Kaypro 10 & CoPower 88

[shirsch]

I am trying to bring up an SWP CoPower 88 board in my Kaypro 10 w/ TurboROM. Once I finally figured out that the daughterboard needed to be jumpered for ports 7E and 7F it's trying hard to work. The ramdisk program initializes properly, I can write files to the ramdisk and read them back. But, the screen fills with garbage at every access. Similarly, running MSDOS.COM to boot DOS 2.11 from floppy starts out encouragingly, but also writes garbage to the screen and dies with a complaint of bad command interpreter (it's not, I generated two different diskettes from two different sources). I actually have two CoPower board sets and the other 8088 board behaves the same way (I cannot use the second daughterboard. It's a 'Universal' variant with no port jumpers that isn't seen by the utilities).

So, the question is: Is the CoPower actually compatible with a K10 (4 Mhz. CPU) and TurboROM? Or, does it have dependencies on a slower host CPU speed and/or OEM firmware? Hard to find any hard information on this device so I'm hoping someone here can chime in. Many thanks for any input!

[mloewen]

I can't say about the Kaypro 10, but the CoPower definitely works in the Kaypro 4/84 with a 4MHz clock.

http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/Kaypro/Kaypro488.html

[shirsch]

I can't say about the Kaypro 10, but the CoPower definitely works in the Kaypro 4/84 with a 4MHz clock.

http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/Kaypro/Kaypro488.html

Thanks, Mike. Since posting yesterday, I added a DIP header to let me fiddle with port addresses on the daughterboard. Relocating the CoPower ports to any of 2e/f, 4e/f or 6e/f solved the screen garbage issues with the ramdisk driver (and I found out how to patch it to use any of these by default). However, the same trick doesn't completely work with MS-DOS. After patching it in a similar manner (it doesn't take command line input), it gets as far as signing on and trying to boot MS-DOS from the floppy drive. At that point it hangs with the drive spinning. At the default port location (7e/f), it at least tries to load the command interpreter before failing so I'm probably still missing a required edit somewhere. I'm also a bit suspect of the diskette images but cannot locate any alternative copies. If you have known working CoPower 88 support files (and I can see MS-DOS 2.11 on your web site) I'd really like to try them. Can you ping me privately and tell me how I can grab copies? Also, if you have the older (non-PAL based) daughterboard in your system I'd love to know the 'official' port address used in the Kaypro system. Both of my board sets came from other CP/M machines (probably Osborne and SWP Atari CP/M box).

[mloewen]

PM sent.

[shirsch]

Mike was kind enough to pass along the software that works in his K 4-84. It's a slightly different version from what I had and behaves slightly better, but I'm still getting 'Bad or missing command interpreter' when I try to boot MS-DOS. Starting to think there might have been a dedicated software release for K10 that I have yet to find. The 4-84 software seems to assume CoPower ports at 7E and 7F (yet to be confirmed, but the code looks like that's what it's doing). Those addresses definitely don't work in a K10.

Does anyone reading this have (or know of) a working Co-Power 88 in a K10? If so, I'd very much like to get my hands on the software and get confirmation regarding daughterboard jumpering.

[shirsch]

Well, I've exhausted all avenues I'm aware of. With the kind help of Larry Kraemer we were able to read out the contents of a disk that purports to be for K10 from a very damaged TD0 file. The software is definitely different from any of the K4 versions and it expects the Copower at ports 1A and 1B. There was even a utility to create a virtual hard drive on the K10 hard disk! I spent an hour wiring in an extra inverter on the daughterboard to move ports to 1A and 1B and gave it a try. Still no luck. It never even tries to access the floppy drive and simply hangs after startup. The DREM disk emulator is showing a lot of activity on the hard drive (maybe the virtual disk I created?) but eventually hangs.

I'm about out of ideas. So, once again I'll ask: Does anyone have a known-working collection of utilities or disks to get the Copower-88 working on a Kaypro 10?
I'll also take any other troubleshooting suggestions. Before anyone asks: Yes, the Copower board is functional. The ramdisk program finds it and creates a working ramdisk the size of the 8088's memory. An awful lot of things must be working correctly for that to cooperate so I believe this unit itself is ok.

