RomWBW Applications Guide \ Version 3.6 \ MartinR \& Phillip Summers () \ -30 Nov 2025
+09 Dec 2025RomWBW is supplied with a suite of software applications that enhance the use of the system. Some of these applications have been written @@ -1402,6 +1406,11 @@ included within RomWBW may be found within the Binary/Apps directory.
The source code is provided in the RomWBW distribution.
+| VGMPLAY | ++ |
|---|---|
| ROM-based | +No | +
| Disk-based | +Yes | +
A utility that scans all .VGM files in the current directory and +displays a table showing which audio chips each file uses.
+Version 1.1 uses a hybrid detection approach:
+VGMINFO
No command line arguments are needed. The program will automatically +scan all .VGM files in the current directory.
+The program displays a formatted table with two columns:
+The program can detect the following audio chips:
+The program reads the VGM file headers and scans up to 255 commands + from the VGM data stream for accurate chip detection.
+Files that don’t have a valid VGM header are silently skipped.
+Chip detection uses a hybrid approach:
+VGM header clock values (offsets 0x0C, 0x2C, 0x30, 0x74) determine + which chip types are present
+Command stream scanning detects multiple instances (e.g., + “2xSN76489”)
+AY-3-8910 clock detection respects VGM version - only checked for + v1.51+ to avoid false positives from invalid header data in older VGM + versions.
+The VGMINFO application was written and contributed to RomWBW by Joao
+Miguel Duraes.
An adaptation of Ward Christensen’s X-Modem protocol for transferring files between systems using a serial port.
-XM S<filename>
XM SK<filename>
XM L<library> <filename>
@@ -3448,7 +3532,7 @@ files between systems using a serial port.
For example, the following command will receive a file using checksums
on HBIOS character unit 3 and will name the received file MYFILE.TXT.
XM RC3 MYFILE.TXT
To transfer a file from your host computer to your RomWBW computer, do the following:
Please refer to the documentation of your host computer’s terminal emulation software for specific instructions on how to use XModem.
-The XModem adaptation that comes with RomWBW will default to using the current HBIOS console port for transfers. Note that if you change your console port at the OS level (e.g., STAT CON:=UC1:), this does not @@ -3488,7 +3572,7 @@ flow control can be used.
that the serial port can be serviced fast enough by either using a baud rate that is low enough or ensuring that hardware flow control is fully functional (end to end). -The XM application provided in RomWBW is an adaptation of a
pre-existing XModem application. Based on the source code comments, it
was originally adapted from Ward Christensen’s MODEM2 by Keith Petersen
@@ -3523,7 +3607,7 @@ driver.
NOTE: ZMD does not do ZModem transfers. The Z in ZMD refers to Z-System compatibility.
-ZMD \<mode>\<protocol>\<unit> [\<filename>]
where \<mode> can be:
S - Send file from BBS
@@ -3539,7 +3623,7 @@ Z-System compatibility.
K - Ymodem 1024 byte blocks (CRC only)
and \<unit> can specify a single digit (0-9) that specifies the RomWBW Character Unit to use for the file transfer.
-To transfer a file from your host computer to your RomWBW computer, do the following:
Please refer to the documentation of your host computer’s terminal emulation software for specific instructions on how to use XModem.
-The ZMD adaptation that comes with RomWBW will default to using the current HBIOS console port for transfers. Note that if you change your console port at the OS level (e.g., STAT CON:=UC1:), this does not @@ -3580,7 +3664,7 @@ flow control can be used.
that the serial port can be serviced fast enough by either using a baud rate that is low enough or ensuring that hardware flow control is fully functional (end to end). -ZMD v1.50 was produced by Robert Kramer. The RomWBW adaptation just uses the RomWBW HBIOS serial API.
ZMP.
-ZMD [\<unit>]
\<unit> can specify a single digit (0-9) indicating the RomWBW Character Unit to use for the modem port.
-Refer to the file ZMP.DOC found on all disk images that include the
ZMP application.
ZMP requires access to multiple overlay and configuration files to
run. It will look for these on the default driver and user area.
Depending the operating system used, you may be able to set up a search
@@ -3642,7 +3726,7 @@ options within ZMP. Instead, you should configure the HBIOS Charact
Unit using the RomWBW MODE command before launching ZMP.
ZMP is written in C. As a result, file transfers will be noticeably
slower than other assembly language file transfer tools.
