SymbOS on NC200?

[pollito]

Please try this.
The size is strange (768K) as parts of @Edoz(MSX) SRAM cards are broken (the upper 256K), so I switched to this size for testing, you will only have 256K ram. I will switch back to 1MB later.

@pollito, I hope this will work and detect your NC200 correctly.

Many thanks for this, and sorry for the delay. I have to get my old PC down from the loft, as it's the only one that can take my PCMCIA reader/writer. Hopefully I will be able to test this later this week.

Thanks! If you own a serial mouse, I could provide a version with mouse support as well very soon (hopefully).
Currently we can test it only with a NC100, so you would be the first one with a NC200 for testing the mouse (they have different IRQ-bits for the serial device).

Will get it done asap. I have a serial mouse somewhere and will dig it out so feel free to provide the mouse version too.

[Prodatron]

Watch this at your own risk (you should better mute it):



SoundDaemon playing a SoundTracker 128 tune by BSC on an emulated NC200, using the Arkos player with my "new NC driver".
Just experimental and for fun At least some of the sound effects could make sense (see end of video).
The NC100/200 has two sound channels, which only can have a period, no volumes or effects. I wonder if it sounds different on a real machine, will see this hopefully in a few days.

[pollito]

@Prodatron apologies for the delay - once I had got the PC down from the loft, Windows XP didn't want to boot. Long story short, it was a hard drive issue.

Anyway, I wrote the latest image to both of my PCMCIA cards. Again, the software told me that the written image didn't match the file. One of the PCMCIA cards does nothing with [FUNCTION] + [X], but the other does boot SymbOS!

Unfortunately, once booted, if I try to execute any of the programs, I get a File not found error.



Any ideas? Both PCMCIA cards work fine for saving NC documents. Could it be the software I am using for writing to the cards? These are the only two I have and it was difficult to obtain them.

[McArti0]

Applications is on second disk?

How did you format PCMCIA?

[pollito]

Applications is on second disk?

How did you format PCMCIA?

I don't have a working disk drive, and am not sure where I would find the disk image. I was expecting things like SymCommander and the Settings program to be on the boot image.

@pelrun gave me a copy of Elan Memory Card Explorer for Windows XP. I erased both cards, then wrote the image. Both failed the verification, and only one will boot SymbOS.

[Prodatron]

Thanks for testing, @pollito !

The fact, that SymbOS is booting, means, that at least the first 64K of the PCMCIA card has been written correctly.
It seems, that we are using the same tool for writing to the PCMCIA SRAM card:

You cannot view this attachment.

I guess your cards have a size of 1MB?

It sounds bad to me, that the verification fails (this is done automatically after the writing process?).
Here it is always successful, so it seems, that at least the higher parts of your cards maybe damaged.
As I meantioned @Edoz(MSX) had a card, where only the first 768K were working.

What do you see, if you open the "start"menu, click "run" and then "browse"? Do you get an error or see some directory entries?

I wonder if it's possible for you to find out, which parts of the cards are good and which are bad.
Maybe I can make a version, which is using only the first 512K.

Last week I added serial mouse support, including the wheel, which is very very useful.
Then I tried to add floppy support as well, but that completely failed. Even when using the cpmish routines by David Given I couldn't get the FDC working, its status register always returns "busy". If I can solve this, I could make a version which is using the SRAM card only for booting.

[Prodatron]

I was expecting things like SymCommander and the Settings program to be on the boot image.

Yes, they are included in the SRAM image:
0-64K -> boot code
64-512K -> used as a ram expansion
512-1024K -> fat12 512K "ram disc", including config, apps, files etc.

[Edoz(MSX)]

If you have checksum errors during writing this probably is because the sram cards is damaged. As prodatron explains i had the same issue withmy sram card. That is probably the same issue you're facing now. Maybe some memory banks are damaged as well. After writing the data to the card you should not have checksum errors. I did bought another sram card and this new one was just working fine. Probably you never noticed this behavior before as you never used the complete memory of the card like symbos does.

[pollito]

@Prodatron thank me for testing? No way - thank you for all your hard work making this a reality!

If I do Start -> Run -> Browse, I can see C: MassStorage but it is completely empty.

