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Misc Improvements to User Guide

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Mark Pruden 1 year ago
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  1. 142
      Binary/ReadMe.txt
  2. 586
      ReadMe.md
  3. 598
      ReadMe.txt
  4. 107
      Source/Doc/UserGuide.md

142
Binary/ReadMe.txt
View File

@ -6,37 +6,37 @@
*** ***
***********************************************************************
This directory ("Binary") is part of the RomWBW System Software
distribution archive. It contains the completed binary outputs of
the build process. As described below, these files are used to
This directory ("Binary") is part of the RomWBW System Software
distribution archive. It contains the completed binary outputs of
the build process. As described below, these files are used to
assemble a working RetroBrew Computers system.
The files in this directory are created by the build process that is
documented in the ReadMe.txt file in the Source directory. When
released the directory is populated with the default output files.
However, the output of custom builds will be placed in this directory
The files in this directory are created by the build process that is
documented in the ReadMe.txt file in the Source directory. When
released the directory is populated with the default output files.
However, the output of custom builds will be placed in this directory
as well.
If you only see a few files in this directory, then you downloaded
just the source from GitHub. To retrieve the full release download
package, go to https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW. On this page,
look for the text "XX releases" where XX is a number. Click on this
text to go to the releases page. On this page, you will see the
latest releases listed. For each release, you will see a package
file called something like "RomWBW-2.9.0-Package.zip". Click on the
If you only see a few files in this directory, then you downloaded
just the source from GitHub. To retrieve the full release download
package, go to https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW. On this page,
look for the text "XX releases" where XX is a number. Click on this
text to go to the releases page. On this page, you will see the
latest releases listed. For each release, you will see a package
file called something like "RomWBW-2.9.0-Package.zip". Click on the
package file for the release you want to download.
ROM Firmware Images (<plt>_<cfg>.rom)
-------------------------------------
The files with a ".rom" extension are binary images ready to program
into an appropriate PROM. These files are named with the format
<plt>_<cfg>.rom. <plt> refers to the primary platform such as Zeta,
N8, Mark IV, etc. <cfg> refers to the specific configuration. In
general, there will be a standard configuration ("std") for each
platform. So, for example, the file called MK4_std.rom is a ROM
image for the Mark IV with the standard configuration. If a custom
configuration called "custom" is created and built, a new file called
The files with a ".rom" extension are binary images ready to program
into an appropriate PROM. These files are named with the format
<plt>_<cfg>.rom. <plt> refers to the primary platform such as Zeta,
N8, Mark IV, etc. <cfg> refers to the specific configuration. In
general, there will be a standard configuration ("std") for each
platform. So, for example, the file called MK4_std.rom is a ROM
image for the Mark IV with the standard configuration. If a custom
configuration called "custom" is created and built, a new file called
MK4_custom.rom will be added to this directory.
Documentation of the pre-built ROM Images is contained in
@ -54,52 +54,52 @@ contents. Refer to the RomWBW User Guide for more information.
ROM Executable Images (<plt>_<cfg>.com)
---------------------------------------
When a ROM image (".rom") is created, an executable version of the
ROM is also created. These files have the same naming convention as
the ROM Image files, but have the extension ".com". These files can
When a ROM image (".rom") is created, an executable version of the
ROM is also created. These files have the same naming convention as
the ROM Image files, but have the extension ".com". These files can
be copied to a working system and run like a normal CP/M application.
When run on the target system, they install in RAM just like they had
When run on the target system, they install in RAM just like they had
been loaded from ROM. This allows a new ROM build to be tested
without reprogramming the actual ROM.
WARNING: In a few cases the .com file is too big to load. If you get
a message like "Full" or "BAD LOAD" when trying to load one of the
.com files, it is too big. In these cases, you will not be able to
WARNING: In a few cases the .com file is too big to load. If you get
a message like "Full" or "BAD LOAD" when trying to load one of the
.com files, it is too big. In these cases, you will not be able to
test the ROM prior to programming it.
VDU ROM Image (vdu.rom)
-----------------------
The VDU video board requires a dedicated onboard ROM containing the
font data. The "vdu.rom" file contains the binary data to program
The VDU video board requires a dedicated onboard ROM containing the
font data. The "vdu.rom" file contains the binary data to program
onto that chip.
