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CP/M on HP-86B

Hi Glen,

Thanks a million!

Now for the not-so-good news:

I downloaded the file: WORDSTAR.TD0 from the HP Computer Museum site. I moved the file onto an MS-DOS formatted floppy disk on a USB drive connected to my Mac. I started up Parallels and started my Windows XP virtual machine. I connected the floppy disk drive to Windows XP. In Windows, I opened an MS-DOS window. Within that MS-DOS window, I did a CD A:. On A: I placed a copy of WORDSTAR.TD0 into my IMD118 directory. Within A:\IMD118\ I did TD02IMD WORDSTAR.TD0...

I got the following error message:

TD 1.5 3.5 LD MFM S-step, 2 sides 25/07/2004 22:23:18
WORDSTAR FOR HP 150
Cannot do mixed sector size within track
A:\IMD118>


This is the same sequence that I used successfully to replicate what you did previously with the file HP87CPM.TD0, except I replicated what you did, and I successfully ended up with the .IMD file.

Can you please try this process? I am not familiar with these tools, and I have not found any directions to guide me on what to try next. I'll be looking on the HP Computer Museum site - I seem to remember that they had some directions for transforming .TD0 files into .IMD files.

Thanks in advance, for your continued attention and advice. I will post back if I find something and make any breakthrough, or get further into trouble.

smp
 
Hi Glen,

Thanks a million!

Now for the not-so-good news:

I downloaded the file: WORDSTAR.TD0 from the HP Computer Museum site. I moved the file onto an MS-DOS formatted floppy disk on a USB drive connected to my Mac. I started up Parallels and started my Windows XP virtual machine. I connected the floppy disk drive to Windows XP. In Windows, I opened an MS-DOS window. Within that MS-DOS window, I did a CD A:. On A: I placed a copy of WORDSTAR.TD0 into my IMD118 directory. Within A:\IMD118\ I did TD02IMD WORDSTAR.TD0...

I got the following error message:

TD 1.5 3.5 LD MFM S-step, 2 sides 25/07/2004 22:23:18
WORDSTAR FOR HP 150
Cannot do mixed sector size within track
A:\IMD118>


This is the same sequence that I used successfully to replicate what you did previously with the file HP87CPM.TD0, except I replicated what you did, and I successfully ended up with the .IMD file.

Can you please try this process? I am not familiar with these tools, and I have not found any directions to guide me on what to try next. I'll be looking on the HP Computer Museum site - I seem to remember that they had some directions for transforming .TD0 files into .IMD files.

Thanks in advance, for your continued attention and advice. I will post back if I find something and make any breakthrough, or get further into trouble.

smp

I too, will see what I can do. I have that imagedisk around somewhere...
Trust me... it WILL be worth it! :p
:D
EDIT: Im wondering if your problem(s) is(are)nt being caused by the USB-based drive...
You might want to try the procedure on the PC...
 
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Yes, I agree with you. There is probably something wrong with the setup with the virtual machine - except that I was able to replicate Glen's activities with the initial HP87CPM.TD0 file.

So, I went out into the garage and tried my old PC. I get the same error as I reported from the ImageDisk program.

I downloaded Teledisk version 2.16 (the one for 3.5 inch disks) and got that over onto my old PC, too. That program wants to see every diskette that I insert as a 1.44 MB diskette, even though the Teledisk program correctly sees the WORDSTASR.TD0 file as coming from a low density formatted source disk. So, I am feeling that my old PC hardware is probably fouling me up somehow.

Oh, well. I will keep rooting around and keep trying things, but if I can't get the file out of the .TD0 format, I will not be able to put the image onto a disk, and if the programs suggested by the folks who created the .TD0 files in the first place won't work on my hardware, I may be back in the position of looking for some more hardware that will actually work.

SIGH...

smp
 
Well, there is one possiblity not being considered...

That the FILE itself is messed up...

:(

Later y'all!
Im out to attempt recovery of an Android tablet with an ARM cpu!

