Hello.
my first post here. Still figuring out how this works, so please be understanding -- eventual breaches of the etiquiette are not intentional.
I got a mainboard and a hard drive board from an Altos 586 computer. Just the bare boards acquired on e-bay some time ago -- no case, no documentation. As the documentation available is scarce, I've been reverse engineering some parts, notably the firmware. I'm also currently investigating a fault on the hard drive board, with an intent of making the machine run its original software.
I'm keeping the notes here: https://github.com/lkundrak/altos586/
And I've got a partial emulation in MAME working, enough to run the SDX diagnostic disk: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/11670
In any case -- I've got to the point I've given running the CCP/M-86 a shot. I got the install disk from bitsavers: http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/Altos/586/
It didn't work. Digging a little bit deeper into it, I've noticed it's issuing an INT 20 (decimal) in an apparent attempt to make a firmware call to print a string.
That is fairly odd. The firmware I doesn't implement INT 20 -- the firmware calls are made with a far jump to FE00:0000. That is also what the 586T documentation (closest available) uses. On the other hand, the 486 (I think that's slightly newer model, 186-based) manual mentions INT 20. Is the install disk for 486, perhaps?
Looks like the right disk? Are there perhaps newer versions of the firmware that implement system calls via INT 20? I've got version 1.3. There's version a2.2 on bitsavers, but that seems to support a different hard drive board and not to support INT 20 either. Does anybody around here perhaps have a similar machine running a different firmware version? Is there anybody running CCP/M-86 or anything other than XENIX?
Thank you
Lubo
my first post here. Still figuring out how this works, so please be understanding -- eventual breaches of the etiquiette are not intentional.
I got a mainboard and a hard drive board from an Altos 586 computer. Just the bare boards acquired on e-bay some time ago -- no case, no documentation. As the documentation available is scarce, I've been reverse engineering some parts, notably the firmware. I'm also currently investigating a fault on the hard drive board, with an intent of making the machine run its original software.
I'm keeping the notes here: https://github.com/lkundrak/altos586/
And I've got a partial emulation in MAME working, enough to run the SDX diagnostic disk: https://github.com/mamedev/mame/pull/11670
In any case -- I've got to the point I've given running the CCP/M-86 a shot. I got the install disk from bitsavers: http://www.bitsavers.org/bits/Altos/586/
It didn't work. Digging a little bit deeper into it, I've noticed it's issuing an INT 20 (decimal) in an apparent attempt to make a firmware call to print a string.
That is fairly odd. The firmware I doesn't implement INT 20 -- the firmware calls are made with a far jump to FE00:0000. That is also what the 586T documentation (closest available) uses. On the other hand, the 486 (I think that's slightly newer model, 186-based) manual mentions INT 20. Is the install disk for 486, perhaps?
Looks like the right disk? Are there perhaps newer versions of the firmware that implement system calls via INT 20? I've got version 1.3. There's version a2.2 on bitsavers, but that seems to support a different hard drive board and not to support INT 20 either. Does anybody around here perhaps have a similar machine running a different firmware version? Is there anybody running CCP/M-86 or anything other than XENIX?
Thank you
Lubo