Disk Images (fd_*.img, hd_*.img, psys.img)
------------------------------------------
Disk Images (fd_*.img, hd_*.img)
--------------------------------
RomWBW includes a mechanism for generating floppy disk and hard disk
binary images that are ready to copy directly to a floppy, hard disk,
CF Card, or SD Card which will then be ready for use in any
RomWBW includes a mechanism for generating floppy disk and hard disk
binary images that are ready to copy directly to a floppy, hard disk,
CF Card, or SD Card which will then be ready for use in any
RomWBW-based system.
Essentially, these files contain prepared floppy and hard disk images
with a large set of programs and related files. By copying the
contents of these files to appropriate media as described below, you
Essentially, these files contain prepared floppy and hard disk images
with a large set of programs and related files. By copying the
contents of these files to appropriate media as described below, you
can quickly create ready-to-use media. Win32DiskImager or
RawWriteWin can be used to copy images directly to media. These
programs are included in the RomWBW Tools directory.
The fd_*.img files are floppy disk images. They are sized for 1.44MB
floppy media and can be copied to actual floppy disks using
RawWriteWin (as long as you have access to a floppy drive on your
Windows computer). The resulting floppy disks will be usable on any
The fd_*.img files are floppy disk images. They are sized for 1.44MB
floppy media and can be copied to actual floppy disks using
RawWriteWin (as long as you have access to a floppy drive on your
Windows computer). The resulting floppy disks will be usable on any
RomWBW-based system with floppy drive(s).
Likewise, the hd512_*.img and hd1k_*.img files are hard disk images.
Each file is intended to be copied to the start of any type of hard
disk media (typically a CF Card or SD Card). The resulting media will
be usable on any RomWBW-based system that accepts the corresponding
Likewise, the hd512_*.img and hd1k_*.img files are hard disk images.
Each file is intended to be copied to the start of any type of hard
disk media (typically a CF Card or SD Card). The resulting media will
be usable on any RomWBW-based system that accepts the corresponding
media type.
NOTE: The hd512_*.img files are equivalent to the hd_*.img
@ -109,34 +109,58 @@ maximum number of CP/M directory entries from 512 to 1024.
Refer to the ReadMe.txt in the Source/Images directory
for details.
Documentation of the pre-built disk images is contained in the
Documentation of the pre-built disk images is contained in the
"RomWBW User Guide" found in the Doc directory. The contents of
the disk images is contained in the "RomWBW Disk Catalog", but it
is significantly out-of-date.
The contents of the floppy/hard disk images are created by
the BuildImages.cmd script in the Source directory. Additional
information on how to generate custom disk images is found in the
The contents of the floppy/hard disk images are created by
the BuildImages.cmd script in the Source directory. Additional
information on how to generate custom disk images is found in the
Source\Images ReadMe.txt file.
The psys.img file contains a full implementation of the UCSD p-System
for the Z80 running under RomWBW. This image file must be placed on
disk media by itself (not appended or concatenated with hd*.img files.
Refer to the Source/pSys/ReadMe.txt file for more information on the
Disk Images (hd512_combo.img, hd1k_combo.img, *_std_hd1k_combo.img)
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The hd512_combo.img and hd1k_combo.img file are the primary combo
disk image files suitable for most platforms.
The *_std_hd1k_combo.img files are platform specific combo files
typically used in romless platforms, they also contain RomWBW binary code
that is loaded at boot time into RAM
Disk Images (hd1k_prefix.dat, *_std_hd1k_prefix.dat)
----------------------------------------------------
The hd1k_prefix.dat file is part of the combo disk images and is
applied to hd1k image files as a prefix, it contains the standard
partion table.
The *_std_hd1k_prefix.dat files are platform specific prefixes
typically used in romless platforms, they also contain RomWBW binary code
that is loaded at boot time into RAM
Disk Images (psys.img)
----------------------
The psys.img file contains a full implementation of the UCSD p-System
for the Z80 running under RomWBW. This image file must be placed on
disk media by itself (not appended or concatenated with hd*.img files.
Refer to the Source/pSys/ReadMe.txt file for more information on the
p-System implementation.