I get to learn ARM SoC assembly language/programming!
Oh joy. :rolleyes:
 
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I got the following error message:

TD 1.5 3.5 LD MFM S-step, 2 sides 25/07/2004 22:23:18
WORDSTAR FOR HP 150
Cannot do mixed sector size within track
A:\IMD118>


I am thinking that the original disk was a 5.25 inch double sided disk. That is what is in the picture on the web page that Glen's link pointed to. And within the directions elsewhere on the web site, "...Insert a floppy disc ... The disc need not be blank or formatted. However, it must be the same size and density as the disc from which the archive was made."

Taking the instructions literally, that means that the Teledisk utility can re-create only the exact same physical diskette type as the image was originally on.

That will blow me out of the water for now. Looks like I will have to consider moving on with an attempt to create an HP Drive.

smp
 
Boy... you sure do give up easy, huh? :p
You think that DINOSAUR in my avatar went together easy?
(5.25 SSDDs to 3.5 DSDDs, custom FD cable, custom HD interface, custom HD driver(s))

Let me see what sort of alchemy I can work up...
Give me a day or two... will keep yall in the loop!
:D
 
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My project for the last couple of evenings was to get a real physical 9895A 8-inch floppy drive up and running with CP/M on the HP-86B. I wanted to do this with a real drive because I haven't been able to get emulated HPDrive disks to format successfully with the HP-86B. If I could get a real physical 8-inch floppy formatted with CP/M on the HP-86B then I could create a disk image from that and use that image with an emulated HPDrive disk. The advantage of doing this is that the 8-inch disks contain over 1MB of data while the 5.25-inch or 3.5-inch disks are around a quarter of that.

I've had a 9895A drive for a few years now and have never actually done anything with it other than power it on briefly, after which it blew its main fuse. I finally decided to get it going and after replacing the fuse with a proper rated one things looked mostly good, except for some head positioner issues. After some mechanical work to clear up something jamming the stepper motor drive I got one of the two 8-inch drives running.

Here are the drive format details after I finally got an 8-inch floppy formatted with CP/M on the HP-86B:

Code:
A>stat dsk:

    A: Drive Characteristics
 1952: 128 Byte Record Capacity
  244: Kilobyte Drive  Capacity
  128: 32  Byte Directory Entries
  128: Checked  Directory Entries
  128: Records/ Extent
    8: Records/ Block
   32: Sectors/ Track
    3: Reserved Tracks

    E: Drive Characteristics
 8864: 128 Byte Record Capacity
 1108: Kilobyte Drive  Capacity
  128: 32  Byte Directory Entries
  128: Checked  Direcotry Entries
  256: Records/ Extent
   32: Records/ Block
   60: Sectors/ Track
    2: Reserved Tracks

5.25-inch Disk Parameter Block:
20 00 03 07 00 F3 00 7F 00 F0 00 20 00 03 00

0020    Sectors Per Track  (32)
03      Block Shift  (Allocation Block Size 1024)
07      Block Mask
00      Extent Mask
00F3    Maximum Allocation Block Number  (243)
007F    Number of Directory Entries - 1  (127)
00F0    Allocation Blocks Bitmap for the Directory
0020    Size of Buffer for Directory Checking  (32)
0003    Number of Tracks Before the Directory  (3)

8-inch Disk Parameter Block:
3C 00 05 1F 01 14 01 7F 00 80 00 20 00 02 00

003C    Sectors Per Track  (60)
05      Block Shift  (Allocation Block Size 4096)
1F      Block Mask
01      Extent Mask
0114    Maximum Allocation Block Number  (276)
007F    Number of Directory Entries - 1  (127)
0080    Allocation Blocks Bitmap for the Directory
0020    Size of Buffer for Directory Checking  (32)
0002    Number of Tracks Before the Directory  (2)
One thing that puzzles me is that while the Maximum Allocation Block Number for the 5.25-inch disk format matches my calculations for the number of CP/M directory and file sectors on a 5.25-inch inch disk after subtracting the 3 reserved tracks at the beginning of the disk and the 2 tracks at the end of the disk for the BASIC Autost program and the CP/M binary program, the Maximum Allocation Block Number for the 8-inch disk format appears to only take the 2 reserved tracks at the beginning of the disk into account and not the 1+ tracks at the end of the disk.

For the 8-inch format I calculate ((150-2)*30)-32 = 4408 256-byte sectors, or 275.5 4096-byte blocks. So I would expect the rounded down and zero-based Maximum Allocation Block Number to be 274, not 276.

