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  • It's alive!

    From John Dammeyer@21:1/5 to All on Sat May 21 18:59:55 2022
    The ERG M68K S100 computer is up and running. I had to create a new boot floppy for it. Still requires a G command at the debugger prompt.

    The boot process hung the first time I tried it because the boot code used sector sizes in the DD_OPT section of the boot sector. Once I changed those two locations in the boot sector to be 16 sectors per track DD,DS I made it to sector 31.

    I then had to modify the versaboot.a file to not assume by default that the boot floppy was 40 track since the hardware is 80 track and was used to create the floppy. Then create new EPROMs.

    It's pretty old circa 1986 and I no longer have the original distribution diskettes for it. I think it's' around Version 1.2. Not sure how to find that out.

    Clearly also suffers from the millenium bug as it won't allow a year past 1999 in the setime function. Begs the question whether the file system can even handle dates above 1999.

    Not sure where to go next. I guess finish the note I wrote to myself in May 1987 that had a do list which included looking for a floppy and if not found then boot from the hard drive. This way new versions of the OS could be tested without breaking
    things.

    The hard drive is still flakey for coming up to speed if it hasn't been run for a while so I think the MFM board many end up living in this box in place of the Rodime RO_204a hard drive.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John Dammeyer@21:1/5 to John Dammeyer on Fri Jul 8 13:59:20 2022
    On Saturday, May 21, 2022 at 6:59:56 PM UTC-7, John Dammeyer wrote:
    The ERG M68K S100 computer is up and running. I had to create a new boot floppy for it. Still requires a G command at the debugger prompt.

    {SNIP}
    The hard drive is still flakey for coming up to speed if it hasn't been run for a while so I think the MFM board many end up living in this box in place of the Rodime RO_204a hard drive.

    OK. Quick update. Most of the comments have been on the OS9 facebook page. The system now has the ability to boot from the floppy or the hard drive. The hard drive is now the MFM board (BeagleBone controlled). I've left the debug monitor so that I
    still have to type G to boot but I'm happy with that since this isn't an embedded installation that would need to restart correctly on power-up.

    The biggest issue was the M58167.a program for the system clock. It has a bug that was carried forward into the Electralogics MFIO board mfioclk.a module. The data sheet for the clock chip is rather vague for setting up a periodic 10mS interrupt. The
    Eletralogics manual had additional information that once I figured out the problem also showed the solution. I posted the updated mfioclk.a onto the facebook forum.

    So now the only other issue is the setime program. I hard coded 2022 into the mfioclk.a file so on startup reading the clock gets the correct year. However since the battery is duff on the MFIO board the time needs to be set manually at the moment.
    And that introduces the issue with "setime". It defaults back to 1900+the year entered as 22/07/08 for example. So once the clock date and time are set correctly the system has to be rebooted again to set the year from the mfioclk.a module on startup.

    If someone has access to the OS9-68K "setime" program it would be appreciated.

    Meanwhile once I wire up a new Nicad battery to the MFIO board so it will keep the time I can put the covers back on this beast and consider it done.

    Oh and the K9 program has been fine for downloading text files that I edit on the PC and then update on the OS9 system. As yet I don't have a kermit or any other sort of binary download program working yet.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)