Propeller ROM Images (*.eeprom)
-------------------------------
The files with and extension of ".eeprom" contain the binary images
to be programmed into the Propeller-based boards. The list below
The files with and extension of ".eeprom" contain the binary images
to be programmed into the Propeller-based boards. The list below
indicates which file targets each of the Propeller board variants:
ParPortProp ParPortProp.eeprom
PropIO V1 PropIO.eeprom
PropIO V2 PropIO2.eeprom
Refer to the board documentation of the boards for more information
Refer to the board documentation of the boards for more information
on how to program the EEPROMs on these boards.
Apps Directory
@ -144,4 +168,4 @@ Apps Directory
The Apps subdirectory contains the executable application files that
are specific to RomWBW. The source for these applications is found
in the Source\Apps directory of the distribution.
in the Source\Apps directory of the distribution.

586
ReadMe.md
View File

@ -1,293 +1,293 @@
**RomWBW ReadMe** \
Version 3.5 \
Wayne Warthen ([wwarthen@gmail.com](mailto:wwarthen@gmail.com)) \
05 Sep 2024
# Overview
RomWBW software provides a complete, commercial quality implementation
of CP/M (and workalike) 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)
(<https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org>)
- [RC2014](https://rc2014.co.uk) (<https://rc2014.co.uk>),
[RC2014-Z80](https://groups.google.com/g/rc2014-z80)
(<https://groups.google.com/g/rc2014-z80>)
- [Retro Computing](https://groups.google.com/g/retro-comp)
(<https://groups.google.com/g/retro-comp>)
- [Small Computer Central](https://smallcomputercentral.com/)
(<https://smallcomputercentral.com/>)
A complete list of the currently supported platforms is found in the
\[Installation\] section.
General features 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
- Keyboard (PS/2) drivers via VT8242 or PPI interfaces
- Real time clock drivers including DS1302, BQ4845
- OSes: CP/M 2.2, ZSDOS, CP/M 3, NZ-COM, ZPM3, QPM, p-System, and
FreeRTOS
- Built-in VT-100 terminal emulation support
RomWBW is distributed as both source code and pre-built ROM and disk
images. 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 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 accessible storage on a single device.
The pre-built ROM firmware images are generally suitable for most users.
However, 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 – 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.
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 “combo” 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.
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.
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.
# Acquiring RomWBW
The [RomWBW Repository](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW)
(<https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW>) on GitHub is the official
distribution location for all project source and documentation. The
fully-built distribution releases are available on the [RomWBW Releases
Page](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/releases)
(<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. Expand the “Assets” drop-down
for the release you want to download, then select the asset named
RomWBW-vX.X.X-Package.zip. The Package asset 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.
All source code and distributions are maintained on GitHub. Code
contributions are very welcome.
# 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](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/raw/master/Doc/RomWBW%20User%20Guide.pdf).
## Documentation
Documentation for RomWBW includes:
- [RomWBW User
Guide](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/raw/master/Doc/RomWBW%20User%20Guide.pdf)
- [RomWBW System
Guide](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/raw/master/Doc/RomWBW%20System%20Guide.pdf)
- [RomWBW
Applications](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/raw/master/Doc/RomWBW%20Applications.pdf)
- [RomWBW
Errata](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/raw/master/Doc/RomWBW%20Errata.pdf)
# 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 – 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 “the
early days”. 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 the sound driver interface and the SN76489
sound driver.
- 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 also contributed a great deal of content to the User
Guide.
- 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
Contributions of all kinds to RomWBW are very welcome.
# Licensing
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.
# 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](https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/forum/)
- [RC2014 Google
Group](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rc2014-z80)
- [retro-comp Google
Group](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/retro-comp)
Submission of issues and bugs are welcome at the [RomWBW GitHub
Repository](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW).
Also feel free to email Wayne Warthen at <wwarthen@gmail.com>.
**RomWBW ReadMe** \
Version 3.5 \
Wayne Warthen ([wwarthen@gmail.com](mailto:wwarthen@gmail.com)) \
06 Sep 2024
# Overview
RomWBW software provides a complete, commercial quality implementation
of CP/M (and workalike) 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)
(<https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org>)
- [RC2014](https://rc2014.co.uk) (<https://rc2014.co.uk>),
[RC2014-Z80](https://groups.google.com/g/rc2014-z80)
(<https://groups.google.com/g/rc2014-z80>)
- [Retro Computing](https://groups.google.com/g/retro-comp)
(<https://groups.google.com/g/retro-comp>)
- [Small Computer Central](https://smallcomputercentral.com/)
(<https://smallcomputercentral.com/>)
A complete list of the currently supported platforms is found in the
\[Installation\] section.
