How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

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mark1969
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How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by mark1969 »

All
Over the last months I have carefully restored and upgraded my ORIC Atmos with Microdisk, with particular attention to the power supply which has always been a pain point of the ORIC. In the past I also had a 5.25inch floppy drive as well as a 3.5 inch floppy drive. I've brushed this up as well and all is working as new. I've taken care that I would retain the original 'look and feel' of my system and ensure full backward compatibility (yes, the 8V that powers my ORIC can handle the negative voltage regulator) To make it complete, I've added a modern SCART to HDMI converter so I can watch my ORIC work on any modern monitor or TV. So far so good. (if someone is interested in images, schematics, etc, just let me know, I'm happy to share)

However, when I tried the floppies I still had, it seems that after 30 or so years they have degraded a bit.
- the 3inch original floppies lost all data
- the 3.5 inch floppies mostly survived, with some data loss
- the 5.25 inch floppies: also most had some data loss (the dirt cheap ones were just has good/bad as the expensive ones)
So overall I was able to test my system, but have no longer all at my disposal.

So, I need somehow to get new system disks of ORIC DOS, SedORIC, RanDOS, as well as most of the available software.
I found some sites where I can download this but then how to transfer to my ORIC is still a puzzle.

Also I recall that someone created an upgraded version of SedORIC which no longer had the limitation of 42 tracks 17 sectors but could utilize he full disk. I'd really like to get this working but where to find it and again, how to get it on my system?

Can someone help me to get it all back in pristine condition as far as software is concerned? What do I need, etc?
Thanks in advance
Mark Vermeulen
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Chema
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by Chema »

Hi! It is great to see people getting back their old systems, mostly when they are so complete as yours! Would definitely want to see some pics.

Regarding your question, I'll take that you don't have a gotek or similar, because it would make anything much easier.

It is really difficult to produce a 3" disk with a PC, and 5.25" drives are difficult to find, so let's try 3.5". You need a PC with a real 3.5 FDD (some have internal USB drives, which won't handle esoteric formats). This computer should run MSDOS, or, as I do, Win95/98 (but it still needs to have a real MSDOS underneath). I have a Win98 system with USB drivers and all, so getting images there is quite easy.

Get to https://sourceforge.net/projects/euphor ... s%20tools/ and download wrtdsk23.exe. I don't think you need memory extenders, but if needed look for them in the web. They are still available.

Download any oric disk image you want and use the tool to dump it to a 3.5 floppy. This should work directly on your oric system (that is what I am doing and it works perfectly!)

Then you can use the standard ORIC DOS, SEDORIC or any OS tools to duplicate/copy disks to generate your 3" or 5.25" floppies.
:D
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by Dbug »

Could you post some photos of your setup, the description of it looks cool :)

Recently there's also been a bunch of devices made to connect retro drives to PCs and extract data, things like "KryoFlux", "Pauline" and "Greaseweazle", which come with tools design to extract as much data as possible using some software controlled controllers that can do things the normal controller boards on our computers could do, including some special modes designed to extract data by running multiple time with different parameters.

That being said, I'm not an expert, I've never used these, but I know that some people have managed to use that on other machines to rip software from Amstrad CPC and MSX which also use 3" software, or Apple II stuff on 5.25" drives.

Possibly ISS and Steve have a bit of experience with that.
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by Jonh »

I second what Chema said. Facing your problem, I bought a Win 98 Compaq Armada 1750 portable with built in FDD on EBay for £30. The FDD accesses both 1.4Mb HD and 720k DD 3.5" floppies. In my case it had an Ethernet socket for networking but not wi-fi, so a cable connection to the router. The portable is built like a tank!

I assume your Oric 3.5" drive is a 720k DD one. If so, be sure when using writedsk on the Win 98 machine to write a .DSK image to a 720k DD floppy.

I'd suggest starting with Sedoric V3 as your Oric OS - available to download on the Oric.org software archive together with the manual. Most .DSK files on Oric.org run under Sedoric.

Good luck!
mark1969
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by mark1969 »

I'm surprised to see such an active community for a system from the mid 80's.

As per request, I've uploaded some images of my updated system.

The microdisk has undergone the most changes. It is now powered via the single adapter (in this case 15VDC - 4.33A)
The linear regulators inside the microdisk have been replaced with modern DC/DC converters and for the ORIC, as it features the negative regulator, I've added an isolated DC/DC converter that generates 8VDC so it can power an unmodified ORIC without the internal linear regulator running extremely hot. Also on the Microdisk I've added a switch that swaps DS0 and DS1, so I can easily swap the master and slave drive. Once I have new 3" bootable floppies I can then also NOT connect the extra two drives which is the simplest setup.

The power can be looped through to the floppy drive assembly with the 3,5" and 5.25" floppy drives and from there to the SCART to HDMI converter. Effectively this means I only need a single outlet to power all making it extremely easy to set-up. The HDMI converter works with the same screen as my laptop as it supports up to 1920 video.

Although I am not a big fan of Aliexpress, most parts required for ORIC can still be found there, including even the 24 pin IDC connectors with frame mounting options.

Back to the original topic: I'll go the route of the 3.5" floppy drive.
- would an external USB floppy drive work?
- Does SedORIC V3.0 support the 80 track/ 17 sectors / double sided (original SedORIC was limited to 56/17/DS)
- great to see a link to PC, I can probably run an MS DOS bo inside Parallels desktop and that way also backup.