-Glen
 
I spent some time looking at the WORDSTAR.TD0 image and realized that it was actually the HP-150 version and the HP Museum site was pointing to the same image for both the HP-150 and HP-86/87 CP/M versions. I sent an email to Jon there and got a quick reply with the correct image which has now been renamed WORDSR80.TD0 there for the HP-86/87 CP/M version. The page there has now been updated to point to the correct image version.

http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=270
http://www.hpmuseum.net/software/WORDSR80.TD0

I was able use Teledisk to write the WORDSR80.TD0 image out to a physical 3.5-inch floppy (the web page for the HP-86/87 CP/M version of WordStar 3.0 shows a 5.25-inch floppy picture although the text does say 3.5-inch) and then read that
physical 3.5-inch floppy back into a plain disk image using HPDir and then access that disk image just fine from my HP-86B CP/M system as an emulated disk using HPDrive. Now I can run WordStar on my HP-86B.

-Glen

C:\HPDIR>hpdir -query
Info: NI TNT4882 GPIB hardware found at location 0x2C0 [Board 0]
Scanning devices on GPIB:
(0) HP82901/HP9121 (identify=$0104) at address 6
Sending parallel poll query...response=00000000

C:\HPDIR>hpdir -dup 706: WORDSR80.DSK
record 1119 (100%)

C:\cpmtools>cpmls -l -f hp87cpm WORDSR80.DSK
0:
-rw-rw-rw- 12544 Dec 31 1969 example.txt
-rwxrwxrwx 32896 Dec 31 1969 install.com
-rwxrwxrwx 15872 Dec 31 1969 ws.com
-rw-rw-rw- 27904 Dec 31 1969 wsmsgs.ovr
-rw-rw-rw- 34048 Dec 31 1969 wsovly1.ovr
-rwxrwxrwx 15872 Dec 31 1969 wsu.com

C:\HPDRIVE>hpdrive -9121 -a 4 -l 2 -d -n 2 HP87CPM.DSK WORDSR80.DSK
Info: HPDrive 4.0 beta4 (2012/04/09)
Info: NI TNT4882 GPIB hardware found at location 0x2C0 [Board 0] (3c)
File HP87CPM.DSK is write protected, mounting in read-only mode.
File WORDSR80.DSK is write protected, mounting in read-only mode.
9121 drive ready, listening at GPIB address 4 (0.27 0.27 MBytes)
 
... For the 8-inch format I calculate ((150-2)*30)-32 = 4408 256-byte sectors, or 275.5 4096-byte blocks. So I would expect the rounded down and zero-based Maximum Allocation Block Number to be 274, not 276.
-Glen

The 8-in drive is 77 tracks, right? So it should be 154-2... then the 2 at the end... so 152 total tracks.
Just using the numbers in the DPB, etc I came up with 277 blocks (at 128 byte/rec)... for the total 8864 records.
So... if you figure 256 byte recs, the total is 4432, but the number of records/block would also be halved... so it should still come out to 277...
276 suggests that 32 128-byte records are 'missing'... perhaps there on the end of the disk...

GOOD CATCH on that Wordstar issue - Im sure SMP will appreciate that, as I know I look forward to seeing if the install program (which I 'dont seem to have') will allow me to make 'preferred' changes to the way mine works (for the 4p).

I still have to track down my copy if Imagedisk, but I know its around somewhere...

MAD PROPS to you!!! :bigups:
 
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The HP 9895A physical format is 77 tracks but as I understand how they are used by the drive is that 2 of the tracks are reserved as spares for bad tracks and logically there are only 75 tracks.

Same as on the 5.25 inch where there are physically 35 tracks with 2 reserved as spare tracks leaving 33 logical tracks. Or 3.5 inch with a single side of 70 physical tracks and 4 reserved. That's where the 66 tracks value comes from for the 5.25 and 3.5 inch formats and that number works with the maximum block value there.
 