General features 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
- Keyboard (PS/2) drivers via VT8242 or PPI interfaces
- Real time clock drivers including DS1302, BQ4845
- OSes: CP/M 2.2, ZSDOS, CP/M 3, NZ-COM, ZPM3, QPM, p-System, and
FreeRTOS
- Built-in VT-100 terminal emulation support
RomWBW is distributed as both source code and pre-built ROM and disk
images. 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 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 accessible storage on a single device.
The pre-built ROM firmware images are generally suitable for most users.
However, 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 – 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.
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 “combo” 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.
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.
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.
# Acquiring RomWBW
The [RomWBW Repository](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW)
(<https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW>) on GitHub is the official
distribution location for all project source and documentation. The
fully-built distribution releases are available on the [RomWBW Releases
Page](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/releases)
(<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. Expand the “Assets” drop-down
for the release you want to download, then select the asset named
RomWBW-vX.X.X-Package.zip. The Package asset 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.
All source code and distributions are maintained on GitHub. Code
contributions are very welcome.
# 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](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/raw/master/Doc/RomWBW%20User%20Guide.pdf).
## Documentation
Documentation for RomWBW includes:
- [RomWBW User
Guide](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/raw/master/Doc/RomWBW%20User%20Guide.pdf)
- [RomWBW System
Guide](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/raw/master/Doc/RomWBW%20System%20Guide.pdf)
- [RomWBW
Applications](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/raw/master/Doc/RomWBW%20Applications.pdf)
- [RomWBW
Errata](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW/raw/master/Doc/RomWBW%20Errata.pdf)
# 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 – 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 “the
early days”. 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 the sound driver interface and the SN76489
sound driver.
- 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 also contributed a great deal of content to the User
Guide.
- 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
Contributions of all kinds to RomWBW are very welcome.
# Licensing
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.
# 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](https://www.retrobrewcomputers.org/forum/)
- [RC2014 Google
Group](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rc2014-z80)
- [retro-comp Google
Group](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/retro-comp)
Submission of issues and bugs are welcome at the [RomWBW GitHub
Repository](https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW).
Also feel free to email Wayne Warthen at <wwarthen@gmail.com>.

598
ReadMe.txt
View File

@ -1,299 +1,299 @@
RomWBW ReadMe
Wayne Warthen (wwarthen@gmail.com)
05 Sep 2024
OVERVIEW
RomWBW software provides a complete, commercial quality implementation
of CP/M (and workalike) 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 the
[Installation] section.
General features 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
- Keyboard (PS/2) drivers via VT8242 or PPI interfaces
- Real time clock drivers including DS1302, BQ4845
- OSes: CP/M 2.2, ZSDOS, CP/M 3, NZ-COM, ZPM3, QPM, p-System, and
FreeRTOS
- Built-in VT-100 terminal emulation support
RomWBW is distributed as both source code and pre-built ROM and disk
images. 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 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 accessible storage on a single device.
The pre-built ROM firmware images are generally suitable for most users.
However, 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 – 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.
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 “combo” 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.
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.
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.
ACQUIRING ROMWBW
The RomWBW Repository (https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW) on GitHub is
the official distribution location for all project source and
documentation. 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. Expand
the “Assets” drop-down for the release you want to download, then select
the asset named RomWBW-vX.X.X-Package.zip. The Package asset 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.
All source code and distributions are maintained on GitHub. Code
contributions are very welcome.
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.
Documentation
Documentation for RomWBW includes:
- RomWBW User Guide
- RomWBW System Guide
- RomWBW Applications
- RomWBW Errata
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 – 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 “the
early days”. 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 the sound driver interface and the
SN76489 sound driver.
- 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 also contributed a great deal of content to the User
Guide.
- 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
Contributions of all kinds to RomWBW are very welcome.
LICENSING
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.
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.
RomWBW ReadMe
Wayne Warthen (wwarthen@gmail.com)
06 Sep 2024
OVERVIEW
RomWBW software provides a complete, commercial quality implementation
of CP/M (and workalike) 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 the
[Installation] section.
