RomWBW Release Notes

This file contains information useful to those upgrading to a new release of RomWBW.

All Versions

Please review the "Upgrading" Section of the RomWBW User Guide.
The RomWBW ROM and the RomWBW disk images are intended to be a matched set. After upgrading your ROM, you need to update your boot disk media by doing one of the following:
- Write a new disk image (typically hd1k_combo.img) onto your disk media (will overwrite existing data/files).
- Update the boot tracks of the bootable OS images as described in the RomWBW User Guid.

The FZ80 (S100 FPGA Z80) platform has been renamed to SZ80 (S100 Z80) and has two configurations. SZ80_std is for the generic S100 Z80 CPU. SZ80_fpga is for the FPGA Z80 SBC.

This is a patch release of v3.5.

Corrects an issue with the CPMLDR.SYS and ZPMLDR.SYS files that caused SYSCOPY to fail when used with them.
Added missing BCLOAD file to the MS BASIC Compiler disk image.

Added SLABEL application (Mark Pruden).
Variety of documentation improvements, especially an overhaul of the Hardware Document (Mark Pruden).

RomWBW is now more strict with respect to hard disk partition tables. If your hard disk media was created using any of the pre-built disk image files, this will not affect you. Otherwise, you may find you are unable to access slices beyond the first slice. If so, use FDISK80 to reset the partition table on the disk. This will restore normal access to all slices. Only do this if you are having an issue.
For those building custom ROMs that are overriding DEFSERCFG, note that this setting has been moved to a #DEFINE instead of an equate (.SET or .EQU). You will find this #DEFINE at the top of all standard config files. You will need to change your setting to a #DEFINE at the top of your config file and remove any .SET or .EQU lines for DEFSERCFG.
Combining config settings AUTOCON and VDAEMU_SERKBD causes issues at the boot loader prompt. So, all config files have been changed to consistently enable AUTOCON and disable VDAEMU_SERKBD ($FF). If are want to use VDAEMU_SERKBD, you need to set it in your config file as well as disabling AUTOCON.

RC2014 Front Panel and LCD Screen support.
Console "takeover" support at Boot Loader prompt by pressing the key twice on an alternate console device.
Cowgol disk image based on the work of Ladislau Szilagyi.
TMS video is automatically reset after an OS warm boot which allows OS to recover from applications that reprogram the TMS video display controller.
Implemented "application" RAM banks that can be discovered via the HBIOS API.
Documentation improvements (Mark Pruden), including:
- Reorganization into multiple directories.
- Improved Disk Management section in User Guide.
- Overhaul of Disk Catalog.
Disk image for Z3PLUS (Mark Pruden).
REBOOT application added (Martin R). Also, reboot capability added to CPUSPD utility.
COPYSL slice copy application (Mark Pruden).
SLABEL slice label display/edit tool (Mark Pruden).
Improved disk slice management and protection (Mark Pruden).
Initial NVRAM configuration support (Mark Pruden).
Enhancements to ASSIGN command to automatically assign drives (Mark Pruden).