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new to CP/M and Kaypro - advice needed!

SMichelsen

SMichelsen

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2015
Messages
105
Location
Lewes, Delaware
So I finally got to start exploring my Kaypro 2X, thanks to a keyboard cable I found on ebay (coincidentally sold by a VCFED member).
I have exactly ONE disk for the Kaypro, a boot disk with these files on it...

Kaypro_CPM_2.2.jpg

I am a CP/M newbie and am a bit baffled by many of the CP/M commands I have seen. It's often quite different from MS-DOS, for sure. Anyway, I am trying to accomplish a couple of basic things, and one more challenging thing, and could surely use a little help:

The easy part (I hope):
- format a fresh disk
- back up the boot disk I have now.

Can you please tell me the appropriate commands to make this happen?

Additionally, I have a task which may or may not be possible with this machine. I have an S-100 bus, CP/M based "Eagle" computer, that uses an single, external disk drive, a Shugart SA400, which uses 35 track, 110kb, single sided disks (specs here). The drive
connects to the Eagle via a 37 pin cable. ​
I don't have a CP/M boot disk for the Eagle, only disks that boot directly to the software that the Eagle was built to run on, called "Procall".
There is no command within that application to quit to the OS.​

I need to be able to back up the very few disks I have for this computer. They are as rare as rare can be and I use them as infrequently as possible. Is it possible to format a disk that will work on the Eagle in my Kaypro? If so could the Kaypro be used to copy my Procall disks? I fear there is some "fact of life" about all of this that I am unaware of - any education you can offer is appreciated.

Steve

The Eagle:

AVL_Eagle_I.jpg
 
Steve,
I don't have any Kaypro 2 files, but have Kaypro II, Kaypro 1, Kaypro 4 and Kaypro 10.

For the Kaypro, if you run the copy command just as "COPY", it should come up with a choice to "FORMAT", "COPY"
and maybe another command. When you select format it will ask for Kaypro II (SS/DD 40 Track), Kaypro IV (DS/DD 40 Track),
and maybe another choice for Kaypro (DS/DD 80 Track). (At least my Kaypro II with the PRO8 ROM does those format.)
Also COPY command will copy a SOURCE Floppy to a DESTINATION Floppy, with you selecting Source & Destination.
After you copy the Floppy in Drive A:, it should Boot in B:. But before you do that there is one thing that you need
to remember. Any Time you are going to replace a floppy in any Drive, SAVE you work. Then exit the running program,
and Replace the Floppy in B:, and then immediately do a CNTL C. That will read the Floppy Directory entries into memory.
If you always do that you will never clobber a Floppy.

For the Eagle, I don't have any floppy images for it, but possibly can write an Image with the GreaseWeazle. I just got it working
with my Floppy Drives, and can read a Floppy, save the Flux Image, and write a Fresh Floppy, and boot it. If you can find someone
local with a SuperCard Pro, or Kryoflux, they can make a Flux Image of the Original.

Larry
 
One word of CAUTION: When doing the "CNTL C after changing disks" thing, keep in mind that only applies to when you are at the CP/M prompt, e.g. "A0>". If, for example, you have started COPY and are about to format a new disk in B:, DO NOT press Ctrl-C.

Once you get several backup copies of your (only) CP/M master disk, you'll want to come up with a method of getting more software onto diskettes. I'm not sure what method you'll want to use, but there are a lot of archived diskette images around with additional software.

Regarding the Eagle floppies, something to look at is what formats are supported by MFDISK.COM. MFDISK stands for "Multi-Format Disk" and was a (bit of a hack) method of being able to read/write alternate formats on the Kaypro. I don't know what diskette format the Eagle uses, but from the drive spec we can assume it only used 35 tracks. If the Eagle floppy controller was based on a Western Digital controller chip, or compatible, then you may be able to read/write the Eagle disks on the Kaypro. If the Eagle had some obscure, custom, controller then all bets are off. However, the Kaypro BIOS won't likely read them correctly and it will probably require some programming. You might have to write a program to read each track and then write each to a new diskette. The other side of that is to archive the contents of the diskettes for posterity, and that will require a way to get the diskette contents off the Kaypro.
 
I've sent you a couple PM's. I've located some Eagle Images, but some are marked as EaglII EaglIII and such.
I don't know if that refers to a different Model or different Disk Number. I've downloaded several *.TD0 files,
created *.IMD files, and then used the Imagedisk utilities to create *.RAW images. That way I can look for
Directory entries for CP/M and try using cpmtools with my conjured up definitions to access Directories of
the .RAW images. And even extract some of the files, if possible.

Next step is I need more information from you on the Eagle and what you would like to try. I have a GreaseWeazle
that should be able to duplicate the .RAW images with my GreaseWeazle/Flashfloppy Definitions.

Send me an email to address in PM's.

Code: 
$ cpmls -f eag1 -D EAGLII.RAW
     Name    Bytes   Recs  Attr     update             create
------------ ------ ------ ---- -----------------  -----------------
ASM     .COM     8K     64    
ASSIGN  .COM     6K     48    
CBAS2   .COM    22K    166    
CRUN2   .COM    18K    140    
D       .COM     4K     24    
DDISKUTL.COM     6K     44    
DDT     .COM     6K     38    
DISKUTIL.COM     6K     44    
DUMP    .COM     2K      4    
EBIOS   .ASM    64K    508    
ED      .COM     8K     52    
ICPM60  .ASM     2K     10    
LOAD    .COM     2K     14    
MOVCPM  .COM    10K     76    
PIP     .COM     8K     58    
STAT    .COM     6K     41    
SUBMIT  .COM     2K     10    
SYSGEN  .COM     2K      9    
XREF    .COM     8K     56    
XSUB    .COM     2K      6    
   20 Files occupying    192K,     192K Free.


