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Compupro Mdrive-h driver for non-Compupro machines

cellarcat

Member
Joined
Apr 28, 2013
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Just wondering if anybody out there has a copy of Mdrive.com for the Compupro Mdrive-H. This was the driver for S100 computers other than Compupro's own machines which had the driver incorporated into the BIOS. One made space for mdrive.com above CP/M and just loaded it. Very simple. I have Mform.com which formats the ramdrive but it would be nice not to have to rewrite the bios. I have several S100 computers and could then use the board on any of them.
 
Mdrive/h

Mdrive/h

Just wondering if anybody out there has a copy of Mdrive.com for the Compupro Mdrive-H. This was the driver for S100 computers other than Compupro's own machines which had the driver incorporated into the BIOS. One made space for mdrive.com above CP/M and just loaded it. Very simple. I have Mform.com which formats the ramdrive but it would be nice not to have to rewrite the bios. I have several S100 computers and could then use the board on any of them.

Hello,
I have an S100 machine I started building in 1976. The original was a 2Mhz 8080 and 12k static ram, bootleg MS 8k basic, ASR33 Teletype w/ Ptape rd/punch.
Over the years it's morphed a bit..6Mhz z80, DiskJocley 2d with two 8inch SSDD drives, 64k ram, and a Compupro MDrive / H that's been sitting in a box since the 80s with no software. The system is working and I'd like to get the Mdrive/H integrated in. I need the 2 programs MDRIVE.COM and MFORM.COM. I was trying to write a basic program to check out the Mdrive and it looks like its alive but I'm fumbling something with the fifo type addressing. Compupro manual doesn't have any diagnostic suggestions.
Anyway, it would be great if somebody can locate the MDRIVE.COM and MFORM.COM software.
I don't think you have to rewrite the bios. I think you just need to "Sysgen" the CPM you have to make a "53k" system. I think the Mdrive.com uses the ram above the top of CPM 53k and patches the Cbios (i think).
Anyway, I could use a copy of MDRIVE.COM and MFORM.COM...


thanks,
JeffG
 
Just wondering if anybody out there has a copy of Mdrive.com for the Compupro Mdrive-H. This was the driver for S100 computers other than Compupro's own machines which had the driver incorporated into the BIOS. One made space for mdrive.com above CP/M and just loaded it. Very simple. I have Mform.com which formats the ramdrive but it would be nice not to have to rewrite the bios. I have several S100 computers and could then use the board on any of them.

INSTALLING M-DRIVE/H DRIVERS IN OTHER CP/M SYSTEMS
To install the M-DRIVE/H drivers in other CP/M systems, copy the files
"MDRIVE.COM" and "MFORM.COM" onto your system disk. You must now make some
room for the new drivers above your current CP/M. Currently, the M-DRlVE/H
drivers and buffers take about 1K (1024) bytes. This means that your must
make a CP/M 1K less than the amount of memory available in your system. If
you do not know how to move your CP/M down, see your system manual. The
required program is usually called "MOVCPM".
Once you have 1K of room at the top of memory, each time you boot your
system, you must call the MDRIVE program. The format of the MDRIVE command is
as follows:
MDRIVE -DRIVE DESIGNATOR ADDRESS
Where DRIVE DESIGNATOR is the let ter of the logical drive you want the
memory drive to respond to (A-P), and ADDRESS is the address in hex of the end
of your CP /M, or the TOP of your memory minus IK. See table I to determine
what hex address you should use for different memory sizes.
TABLE 1
Amount of memory Hex address to use size CPM to make
64K FCOO 63K
60K ECOO 59K
56K DCOO 55K
52K CCOO 5IK
 
It is fairly easy to find the program MFORM.COM, but apparently MDRIVE.COM is not so easy to find. If you have access to the RLEE archive, you can find a number of copies of MFORM.COM there (look in the M/MORROW directory). There is also a CPMDRV.COM which may be a version of MOVCPM with the MDRIVE stuff included in the BIOS? I have not investigated that aspect of it fully in order to be able to say for sure.

Roger
 
still can't find MDRIVE.COM anywhere.
I'm trying to modify cbios with the Morrow suggested "skeleton mdrive bios" but I'm having trouble with the large modified cbios file.
The CPM-80 built in assembler is reporting multiple errors for imbeded non print characters. I'm not very skilled with the CPM ed program.
The next thing I'm going to try is the Microsoft M80 / L80
 
Just updated GitHub code for the memory test program I wrote “MTEST”.
I am using simh to debug my cp/m driver, and will be adding self sizing code soon.
 
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