[N8VEM: 16942] Banked & Portable BIOS

[Lars Nelson]

While waiting for the parts and Mark IV board I was hoping to start a
discussion on a possible direction to go in software development for N8VEM
namely merging RomWBW and B/P BIOS. First a little background on B/P Bios.
It is more than just a BIOS, it was developed in the late 90's and also
includes banked versions of ZCPR and ZSDOS. B/P Bios was developed to
provide a common interface for CP/M 2.2 compatible systems with provisions
to manage more than 64k of physical memory. With permission of Jay Sage, a
banked Command Processor Replacement based on ZCPR 3.4 (named ZCPR4.0) was
added with many built-in commands; ZSDOS was banked and extended to include
multiple file date/time stamp formats (courtesy of Bridger Mitchell and Joe
Wright) and optional directory hashing to speed access. Banked ZSDOS is
called ZSDOS 2.0. Five hardware platforms were ultimately supported in the
commercial release which was sold from 1992 through 1999. Its been
released under a GNU license by its authors. By banking much of ZCPR,
ZSDOS and the BIOS, very large TPAs are possible. The biggest space
savings comes from placing the disk buffers and allocation vectors in
banked memory. Note that CPM 2.2 requires the allocation to be in ram so
banking the BIOS does not help. The allocation table for large disks
really chews up TPA and so large disks are really not useable without a
banked OS like CPM 3 or ZDOS 2.0. B/P BIOS with ZSDOS 2.0 is a much better
option than CPM 3 because it offers BIOS functions for managing banked
memory. RomWBW has taken an important step in banking many bios functions
but the full potential of the banked memory cannot be fully realized
without also banking the CCP and BDOS. B/P BIOS has been available on Hal
Bower's web site. I have been having trouble getting to Hal's site. My
worst fear is that Hal has passed away. He fought in the Korean war so it
not inconceivable he has pasted (hope he is still with us). Anyway I have
a copy of B/P BIOS from his web site if any one needs a copy. I adapted
B/P BIOS to my homebrew Z80 with 1 meg ram and a 512 meg harddrive
partitioned as 10 drives. A full blown Z-system with 28 named directories
has a 58k TPA!

[Wayne Warthen]

Hi Lars,

Your comments about BPBIOS are right on point. I have looked at porting
the existing RomWBW to BPBIOS and intend to do that someday. It is more
than a trivial task, but would be worth the effort.

Regarding Hal Bower's website. It is still up and running
at http://mysite.verizon.net/hal.bower/. However, I have noticed that the
most recent version of browsers have a problem displaying the content. I
am able to display the content by using IE 10 and turning on compatibility
mode.

Thanks,

Wayne

Post by Lars Nelson
While waiting for the parts and Mark IV board I was hoping to start a
discussion on a possible direction to go in software development for N8VEM
namely merging RomWBW and B/P BIOS. First a little background on B/P Bios.
It is more than just a BIOS, it was developed in the late 90's and also
includes banked versions of ZCPR and ZSDOS. B/P Bios was developed to
provide a common interface for CP/M 2.2 compatible systems with provisions
to manage more than 64k of physical memory. With permission of Jay Sage, a
banked Command Processor Replacement based on ZCPR 3.4 (named ZCPR4.0) was
added with many built-in commands; ZSDOS was banked and extended to include
multiple file date/time stamp formats (courtesy of Bridger Mitchell and Joe
Wright) and optional directory hashing to speed access. Banked ZSDOS is
called ZSDOS 2.0. Five hardware platforms were ultimately supported in the
commercial release which was sold from 1992 through 1999. Its been
released under a GNU license by its authors. By banking much of ZCPR,
ZSDOS and the BIOS, very large TPAs are possible. The biggest space
savings comes from placing the disk buffers and allocation vectors in
banked memory. Note that CPM 2.2 requires the allocation to be in ram so
banking the BIOS does not help. The allocation table for large disks
really chews up TPA and so large disks are really not useable without a
banked OS like CPM 3 or ZDOS 2.0. B/P BIOS with ZSDOS 2.0 is a much better
option than CPM 3 because it offers BIOS functions for managing banked
memory. RomWBW has taken an important step in banking many bios functions
but the full potential of the banked memory cannot be fully realized
without also banking the CCP and BDOS. B/P BIOS has been available on Hal
Bower's web site. I have been having trouble getting to Hal's site. My
worst fear is that Hal has passed away. He fought in the Korean war so it
not inconceivable he has pasted (hope he is still with us). Anyway I have
a copy of B/P BIOS from his web site if any one needs a copy. I adapted
B/P BIOS to my homebrew Z80 with 1 meg ram and a 512 meg harddrive
partitioned as 10 drives. A full blown Z-system with 28 named directories
has a 58k TPA!