I feel really gutted about the PCMCIA cards. I bought them from this guy over in the US. He refused to send them to Europe, so I had to have them delivered to a work colleague over there. The colleague then gave them to his friend when she visited the UK, who sent them to my parents. I then picked them up next time I was visiting, and brought them back to Romania with me.

I guess there is no way of making SymbOS work with a CF to PCMCIA adaptor because they are different types of memory, right?

Getting the floppy drive to work in SymbOS would be great, but it would also involve me fixing mine. I still haven't got around to recapping the NC either. It is in the queue, though

[pollito]

If you have checksum errors during writing this probably is because the sram cards is damaged. As prodatron explains i had the same issue withmy sram card. That is probably the same issue you're facing now. Maybe some memory banks are damaged as well. After writing the data to the card you should not have checksum errors. I did bought another sram card and this new one was just working fine. Probably you never noticed this behavior before as you never used the complete memory of the card like symbos does.

Yes, that makes perfect sense. I only used the cards for saving a few BASIC programs before.

Do you know of a source of reasonably priced PCMCIA cards within the EU? The prices on eBay and the like are ridiculous.

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Starting to wonder if there's a way to make new PCMCIA SRAM cards using a RPi Pico + Flash and some bitbanging to implement the PCMCIA protocol.

I expect the speed of flash is fast enough, but there are ways to add RAM (https://hackaday.com/2023/08/21/adding-mmio-ram-on-the-rp2040/) or the newer Pico has more SRAM so you could do some mapping to use that for RAM and the flash as a filesystem.

[robcfg]

There's also a model on Thingiverse that you can print to allow PCMCIA type II cards to be inserted on the NC200: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4539604

For using them though, cpmish is suggested there.

A replacement with a Pico or similar would be nice too.

@Prodatron , is there no way to boot Symbos from disk?

[McArti0]

Try copy image 720kB dsk.

https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/hardware-related/wip-internal-512k-expansion/msg243568/#msg243568

But first you must convert to IMA/IMG i think.

If PCMCIA Card has MBR? And is hard drive?

[Prodatron]

thank you for all your hard work making this a reality!

Thanks for the nice words!

I bought them from this guy over in the US. He refused to send them to Europe, so I had to have them delivered to a work colleague over there. The colleague then gave them to his friend when she visited the UK, who sent them to my parents. I then picked them up next time I was visiting, and brought them back to Romania with me.

Oh I am very sorry about this.
I bought my card 1,5 years ago for 89€ from a german eBay seller. Yes, they are really not cheap, that's a pitty.
Currently it seems, that they are around 100€:
https://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2553889.m570.l1313&_nkw=PCMCIA+SRAM+Speicherkarte+1+MB&_sacat=0
That's half or the third of the price of a NC200, phew...

I guess there is no way of making SymbOS work with a CF to PCMCIA adaptor because they are different types of memory, right?

Getting the floppy drive to work in SymbOS would be great, but it would also involve me fixing mine. I still haven't got around to recapping the NC either. It is in the queue, though

You are right, the PCMCIA to CF adapter is something completely different.

- The SRAM card is nothing else than a RAM memory expansion, connected directly to the Z80 as banked memory.
- The CF adapter is an interface to IDE/CF devices, where you will transfer the content of the CF card byte by byte.

I will give the floppy disc driver another try during the next days, let's see...

[Prodatron]

@Prodatron , is there no way to boot Symbos from disk?

Not at the moment. During my last attempt I couldn't get the FDC working, no matter if using my routines or these from Cpmish. I have to try this again later, and then I should also be able to create a boot disc (which has to be formatted in a strange way, thanks to this company which made the NC disc routines...).

[Prodatron]

Try copy image 720kB dsk.

https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/hardware-related/wip-internal-512k-expansion/msg243568/#msg243568

But first you must convert to IMA/IMG i think.

If PCMCIA Card has MBR? And is hard drive?

It's just RAM. I am not sure, how the NC itself is "formatting" an SRAM card, but there is not boot sector or something like this.

In my case I divide it into a boot part, a ram expansion part and a "ram disc" (see some posts above).