Boy... you sure do give up easy, huh? :p


Hi again guys,

We were off doing other things today, but when we got home, I put in some more time on my old PC, and I now have the PC successfully running MS-DOS 6.21 as before, but now I have both the original 3.5 inch 1.44 MB floppy disk drive, AND a 5.25 inch 360K floppy disk drive. I had to go through all 3 of my 5.25 inch drive units that I have saved for my S-100 machine. I didn't really know if any of them are in working condition. I think that 2 of them (both are half height form factor) are higher density than 360K, but I could not get either of those to completely integrate with the PC. My full height form factor drive went right in and worked as a 360K drive right off. So, I now have the ability to read and write 5.25 inch 360K double sided diskettes.

On the PC, I have the Image Disk tools, as well as Teledisk version 2.11 (supposedly for 5.25 inch diskettes) and Teledisk version 2.16 (supposedly for 3.5 inch diskettes).

Right now I'm tired, and I do not know if this has actually advanced my capabilities to deal with the issues I am facing, or not. I tried to use Teledisk to write the WORDSTAR.TD0 file onto a 5.25 inch diskette, but I got the error message that the file was from a 3.5 inch disk so it would not write it onto a 5.25 inch disk. I have not been able to dig up a real 270K or 720K 3.5 inch diskette to play around with, so when I try to play around with the 3.5 inch disk drive, it always assumes I want 1.44 MB format. I don't know if that is fouling me up or not. Like I said, I'm tired, so I will be packing things in for tonight.

I think I am now in better shape with my hardware that I was before. Right?

smp
 
I spent some time looking at the WORDSTAR.TD0 image and realized that it was actually the HP-150 version and the HP Museum site was pointing to the same image for both the HP-150 and HP-86/87 CP/M versions. I sent an email to Jon there and got a quick reply with the correct image which has now been renamed WORDSR80.TD0 there for the HP-86/87 CP/M version. The page there has now been updated to point to the correct image version.

http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?sw=270
http://www.hpmuseum.net/software/WORDSR80.TD0

I was able use Teledisk to write the WORDSR80.TD0 image out to a physical 3.5-inch floppy (the web page for the HP-86/87 CP/M version of WordStar 3.0 shows a 5.25-inch floppy picture although the text does say 3.5-inch) and then read that
physical 3.5-inch floppy back into a plain disk image using HPDir and then access that disk image just fine from my HP-86B CP/M system as an emulated disk using HPDrive. Now I can run WordStar on my HP-86B.

-Glen


Holy cow! I think I got it!

After I posted my last message, I re-read the previous posts and saw Lee's comment that I ought to be happy about Glen's success with Wordstar. So, I went back and really read what Glen had said, and I gave it a try.

I downloaded the correct Wordstar file and got it onto my PC. I used Teledisk version 2.16, like I think I was supposed to. And I used one of my high density 3.5 inch diskettes, with the high density hole blocked to make it pretend to be a low density diskette.

Teledisk gave me an error on pretty much every track at sector 17, but I saw somewhere that one of the things to try is ignore errors and just go on, so I did. When I got the entire diskette copied, I brought it onto my HP-86B and, holy cow, everything showed up on my drive B: as it should. I went onto drive B: and executed WS, and there I was, in Wordstar.

Now I know absolutely nothing about using Wordstar, so I stumbled around with the onscreen assistance, and I was able to load in EXAMPLE.TXT and wander around in it. I could not find the command to exit from Wordstar (!) so I reset the HP-86B to get out of everything. Now, obviously, I need to find some directions on how to use Wordstar, so I can actually be able to accomplish something.

Thanks a million, Glen. I don't really understand everything that's going on, but I have been able to keep up with your accomplishments. Also, it appears that my PC is actually working OK, so that is an accomplishment for me.

Thanks a million, guys. Your attention and assistance is greatly appreciated.

smp
 
Right now I'm tired, and I do not know if this has actually advanced my capabilities to deal with the issues I am facing, or not. I tried to use Teledisk to write the WORDSTAR.TD0 file onto a 5.25 inch diskette, but I got the error message that the file was from a 3.5 inch disk so it would not write it onto a 5.25 inch disk. I have not been able to dig up a real 270K or 720K 3.5 inch diskette to play around with, so when I try to play around with the 3.5 inch disk drive, it always assumes I want 1.44 MB format. I don't know if that is fouling me up or not. Like I said, I'm tired, so I will be packing things in for tonight.
smp

I wrote the WORDSR80.TD0 Teledisk disk image file to a non-HD 3.5-inch floppy disk. In the PC world that would be a 360KB (single-sided) or 720KB (double-sided) floppy, not an HD 1.44MB (double-sided) floppy. If you were to write that Teledisk disk image file to a 5.25-inch floppy there isn't any HP drive hardware that would work with. The disk image is for a singled-sided 70 track 3.5-inch disk while the HP 5.25-inch drives are double-sided 35 track disks. (The Teledisk disk image appears to actually contain some sort of information for the second side and for tracks 70-79, although whatever information they contain for those tracks is not meaningful).