Thanks for the quick response. If I have any further questions, I'll be sure to reach out.
Mark
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by ibisum »

I'm surprised to see such an active community for a system from the mid 80's.
In a similar fashion, its great to see new ''old Oric users'' finding their way into this community, which has indeed been functional for decades.

Your disk setup is pretty intriguing. What sort of software are you transferring, after all - stuff you wrote, collected?
mark1969
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by mark1969 »

My disk setup is nothing really special I think...
In the 80's I started off with a 5.25" floppy drive and collected quite some disks. I never bothered to put it into an enclosure at the time.
When the 3.5" floppy drive became more popular it was also added, after all you can connect 4 drives to the same bus.
An enclosure simple meant you could not easily change the drive select jumper settings. I've now solved this differently.

for this project I collected all my 5.25" drives as well as my 3.5" drives and experimented a bit. The setup on the photos is the setup works with my old disks. The other 5.25" drive is more silent but longer than the enclosure.

I have quite some software that may be fairly unique
At the time I was active member of the OCGC (Oric Computer Gebruikers Club, translated as Oric Computer User Club) and we produced our own software and published 'clubbanden' or club tapes. Some high quality software was produced by some of the members that fortunately seemed to have survived. Examples include
  • Hemo (Hermans Monitor). A disassembler and monitor program that allowed you to insert break points into assembler code
    Integer Pascal. an interpreter to program Pascal on the ORIC (adapted from Apple)
    Oneliner. A converter that allowed to create long oneliners longer than the 80 characters you were normally limited to.
    SedAuthor. A disk version of Author, with help pages (on the floppy), disk AND tape access, directory function, etc. All fully backward compatible with the tape version.
The last program I used in school to write my book reports. Where the rest was struggling with a typewriter, I could print out my paper. Remarkable at the time, nothing special now. Fortunately only some standard software did not survive the test of time, such as the original boot disk for ORIC dos, some games, so I'd like to recover this and hopefully keep this a bit longer.

The OCGC also published hardware modifications, amongst which modifications that improved the stability of the expansion port and a mod that ensured you can use tape and disk at the same time. All of this was published in a magazine we brought out monthly.

So overall, I believe there is some stuff to share when I have my link to my PC (Mac, actually) ready.

p.s. what I forgot to mention/show is that I also own an ORIC plotter, an ORIC joystick controller and an ORIC joystick. These were bought later and I never got around testing them, but I intend to get these working as well.
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by Jonh »

Back to the original topic: I'll go the route of the 3.5" floppy drive.
- would an external USB floppy drive work?
- Does SedORIC V3.0 support the 80 track/ 17 sectors / double sided (original SedORIC was limited to 56/17/DS)
- great to see a link to PC, I can probably run an MS DOS bo inside Parallels desktop and that way also backup.
The key thing to recognise is that writedsk uses motherboard level BIOS calls to write an Oric disk, so it will only work with a genuine MS-DOS machine with a built-in floppy drive and FDD controller on the motherboard. So the answer to the first question is no.

Yes, Sedoric supports 80/17 double sided 720k disks from V2.0 onwards, so V3 does indeed do so.

As for your third query, I'm no expert on DOS boxes, but I'm sure you will have problems writing disks with writedsk on any machine other than a DOS machine (which means one up to Win 98), for the reasons given above.
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by Chema »

mark1969 wrote: Sun Jul 10, 2022 9:19 pm amongst which modifications that improved the stability of the expansion port and a mod that ensured you can use tape and disk at the same time. All of this was published in a magazine we brought out monthly.
Everything is great, and I'd love to see that Pascal compiler, but I am really interested in this bit. Do you still have this information?
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by Dbug »

If you have some Dutch magazines, books or manuals which we have not yet scanned, I would be very interested to add that to the Oric Library.

We only have one book and two magazines:
https://library.defence-force.org/index ... anguage=nl
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by Symoon »

Chema wrote: Mon Jul 11, 2022 12:16 am
mark1969 wrote: Sun Jul 10, 2022 9:19 pm amongst which modifications that improved the stability of the expansion port and a mod that ensured you can use tape and disk at the same time. All of this was published in a magazine we brought out monthly.
Everything is great, and I'd love to see that Pascal compiler, but I am really interested in this bit. Do you still have this information?
I second that. This "random" behavior is really annoying, and at least knowing a way to deal with it would be great.
That being said, I wonder if Théoric didn't have an article about it too.
EDIT: https://forum.defence-force.org/viewtopic.php?p=12851
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Re: How to create new system disks and retrieve my software

Post by mark1969 »

A bit from memory, I did not yet have time to double-check with the official specification.

Some signals of the 6502 are overloaded.
Most critical signal is the phi2 signal which is the clock. Not all signals of the 6502 have the same fanout. The phi2 signal has a fanout of only 1 TTL load and this is already used on the motherboard. I've mounted piggyback on the 6502 a 74LS14 to buffer and polish up the signal and this ensures the signal is clean and can handle 10 LSTTL loads after the buffer.

The mod in the article also simply polished up most signals, with special attention to the phi2 signal. However, as the signal is already loaded on the motherboard, you still add another load and thus run the 6502 out of spec. It's definitely an improvement especially if you have multiple devices on the expansion port.

Again, this is from memory, I still haven't found the time to recover all articles and books. All I know for sure is that both my ORICs work with tape as well as disk, no problem there, and have this mod on the 6502.
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