[ktmchrisv]

Hi shirsch,

I have a Kaypro 10 and a CoPower 88 board. I am using the stock rom 81-478A and am able to boot the MS-DOS 2.11 diskettes off of the Maslin Archive and use the RAM disk. I have not been able to get the TurboROM working on my system because of the dependency on the inverted reset line to the HDD. So, I never got to the point of testing the CoPower 88 on the TurboROM. I'm curious if you have a complete set of the K10 CoPower Utilities? The TD0 off of the Maslin archive is badly corrupted. It sounds like you have recovered them. Do you have the original board with 81-302 ROM? Or, do you have the Universal board like myself? I would really like to get a copy of the K10 CoPower Utilities. Anyways, maybe we can collaborate and understand whether the TurboROM is the incompatibility.

Chris V.

[shirsch]

Hi shirsch,

I have a Kaypro 10 and a CoPower 88 board. I am using the stock rom 81-478A and am able to boot the MS-DOS 2.11 diskettes off of the Maslin Archive and use the RAM disk. I have not been able to get the TurboROM working on my system because of the dependency on the inverted reset line to the HDD. So, I never got to the point of testing the CoPower 88 on the TurboROM. I'm curious if you have a complete set of the K10 CoPower Utilities? The TD0 off of the Maslin archive is badly corrupted. It sounds like you have recovered them. Do you have the original board with 81-302 ROM? Or, do you have the Universal board like myself? I would really like to get a copy of the K10 CoPower Utilities. Anyways, maybe we can collaborate and understand whether the TurboROM is the incompatibility.

Chris V.

Hi, Chris. I sent you a private note with a link to the contents Larry Kraemer recovered. Why I cannot get MSDOS working is a complete mystery. By examination of the MSDOS.COM file on the K10 disk, I determined that it expects the CoPower board at ports 1Ah and 1Bh. The daughter board I have needed modification to respond to those addresses and will cheerfully work as a ramdisk. However, no matter what I've tried MS-DOS won't boot. It gets as far as the splash screen and hangs. If you have an 'official' K10 CoPower board, I'd love to see some clear photos of both the CPU and daughterboard (both sides of each).

My K10 is the original with 81-302 ROM. FWIW, I switched back to the original ROM and had no better luck. My thoughts about the TurboROM were a red-herring.

Are you saying you simply made a diskette from the Maislin TD0 image and successfully booted it? Or, do you have other files obtained from a different source? I could not write a diskette using the TD0 as it's too badly damaged. Don M provided a great service to the community, but he was not as careful as he might have been in taking images. I've discovered a lot of duds in that collection.

[ktmchrisv]

I am going to experiment with what I have working on the CoPower 88, then I'll send you the software I used and how my board is setup. I struggled immensely to get this working. Eventually, I found that the port address of the board was not correct. I ended up strapping the board based on a decompilation of the ram drive program. Then with the new strapping, it booted MS-DOS 2.11 off floppy. I also had MSDOS 3.0 working. But, not the CPM86 disk that's floating around out there. I've never been able to boot of the hard drive; which is my interest in the K10 CoPower Utilities. I actually have both the 81-302 board and the universal board. I have used both. Currently, I'm experimenting with putting a 40MB drive in the K10 with the Universal board. My problems with TurboROM have lead me to use the KPLUS rom. I've been experimenting with it, but, have found unfortunate incompatibilities with MASMENU and SUBMIT / EX14.
Let me put this system back together and document what is working. Please stand by.......

[shirsch]

I'd be very interested in trying the software you are using. Fortunately, I was able to spot the differing port addresses by doing a binary comparison between RAMDISK.COM versions for Kaypro and one of the other CP/M system types. The low and high port addresses are baked in just after a JP (or JR) command at the start of the program. After realizing that the Maislin utilities wanted 1A and 1B, I went through a similar exercise by bending out a few pins and inverting one of the address lines through an unused gate. But even though RAMDISK.COM started working I was still unable to get MSDOS to work. I recently started working on a disassembly of MSDOS.COM, but I'm not getting very far (admittedly I'm not good at disassembly).