ZMP was produced by Ron Murray and was based on HMODEM II. Wayne Hortensius updated the source to compile with the latest version of Hi-Tech C and implemented a few enhancements.
diff --git a/Catalog/index.html b/Catalog/index.html index ec120da6..e645de28 100644 --- a/Catalog/index.html +++ b/Catalog/index.html @@ -336,7 +336,7 @@RomWBW Disk Catalog \ Version 3.6 \ Mark Pruden \& Mykl Orders () \ -30 Nov 2025
+09 Dec 2025This document is a reference to the files found on the disk media distributed with RomWBW. Specifically, RomWBW provides a set of floppy diff --git a/Hardware/index.html b/Hardware/index.html index d2276b8c..b723259d 100644 --- a/Hardware/index.html +++ b/Hardware/index.html @@ -400,7 +400,7 @@
RomWBW Hardware \ Version 3.6 \ Wayne Warthen (wwarthen@gmail.com) \ -30 Nov 2025
+09 Dec 2025This section contains a summary of the system configuration target for @@ -1264,7 +1264,7 @@ of the SIO ports, for ease of use with modern computers.
RomWBW Introduction \ Version 3.6 \ Wayne Warthen (wwarthen@gmail.com) \ -30 Nov 2025
+09 Dec 2025RomWBW software provides a complete, commercial quality implementation of CP/M (and work-alike) operating systems and applications for modern diff --git a/SystemGuide/index.html b/SystemGuide/index.html index ac7b55bd..975eb9a0 100644 --- a/SystemGuide/index.html +++ b/SystemGuide/index.html @@ -659,7 +659,7 @@
RomWBW System Guide \ Version 3.6 \ Wayne Warthen (wwarthen@gmail.com) \ -30 Nov 2025
+09 Dec 2025The objective of RomWBW is to provide firmware, operating systems, and applications targeting the Z80 family of CPUs. The firmware, in the form diff --git a/UserGuide/index.html b/UserGuide/index.html index f4a8024d..5a7713ce 100644 --- a/UserGuide/index.html +++ b/UserGuide/index.html @@ -527,7 +527,7 @@
RomWBW User Guide \ Version 3.6 \ Wayne Warthen (wwarthen@gmail.com) \ -30 Nov 2025
+09 Dec 2025This document is a general usage guide for the RomWBW software and is generally the best place to start with RomWBW.
diff --git a/index.html b/index.html index 3179fbe1..0a70659c 100644 --- a/index.html +++ b/index.html @@ -179,7 +179,7 @@RomWBW Introduction \ Version 3.6 \ Wayne Warthen (wwarthen@gmail.com) \ -30 Nov 2025
+09 Dec 2025RomWBW software provides a complete, commercial quality implementation of CP/M (and work-alike) operating systems and applications for modern @@ -704,5 +704,5 @@ control system to ensure their contributions are clearly documented.
diff --git a/search/search_index.json b/search/search_index.json index b077ece5..f722c732 100644 --- a/search/search_index.json +++ b/search/search_index.json @@ -1 +1 @@ -{"config":{"indexing":"full","lang":["en"],"min_search_length":3,"prebuild_index":false,"separator":"[\\s\\-]+"},"docs":[{"location":"","text":"RomWBW Introduction \\ Version 3.6 \\ Wayne Warthen ( wwarthen@gmail.com ) \\ 30 Nov 2025 Overview RomWBW software provides a complete, commercial quality implementation of CP/M (and work-alike) operating systems and applications for modern Z80/180/280 retro-computing hardware systems. A wide variety of platforms are supported including those produced by these developer communities: RetroBrew Computers ( https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org ) RC2014 ( https://rc2014.co.uk ), RC2014-Z80 ( https://groups.google.com/g/rc2014-z80 ) Retro Computing ( https://groups.google.com/g/retro-comp ) Small Computer Central ( https://smallcomputercentral.com/ ) A complete list of the currently supported platforms is found in RomWBW Hardware . Description Primary Features By design, RomWBW isolates all of the hardware specific functions in the ROM chip itself. The ROM provides a hardware abstraction layer such that all of the operating systems and applications on a disk will run on any RomWBW-based system. To put it simply, you can take a disk (or CF/SD/USB Card) and move it between systems transparently. Supported hardware features of RomWBW include: Z80 Family CPUs including Z80, Z180, and Z280 Banked memory services for several banking designs Disk drivers for RAM, ROM, Floppy, IDE ATA/ATAPI, CF, SD, USB, Zip, Iomega Serial drivers including UART (16550-like), ASCI, ACIA, SIO Video drivers including TMS9918, SY6545, MOS8563, HD6445, Xosera Keyboard (PS/2) drivers via VT8242 or PPI interfaces Real time clock drivers including DS1302, BQ4845 Support for CP/NET networking using Wiznet, MT011 or Serial Built-in VT-100 terminal emulation support A dynamic disk drive letter assignment mechanism allows mapping operating system drive letters to any available disk media. Additionally, mass storage devices (IDE Disk, CF Card, SD Card, etc.) support the use of multiple slices (up to 256 per device). Each slice contains a complete CP/M filesystem and can be mapped independently to any drive letter. This overcomes the inherent size limitations in legacy OSes and allows up to 2GB of addressable storage on a single device, with up to 128MB accessible at any one time. Included Software Multiple disk images are provided in the distribution. Most disk images contain a complete, bootable, ready-to-run implementation of a specific operating system. A \u201ccombo\u201d disk image contains multiple slices, each with a full operating system implementation. If you use this disk image, you can easily pick whichever operating system you want to boot without changing media. Some of the included software: Operating Systems (CP/M 2.2, ZSDOS, NZ-COM, CP/M 3, ZPM3, Z3PLUS, QPM ) Support for other operating systems, p-System, FreeRTOS, and FUZIX. Programming Tools (Z80ASM, Turbo Pascal, Forth, Cowgol) C Compiler\u2019s including Aztec-C, and HI-TECH C Microsoft Basic Compiler, Microsoft Fortran, and Microsoft COBOL Some games such as Colossal Cave, Zork, etc Wordstar Word processing software Some of the provided software can be launched directly from the ROM firmware itself: System Monitor Operating Systems (CP/M 2.2, ZSDOS) ROM BASIC (Nascom BASIC and Tasty BASIC) ROM Forth A tool is provided that allows you to access a FAT-12/16/32 filesystem. The FAT filesystem may be coresident on the same disk media as RomWBW slices or on stand-alone media. This makes exchanging files with modern OSes such as Windows, MacOS, and Linux very easy. ROM Distribution The RomWBW Repository ( https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW ) on GitHub is the official distribution location for all project source and documentation. RomWBW is distributed as both source code and pre-built ROM and disk images. The pre-built ROM images distributed with RomWBW are based on the default system configurations as determined by the hardware provider/designer. The pre-built ROM firmware images are generally suitable for most users. The fully-built distribution releases are available on the RomWBW Releases Page ( https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/releases ) of the repository. On this page, you will normally see a Development Snapshot as well as recent stable releases. Unless you have a specific reason, I suggest you stick to the most recent stable release. The asset named RomWBW-vX.X.X-Package.zip includes all pre-built ROM and Disk images as well as full source code. The other assets contain only source code and do not have the pre-built ROM or disk images. Distribution Directory Layout The RomWBW distribution is a compressed zip archive file organized in a set of directories. Each of these directories has its own ReadMe.txt file describing the contents in detail. In summary, these directories are: Directory Description Binary The final output files of the build process are placed here. Most importantly, the ROM images with the file names ending in \u201c.rom\u201d and disk images ending in .img. Doc Contains various detailed documentation, both RomWBW specifically as well as the operating systems and applications. Source Contains the source code files used to build the software and ROM images. Tools Contains the programs that are used by the build process or that may be useful in setting up your system. Building from Source It is also very easy to modify and build custom ROM images that fully tailor the firmware to your specific preferences. All tools required to build custom ROM firmware under Windows are included \u2013 no need to install assemblers, etc. The firmware can also be built using Linux or MacOS after confirming a few standard tools have been installed. Installation & Operation In general, installation of RomWBW on your platform is very simple. You just need to program your ROM with the correct ROM image from the RomWBW distribution. Subsequently, you can write disk images on your disk drives (IDE disk, CF Card, SD Card, etc.) which then provides even more functionality. Complete instructions for installation and operation of RomWBW are found in the RomWBW User Guide . It is also a good idea to review the Release Notes for helpful release-specific information. Documentation There are several documents that form the core of the RomWBW documentation: RomWBW User Guide is the main user guide for RomWBW, it covers the major topics of how to install, manage and use RomWBW, and includes additional guidance to the use of some of the operating systems supported by RomWBW RomWBW Hardware contains a description of all the hardware platforms, and devices supported by RomWBW. RomWBW Applications is a reference for the ROM-hosted and OS-hosted applications created or customized to enhance the operation of RomWBW. RomWBW Disk Catalog is a reference for the contents of the disk images provided with RomWBW, with a description of many of the files on each image RomWBW System Guide discusses much of the internal design and construction of RomWBW. It includes a reference for the RomWBW HBIOS API functions. An online HTML version of this documentation is hosted at https://wwarthen.github.io/RomWBW . Each of the operating systems and ROM applications included with RomWBW are sophisticated tools in their own right. It is not reasonable to fully document their usage. However, you will find complete manuals in PDF format in the Doc directory of the distribution. The intention of this documentation is to describe the operation of RomWBW and the ways in which it enhances the operation of the included applications and operating systems. Since RomWBW is purely a software product for many different platforms, the documentation does not cover hardware construction, configuration, or troubleshooting \u2013 please see your hardware provider for this information. Support Getting Assistance The best way to get assistance with RomWBW or any aspect of the RetroBrew Computers projects is via one of the community forums: RetroBrew Computers Forum RC2014 Google Group retro-comp Google Group Submission of issues and bugs are welcome at the RomWBW GitHub