RickNel
Veteran Member
I have a feeling that a wheel is being re-invented here 
.
When I had this sort of CP/M loading problem, I found there was plenty of well-commented 8080 source code for CP/M boot sequences and boot ROMs on the web, as well as the standard CP/M Customisation Guide about adapting BIOS to different system environments. I used this with the FDC references to compile my own ROM monitor with CP/M system load as just one option along with a suite of standard test and data transfer utilities all in a 2716 EPROM. This was pretty standard practice in CP/M days.
The CP/M 8080 ASM sources are also freely available for BIOS.ASM, FORMAT.ASM and PIP.ASM. Even if you don't have a single formatted diskette to begin with, you can use a ROM-based monitor (like my Minimon) to load an appropriately-configured FORMAT.COM file into RAM directly from a PC, via serial port. FDD and COM port are set up by the ROM. You can also load a compiled BIOS from file into ROM, jump to it, then FORMAT your master diskette.
Of course it will be much easier if you can find a suitable disk image for your system (Dave Dunfield's DiskImage site has/had a wide collection) and make a boot disk on a floppy drive attached to a DOS-based machine using Dunfield's IMD. There may be other image creation options. That approach takes care of initial floppy formatting.
Rick
. When I had this sort of CP/M loading problem, I found there was plenty of well-commented 8080 source code for CP/M boot sequences and boot ROMs on the web, as well as the standard CP/M Customisation Guide about adapting BIOS to different system environments. I used this with the FDC references to compile my own ROM monitor with CP/M system load as just one option along with a suite of standard test and data transfer utilities all in a 2716 EPROM. This was pretty standard practice in CP/M days.
The CP/M 8080 ASM sources are also freely available for BIOS.ASM, FORMAT.ASM and PIP.ASM. Even if you don't have a single formatted diskette to begin with, you can use a ROM-based monitor (like my Minimon) to load an appropriately-configured FORMAT.COM file into RAM directly from a PC, via serial port. FDD and COM port are set up by the ROM. You can also load a compiled BIOS from file into ROM, jump to it, then FORMAT your master diskette.
Of course it will be much easier if you can find a suitable disk image for your system (Dave Dunfield's DiskImage site has/had a wide collection) and make a boot disk on a floppy drive attached to a DOS-based machine using Dunfield's IMD. There may be other image creation options. That approach takes care of initial floppy formatting.
Rick
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