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Franklin Ace 1000 Won't Floppy Boot but seems OK?

So here's an update. I took the Floppy Emu with me to our makerspace where we have a IIe on the shelf. This one has the 20 (?) pin D-shell connector on it, so I popped that off, used the little adapter that came with the Emu board, and cabled things up. The IIe booted cleanly off the floppy emu right on the first try. Tried a couple different images, including ProDOS and a few games, everything worked perfectly.

So the problem is either my Frnaklin controller card is horked, or there's some issue with running the Emu on Franklin hardware. I should have the new controller in a few days, so I can test that.

1703820675948.png
 
I can verify Cryu's findings. Using a ACE1200 and the Franklin FDC, my Floppy Emu ( model B, in disk 2 mode ) works fine, but if I swap the Franklin FDC for real Apple Disk II FDC when I try to boot a disk the system just hangs. I also tried the BMOW Yellowstone FDC in vanilla Disk II mode and it does work in the Franklin. So if you can't get your Franklin FDC to work, one option would be to replace it with a Yellowstone FDC.
 
d5aa96 said:
So if you can't get your Franklin FDC to work, one option would be to replace it with a Yellowstone FDC.
Click to expand...
Much as I love supporting Steve, I"m going to wait and see if the Franklin controller i got off ebay works, or I can repair the one I have (as @cryu was suggesting). If that fails, I"ll definitely pick up the yellowstone card, as that seems like "best of breed" for Apple compat machines.

Thanks for the pointer though, I wasn't up to speed on the Yellowstone controllers. Nice!
 
Happy New Year everyone! Well, here's an update. I picked up a new-to-me Franklin controller - it's a more up to date version of the one I have (has the guides for the floppy headers), and... it works! No problems booting off the Floppy EMU. I was able to boot DOS 3.3 and ProDOS and load/run a couple apps.
Next step is to see if I can find a bootable Franklin CP/M image and see if I can get CP/M booted.

1704655531216.png1704655584969.png
 
That's very good to hear, congratulations.

If you're using the Franklin CP/M card, IIRC it uses the same boot disks as the PCPI card. (Franklin didn't do *anything* original with the exception of their comm card and color daughterboard, and both were designed ... um, *special*)

As an aside, there's a bug in ProDOS-2.4.2's BITSY.BOOT that affects the Franklin (and probably all machines that lack the open/closed-apple keys), rendering it unusable. I submitted a PR at https://github.com/ProDOS-8/ProDOS8-Testing/issues/71, but it seems that work on ProDOS has stalled ... so if you want to use BITSY.BOOT, let me know and I can pass along a fixed version.
 
I found some archives of Franklin utilities and boot tools, and got them running - did a full RAM and system diagnostic, everything is good. I also found a CP/M boot image, which I tried to boot (did you know the Z80 board needs to be in slot 4? I didn't - running the Franklin "Use the Z80 card as a RAMdisk" was failing until I moved it to slot 4, then it worked, so I guess the card isn't completely dead.

When I try booting the CPM image I have it does go into 80 column mode, but crashes out to the monitor (The image i'm using is FRANKLIN_CPM_CX.DSK - which apparently was for the CX portable - if you have a link for a better boot image let me know)
1704669761868.png

Oh, here's another trick I learned. Boot images on the Floppy EMU need to be contiguous. The trick for doing this is to mount them to somehting that has rsync, and then:

rsync --preallocate /path/to/source/file /path/to/destination/
Click to expand...

Then you can use 'filefrag' to see if the files have any extents (they should just have one)

filefrag /path/to/destination/file
Click to expand...

That let me boot these images from the Emu
 
shevett said:
Happy New Year everyone! Well, here's an update. I picked up a new-to-me Franklin controller - it's a more up to date version of the one I have (has the guides for the floppy headers), and... it works! No problems booting off the Floppy EMU. I was able to boot DOS 3.3 and ProDOS and load/run a couple apps.
Next step is to see if I can find a bootable Franklin CP/M image and see if I can get CP/M booted.

View attachment 1270977View attachment 1270978
Click to expand...
Congrats.. its just Like I said early in the post i didnt have doubts the floppy emu would work.
 
@cryu you are an absolute gem of knowledge. That was exactly the problem. I moved the 80 column card, and TADA!
1704674724613.png

I have a bunch of challenges to handle next (like having only one floppy drive - the physical drive I have doesn't seem to be working, but I'll keep trying). I'll also look at that software archive - would love to get wordstar, turbopascal, and a couple other tools ready for use.

Also, I need to hunt around for a super serial card so I can get this machine talking on the net a little.

Thank you very much for your help!