Repository . Also feel free to email Wayne Warthen at wwarthen@gmail.com . I am happy to provide support adapting RomWBW to new or modified systems Contributions All source code and distributions are maintained on GitHub. Contributions of all kinds to RomWBW are very welcome. Acknowledgments I want to acknowledge that a great deal of the code and inspiration for RomWBW has been provided by or derived from the work of others in the RetroBrew Computers Community. I sincerely appreciate all of their contributions. The list below is probably missing many names \u2013 please let me know if I missed you! Andrew Lynch started it all when he created the N8VEM Z80 SBC which became the first platform RomWBW supported. Some of his original code can still be found in RomWBW. Dan Werner wrote much of the code from which RomWBW was originally derived and he has always been a great source of knowledge and advice. Douglas Goodall contributed code, time, testing, and advice in \u201cthe early days\u201d. He created an entire suite of application programs to enhance the use of RomWBW. Unfortunately, they have become unusable due to internal changes within RomWBW. As of RomWBW 2.6, these applications are no longer provided. Sergey Kiselev created several hardware platforms for RomWBW including the very popular Zeta. David Giles created support for the Z180 CSIO which is now included SD Card driver. Phil Summers contributed the Forth and BASIC adaptations in ROM, the AY-3-8910 sound driver, DMA support, and a long list of general code and documentation enhancements. Ed Brindley contributed some of the code that supports the RCBus platform. Spencer Owen created the RC2014 series of hobbyist kit computers which has exponentially increased RomWBW usage. Some of his kits include RomWBW. Stephen Cousins has likewise created a series of hobbyist kit computers at Small Computer Central and is distributing RomWBW with many of them. Alan Cox has contributed some driver code and has provided a great deal of advice. The CP/NET client files were developed by Douglas Miller. Phillip Stevens contributed support for FreeRTOS. Curt Mayer contributed the original Linux / MacOS build process. UNA BIOS and FDISK80 are the products of John Coffman. FLASH4 is a product of Will Sowerbutts. CLRDIR is a product of Max Scane. Tasty Basic is a product of Dimitri Theulings. Dean Netherton contributed multiple components: eZ80 CPU support Sound driver infrastructure SN76489 sound driver Native USB driver (keyboard, floppy, mass storage) The RomWBW Disk Catalog document was produced by Mykl Orders. Rob Prouse has created many of the supplemental disk images including Aztec C, HiTech C, SLR Z80ASM, Turbo Pascal, Microsoft BASIC Compiler, Microsoft Fortran Compiler, and a Games compendium. Martin R has provided substantial help reviewing and improving the User Guide and Applications documents. Mark Pruden has made a wide variety of contributions including: significant content in the Disk Catalog and User Guide creation of the Introduction and Hardware documents Z3PLUS operating system disk image Infocom text adventure game disk image COPYSL, and SLABEL utilities Display of bootable slices via \u201cS\u201d command during startup Optimisations of HBIOS and CBIOS to reduce overall code size a feature for RomWBW configuration by NVRAM the /B bulk mode of disk assignment to the ASSIGN utility Jacques Pelletier has contributed the DS1501 RTC driver code. Jose Collado has contributed enhancements to the TMS driver including compatibility with standard TMS register configuration. Kevin Boone has contributed a generic HBIOS date/time utility (WDATE). Matt Carroll has contributed a fix to XM.COM that corrects the port specification when doing a send. Dean Jenkins enhanced the build process to accommodate the Raspberry Pi 4. Tom Plano has contributed a new utility (HTALK) to allow talking directly to HBIOS COM ports. Lars Nelson has contributed several generic utilities such as a universal (OS agnostic) UNARC application. Dylan Hall added support for specifying a secondary console. Bill Shen has contributed boot loaders for several of his systems. Laszlo Szolnoki has contributed an EF9345 video display controller driver. Ladislau Szilagyi has contributed an enhanced version of CP/M Cowgol that leverages RomWBW memory banking. Les Bird has contributed support for the NABU w/ Option Board Rob Gowin created an online documentation site via MkDocs, and contributed a driver for the Xosera FPGA-based video controller. J\u00f6rg Linder has contributed disassembled and nicely commented source for ZSDOS2 and the BPBIOS utilities. Marshall Gates has contriubed sample program source files for all of the language disk images. Randy Merkel provided the ZSDOS Programmer\u2019s Manual as translated by Wayne Hortensius. Henk Berends added support for the MSX platform. Related Projects Outside of the hardware platforms adapted to RomWBW, there are a variety of projects that either target RomWBW specifically or provide a RomWBW-specific variation. These efforts are greatly appreciated and are listed below. Please contact the author if there are any other such projects that are not listed. Z88DK Z88DK is a software powerful development kit for Z80 computers supporting both C and assembly language. This kit now provides specific library support for RomWBW HBIOS. The Z88DK project is hosted