You should get your old PC set up with the GPIB board and HPDir and HPDrive and once you have that set up it will make some things easier.

-Glen
 
Holy cow! I think I got it! .... Thanks a million, guys. Your attention and assistance is greatly appreciated.

smp

1) Open the file you want to work with AFTER starting wordstar. otherwise it will default to DOCUMENT mode (unless it has been changed by the install pgm)
2) Once its started, press 'N' for non-document file (unformatted, plain text)
3) Use of ^Kq will exit a file... prompted if file is changed. ^Kd (done) will save & close.
4) ^Kx exits Wordstar.
*** IF you press ^K and wait, it will display the options!

That's the fast-and-dirty. If you have 'arrow' keys you are likely able to use them... else ^E=up, ^X=down, ^S = left, ^F = right...

Oh... you might want to check the PCs BIOS to see if it can be 'forced' to the DD floppy type. Might have less issues with it.
:D
 
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You should get your old PC set up with the GPIB board and HPDir and HPDrive and once you have that set up it will make some things easier.

-Glen

Hi Glen,

Amen to that! However, my latest adventure with my old PC is that I cannot get the CD Drive to work. Since I had to rebuild the hard disk, I started off with MS-DOS, and I figured that I could add Windows 98 later. Now that later is here, I have a non-responsive CDROM drive. Of course! All I have is MS-DOS, and MS-DOS knows nothing about the CDROM drive. The adventure goes on!


1) Open the file you want to work with AFTER starting wordstar. otherwise it will default to DOCUMENT mode (unless it has been changed by the install pgm)
2) Once its started, press 'N' for non-document file (unformatted, plain text)
3) Use of ^Kq will exit a file... prompted if file is changed. ^Kd (done) will save & close.
4) ^Kx exits Wordstar.
*** IF you press ^K and wait, it will display the options!

That's the fast-and-dirty. If you have 'arrow' keys you are likely able to use them... else ^E=up, ^X=down, ^S = left, ^F = right...

Hi Lee,

Thanks very much for those tips. I have done a proper install, and now those tips make a bit more sense.


Oh... you might want to check the PCs BIOS to see if it can be 'forced' to the DD floppy type. Might have less issues with it.


Yes. I checked, and there does not seem to be a way available to do that. That's OK, though, because when I followed the directions properly, and I had a high density disk with its HD hole blocked to pretend to be a low density disk, everything came out OK.

I am learning a lot here, kind of a trial by fire for me.

Thanks guys, for your patience and attention.

smp
 
Hi Glen,

Amen to that! However, my latest adventure with my old PC is that I cannot get the CD Drive to work. Since I had to rebuild the hard disk, I started off with MS-DOS, and I figured that I could add Windows 98 later. Now that later is here, I have a non-responsive CDROM drive. Of course! All I have is MS-DOS, and MS-DOS knows nothing about the CDROM drive. The adventure goes on!




Hi Lee,

Thanks very much for those tips. I have done a proper install, and now those tips make a bit more sense.





Yes. I checked, and there does not seem to be a way available to do that. That's OK, though, because when I followed the directions properly, and I had a high density disk with its HD hole blocked to pretend to be a low density disk, everything came out OK.

I am learning a lot here, kind of a trial by fire for me.

Thanks guys, for your patience and attention.

smp

Look online for OAKCDROM.SYS... probably the most compliant drivers out there for DOS.
If you cant find it, let me know... I can probably email it to you.

