*********************************************************************** *** *** *** R o m W B W *** *** *** *** Z80/Z180 System Software *** *** *** *********************************************************************** This directory ("Binary") is part of the RomWBW System Software distribution archive. Refer to the ReadMe.txt file in this directory for more information on the overall contents of the directory. RomWBW includes a set of disk images that are ready to copy onto a floppy or hard/CF/SD disk. You can use your modern computer (Windows/Linux/Mac) to copy the disk image file onto your disk media. The disk media will then be ready to use in your RomWBW System. A description of the disk images is provided later in this file. For more information on the creatioin of these images including instructions for customizing them or creating your own, refer to the ReadMe.txt file in the Source\Images directory. Installing Images ----------------- The following instructions apply to Windows computers. Alternatively, you can use the "dd" command on Linux or Mac. First of all, a MAJOR WARNING!!!! The tools described below are quite capable of obliterating your running Windows system drive. Use with extreme caution and make sure you have backups. To install a floppy image on floppy media, you can use the tool called RaWriteWin. This tool is included in the Tools directory of the distribution. This tool will write your floppy image (fd_xxx.img) to a floppy disk using a raw block transfer. The tool is GUI based and it's operation is self explanatory. To install a hard disk image on a CF card or SD card, you must have the appropriate media card slot on your computer. If you do, you can use the tool called Win32DiskImager. This tool is also included in the Tools directory of the distribution. It will write your hard disk image (hd_xxx.img) to the designated media card. This tool is also GUI based and self explanatory. The use of the SIMH emulator is outside of the scope of this document. However, if you use SIMH, you will find that you can attach the hard disk images to the emulator with lines such as the following in your SIMH configuration file: | attach hdsk0 hd_cpm22.img | set hdsk0 format=HDSK | set hdsk0 geom=T:2048/N:256/S:512 | set hdsk0 wrtenb Making Disk Images Bootable --------------------------- The Operating System disk images below are ready to boot by the RomWBW Boot Loader. However, if you update your RomWBW ROM, then you should also update the system tracks of your bootable disk images. You would use SYSCOPY to do this. SYSCOPY can also be used to make a disk bootable if it is not already bootable. You would use a command like the following to make drive C bootable: | B>SYSCOPY C:=CPM.SYS The system file to use depends on the operating system you are trying to boot from the slice you are initializing with SYSCOPY: CP/M 2.2 - cpm.sys ZSDOS 1.1 - zsys.sys CP/M 3 - cpmldr.sys ZPM3 - cpmldr.sys Slices ------ A RomWBW CP/M filesystem is fixed at 8MB. This is because it is the largest size filesystem supported by all common CP/M variants. Since all modern hard disks (including SD Cards and CF Cards) are much larger than 8MB, RomWBW supports the concept of "slices". This simply means that you can concatenate multiple CP/M filesystems (up to 256 of them) on a single physical hard disk and RomWBW will allow you to assign drive letters to them and treat them as multiple independent CP/M drives. With the exception of the hd_combo image, each of the disk images includes a single CP/M file system (i.e., a single slice). However, you can easily create a multi-slice disk image by merely concatenating multiple images together. For example, if you wanted to create a 2 slice disk image that has ZSDOS in the first slice and Wordstar in the second slice, you could use the following command from a Windows command prompt: | C:\RomWBW\Binary>copy /b hd_zsdos.img + hd_ws.img hd_multi.img You can now write hd_multi.img onto your SD or CF Card and you will have ZSDOS in the first slice and Wordstar in the second slice. The hd_combo disk image is an example of this. It contains several slices in one image file. The contents of this special disk image are described below. The concept of slices applies ONLY to hard disks. Floppy disks are not large enough to support multiple slices. Disk Image Contents ------------------- What follows is a brief description of the contents of the disk images automatically provided in the RomWBW distribution. Note that all of the OS images include the RomWBW custom support apps. cpm22 - DRI CP/M 2.2 (Bootable Floppy and Hard Disk) Standard DRI CP/M 2.2 distribution files along with a few commonly used utilities. zsdos - ZCPR1 + ZSDOS 1.1 (Bootable Floppy and Hard Disk) Contains ZCPR1 and ZSDOS 1.1. This is roughly equivalent to the ROM boot contents, but provides a full set of the applications and related files that would not all fit on the ROM drive. nzcom - NZCOM (Bootable Floppy and Hard Disk) Standard NZCOM distribution. Note that you will need to run the NZCOM setup before this will run properly. You will need to refer to the NZCOM documentation. cpm3 - DRI CP/M3 (Bootable Floppy and Hard Disk) Standard DRI CP/M 3 adaptation for RomWBW that is ready to run. It can be started by running CPMLDR. zpm3 - ZPM3 (Bootable Floppy and Hard Disk) Simeon Cran's ZCPR 3 compatible OS for CP/M 3 adapted for RomWBW and ready to run. It can be started by running CPMLDR (which seems wrong, but ZPMLDR is somewhat broken). ws4 - WordStar 4 (Floppy and Hard Disk) Micropro Wordstar 4 full distribution. This image is not bootable and is intended to be added as an additional slice to an OS image. bp - BPBIOS (Hard Disk only) Adaptation of BPBIOS for RomWBW. This is NOT complete and NOT useable in it's current state. combo - Multi-Boot Combination (Bootable Hard Disk) A pre-created combo image that contains the following slices. The slices are identical to the individual images listed above. Slice 0: cpm22 (bootable) Slice 1: zsdos (bootable) Slice 2: nzcom (bootable) Slice 3: cpm3 (bootable) Slice 4: zpm3 (bootable) Slice 5: ws4 (not bootable)