$ cpmls -f eag1 -D EAGLII-A.RAW
     Name    Bytes   Recs  Attr     update             create
------------ ------ ------ ---- -----------------  -----------------
ASM     .COM     8K     64    
ASSIGN  .COM     6K     48    
CBAS2   .COM    22K    166    
CRUN2   .COM    18K    140    
DDISKUTL.COM     6K     44    
DDT     .COM     6K     38    
DISKUTIL.COM     6K     44    
DUMP    .COM     2K      4    
EBIOS   .ASM    64K    508    
ED      .COM     8K     52    
ICPM60  .ASM     2K     10    
LOAD    .COM     2K     14    
MOVCPM  .COM    10K     76    
PIP     .COM     8K     58    
STAT    .COM     6K     41    
SUBMIT  .COM     2K     10    
SYSGEN  .COM     2K      9    
XREF    .COM     8K     56    
XSUB    .COM     2K      6    
   19 Files occupying    188K,     196K Free.


$ cpmls -f eag1 -D E-ULCALC.RAW
     Name    Bytes   Recs  Attr     update             create
------------ ------ ------ ---- -----------------  -----------------
ASSIGN  .COM     6K     48    
BALANCE .SHT     2K     10    
BRKEVEN .ANA     2K     16    
DISKUTIL.COM     6K     44    
HELLO   .COM     4K     32    
SS      .COM     4K     27    
SS      .HLP    26K    193    
SS      .OVL   114K    912    
    8 Files occupying    164K,     220K Free.




Larry
 
Last edited:
SMichelsen said:
I am a CP/M newbie and am a bit baffled by many of the CP/M commands I have seen. It's often quite different from MS-DOS, for sure. Anyway, I am trying to accomplish a couple of basic things, and one more challenging thing, and could surely use a little help:
Click to expand...

Since you're familiar with MS-DOS, you'll find CP/M isn't really that difficult. Firstly, filenames are 8.3, same as DOS. No long filenames. No subdirectories. ? and * have the same meanings as in DOS. Since there's no subdirectories, \ doesn't mean anything. There's no . and .. entries. No environment variables. No path statement.

You can change between drives with A: and B: , same as DOS. It supports up to P: . Make sure there's a disk in the drive, or your machine will most likely hang.

The 5 inbuilt commands:
ERA - deletes a file
DIR - list of files
REN - rename a file
SAVE - make a new file by saving x blocks of memory to disk
TYPE - (same as DOS)

All other commands are listed on your disk. COM files are the same idea as in DOS - an executable binary that loads and runs from 0x100 in memory. Command-line parameters can be passed, if the program supports it - same as DOS,
The supplied editor is a line editor called ED. The debugger is called DDT. The file copy utility is usually called PIP.

There's no such thing as EXE files - COM files are the only binary available. There's a batch environment using SUB files, but it isn't really as easy as the BAT files found in DOS.

There's no config.sys or autoexec.bat either. Some versions of CP/M are patched to allow a SUB file to run at boot, but that isn't standard.

As for formatting, most companies will supply a FORMAT.COM . There's no diskcopy program as standard. You'd normally have to use PIP to copy over all the files, followed by SYSGEN to copy over the system tracks to make it bootable. CP/M always reserves an area for the system tracks, even if you never use it.

Hopefully that will get you started. There's heaps of CP/M sites around, and lots of manuals to be had.
 
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Also, for the commands like PIP the command uses DESTINATION:=SOURCE:*.*
as follows:
pip c:=a:*.com
pip b:=c:*.asm
pip b:=a:*.txt
pip c:=a:*.*

there are switches that can modify the commands:
pip b:=a:*.* [ov]

sysgen is used to copy the system tracks.


STAT DEV: - Displays current DEVICE information.
STAT VAL: - Displays current STATUS information.
STAT USR: - Displays current USR information.
STAT A*.* $S - Displays detailed file information.
STAT DSK: - Gives some detailed disk information for logged drive.
STAT A: DSK: - Gives some detailed disk information for A:.
STAT B: DSK: - Gives some detailed disk information for B:.


Larry
 
CP/M will seem to be a crude form of DOS. Since early DOS was copied to act like CP/M, more or less, many features carried over. Of course, MS had to change or add stuff as DOS grew into the later forms. Several good books for mastering CP/M, but most are pricey these days.
 
Your Eagle computer was designed as an audio visual controller. The computer ran the operating system called procall or lifeboat associates cpm. Procall is purely to program Audio Visual shows where it could connected to up to 30 or so desolve units. These desolve units would in turn control about 3 slide projectors like the Kodak SAVs. Controlling the slide projectors by stepping the slides, and control the light output. The slides could be background & foreground images covering the whole screen or sectors of the screen. The whole effect would create an animation of great clarity. The slide show could be synchronised with an audio track and potentially stage lighting, prompts e.g curtains etc. In the late 70s early 80s when these were produced the memory and processing capacity wasn't there to manipulate and store graphic images directly, but systems like these were the way to go in the 80s & early 90s. A good place to get more detail is https://www.stevenmichelsen.com/AVL/. This provides links to Eagle user manual & Procall etc
 
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