General features 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
- Keyboard (PS/2) drivers via VT8242 or PPI interfaces
- Real time clock drivers including DS1302, BQ4845
- OSes: CP/M 2.2, ZSDOS, CP/M 3, NZ-COM, ZPM3, QPM, p-System, and
FreeRTOS
- Built-in VT-100 terminal emulation support
RomWBW is distributed as both source code and pre-built ROM and disk
images. 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 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 accessible storage on a single device.
The pre-built ROM firmware images are generally suitable for most users.
However, 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 – 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.
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 “combo” 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.
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.
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.
ACQUIRING ROMWBW
The RomWBW Repository (https://github.com/wwarthen/RomWBW) on GitHub is
the official distribution location for all project source and
documentation. 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. Expand
the “Assets” drop-down for the release you want to download, then select
the asset named RomWBW-vX.X.X-Package.zip. The Package asset 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.
All source code and distributions are maintained on GitHub. Code
contributions are very welcome.
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.
Documentation
Documentation for RomWBW includes:
- RomWBW User Guide
- RomWBW System Guide
- RomWBW Applications
- RomWBW Errata
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 – 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 “the
early days”. 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 the sound driver interface and the
SN76489 sound driver.
- 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 also contributed a great deal of content to the User
Guide.
- 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
Contributions of all kinds to RomWBW are very welcome.
LICENSING
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.
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.

107
Source/Doc/UserGuide.md
View File

@ -1072,6 +1072,18 @@ The concept of slices is described in detail in the section
The mapping of a hardware disk (and slice) to a Drive letter
in an operating system. A Drive has a file system installed on it
#### Disk Image
A disk image is a predefined image of a complete CP/M filesystem,
or filesystem(s), including any partition tables (for hard disk images).
Each disk image has the complete set of normal applications and tools
distributed with the associated operating system or application suite.
This comes in for form of a file which is suitable for copying directly
onto target media, using a modern computer. It is generally easier to
use these disk images than transferring files over individually.
See the section [Disk Images] for further details.
## Startup Hardware Discovery
During startup RomWBW performs detection for hardware supported by your
@ -1241,16 +1253,17 @@ With some understanding of how RomWBW presents disk space to the
operating systems, we need to go over the options for actually setting
up your disk(s) with content.
### Preparing Media for first use
### Preparing Media for First Use
You can initialize the media in-place using your RomWBW system.
Essentially, this means you are creating a set of blank directories on
your disk so that files can be saved there.
This is somewhat analogous to partitioning partitioning of a hard disk
This is somewhat analogous to partitioning of a hard disk
or doing a low level format of a floppy disk.
Initilizing a Floppy disk is covered in the section [Floppy Disk Formatting],
or for a Hard disk the section [Hard Disk Preparation]
or for a Hard disk the section [Hard Disk Preparation] covers the steps to
manually setup a hard disk for first use.
### Clearing (Formatting) Drives
@ -1298,30 +1311,6 @@ Directory cleared.
B>
```
### Making Bootable Media
If you want to make a disk bootable, you will need to use `SYSCOPY` to
setup the system track(s) of the slice.
The use of `SYSCOPY` depends on the operating system and is
described in the [Operating Systems] chapter of this document.
As an example, let's assume you want to setup C: as a bootable Z-System disk.
To setup the system track you would use:
```
B>SYSCOPY C:=B:ZSYS.SYS
SYSCOPY v2.0 for RomWBW CP/M, 17-Feb-2020 (CP/M 2 Mode)
Copyright 2020, Wayne Warthen, GNU GPL v3
Transfer system image from B:ZSYS.SYS to C: (Y/N)? Y
Reading image... Writing image... Done
```
Once this process succeeds, you will be able to boot directly to the
disk slice from the boot loader prompt. See the instructions in
[Starting Operating Systems from Disk] for details on this.
### Checking Disk Layout
If you are not sure which disk layout is used for your existing
@ -1643,10 +1632,7 @@ There are two approaches to preparing disks for use by RomWBW.
including files to a disk.
This section of the document describes the manual process of preparing
empty disks that are ready for use by an operating system. You will
need to refer to [Transferring Files] for more information on getting
files onto the disks. You will also need to follow the instructions
in [Operating Systems] to make disks bootable.
empty disks that are ready for use by an operating system.
