• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

CP/M Formatting an IDE Hard Drive Using a Kaypro II- Is it possible?

thummp3r

New Member
Joined
Aug 13, 2010
Messages
0
Greetings:
I have a set of machines where I work, they were made in the mid 80's, seem to have been upgraded at some time to IDE hard drives from MFM, but the drives are formatted in CP/M.

The manufacturer has gone out of business, but many of the tech support people are still around.

They have the floppies with the software needed. The one thing they can't do for me is format a hard drive in CP/M.

I purchased a Kaypro II on ebay which was what the tech said the guy at the company used to use before they went bust, but, have no idea how to proceed from here.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. We're a small company and basically just making ends meet.

Thank you
 
Hi! It is probably possible but there will have to be some software written. You may want to consider using the N8VEM DiskIO board and/or PropIO board with the ECB Z80 socket adapter. For sure the PropIO would work since I've seen it demonstrated. Probably the DiskIO too since they are quite similar. There is all the information on the N8VEM project on the N8VEM wiki or you can contact me to discuss at LYNCHAJ@YAHOO.COM

Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch
 
For CP/M all you really need is to wipe the drives with E5... yes?

Do you know what port(s) your controller uses?
I have a HDFORMAT program I wrote in Pascal (MT+) that was derived from another source... It would wipe the ENTIRE DRIVE but if you're not booting from it that shouldnt be a problem...
All it does is write E5 until it cant write any more... or you stop it first. :p

Gonna depend upon the location(s) of the port(s)... tho being IDE it SHOULD be consistent and only need to know the BASE PORT... (in my case, $C0)...
:D
 
Hi! Yes, filling the drive with $E5 will serve as a basic format for CP/M.

The N8VEM DiskIO uses $2x address range for IDE. There is sample code on how to interface with the DiskIO on the N8VEM wiki and other various files like schematics, PCB layout, test software, photos, etc.

http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/w/file/4201420/tp-ide.asm

http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/w/browse/#view=ViewFolder&param=ECB Disk IO

You'll need the ECB to Z80 socket shim miniboard to interface the Z80 CPU to ECB

http://n8vem-sbc.pbworks.com/w/browse/#view=ViewFolder&param=MINI ECB to Z80 socket adapters

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks and have a nice day!

Andrew Lynch

PS, the ECB to Z80 socket shim mini board allows use of any ECB board so it could be DiskIO (IDE/CF) or PropIO (microSD) or other ECB board.
 
Back
Top