Newsgroup: it.comp.retrocomputing
Titolo: PCOS per Olivetti M20

Ciao a tutti , chi riesce a darmi delle dritte per generare il floppy
di boot in PCOS
per Olivetti M20?
Ho visto in dei siti che si puo' fare il download dell' immagine , ma
poi non so' com'è
corretto procedere per quello che riguarda la formattazione del floppy
disk che dovrebbe essere a 160Kb e non conpatibile con MS-DOS.
Grazie

st...@yahoo.it
 ha scritto:

Ti ci vuole un floppy disk formattato su M20 (anche non vuoto), un 
floppy drive da 360K per PC e soprattutto un PC AT piuttosto vecchio in 
grado di digerire il programma WRM20 che probabilmente avrai gia' 
trovato in rete... Insomma, e' un bel casino :-)
Ciao.
-- 
Carlo

Carlo ha scritto:

Ciao,
aprofitto del discorso DOS anche se non uguale a quello del M20 PCOS,
si possono trovare immagini dei DOS (MSo IBM o altri?) ormai passati, 
tipo 2.00 2.11 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 ecc..
Scusate l intrusione ma prendo al balso l occasione per toglieri questa 
curiosita io non ho mai trovato nulla.
salutissimi ffabriziolluga

 rete... Insomma, e' un bel casino :-)
Infatti, confermo che è un casino.
Io non sono mai riuscito a far funzionare il wrm20, con diverse release e su 
diversi pc, dagli 8086 ai pentium,e con diversi controller e drive. Non ho 
mai trovato la combinazione giusta che funzioni correttamente.
Se ne hai bisogno ti faccio una copia del PCOS direttamente sull'M20, che 
facciamo sicuramente prima. :)
Ciao.
Roberto

 > Ti ci vuole un floppy disk formattato suM20(anche non vuoto), un floppy

Hi
 I hope someone can translate this for me into Italian.
 There are several issues with WRM20. The first is that most of the
images
that are available on the web do not have the first track data. This
is
because the images were created from PC's that were not capable of
doing single density FM formatted floppies. All but the first track
are MFM
format and compatible with machines that can handle 360K disk and
drives
( Note: not 1.2M that can read 360K, it must be a 360K drive ).
 WRM20 has two options. One will transfer the first track from the
image to the
disk. This assumes that the image contains the first track information
and that
the controller can write FM data. As I stated before, most images do
not
contain the first track information and not many controllers can do
FM.
 To get around this problem, one can first format a disk on the M20
and
then use WRM20 to overwrite all but the first track. This of course
means that
one must have a working boot disk.
 This works because the first track is the same for all 320K PCOS
disk. If you
have a 160K M20 system, the images for 320K won't work. It would be
suggest
to upgrade somehow.
 If you have a 640K system, I don't think we have anything to help
there either.
But I think these systems can read 320K disk.
 As a side note, there are machines that have the 8086 board added to
them. These will run DOS but I believe one still needs to boot a PCOS
disk
first. If you have disks for this, we are interested in images from
these as
we've not seen any yet.
 Hopefully someone there in Italy can send a boot disk to get you
started.
Dwight

these as we've not seen any yet.
I'm also looking for theese disk :-)
Do you know if an M20 equipped with the APB 1086 require the Olivetti 
version of MS/DOS or it run also with a standard MS/DOS disk?
I'm curious to know if the MS/DOS for M20+APB1086 was a special version made 
by Microsoft for Olivetti or it was the standard one
Bye
Luigi Serrantoni
(probably you know my page on M20 on 
www.retrocomputing.tk
)

 made by Microsoft for Olivetti or it was the standard one
You made me recall that I have a copy of an original MS-DOS Olivetti disk 
for the M20, that I used around 20 years ago with a dual cpu M20 at school.
I know it's still in the disk box, and it should be in good state.
This evening I'll take a look at it.
Roberto