at https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk . Paleo Editor Steve Garcia has created a Windows-hosted IDE that is tailored to development of RomWBW. The project can be found at https://github.com/alloidian/PaleoEditor . Z80 fig-FORTH Dimitri Theulings\u2019 implementation of fig-FORTH for the Z80 has a RomWBW-specific variant. The project is hosted at https://github.com/dimitrit/figforth . Assembly Language Programming for the RC2014 Zed Bruce Hall has written a very nice document that describes how to develop assembly language applications on RomWBW. It begins with the setup and configuration of a new RC2014 Zed system running RomWBW. It describes not only generic CP/M application development, but also RomWBW HBIOS programming and bare metal programming. The latest copy of this document is hosted at http://w8bh.net/Assembly for RC2014Z.pdf . Licensing License Terms RomWBW is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. RomWBW is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with RomWBW. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ . Portions of RomWBW were created by, contributed by, or derived from the work of others. It is believed that these works are being used in accordance with the intentions and/or licensing of their creators. If anyone feels their work is being used outside of its intended licensing, please notify: Wayne Warthen wwarthen@gmail.com RomWBW is an aggregate work. It is composed of many individual, standalone programs that are distributed as a whole to function as a cohesive system. Each program may have its own licensing which may be different from other programs within the aggregate. In some cases, a single program (e.g., CP/M Operating System) is composed of multiple components with different licenses. It is believed that in all such cases the licenses are compatible with GPL version 3. RomWBW encourages code contributions from others. Contributors may assert their own copyright in their contributions by annotating the contributed source code appropriately. Contributors are further encouraged to submit their contributions via the RomWBW source code control system to ensure their contributions are clearly documented. All contributions to RomWBW are subject to this license.","title":"Home"},{"location":"#overview","text":"RomWBW software provides a complete, commercial quality implementation of CP/M (and work-alike) operating systems and applications for modern Z80/180/280 retro-computing hardware systems. A wide variety of platforms are supported including those produced by these developer communities: RetroBrew Computers ( https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org ) RC2014 ( https://rc2014.co.uk ), RC2014-Z80 ( https://groups.google.com/g/rc2014-z80 ) Retro Computing ( https://groups.google.com/g/retro-comp ) Small Computer Central ( https://smallcomputercentral.com/ ) A complete list of the currently supported platforms is found in RomWBW Hardware .","title":"Overview"},{"location":"#description","text":"","title":"Description"},{"location":"#primary-features","text":"By design, RomWBW isolates all of the hardware specific functions in the ROM chip itself. The ROM provides a hardware abstraction layer such that all of the operating systems and applications on a disk will run on any RomWBW-based system. To put it simply, you can take a disk (or CF/SD/USB Card) and move it between systems transparently. Supported hardware features of RomWBW include: Z80 Family CPUs including Z80, Z180, and Z280 Banked memory services for several banking designs Disk drivers for RAM, ROM, Floppy, IDE ATA/ATAPI, CF, SD, USB, Zip, Iomega Serial drivers including UART (16550-like), ASCI, ACIA, SIO Video drivers including TMS9918, SY6545, MOS8563, HD6445, Xosera Keyboard (PS/2) drivers via VT8242 or PPI interfaces Real time clock drivers including DS1302, BQ4845 Support for CP/NET networking using Wiznet, MT011 or Serial Built-in VT-100 terminal emulation support A dynamic disk drive letter assignment mechanism allows mapping operating system drive letters to any available disk media. Additionally, mass storage devices (IDE Disk, CF Card, SD Card, etc.) support the use of multiple slices (up to 256 per device). Each slice contains a complete CP/M filesystem and can be mapped independently to any drive letter. This overcomes the inherent size limitations in legacy OSes and allows up to 2GB of addressable storage on a single device, with up to 128MB accessible at any one time.","title":"Primary Features"},{"location":"#included-software","text":"Multiple disk images are provided in the distribution. Most disk images contain a complete, bootable, ready-to-run implementation of a specific operating system. A \u201ccombo\u201d disk image contains multiple slices, each with a full operating system implementation. If you use this disk image, you can easily pick whichever operating system you want to boot without changing media. Some of the included software: Operating Systems (CP/M 2.2, ZSDOS, NZ-COM, CP/M 3, ZPM3, Z3PLUS, QPM ) Support for other operating systems, p-System, FreeRTOS, and FUZIX. Programming Tools (Z80ASM, Turbo Pascal, Forth, Cowgol) C Compiler\u2019s including Aztec-C, and HI-TECH C Microsoft Basic Compiler, Microsoft Fortran, and Microsoft COBOL Some games such as Colossal Cave, Zork, etc Wordstar Word processing software Some of the provided