Taken from an article written by the late Ted Cawkwell published around 2000 Einstein Magazine No.89/10 THE BOMB PART THREE The final stretch, at last. You have selected your drive, fitted the appropriate leads and checked that it appears to work - so far, so good. Now you have to consider the Disk Operating System or DOS. It is mainly a question of what you have available, if you already have Tatung's DOS 80 or Crystal's XDOS 2.05 you can go ahead and use your 3.5" disks to the full, getting 786k of useable memory and never again having to flip over the disk to use the other side. Each of these DOS's is configurable to suit the drives you have fitted to your machine. XDOS 2 and DOS80 DOS 80 has a file called CONFIG.COM which you run from the 0: and follow the onscreen instructions. XDOS 2,of which there are versions 2.02 and 2.05 in circulation, has no config file but there are instructions in the Manual for modifying the system tracks. This is a little tricky, so I wrote a program called 5DRiVES.XBS which does the job for you with onscreen instructions, I seem to recall that Graham Bettany made a request for this in response to a readers letter. A more recent version is called DRIVES.XBS and is more user friendly.The last I heard, both DOS's were on sale from :~ D&H Computers (HX) Ltd Beacon Business Centre Southowram Halifax W.Yorks.HX3 9UATel 01422 330408 Dos 80 was about £10 but Xdos 2 was around £29 because it only comes with System 5 which includes an improved XBAS and compiler plus a text editor and some other programs,including enhanced versions of COPY.COM and BAGKUP.COM. System 5 will run all the programs you used with the old Dos 1.11 or 1.31 and, frankly, is much the best option. Dos 80 has an 80 column version of XBAS with it and will also run all of your old XBAS programs but not necessarily XBAS 5 ones and definitely not compiled programs. To set up your system you need a working 3" drive as drive 0, because the Dos's both come on 3" disks. One or more 3.5" drives can be fitted as drive 1, 2 or 3, Place your Dos 80 or Xdos 2 disk in drive 0: and boot up Einstein Magazine No. 89/11 the system with Control/Break as usual. Now insert a 3.5" DD disk into your 3.5" drive and type Backup at the 0; followed by enter. Follow the instructions to format the 3.5" disk and do more if needed. A DIR of the drive should now show that you have a disk with 786k of free space. This disk could then be used to boot the micro directly from a 3.5" drive 0. At this point you can start to transfer your files from 3" to 3.5" disk. Each 3,5" disk will hold the whole content of both sides of two 3" 188k disks. There are two things to remember; you must use COPY to do the transfer as BACKUP will only work with samesize disks, and that the Directory on the 3.5" disk has a top limit of 128 entries. Each side of a 3" disk has 64 Dir spaces so it is possible (though rather unlikely) that you may fill all the directory spaces before the disk is full. ! assume that my own 3" disks are fairly typical and I seem to have a natural top limit of around 45 files per disk, and an averaae of about 25. XDOS 1.31 Failing either of the above you will have to use the DOS which comes with the TC01 as standard which should be XTAL DOS 1.31 or the earlier version XDOS 1.11. DOS 1.31 is preferable and a look through your collection of disks should pick up at least one example. Boot this disk in your 3" drive 0 and then replace it with your Master disk or another one containing the file BACKUP.COM. Insert a DD disk in your 3.5" drive and use the FORMAT facility in BACKUP to format the DD disk. A D1R of this disk will now show it to have a capacity of 188k. As you cannot turn it over this is it! It will work just like a 3" disk but obviously only in the 3.5" drive or drives. No configuring of drives is necessary. If it seems disappointing to have only 188k when 786k is possible, then reflect that many Members have been using this method for years because a DD disk is much cheaper than a 3" one, and more easily obtained. It is possible to double the size by inserting a switch in the drive cable (The Potts Switch) which causes the FDC (Floppy Disk Controller chip) to treat the disk as a double sided one, but the action is not automatic and each 'side' of the disk has to be formatted separately, once with the switch IN and once with it OUT. The line to be switched is line 32 and it is switched between Ground and its normal setting on the DRIVE side of the cable. Full details of this switch were in EM 80 and 81. Back copies are available. XDOS 3.0 It has not