(Here's a weird question - if you look up-thread, this machine also had a Microsoft Softcard in it - which IIRC is basically another Z80 CPM board. WHy would they have two in here? But then again, given the random slot configuration, maybe this just had cards shoved in it willy nilly.)
 
shevett said:
@cryu you are an absolute gem of knowledge. That was exactly the problem. I moved the 80 column card, and TADA!
Click to expand...

*chuckle* Glad that I could be of service :)

shevett said:
I have a bunch of challenges to handle next (like having only one floppy drive - the physical drive I have doesn't seem to be working, but I'll keep trying).
Click to expand...

If you have the FloppyEmu rev C (which you probably do), it will emulate dual drives. You'd need to perform a modification to your Franklin controller board (cut the trace leading to pin 5 on the first floppy connector, then connect that pin through a 470-ohm resistor to pin 14 on the second floppy controller connector). That's identical to what Steve's dual-floppy adapter does.

shevett said:
Also, I need to hunt around for a super serial card so I can get this machine talking on the net a little.
Click to expand...

If you can't find a SSC, there is a clone at https://github.com/jmthompson/ssc that works with ADTPro. It has not been extensively tested, however, so caveat emptor.

shevett said:
(Here's a weird question - if you look up-thread, this machine also had a Microsoft Softcard in it - which IIRC is basically another Z80 CPM board. WHy would they have two in here? But then again, given the random slot configuration, maybe this just had cards shoved in it willy nilly.)
Click to expand...

That's probably the case, yes. I can't think of a case where one would want to use a Softcard instead of a PCPI, let alone have both of them in the same machine at the same time.
 
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So this is where I ask stupid questions, and we're going a bit off the "Apple" thread, but it's relevant cuz we're talking apple hardware :).

It's been a good 30 years since I didn't anything in depth in CP/M. This machine is now running CP/M, but with a disk format that's a little squirrely - the whole 140k Apple drive thing. Because CP/M is primarily a Z80 based OS, does this mean any CP/M binary should work on this machine, if I can get it into a disk image that the Emu will boot / run?

I ask because I'm rummaging around various CPM archives and seeing lots of programs, but I guess I need to figure out how to get them from "I've just downloaded 80 files that are supposedly for CPM on Apple... now what??"

Here's an example of an archive I found. Note in the middle of this there appears to be a copy of Wordstar (which I'm interested in running) as an ... sdk file?? I may be hamstrung by the fact that the Franklin only has one functional drive (the Emu), though I can mount any floppy to it (IIRC, once the CP/M 'kernel' for lack of a better term is loaded, you can swap the main disk with something else, and run directly from the new disk, even if the new one doesn't have a boot image on it).


Code: 
shevett@mac:~/Downloads/A2.CPM.COLLECTIONS $ ls
0index.txt            apbdsc.pat            pcpi.xy.bzs
2C.Z80.TXT            apboot.mqc            pcpi6502.mzp
6502DASM.LBR            apclktc.lbr            pcpias11.azm
6502SIM.LBR            apcpmxfr.lbr            pcpibdos.mzc
AP.CPM.FIX.TXT            apgraf.lbr            pcpiboot.aqm
AZTEC.C                aphimem.aqm            pcpibye1.lbr
BURES.UTILS.SHK            aplcat99.lbr            pcpiclk2.lbr
CPM.CARD            aplcpmlg.7z7            pcpiclk3.lbr
CPM.EMUCARD.ZIP            aplicard.txt            pcpicolr.lbr
CPM.UTILS.SDK            aplvidex.ark            pcpidbii.fix
CPM226B.ZIP            apmboot.aqm            pcpidvr6.lzt
CPSMULTIFUNCTIONDOS.IMG        appatch1.aqm            pcpifst6.ark
CPSMULTIFUNCTIONPASC.IMG    appatch2.com            pcpigprt.lbr
CPSMULTIFUNCTIONZ80.IMG        appatch2.mqc            pcpigrf2.lbr
DOS.3                appicsav.lbr            pcpigrfx.lbr
IIC.Z80                applcrt3.aqm            pcpigrlr.lbr
INDEX.TXT            appldisk.dzc            pcpimmii.lbr
INDEX6502.TXT            appledrv.dqc            pcpitime.lbr
INSTALL.SDK            applutil.lbr            pcpiuni.lbr
IOLOADER.ASM            apunspol.msg            pcpivers.azm
IOLOADER.DOC            binhex.bas            pcpixfer.lbr
N.80..TXT            binhex.hex            pcpiz3v2.mzp
PASCAL.UTILS            cardz180.inf            pics.ap2.lbr
PCPI.DRVR-READ.ME        cpmdir.inf            sscdrvr.aqm
PCPIDRVR.ZIP            cpmxfer.com            starcrd.txt
PRINTER.BUFFER.DRVR.ASM        cpmxfer.dqc            starcrd1.sdk
RE.MSOFT.SOFTCARD.SOFTSWITCH    lisa01.dqc            starcrd2.sdk
READ.ME                loksmith.dqc            tdbt12.txt
SERIAL.GAME.DRVR.ASM        mxh.cz11.lbr            tdbt12d1.sdk
STARCPM.DSK            pcpi.doc            tdbt12d2.sdk
STARCPM.IMG            pcpi.mac            thunder.azm
SVA-ZX4-DISK-DRVR.ASM        pcpi.mon.lbr            tp301a.txt
SYNETIX-RAMDISK-DRVR.ASM    pcpi.ram.lbr            tp301ad1.sdk
TRANS.TBL.TXT            pcpi.rtc.lbr            tp301ad2.sdk
VISTA.DISK.DRVR.ASM        pcpi.sio.lbr            ws333.txt
Z80.CARD.INFO.TXT        pcpi.ug.1z1            ws333d1.sdk
ap.cpm.fix            pcpi.ug.1z2            ws333d2.sdk
ap2.pics.lbr            pcpi.ug.1z3            wspatch.lbr
ap40trk.lbr            pcpi.ug.1z4            x.10.lbr
ap40trk.tzt            pcpi.ug.izf
ap60zcpr.lbr            pcpi.ws4.azm