[Tom Lafleur]

This looks like a copy of his files....

http://www.classiccmp.org/cpmarchives/cpm/Miscellany/BDOS-CCP/ZSDOS/HalBower's%20Home%20Page.htm


i~~ _/) ~~~~ _/) ~~~~ _/) ~~~~ _/) ~~i

Tom Lafleur
[phone]

Post by Wayne Warthen
Hi Lars,
Your comments about BPBIOS are right on point. I have looked at porting the existing RomWBW to BPBIOS and intend to do that someday. It is more than a trivial task, but would be worth the effort.
Regarding Hal Bower's website. It is still up and running at http://mysite.verizon.net/hal.bower/. However, I have noticed that the most recent version of browsers have a problem displaying the content. I am able to display the content by using IE 10 and turning on compatibility mode.
Thanks,
Wayne

While waiting for the parts and Mark IV board I was hoping to start a discussion on a possible direction to go in software development for N8VEM namely merging RomWBW and B/P BIOS. First a little background on B/P Bios. It is more than just a BIOS, it was developed in the late 90's and also includes banked versions of ZCPR and ZSDOS. B/P Bios was developed to provide a common interface for CP/M 2.2 compatible systems with provisions to manage more than 64k of physical memory. With permission of Jay Sage, a banked Command Processor Replacement based on ZCPR 3.4 (named ZCPR4.0) was added with many built-in commands; ZSDOS was banked and extended to include multiple file date/time stamp formats (courtesy of Bridger Mitchell and Joe Wright) and optional directory hashing to speed access. Banked ZSDOS is called ZSDOS 2.0. Five hardware platforms were ultimately supported in the commercial release which was sold from 1992 through 1999. Its been released under a GNU license by its authors. By banking much of ZCPR, ZSDOS and the BIOS, very large TPAs are possible. The biggest space savings comes from placing the disk buffers and allocation vectors in banked memory. Note that CPM 2.2 requires the allocation to be in ram so banking the BIOS does not help. The allocation table for large disks really chews up TPA and so large disks are really not useable without a banked OS like CPM 3 or ZDOS 2.0. B/P BIOS with ZSDOS 2.0 is a much better option than CPM 3 because it offers BIOS functions for managing banked memory. RomWBW has taken an important step in banking many bios functions but the full potential of the banked memory cannot be fully realized without also banking the CCP and BDOS. B/P BIOS has been available on Hal Bower's web site. I have been having trouble getting to Hal's site. My worst fear is that Hal has passed away. He fought in the Korean war so it not inconceivable he has pasted (hope he is still with us). Anyway I have a copy of B/P BIOS from his web site if any one needs a copy. I adapted B/P BIOS to my homebrew Z80 with 1 meg ram and a 512 meg harddrive partitioned as 10 drives. A full blown Z-system with 28 named directories has a 58k TPA!

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[Lars Nelson]

Wayne,
Thanks for the tip on compatibility mode, that obviously why I can't
see Hal's web site anymore.

I am well aware of the effort in porting B/P Bios as I have first hand
experience. At Hal's suggestion I took the SB-180 version and ported it
over to my quirky home-brew Z80 system. Now that its done, I love it. I
hate to use systems or simulators that use plain vanilla CPM. Hal said he
can't post my port on his web site since he has used up the disk space
Verizon provides without changing extra. ZSDOS supports disks up to 1 gig.
I have some partitions that are over 64 Mb. Interestingly, the Z-system
and other libraries maintained on Hal's site that are used in many disk
utility programs, don't properly work on partitions greater than 64 Mb. I
found that out the hard. Anyhow I have modified many of them as well as a
select number of disk utilities to properly handle large partitions.