proved possible to modify (or PATCH) XDOS 1.31 to cope with disks formatted by Xdos 2 or Dos 80 because the two types of Dos use Einstein Magazine No. 89/12 different areas on the disk to record fiie names but it is possible to patch Dos 1.31 to run DD disks to 786k as Jong as the only drives in use are 3.5" ones. I have called this version XDOS 3.0. There are other problems in that the 1,31 FORMAT does not work, but I have got round this by using a Software Library formatter called FVDS80.COM which does the job. I can provide this disk to Members sending a DD disk and return postage. The disk also contains XBAS80 for 80 column use and utilities to self boot, configure and put system tracks on DD disks. A BACKUP routine is sti!! lacking but I am looking for ways to rectify this. The XDOS 1 version of COPY.COM works of course for transferring files. ZDOS 1.6 This is a CP/M DOS which can be found on volumes 163 and 164 in the Software Library. It is configured for drives 0 and 1 to be 3" and drive 2 to be 3.5 with drive 3 reserved for the silicon disk The Srticon Disk is a special attachment once made for the Einstein TC01 which works rather like a hard drive except that it has to be loaded with the required files after bootup and the files are erased when the machine is switched off. In spite of this handicap it is very fast in use and invaluable when a lot file access takes place. With ZDOS It is possible to change the system tracks between XDOS and ZDOS which makes the use of Einstein CP/M programs possible, but XBAS will not Load so none of your familiar programs will run. There is a wealth of information on the 2 disks explaining how it all works and is about the best PD contender for normal use with mixed drives, It also enables users with only XDOS 1 to copy their 3" disks to DD ones for later use with XDOS 3'0. More later. CP/M PLUS This DOS has been on beta test for some time now and Duncan Elvin who wrote it has successfully produced a 3.5" DD disk which will boot the system. It is configurable for mixed drives. To my mind its main drawbacks are the CP/M type commands which are rather difficult to learn (especially if you have never encountered CP/M before) and it is not compatible with Crystal Basic. I understand it will run Locomotive Basic, but so tar have no experience of this. Locomotive is reputed to be very similar to XBAS (same author, I think) so this may be the answer to many problems when it is released. TRANSFERING FILES TO DD DISKS Transfering your existing files to the new DD media was always going to Einstein Magazine No.89/13 be a problem to those without DOS 2 or 80. As this is probably the majority of members, i.e. those with just one or two 3" drives and no 80 column card, I was quite worried that at one time my only answer was to assemble a party of members who had the needful equipment and were prepared to copy files over for other members. \ could visualise so many problems with this that I am glad I can now forget it. However I have quite recently managed to do the job using Bill Powell's version of PD 164 and a Dos 3.0 DD disk. They are both obtainable from me at present (at the usual Software Library rates for PD 164) which will also be obtainable from whoever ends up handling the Software Library. (There is chanae in the air). If you already have PD 164 check that it boots up in ZDOS 1.6 and contains the files NS.COM and NI.COM. If you read French the file FORMAT2.COM might be use ful as an alternative to VDS80.COM which is the main file you will need from the DD disk DOS 3.0. As briefly as possible the routine is:- 1 Boot up from PD164 2 Place the DOS 3.0 disk in your new 3.5" drive ( assumed 2/C here and must be for ZDOS) 3 Format one or more New DD disks using FVDS80.COM in drive 2/C (NOTE!) 4 Go back to drive A and type GOEiNCPM (NOTE 2} 5 P'ace XDOS disk in drive A 6 To the question Replace DOS Y/N type Y 7 Turn over disk in A and repeat 8 Remove disk in A and replace PDI64 9 Type NS (NOTE 3) 10 Replace the modified Xdos disk in drive A 1 1 Type L 12 To question New drive / user area /mask? type AO 1 3 Tag files to be copied using T Note the useful table of total file space. (NOTE 4) 14 When all needed files tagged type M 15 To question Which drive, etc. type CO ( one of your newly formatted DD disks in drive C) Einstein Magazine No.89/14 16 Files will be copied, space used may be noted, X to quit NS 17 Replace PD164 in A and type NI C: This shows full directory with sizes and space left. (NOTE 5) NB Don't forget to convert your 3" disks back to XDOS, or at least label them and put them