The system has two SASI cards that I thought might accept a SCSI2SD card.
The drive configuration comes up in two places – firstly in configuration of the master or single user system configuration program, and then again when the drive is formatted.
In both cases, the following information is required:
- SASI card number: 0 worked for one card but I tried multiple numbers with the other card without success
- Drive Number: It allows 1 or 2. 1 seemed to be SCSI ID 0.
- Drive Manufacturer: Somewhat randomly chose Tandon 700
- Drive Model Number: 31.2MB drive
- Block size and directory entries: Default
The configuration also deals with partitioning. The default partition size is 4MB which is the optimal size. With large drives, that’s a bit of a nuisance because you need a lot of partitions. Having some optimal 4MB partitions and a larger sub-optimal partition seemed like a reasonable compromise.
The drive selection gave some geometry, but the specifics probably don’t matter with a SCSI2SD. The SCSI2SD was set up with a simple 32MB disk at ID 0 with 512B sectors. Termination needs to be on.
The process went like this:
- Create a fresh single user floppy disk
- Run the Configuration program and select modify
- Set up the hard disk as above
- Format the hard disk using HFORM30 with the same disk parameters
At this point the new drives were available starting at E: but when the directory was listed it appeared the disk was read only and the directory looked corrupted. It didn’t seem to matter if the format was done first and then the configuration.
The “Creating Boot Tracks” section of the System Initialisation Procedure mentioned a program called ERASEDIR but really just in the context of making faster hashed entries. Running this program on each of the drives resolved the issue. It says to run this after BOOTDISC (which writes the boot tracks).
So:
- Run BOOTDISK and write to E: – only the first partition can be a boot partition. It can also be written to A:.
- Run ERASEDIR on each of the new drives from e: to the last one.
- Copy all the files from the A: to E: using DO DCOPY A: E:
When the system is powered up, it looks for a bootable drive. If a boot floppy is in A: it will use it; otherwise it will boot using E:.
Programs were then copied on to the solid state disk from a gotek. TurboDOS supports multiple user areas so the these can be used as directories. User 0 files marked a global can be accessed by all users.
All users are assumed to be using Televideo 950 terminals. A lot of the software on the 8″ disks was configured to use this popular terminal.
To copy from 0A to 1H:
Copy a:*.* h: ;D01
The user must be privileged.
| Disk | E: | F: | G: | H: | I: |
| Capacity | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 4MB | 16MB |
| User | |||||
| 0 | TurboDOS Files | TurboDOS Files Backup | |||
| 1 | Multiplan (118/101) | Multiplan (432/310) | |||
| 2 | Supercalc (332/248) | ||||
| 3 | Wordstar (214/160) | ||||
| 4 | DBase (238/169) | ||||
| 5 | |||||
| 6 | MBasic Games (066/63) | MBasic & Basic Compiler (240/171) | CP/MUG Vol 53 (Adventure & Mbasic Games) (088/77) | ||
| 7 | JRT Pascal V3.0 (261/189) | ||||
| 8 | Diagnostics II (262/190) | ||||
| 9 | Microsoft Fortran (434/312) | Fortran Stuff (434/312) | |||
| 10 | Cross Assemblers (008/007) | ||||
| 11 | Pascal MT/Plus V5.5 & Programs (047/044) | Pascal MT/Plus Sources Development | Pascal MT/Plus V5.5 Support Files Development | Pascal MT/Plus V5.5 G. Purpose Development | |
| 12 | Turbo Pascal (055/052) | ||||
| 13 | Zork (440/318) | ||||
| 14 | |||||
| 15 | Other Games |
