Re: pcw 8xxx CP/M (+?) and assembly help

[GeoffB17]

Hello,

Following thru your message...

There are quite a few images available via the web, although they may need a little searching, and they are not consistently named which does not help.   The system for the 8xxx machines comes on two disks, i.e. 4 sides, and therefore 4 images.   I think there's even a set on this on the Wiki site here.   This will prob be version 1.04 (called 1.4 then) and includes the initial version of Locoscript on a separate image as well.   Image 1 is the CP/M system disk, and yes, this contains a number of the CP/M utilities as well.   Image 2 is the Loco startup disk, but there's at least 1 CP/M util tucked in there as well (MAIL8256, a simple comms prog).   Side 3 contains most of the rest of the CP/M utils, side 4 contains the LOGO programming system, and HELP files and some more CP/M stuff.   You could do with all 4 sides.   As the system versions changed over the years, most of the rest stayed the same.   When we come to the 9xxx versions, then the 2 disks, 4 sides became 2 double sided disks, and I have some images of versions of them too.   As I cannot access the CF2DD disks, when I came by actual system disks for those I had to get the files extracted, so I have files from which a working disk could be created, but not by me (as I don't have a 3" B: drive).

Try and get the images from the CPC/PCW wiki first.  Then at least you're started.

I have some assembler code that includes bank switching, various other things too.   Big Printing?   Things I've entered up from articles in mags back in the 80s.

Making your own disks - this may be 'technically' possible, but I doubt it's remotely practical.   Physically, financially and reliable???
So much easier to check ebay and buy some disks.   They come up often enough.   Including mint ones, still in the celophane wrappers!   I have a couple of mint ones myself, but I'm keeping them for now.   I don't use many 3" disks, as long ago I got a 5.25" 360k drive which I use as my B: drive, and I have a literal pile of disks for that.   I also have a 3.5" drive which I can also attach as B: - just swapping a cable - and I have piles of DD disks for that too.  But now I have the uIDE virtual HDs (13 @ 8Mb) I don't use so many floppy disks.

Geoff

[GeoffB17]

Regarding the above, I got the first two disks the wrong way around.   The first disk is the LocoScript system disk, and the second is the CP/M system/boot disk.

I've sent you separately the complete set, I now see that this set is for CP/M 1.1 and Loco 1.0, so this is just about the first set released.

See the following link which includes details of the various CP/M versions, and in a list at the end the supposed differences between them:   http://www.seasip.info/Cpm/xbiosint.html

I do use 1.1 from time to time, it works fine.  None of the subsequent changes affect me, the only item of any importance in later versions is support for the .FID system which allows use of the uIDE drives.   I think however that I did have a problem with the very first version of LocoScript that came with my machine when I bought it December 1985, but I raised this with Amstrad and I got another version (1.2 of LS) which solved the problem.   I have a note that the first version of LS I had was 1.04 (as reported on the screen at boot-up)?   The problem I had was that if I created a letter, and finished on the last line of a page such that the system created the next page but there was nothing on it, and I then saved the document, it locked up and the only solution was to reboot which lost whatever was typed in.

Geoff