RAMDOS manual


RAMDOS with CP/M 2.2

Before you can use RAMDOS with CP/M 2.2 you will need to modify your system discs (see Start of Day Disc below). Modified discs can be used as normal, with or without RAMDOS, although the TPA will be reduced to 42K.

Discs for drive B can be formatted by using FORMATS (see above). The default format is D20 but any of the standard formats can be read.

When you have modified your discs for drive A and have formatted some discs for drive B, RAMDOS is installed by:

    |CPM
    RAMDOS2

Or, if you wish to use another format, eg D10, type:

    RAMDOS2 D10

Some CP/M 2.2 programs cannot be used with an 80 track second drive, either because they are written for drive A only (such as FILECOPY, DISCCOPY, DISCCHK) or because they assume that drive B has the same format as drive A (such as COPYDISC, CHKDISC, FORMAT).

To move files, use PIP (see your Amstrad manual), eg to copy all the contents of drive A to drive B use: PIP B:.A:*.*

Start of day disc

To modify the system tracks:

Put the CP/M 2.2 System Disc in drive A, with Side 1 uppermost, and type:

    |CPM
    MOVCPM 170 *
    SYSGEN *

Put the disc to be modified in drive A when prompted. Press any key.

To copy RAMD0S2.COM onto a Start of Day disc, put the CP/M 2.2 System Disc in drive A with Side 1 uppermost, and type:

    |CPM
    FILECOPY RAMDOS2.COM

Put the RAMDOS disc in drive A when prowted for the Source Disc.

Put Start of Day disc in drive A when prompted for Destination Disc.

Follow the same procedure to copy PIP.COM (on the Utilities disc).

SETUP can be used to call RAMDOS2 automatically whenever |CPM is used (see Amstrad manual). Add into the Initial Command buffer: RAMDOS2^M

A different default format can be installed by adding the new format to the Initial Command buffer, eg: RAMDOS2 D10^M

Technical details

MOVCPM moves the CCP down in memory to make room for RAMDOS. The main jumpblock is moved from &AD00 to &A400.

The addresses for the CKS and ALV of drive B, the sidedness and track offset of both drives are the same as for RAMDOS.BAS.