Roberto Bazzano wrote:
[...]
ma perchè rispondi a Luigi in inglese? :-P
-- 
_________
Simone DG
_________ 

> ma perchè rispondi a Luigi in inglese? :-P
Boh, ha cominciato lui... :-))
Roberto


Hi Roberto
 It would be great to get this into the archives. The first track may
be MFM like a standard DOS disk. One should try using David Dunfield's
ImageDisk on it before using RDM20. RDM20 is specialized for M20
disk and David's is more universal.
Dwight
 PS: Try to include some Italian for the others. It is often
frustrating to not
be able to follow what is going on. I can't read Italian but I'm just
one
small part of the world.

 it may be useful to produce an image file containing only the first track
 If you have a binary or hex viewer, you should be able to tell. Those
that
have the first track will have data in the first few bytes. If not, it
will
have all zeros as a space filler.


 disk and David's is more universal.
Hello.
I found the disk, that seems to be in pretty good state.
It's MS-DOS version 2.0 for M20, but it's not readable on a standard PC. May 
be that the recording format is different, i don't know.
Tomorrow I'll try Imagedisk and with the Catweasel also, to see if there is 
any chance to understand what's the format.
If I'm not able to duplicate it or make an image, I could send it to someone 
that has the 8086 board on a working M20 to make some copies, so we can 
start to save it on different floppy disks... :)
Luigi, perhaps have you a 8086 card?
Bye.
Roberto

 Luigi, perhaps have you a 8086 card?
Unortunately i don't have the second processor board
and my M20 is now broken...from a lot of time
it's a power supply problem
i have now found a replacement power supply but up to now i have not fount 
the time to try to replace it
let us know the result of the test on the disk!
i suppose it may be possible the disk have a fm 128 bit/sector structure on 
the first track like the pcos disks
bye
luigi 

 by Microsoft for Olivetti or it was the standard one
I have a MS-DOS boot disk for the M20 with 8086 board. I'll try to
find some time to put it online the next days. I someone needs it
urgently please send me an email directly.
I have the 8086 board for the M20, but w/o processor and ROMs. I
think I have a 8086 laying around here somewhere, so this is not a
problem. But what kind of EPROMs should I use for the board? I have
the ROMs images (not really, but a dump of the E000H and F000H
segments of a machine with the board to which I shortly had access),
but have no idea which EPROMs to use. At first glance, the ROM size
seems to be 16K. Does anyone know what EPROM types I could use?
regards,
chris

 seems to be 16K. Does anyone know what EPROM types I could use?
I do not have the board but in a photo i can read they are 2764
bye!
Luigi 

 urgently please send me an email directly.
Hello Chris. If you put it on your FTP site, I will try to put online
also on the M20 website (thanks Roberto!).
I have a few new manuals, but I only access the Internet from my
office in this period and I am very busy with my work. I have to wait
until I have a (working...) ADSL connection at home, so please
apologize me if the site has not been updated for a while.

 I do not have the board but in a photo i can read they are 2764
Thanks.
chris

 
ftp://ftp.groessler.org/pub/chris/olivetti_m20/diskimages/msdos
Were you able to read it with a standard pc?
Is it a standard ms-dos disk (mfm), or has it the first track that's 
different (fm)?
Roberto

 writes:

I don't find the original disk anymore/at the moment, but I think
it was a standard ms-dos disk.
If you write the image to a 360k floppy you can read it on regular
MS-DOS (I've tried yesterday before posting...).
I couldn't read it on Linux with mdir, so the first sector might be
a bit non-standard. But with ms-dos 6 I could read it.
regards,
chris

 a bit non-standard. But with ms-dos 6 I could read it.
so i imagine that the image does not contain the first track, correct?
do someone have tried to write the image and test on a M20 with APB card?
bye
Luigi 

 do someone have tried to write the image and test on a M20 with APB card?
I did not tried (since I do not have an APB), but I think you should
have an expanded machine with at least 512 KiB RAM space to try.