My ultimate goal here is to get Wordstar and Turbo Pascal 1.x running on it, with possibly the rest of the Microprose apps (see where I'm going here? :) - I just don't understand the details of assembling a working filesystem that has the binaries / apps I'll need - all the TLA extensions are messing me up.
 
AppleCommander (https://applecommander.github.io/) can convert CP/M .sdk files to .do/.po. An example:


Bash: 
(06:46:25 wilbur <~/tmp/w>) 0 $ ls -l
total 56
-rw-r--r-- 1 wileyc users 56599 Jan  9 06:40 ws333d1.sdk
(06:46:27 wilbur <~/tmp/w>) 0 $ applecommander-ac -l ws333d1.sdk
ws333d1.sdk.po CP/M Volume
WINSTALL COM
WS INS
CP/M format; -50,213,888 bytes free; 50,357,248 bytes used.

(06:46:35 wilbur <~/tmp/w>) 0 $ applecommander-ac -convert ws333d1.sdk  ws.po
(06:46:48 wilbur <~/tmp/w>) 0 $ applecommander-ac -l ws.po
ws.po CP/M Volume
WINSTALL COM
WS INS
CP/M format; -50,213,888 bytes free; 50,357,248 bytes used.

(06:46:54 wilbur <~/tmp/w>) 0 $ ls -l
total 196
-rw-r--r-- 1 wileyc users  56599 Jan  9 06:40 ws333d1.sdk
-rw-r--r-- 1 wileyc users 143360 Jan  9 06:46 ws.po

... and cross-check with cpmls (http://www.moria.de/~michael/cpmtools/), as AppleCommander isn't calculating block usage correctly on CP/M formats:

Bash: 
06:48:33 wilbur <~/tmp/w>) 1 $ cpmls -f apple-po ws.po
0:
winstall.com
ws.ins

CP/M with one drive is a serious PITA. Please consider kicking your FloppyEmu into dual drive mode.
 
Forgot: The Unarchiver (https://theunarchiver.com/) can extract .lbr files; copy them into an Apple-formatted CP/M floppy image with cpmcp. There might be a more streamlined way of doing that, but it's been awhile and I haven't had my morning coffee yet :)
 
Good info as always. I'm hesitant to carve up my Franklin controller to make it set up for use with the dual-mode on the Emu. What I'd really like to do is spend some time seeing if I can get the acutal 5 1/4 drive working. AFAICT, i should be able to boot off the Emu, have the second drive in DRIVE 2, and be able to format / work with it, but a very quick test had the machine locking up when I tried to boot in that config. Could be the drive is dragging down the controller, dunno. I have some LIFE invading right now, so I need to slow my work on this for a bit. But I'll keep folks posted!
 
We're up :)

Thank you very much to the pointers for cpmtools and applecommander. Turns out the turbo pascal i was trying to run was too new, or something. I found an archive of TP1.0, used the cpmtools to create a disk image and put tp on it, booted the Franklin into CP/M, and swapped disks (you can run with one 'floppy', because once the 'kernel' as it were is loaded, you can swap disks saround.

I booted CP/M, switched to the turbo pascal image, ran tinst, and started up pascal. it's working!

Lots more to do, but this is the milestone i was hoping to get to! Thank you!

Next steps will be the second drive, and starting to work on the physical floppy drives a bit. I have a super serial card also, would be nice to get on teh BBS :)
 

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Just to button up this thread, the entire video of hte process is now up if anyone is interested. It was a fun ride, and thank you all for your help, I coudlnt' have done it without you.

 
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