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NEC APC: RDCPM and a CP/M-86 formatted diskette?

MissArgent

MissArgent

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So, I'm trying to load the NEC APC version of MS-DOS KERMIT on a DOS 2.11 floppy for my NEC APC, and I had to get the executable on a 8" diskette via KERMIT86 on the machine's CP/M-86 port. Now I'm trying to use DOS 2.11's RDCPM.COM to grab the MS-DOS KERMIT executable off the CP/M-86-formatted diskette, but even a simple RDCPM DIR B: gets me a "HARD DISK ERROR reading CP/M disk" after a good ten seconds of trying to read the CP/M-86-formatted diskette in Drive B:. Can NEC's OEM RDCPM not read APC CP/M-86 formatted disks properly, for some reason? Am I doing something wrong?

Unfortunately, NEC seemingly didn't see fit to license GW-BASIC so a remote load via that isn't an option. CP/M-86 does have a BASIC interpreter, but that'd leave me in the same fix.
 
You won't be able to read the CP/M Floppy with MS-DOS, unless you use 22DISK. Chuck(G) on the VCF still sells and supports
22DISK. Just Register with him, and then use 22DISK to access the Floppy with 22DISK. 22DISK has a definition for the NECAPC
BEGIN NECC NEC APC CP/M-86 - DSHD 8" - 256 x 26 ..........

If your system is a One Floppy ONLY system you likely won't be able to access it this way. You can always connect the 8" floppy
to a DOS Computer, and then use 22DISK from DOS to access the floppy, or Imagedisk (IMD) to Grab an Image of the Floppy.
With the Image you can then create a Raw Sector Dump, and access the files with cpmtools (Linux or Windows).

This definition should work for cpmtools:
# NECC NEC APC CP/M-86 - DSHD 8" - 256 x 26
diskdef necc
seclen 256
tracks 154
sectrk 26
blocksize 2048
maxdir 256
skew 3
boottrk 2
os 2.2
end


Larry
 
Is 22DISK going to be able to run? The APC isn't IBM compatible. Also, it's odd that NEC even bothered including RDCPM and tailoring it with their OAK if it won't work with their tailored CP/M-86 distro...
 
Does the NEC RDCPM utility actually read diskettes? I think the error "HARD DISK ERROR reading CP/M disk" may indicate it only reads hard disks.
 
I think the wording is more meant to refer to a "hard error" than anything, the utility itself goes back to 86-DOS in various forms and DOS versions that early didn't have integrated support for fixed disks. The version included with NEC's APC-specific DOS 2.11 distribution has been customized (being 9k vs. some other OEMS's versions of RDCPM) but unfortunately NEC APC DOS documentation isn't on the web at all making it difficult for me to rtfm.
 
Yup. Unfortunately, the DOS documentation they have is all programming-focused - nothing more general purpose that would exposit on command syntax and usage.
 
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