Read CP/M Disks

References

• http://www.z80.eu/transfercpm.html

Hardware

• Televideo TS 803
  • [Old Computer Museum] (on archive.org)
  • [Foto] (flickr)
  • [Televideo Documents] (PDFs)
  • Reseller: Microsystems, Asperner Heldenplatz 6, A-1220 Wien (1983)
  • Installation: EDV-Zentrum, Technische Universität Wien, Gußhausstraße, A-1040 Wien (September 1983)
    Used in the Ein-/ Ausgaberaum Gußhausstraße (input/output room located in the Gußhausstraße building) as replacement for a card puncher and as a workstation for personnel of the IT department (so called EDV-Zentrum in these days).
    Source: from printed issue of the magazine Heißer Draht, September 1983.
    • 5 pieces in the input/output room.
    • Connected to the service host (Service-Rechner) which provides several tools like an editor and transfer programs.
      Terminal on the [CDC Cyber (RMF) mainframe]. Jobs which are queued on the service host are uploaded to the mainframe.
    • CPU Z80A, 64KByte RAM, 2 floppydisk drives 5.25"
    • Operating system: CP/M

Disk format

• Physical:
  • 5,25"
  • Tracks (Cylinder): 40
  • Sectors per track: 18 (1-18)
  • Sector size: 256
  • Double Side
• CP/M:
  • Tracks: 80 (40 cylinders * 2 sides)
  • Usable Diskspace: 342 KByte (76 tracks * 18 sectors * 256 bytes/sector)
  • Allocation Units (AU): 2048 (171 AUs per disk)
  • Directory start: Track #4 (4 boot tracks)
  • Directory entries: 64 (8 sectors = 1 AU)

See also the collection of disk formats: http://www.herne.com/cpm/details.zip

PC Hardware

• Standard PC with floppy drive support (no USB-/SCSI-Floppy)
• 5.25" HD floppy disk drive (80 track) - is normaly capable of reading 40 track formats with double-stepping!

Software

• [Fdutils] (e.g. included on Knoppix distros)
  needed commands:
  • fdrawcmd (directly read sectors and tracks)
  • floppycontrol (initialize/reset the controller)
• [cpmread tool]
• [cpmtools]

cpmtools disk parameter

 sudo vi /usr/share/cpmtools/diskdefs

 diskdef televideo
  seclen 256
  tracks 80
  sectrk 18
  blocksize 2048
  maxdir 64
  skew 1
  boottrk 4
  os 2.2
 end

Read and copy data

E.g. for a Televideo TS803 disk ...

1. Read image from floppy disk with tool cpmread (image name d1).
2. Use cpmtools to list and copy the contents of the image.

 cpmread
 cpmls -f televideo -F d1
 mkdir DISK
 # copy all as binary (no conversion) ...
 cpmcp -f televideo -p 0:'*' DISK/*
 # copy and convert textfiles ...
 # -p keep timestamps, -t convert textformat
 cpmcp -f televideo -p -t 0:'*.txt' DISK/*