software can be launched directly from the ROM firmware itself: System Monitor Operating Systems (CP/M 2.2, ZSDOS) ROM BASIC (Nascom BASIC and Tasty BASIC) ROM Forth A tool is provided that allows you to access a FAT-12/16/32 filesystem. The FAT filesystem may be coresident on the same disk media as RomWBW slices or on stand-alone media. This makes exchanging files with modern OSes such as Windows, MacOS, and Linux very easy.","title":"Included Software"},{"location":"#rom-distribution","text":"The RomWBW Repository ( https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW ) on GitHub is the official distribution location for all project source and documentation. RomWBW is distributed as both source code and pre-built ROM and disk images. The pre-built ROM images distributed with RomWBW are based on the default system configurations as determined by the hardware provider/designer. The pre-built ROM firmware images are generally suitable for most users. The fully-built distribution releases are available on the RomWBW Releases Page ( https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/releases ) of the repository. On this page, you will normally see a Development Snapshot as well as recent stable releases. Unless you have a specific reason, I suggest you stick to the most recent stable release. The asset named RomWBW-vX.X.X-Package.zip includes all pre-built ROM and Disk images as well as full source code. The other assets contain only source code and do not have the pre-built ROM or disk images.","title":"ROM Distribution"},{"location":"#distribution-directory-layout","text":"The RomWBW distribution is a compressed zip archive file organized in a set of directories. Each of these directories has its own ReadMe.txt file describing the contents in detail. In summary, these directories are: Directory Description Binary The final output files of the build process are placed here. Most importantly, the ROM images with the file names ending in \u201c.rom\u201d and disk images ending in .img. Doc Contains various detailed documentation, both RomWBW specifically as well as the operating systems and applications. Source Contains the source code files used to build the software and ROM images. Tools Contains the programs that are used by the build process or that may be useful in setting up your system.","title":"Distribution Directory Layout"},{"location":"#building-from-source","text":"It is also very easy to modify and build custom ROM images that fully tailor the firmware to your specific preferences. All tools required to build custom ROM firmware under Windows are included \u2013 no need to install assemblers, etc. The firmware can also be built using Linux or MacOS after confirming a few standard tools have been installed.","title":"Building from Source"},{"location":"#installation-operation","text":"In general, installation of RomWBW on your platform is very simple. You just need to program your ROM with the correct ROM image from the RomWBW distribution. Subsequently, you can write disk images on your disk drives (IDE disk, CF Card, SD Card, etc.) which then provides even more functionality. Complete instructions for installation and operation of RomWBW are found in the RomWBW User Guide . It is also a good idea to review the Release Notes for helpful release-specific information.","title":"Installation & Operation"},{"location":"#documentation","text":"There are several documents that form the core of the RomWBW documentation: RomWBW User Guide is the main user guide for RomWBW, it covers the major topics of how to install, manage and use RomWBW, and includes additional guidance to the use of some of the operating systems supported by RomWBW RomWBW Hardware contains a description of all the hardware platforms, and devices supported by RomWBW. RomWBW Applications is a reference for the ROM-hosted and OS-hosted applications created or customized to enhance the operation of RomWBW. RomWBW Disk Catalog is a reference for the contents of the disk images provided with RomWBW, with a description of many of the files on each image RomWBW System Guide discusses much of the internal design and construction of RomWBW. It includes a reference for the RomWBW HBIOS API functions. An online HTML version of this documentation is hosted at https://wwarthen.github.io/RomWBW . Each of the operating systems and ROM applications included with RomWBW are sophisticated tools in their own right. It is not reasonable to fully document their usage. However, you will find complete manuals in PDF format in the Doc directory of the distribution. The intention of this documentation is to describe the operation of RomWBW and the ways in which it enhances the operation of the included applications and operating systems. Since RomWBW is purely a software product for many different platforms, the documentation does not cover hardware construction, configuration, or troubleshooting \u2013 please see your hardware provider for this information.","title":"Documentation"},{"location":"#support","text":"","title":"Support"},{"location":"#getting-assistance","text":"The best way to get assistance with RomWBW or any aspect of the RetroBrew Computers projects is via one of the community forums: RetroBrew Computers Forum RC2014 Google Group retro-comp Google Group Submission of issues and bugs are welcome at the RomWBW GitHub Repository . Also feel free to email Wayne Warthen at wwarthen@gmail.com . I am happy to provide support adapting RomWBW to new or modified systems","title":"Getting Assistance"},{"location":"#contributions","text":"All source code and distributions are maintained on GitHub. Contributions of all kinds to RomWBW are very welcome.","title":"Contributions"},{"location":"#acknowledgments","text":"I want to acknowledge that a great deal of the code and inspiration for RomWBW has been provided by or derived from the work of others in the RetroBrew Computers Community. I sincerely appreciate all of their contributions. The list below is probably missing many names \u2013 please let me know if I missed you! Andrew Lynch started it all when he created the N8VEM Z80 SBC which became the first platform RomWBW supported. Some of his original code can still be found in RomWBW. Dan Werner wrote much of the code from which RomWBW was originally derived and he has always been a great source of knowledge and advice. Douglas Goodall contributed code, time, testing, and advice in \u201cthe early days\u201d. He created an entire suite of application programs to enhance the use of RomWBW. Unfortunately, they have become unusable due to internal changes within RomWBW. As of RomWBW 2.6, these applications are no longer provided. Sergey Kiselev created several hardware platforms for RomWBW including the very popular Zeta. David Giles created support for the Z180 CSIO which is now included SD Card driver. Phil Summers contributed the Forth and BASIC adaptations in ROM, the AY-3-8910 sound driver, DMA support, and a long list of general code and documentation enhancements. Ed Brindley contributed some of the code that supports the RCBus platform. Spencer Owen created the RC2014 series of hobbyist kit computers which has exponentially increased RomWBW usage. Some of his kits include RomWBW. Stephen Cousins has likewise created a series of hobbyist kit computers at Small Computer Central and is distributing RomWBW with many of them. Alan Cox has contributed some driver code and has provided a great deal of advice. The CP/NET client files were developed by Douglas Miller. Phillip Stevens contributed support for FreeRTOS. Curt Mayer contributed the original Linux / MacOS build process. UNA BIOS and FDISK80 are the products of John Coffman. FLASH4 is a product of Will Sowerbutts. CLRDIR is a product of Max Scane. Tasty Basic is a product of Dimitri Theulings. Dean Netherton contributed multiple components: eZ80 CPU support Sound driver infrastructure SN76489 sound driver Native USB driver (keyboard, floppy, mass storage) The RomWBW Disk Catalog document was produced by Mykl Orders. Rob Prouse has created many of the supplemental disk images including Aztec C, HiTech C, SLR Z80ASM, Turbo Pascal, Microsoft BASIC Compiler, Microsoft Fortran Compiler, and a Games compendium. Martin R has provided substantial help reviewing and improving the User Guide and Applications documents. Mark Pruden has made a wide variety of contributions including: significant content in the Disk Catalog and User Guide creation of the Introduction and Hardware documents Z3PLUS operating system disk image Infocom text adventure game disk image COPYSL, and SLABEL utilities Display of bootable slices via \u201cS\u201d command during startup Optimisations of HBIOS and CBIOS to reduce overall code size a feature for RomWBW configuration by NVRAM the /B bulk mode of disk assignment to the ASSIGN utility Jacques Pelletier has contributed the DS1501 RTC driver code. Jose Collado has contributed enhancements to the TMS driver including compatibility with standard TMS register configuration. Kevin Boone has contributed a generic HBIOS date/time utility (WDATE). Matt Carroll has contributed a fix to XM.COM that corrects the port specification when doing a send. Dean Jenkins enhanced the build process to accommodate the Raspberry Pi 4. Tom Plano has contributed a new utility (HTALK) to allow talking directly to HBIOS COM ports. Lars Nelson has contributed several generic utilities such as a universal (OS agnostic) UNARC application. Dylan Hall added support for specifying a secondary console. Bill Shen has contributed boot loaders for several of his systems. Laszlo Szolnoki has contributed an EF9345 video display controller driver. Ladislau Szilagyi has contributed an enhanced version of CP/M Cowgol that leverages RomWBW memory banking. Les Bird has contributed support for the NABU w/ Option Board Rob Gowin created an online documentation site via MkDocs, and contributed a driver for the Xosera FPGA-based video controller. J\u00f6rg Linder has contributed disassembled and nicely commented source for ZSDOS2 and the BPBIOS utilities. Marshall Gates has contriubed sample program source files for all of the language disk images. Randy Merkel provided the ZSDOS Programmer\u2019s Manual as translated by Wayne Hortensius. Henk Berends added support for the MSX platform.","title":"Acknowledgments"},{"location":"#related-projects","text":"Outside of the hardware platforms adapted to RomWBW, there are a variety of projects that either target RomWBW specifically or provide a RomWBW-specific variation. These efforts are greatly appreciated and are listed below. Please contact the author if there are any other such projects that are not listed.","title":"Related Projects"},{"location":"#z88dk","text":"Z88DK