Post by Wayne Warthen
Hi Lars,
Your comments about BPBIOS are right on point. I have looked at porting
the existing RomWBW to BPBIOS and intend to do that someday. It is more
than a trivial task, but would be worth the effort.
Regarding Hal Bower's website. It is still up and running at
http://mysite.verizon.net/hal.bower/. However, I have noticed that the
most recent version of browsers have a problem displaying the content. I
am able to display the content by using IE 10 and turning on compatibility
mode.
Thanks,
Wayne

Post by Lars Nelson
While waiting for the parts and Mark IV board I was hoping to start a
discussion on a possible direction to go in software development for N8VEM
namely merging RomWBW and B/P BIOS. First a little background on B/P Bios.
It is more than just a BIOS, it was developed in the late 90's and also
includes banked versions of ZCPR and ZSDOS. B/P Bios was developed to
provide a common interface for CP/M 2.2 compatible systems with provisions
to manage more than 64k of physical memory. With permission of Jay Sage, a
banked Command Processor Replacement based on ZCPR 3.4 (named ZCPR4.0) was
added with many built-in commands; ZSDOS was banked and extended to include
multiple file date/time stamp formats (courtesy of Bridger Mitchell and Joe
Wright) and optional directory hashing to speed access. Banked ZSDOS is
called ZSDOS 2.0. Five hardware platforms were ultimately supported in the
commercial release which was sold from 1992 through 1999. Its been
released under a GNU license by its authors. By banking much of ZCPR,
ZSDOS and the BIOS, very large TPAs are possible. The biggest space
savings comes from placing the disk buffers and allocation vectors in
banked memory. Note that CPM 2.2 requires the allocation to be in ram so
banking the BIOS does not help. The allocation table for large disks
really chews up TPA and so large disks are really not useable without a
banked OS like CPM 3 or ZDOS 2.0. B/P BIOS with ZSDOS 2.0 is a much better
option than CPM 3 because it offers BIOS functions for managing banked
memory. RomWBW has taken an important step in banking many bios functions
but the full potential of the banked memory cannot be fully realized
without also banking the CCP and BDOS. B/P BIOS has been available on Hal
Bower's web site. I have been having trouble getting to Hal's site. My
worst fear is that Hal has passed away. He fought in the Korean war so it
not inconceivable he has pasted (hope he is still with us). Anyway I have
a copy of B/P BIOS from his web site if any one needs a copy. I adapted
B/P BIOS to my homebrew Z80 with 1 meg ram and a 512 meg harddrive
partitioned as 10 drives. A full blown Z-system with 28 named directories
has a 58k TPA!

[Wayne Warthen]

Sounds like you are a great resource to help with the port of N8VEM
variants to BPBIOS! :-)

--Wayne

Post by Lars Nelson
Wayne,
Thanks for the tip on compatibility mode, that obviously why I can't
see Hal's web site anymore.
I am well aware of the effort in porting B/P Bios as I have first
hand experience. At Hal's suggestion I took the SB-180 version and ported
it over to my quirky home-brew Z80 system. Now that its done, I love it.
I hate to use systems or simulators that use plain vanilla CPM. Hal said
he can't post my port on his web site since he has used up the disk space
Verizon provides without changing extra. ZSDOS supports disks up to 1 gig.
I have some partitions that are over 64 Mb. Interestingly, the Z-system
and other libraries maintained on Hal's site that are used in many disk
utility programs, don't properly work on partitions greater than 64 Mb. I
found that out the hard. Anyhow I have modified many of them as well as a
select number of disk utilities to properly handle large partitions.

Post by Wayne Warthen
Hi Lars,
Your comments about BPBIOS are right on point. I have looked at porting
the existing RomWBW to BPBIOS and intend to do that someday. It is more
than a trivial task, but would be worth the effort.
Regarding Hal Bower's website. It is still up and running at
http://mysite.verizon.net/hal.bower/. However, I have noticed that the
most recent version of browsers have a problem displaying the content. I
am able to display the content by using IE 10 and turning on compatibility
mode.
Thanks,
Wayne

Post by Lars Nelson
While waiting for the parts and Mark IV board I was hoping to start a
discussion on a possible direction to go in software development for N8VEM
namely merging RomWBW and B/P BIOS. First a little background on B/P Bios.
It is more than just a BIOS, it was developed in the late 90's and also
includes banked versions of ZCPR and ZSDOS. B/P Bios was developed to
provide a common interface for CP/M 2.2 compatible systems with provisions
to manage more than 64k of physical memory. With permission of Jay Sage, a
banked Command Processor Replacement based on ZCPR 3.4 (named ZCPR4.0) was
added with many built-in commands; ZSDOS was banked and extended to include
multiple file date/time stamp formats (courtesy of Bridger Mitchell and Joe
Wright) and optional directory hashing to speed access. Banked ZSDOS is
called ZSDOS 2.0. Five hardware platforms were ultimately supported in the
commercial release which was sold from 1992 through 1999. Its been
released under a GNU license by its authors. By banking much of ZCPR,
ZSDOS and the BIOS, very large TPAs are possible. The biggest space
savings comes from placing the disk buffers and allocation vectors in
banked memory. Note that CPM 2.2 requires the allocation to be in ram so
banking the BIOS does not help. The allocation table for large disks
really chews up TPA and so large disks are really not useable without a
banked OS like CPM 3 or ZDOS 2.0. B/P BIOS with ZSDOS 2.0 is a much better
option than CPM 3 because it offers BIOS functions for managing banked
memory. RomWBW has taken an important step in banking many bios functions
but the full potential of the banked memory cannot be fully realized
without also banking the CCP and BDOS. B/P BIOS has been available on Hal
Bower's web site. I have been having trouble getting to Hal's site. My
worst fear is that Hal has passed away. He fought in the Korean war so it
not inconceivable he has pasted (hope he is still with us). Anyway I have
a copy of B/P BIOS from his web site if any one needs a copy. I adapted
B/P BIOS to my homebrew Z80 with 1 meg ram and a 512 meg harddrive
partitioned as 10 drives. A full blown Z-system with 28 named directories
has a 58k TPA!