Alternatively, you can use the pre-built RomWBW disk images to quickly
create disk media that already has a large selection of files and
@ -1760,7 +1746,7 @@ First you need to understand
* The disk layout approach (either hd1k or the legacy hd512).
See [Hard Disk Layouts] section if you are not sure.
HD1K should be the preferred layout.
hd1k should be the preferred layout.
* The number of 8MB slices that you want to allocate, preferred is 64 slices.
At least 1 slice of 8MB is required
* If you want to leave space for a FAT partition. See [FAT Filesystem Preparation]
@ -1787,9 +1773,9 @@ The disk unit number was assigned at boot See [Device Unit Assignments]
Refer to $doc_apps$ for more information on use of the `FDISK80` utility.
If you want to use the legacy hd512 layout skip down to the [Legacy (HD512)] section
If you want to use the legacy hd512 layout skip down to the [Legacy (hd512)] section
#### Modern (HD1K)
#### Modern (hd1k)
At this point, use the `I` command to initialize (reset)
the partition table to an empty state.
@ -1849,7 +1835,7 @@ At this point, it is best to restart your system to make sure that
the operating system is aware of the partition table updates. Start
CP/M 2.2 or Z-System from ROM again.
#### Legacy (HD512)
#### Legacy (hd512)
At this point, use the `I` command to initialize (reset)
the partition table to an empty state.
@ -1880,6 +1866,43 @@ using the same process. You may need to reassign drive letters to
access some slices that are beyond the ones automatically assigned.
You can use the `ASSIGN` command to handle this.
## Post Disk Preparation
Once a disk (either floppy or hard disk) has been initialised and
formattted you may optionally;
* Make the disk bootable
* Copy system (or other) files to the disk
### Making a Disk Bootable
To make a disk bootable you will need to follow the specific instructions
in [Operating Systems], as each operating system will be different.
Generally you will need to use `SYSCOPY` to setup the system track(s)
of the disk.As an example, If you wanted to setup C: as a bootable
Z-System disk you would use:
```
B>SYSCOPY C:=B:ZSYS.SYS
SYSCOPY v2.0 for RomWBW CP/M, 17-Feb-2020 (CP/M 2 Mode)
Copyright 2020, Wayne Warthen, GNU GPL v3
Transfer system image from B:ZSYS.SYS to C: (Y/N)? Y
Reading image... Writing image... Done
```
Once this process succeeds, you will be able to boot directly to the
disk slice from the boot loader prompt. See the instructions in
[Starting Operating Systems from Disk] for details on this.
### Copying System Files
As well as making the disk bootable, you may need to transfer other
system and application files to your disks.
Refer to [Transferring Files] for more information on getting
files onto your disks.
# Disk Images
Since it would be quite a bit of work to transfer over all the files you
@ -2072,13 +2095,19 @@ positions indicated:
| Slice 5 | WordStar v4 & ZDE Applications |
| Slice 6-63 | _blank unformatted_ |
There are actually 2 combo disk images in the
There are actually 2 primary combo disk images in the
distribution. One for an hd512 disk layout (hd512_combo.img) and one
for an hd1k disk layout (hd1k_combo.img). Simply use the image file that
corresponds to your desired hard disk layout. Review the information
in [Hard Disk Layouts] if you need more information of the disk layout
options.
> **Note**: Apart from the hd512 and hd1k combo disk images (mentioned above)
> there are actaully a number of other `hd1k_*_combo.img` files. These
> additional combo files are platform (generally romless) specific,
> and should be ignored unless you are on one of these platforms.
> If you are on one of these platforms you must use the correct combo file
The combo disk image actaully only contains the initial partition table,
and the first 6 slices (Slice 0 to 5), this is approximately 49MB in size.
While the partition table reserves space to store 64 CP/M filesystem
@ -2175,6 +2204,12 @@ Linux/MacOS:
`cat hd1k_prefix.dat hd1k_cpm22.img hd1k_cpm3.img hd1k_ws >hd.img`
> **Note**: Apart from the hd1k_prefix.dat file (mentioned above)
> there are actaully a number of other `hd1k_*_prefix.dat` files. These
> additional prefix files are platform (generally romless) specific,
> and should be ignored unless you are on one of these platforms.
> If you are on one of these platforms you must use the correct prefix file
In all of the examples above, the resulting file (hd.img) would now be
written to your hard disk media and would be ready to use in a RomWBW
system.

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