is a software powerful development kit for Z80 computers supporting both C and assembly language. This kit now provides specific library support for RomWBW HBIOS. The Z88DK project is hosted at https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk .","title":"Z88DK"},{"location":"#paleo-editor","text":"Steve Garcia has created a Windows-hosted IDE that is tailored to development of RomWBW. The project can be found at https://github.com/alloidian/PaleoEditor .","title":"Paleo Editor"},{"location":"#z80-fig-forth","text":"Dimitri Theulings\u2019 implementation of fig-FORTH for the Z80 has a RomWBW-specific variant. The project is hosted at https://github.com/dimitrit/figforth .","title":"Z80 fig-FORTH"},{"location":"#assembly-language-programming-for-the-rc2014-zed","text":"Bruce Hall has written a very nice document that describes how to develop assembly language applications on RomWBW. It begins with the setup and configuration of a new RC2014 Zed system running RomWBW. It describes not only generic CP/M application development, but also RomWBW HBIOS programming and bare metal programming. The latest copy of this document is hosted at http://w8bh.net/Assembly for RC2014Z.pdf .","title":"Assembly Language Programming for the RC2014 Zed"},{"location":"#licensing","text":"","title":"Licensing"},{"location":"#license-terms","text":"RomWBW is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. RomWBW is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with RomWBW. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ . Portions of RomWBW were created by, contributed by, or derived from the work of others. It is believed that these works are being used in accordance with the intentions and/or licensing of their creators. If anyone feels their work is being used outside of its intended licensing, please notify: Wayne Warthen wwarthen@gmail.com RomWBW is an aggregate work. It is composed of many individual, standalone programs that are distributed as a whole to function as a cohesive system. Each program may have its own licensing which may be different from other programs within the aggregate. In some cases, a single program (e.g., CP/M Operating System) is composed of multiple components with different licenses. It is believed that in all such cases the licenses are compatible with GPL version 3. RomWBW encourages code contributions from others. Contributors may assert their own copyright in their contributions by annotating the contributed source code appropriately. Contributors are further encouraged to submit their contributions via the RomWBW source code control system to ensure their contributions are clearly documented. All contributions to RomWBW are subject to this license.","title":"License Terms"},{"location":"Applications/","text":"RomWBW Applications Guide \\ Version 3.6 \\ MartinR \\& Phillip Summers ( ) \\ 30 Nov 2025 Summary RomWBW is supplied with a suite of software applications that enhance the use of the system. Some of these applications have been written entirely from scratch for RomWBW. Others are pre-existing software that has been customized for the RomWBW environment. This document serves as a reference for these RomWBW-specific applications. The primary usage documentation for RomWBW is the RomWBW User Guide . It is assumed that the reader is generally familiar with this document. RomWBW also includes many generic software applications that have not been modified for RomWBW (e.g., MSBASIC). These generic applications are not documented here. Please refer to the application specific documentation for these generic applications. The documentation for some of these generic applications is included in the Doc folder of the RomWBW distribution. The applications described in this document fall into two general categories. ROM Applications are software applications that are loaded from the the ROM memory of your RomWBW system. CP/M Applications are software applications that are loaded from disk using a previously loaded CP/M (or CP/M like) operating system using its command line. Note that some applications are available in both forms. For example, Microsoft BASIC is available as a ROM application and as an application that runs under CP/M. Only the ROM variant is documented here because the CP/M variant is not RomWBW-specific. You will see that two of the RomWBW operating systems are included here as ROM Applications. Although operating systems are normally loaded from disk, RomWBW does include a way to launch CP/M 2.2 and Z-System directly from ROM. Most RomWBW systems include a ROM disk. A running operating system can load applications from the ROM disk just like a floppy or hard disk. Applications loaded from the ROM disk by CP/M are considered to be CP/M applications, not ROM applications. Boot Menu The system start-up process is described in some detail in the RomWBW User Guide, and for the sake of completeness there is some overlap here. When a RomWBW system is started the user is presented with a sign-on message at the default console detailing the RomWBW version and build date. The system follows this with the list of hardware that it has discovered, a list of devices and the system units assigned to them. If autoboot is configured then the message (below) will count down and once 0 is reached the system will automatically boot with the configured options AutoBoot in 3 Seconds (