in a safe place. This is all perfectly possible on a 40 column screen. The next thing would be to repeat from 10 using the other side of the 3" disk then another 3" disk, etc etc. It is not really as fiddly as it appears but the following notes will explain what is happening to give members a better overview. Note 1. FVDS80 is tricky to use and it is possible to find yourself formattina the wrong drive! Therefore, ALWAYS HAVE THE WRITE PROTECT ON any disk but the one being formatted. The program asks you to select a drive first, when you do this the only apparent reaction is a slight flicker of the screen, if you then input F for format it proceeds and continues to verify as well, however you can just verify if you want to. FVDS80 (and FORMAT2) only format the disk, they do not put DOS tracks on them, I have found that Dixons PC Line DD disks are NOT pre-formatted (for the PC) and work very well as Einstein disks. Note 2. The thing to remember about GOEINCPM is that it takes the system tracks of the first disk it is used on and tells you whether it is CPM or EIN. PD 164 should be CPM so any EiN disks modified at this point will have CPM tracks put on. This is what we want To copy successfully you have to have both disks CPM compatible. I have tried making both disks Einstein but the files are not properly transferred - only the first 10k gets copied. A formatted DD disk used under ZDOS and with blank system tracks is effectively CPM compatible. Note 3. NS.COM or NEWSWEEP is a very versatile utility and well worth getting to know. Only a few of its commands are used here. Note 4. When tagging files to be copied you will notice numbers appearing alongside the T. The first set are the values of kilobytes and are added up as you go along. To pass a file just press Space. You may also notice that the files are sorted alpha numerically for you. Don't worry that when you select M for Mass copy the M may appear next to a file you have not tagged - the file will not be copied. Note 5. THe file NI.COM is another handy little utility which shows the directory with sizes of all files and space left on the disk. It should now be fairly obvious that it is only necessary to put DOS 3.0 system tracks on the DD disk to be able to use it to boot an all - 3.5" drive system. There is a utility on the DOS 3 disk for this purpose called Einstein Magazine No.89/14 DOSTRACK.XBS. The DOS track is 2800 hex (10240) bytes long and is obtained from the DOS 3 Master Disk. DOS 3 is just DOS 1.31 patched to use 3.5" DD disks instead of 3" flipover disks and should be expected to work just the same as XDOS 1.31 with all your transferred files. Once all your files are on DD disk you will be free to make the 3.5" disk your boot drive 0 with a second drive suggested for a useful system to fast many years. IF you have a good 3" drive leave it in the machine but disconnected and it can be brought into action later, if need be. COPYPROTECTED DISKS. There is one drawback to this seemingly ideal state of affairs though. Copy Protected Disks. It is certainly possible to copy some of these but legally the copyright holders permission is needed, and it is by no means easy to find them. I think that all the businesses concerned are now closed down or absorbed into other 'houses' and may be difficult to contact. Even when contacted, they may be less than willing to help, unfortunately. Who can be bothered with a few Einsteiners when there is a great big World Wide Web of PC users out there just waiting to throw their money at the next 'big improvement'? Not being a player of 'games' myself I am not too hard hit by Copy Protection although there are also some non-games, like Grafdraw, which come in this area. Grafdraw will run from a 3.5" DD disk but the form of protection employed means that only the first 188k is useable. A pity, but no great hardship to have the use of this excellent program. CP/M PLUS Since writing the above I have been checking the in house version of CP/M Plus and find that it can be used to transfer files to DD disks in a similar way to the method for Zdos. In fact, it is rather simpler as there is no need for the swapping of Dos tracks. The moves are:- 1. Boot CP/M+ I can supply a version that is configured for 0 and 1 40t SS and 2 and 3 80t DS. 2. Type EFORM C:8D(space) then ENTER 3. Place a DD disk in drive C and press E. the disk will be formatted and verified 80 tracks with a blank system track. 4. Type A: ENTER 5. Put a copy of PD101 in drive A and type NSWP (Newsweep). this version works, the one on PD 164 does not. Continue as for Zdos.