IF you find it..
Entry in CONFIG.sys:
device=(wherever-u-put-it)\OAKCDROM.SYS /d:mscd001

Entry in AUTOEXEC.bat
C:\DOS\mscdex.exe /d:mscd001

You can actually start up mscdex.exe 'manually' to ensure it works...
:D
EDIT: Isnt the 98 cd bootable?
You may just need to check the BIOS again to set the 1st boot device to CDROM (ATAPI)...

If all else fails, I BELIEVE I have a 95 boot floppy (cuz 95 DIDNT self-boot) I can image off & send you.
:D
 
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EDIT: Isnt the 98 cd bootable?
You may just need to check the BIOS again to set the 1st boot device to CDROM (ATAPI)...

OK!

I was so worried that the CDROM drive seemed to be unresponsive - I couldn't get it to open or anything.

So, after I read your question, I remembered that I had set the CDROM drive to be bootable in the BIOS. So... I carefully crowbarred the CD tray open while no power was applied, and I put in the Windows 98 CD, and when I applied power, the CD tray got sucked in, as expected, and the Windows 98 CD booted, and it installed its own driver for the CDROM drive (yes it was some version of OAK something-or-other), and the Windows 98 Setup screen came up, and I am now installing Windows 98.

I still don't know why I couldn't get the CDROM drive to open up when power was applied. It seems to me that the mechanism should recognize the "open up" button, whether or not anything else is set properly for computer operation. That just stopped me in my tracks, until your question made me think about it.

When I get Windows 98 in there, I will re-check everything that I had working under MS-DOS to be sure that it's all still there, or I will re-install it if it isn't. This will get me to the point that I can download IEEE-488 driver stuff for my HP-IB I/O board, and, hopefully get that running. Then I could be on my way to creating an HP Drive, like Glen.

Thanks again!

smp
 
OK!

I was so worried that the CDROM drive seemed to be unresponsive - I couldn't get it to open or anything.

So, after I read your question, I remembered that I had set the CDROM drive to be bootable in the BIOS. So... I carefully crowbarred the CD tray open while no power was applied, and I put in the Windows 98 CD, and when I applied power, the CD tray got sucked in, as expected, and the Windows 98 CD booted, and it installed its own driver for the CDROM drive (yes it was some version of OAK something-or-other), and the Windows 98 Setup screen came up, and I am now installing Windows 98.

I still don't know why I couldn't get the CDROM drive to open up when power was applied. It seems to me that the mechanism should recognize the "open up" button, whether or not anything else is set properly for computer operation. That just stopped me in my tracks, until your question made me think about it.

When I get Windows 98 in there, I will re-check everything that I had working under MS-DOS to be sure that it's all still there, or I will re-install it if it isn't. This will get me to the point that I can download IEEE-488 driver stuff for my HP-IB I/O board, and, hopefully get that running. Then I could be on my way to creating an HP Drive, like Glen.

Thanks again!

smp

CROWBARRED!!! :eek: :eek:
There is a itty-bitty hole in front that you can use a bent-open paper clip (or somesuch) to push the mechanism that opens the drawer!
Crowbars are 'overkill'! :rolleyes:

The reason it takes so long for the drive to open is,
1) it has to complete its own 'boot' process, and by then
2) the computer has sent it a 'reset' so it goes thru it all over again,
3) THEN it can recognize the open/close button...

Patience is a virtue... or some harlot on the corner! :p
Or just allow it to fail to boot until the drive is ready to puke up whatever it has in it..
:D
 
CROWBARRED!!! :eek: :eek:
There is a itty-bitty hole in front that you can use a bent-open paper clip (or somesuch) to push the mechanism that opens the drawer!
Crowbars are 'overkill'! :rolleyes:


Not on THIS one there isn't! I searched for it - and I only found a small slot underneath the center of the drive tray door that was obviously for a fingernail to grab the tray door and pull it out. So, I did. And it worked. At least to get me into the lollapalooza of loading Windows 98. That did not complete, even after a number of restarts and re-dos. Win 98 seems not to like my 360K 5.25 inch drive. Towards the end of the install process it would probe the disk drive (during discovery of plug-and-play devices, and during setup of plug-and-play devices). That's where the process would hang up forever. I wiped my disk and re-installed MS-DOS 5. At least there I have a stable system that I can transfer .TD0 files to and make diskettes.

smp
 
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