[Lars Nelson]

I would be happy help. John Coffman has suggested to me that the three of
us put our heads together on how to merge B/P Bios into RomWBW. I am all
for it. I have sat by passively for a couple years just monitoring the
goings on of the N8VEM project. However the Mark IV pretty much nailed
everything on my wish list for a Z180 board so the time has come for me to
jump in and conttribute. This seems like an obvious place where I can help
advance the state of the art of the project.
There are four versions of B/P BIOS on Hal's site for different Z180
systems including the now somewhat popular P112. None of those systems
have more than 1 meg of RAM so the expanded memory of the Mark IV will be
one hurdle that needs to be crossed. B/P BIOS is based on 32k pages which
is supported by all N8VEM Z80 and Z180 boards. Currently 256 pages are
supported (8 meg of RAM). I figure the easy part of the port will be tying
the character based and disk I/O to HBIOS. Biggest problem I had in
porting B/P BIOS to my Z80 system was the memory mapping. My Z80 system has
an expanded version of the N8VEM memory mapping logic where the config
register is unfortunately read only. So it is very important that all
memory mapping functions be performed in a central place. Most of the work
I did on memory mapping should be directly applicable except in the area of
moving data between pages which is better supported by my home-brew Z80's
hardware.
I have started to study in more detail RomWBW and will become even
more acquainted with as I bring the Mark IV up (parts and board are in the
mail). Happy to assist in anyway I can.

Lars

Post by Lars Nelson
While waiting for the parts and Mark IV board I was hoping to start a
discussion on a possible direction to go in software development for N8VEM
namely merging RomWBW and B/P BIOS. First a little background on B/P Bios.
It is more than just a BIOS, it was developed in the late 90's and also
includes banked versions of ZCPR and ZSDOS. B/P Bios was developed to
provide a common interface for CP/M 2.2 compatible systems with provisions
to manage more than 64k of physical memory. With permission of Jay Sage, a
banked Command Processor Replacement based on ZCPR 3.4 (named ZCPR4.0) was
added with many built-in commands; ZSDOS was banked and extended to include
multiple file date/time stamp formats (courtesy of Bridger Mitchell and Joe
Wright) and optional directory hashing to speed access. Banked ZSDOS is
called ZSDOS 2.0. Five hardware platforms were ultimately supported in the
commercial release which was sold from 1992 through 1999. Its been
released under a GNU license by its authors. By banking much of ZCPR,
ZSDOS and the BIOS, very large TPAs are possible. The biggest space
savings comes from placing the disk buffers and allocation vectors in
banked memory. Note that CPM 2.2 requires the allocation to be in ram so
banking the BIOS does not help. The allocation table for large disks
really chews up TPA and so large disks are really not useable without a
banked OS like CPM 3 or ZDOS 2.0. B/P BIOS with ZSDOS 2.0 is a much better
option than CPM 3 because it offers BIOS functions for managing banked
memory. RomWBW has taken an important step in banking many bios functions
but the full potential of the banked memory cannot be fully realized
without also banking the CCP and BDOS. B/P BIOS has been available on Hal
Bower's web site. I have been having trouble getting to Hal's site. My
worst fear is that Hal has passed away. He fought in the Korean war so it
not inconceivable he has pasted (hope he is still with us). Anyway I have
a copy of B/P BIOS from his web site if any one needs a copy. I adapted
B/P BIOS to my homebrew Z80 with 1 meg ram and a 512 meg harddrive
partitioned as 10 drives. A full blown Z-system with 28 named directories
has a 58k TPA!