Booting my TRS-80 Model 3 with TRSDOS & LDOS (

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In this journal entry for #SepTandy2023, I finally get to try and boot my TRS-80 Model 3 with a 5 1/4" floppy. I was donated two disks from a viewer, containing two different operating systems that I will try. Come join me in my first exploration of its disk operating system
#TRS-80 #TRSDOS #LDOS #Retro

Опубликовано:

25 окт 2024

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Комментарии : 20

@fra4455 10 месяцев назад

Great✌ video

@SidebandSamurai Год назад

Disks are organized as follows: each track is formatted into a specific number of 256-byte sectors with a maximum capacity of 32 sectors per track. Sectors are grouped into blocks called granules which vary in size according to total track capacity of the disk media, though granule size for each disk format is constant. For forty-cylinder disks formatted in double density, standard for the drives installed in the TRS-80 Models III and 4, the granule size is six 256-byte sectors, or 1.5 KB. Each track has three granules for 4.5 KB of storage. Each side (surface) of the disk is normally formatted with 40 tracks, yielding 180 KB per side. The Model 4D, with its double-sided drives, yields 360 KB of storage. Whenever additional disk space is needed for a file (such as extending a file while being written to), an additional granule is allocated. The granule thus becomes the minimum size storage unit.

@8BitRetroJournal Год назад

Thank you for the information. I have a few more questions, as I filmed a future video on this where I tried unsuccessfully to format new blank disks. I could give a link to it if you email me (email under About tab): o what is the password? o a formatting command in LDOS asked for a millisecond value of 6, 12, 20 and 30? o I'm able to boot off of drive 0 but unable to format a new disk with either TRSDOS or LDOS so I'm stuck.

@ohioterran7374 Год назад

You could also replace drive 0 with a go-tek floppy emulator after loading the "FlashFloppy" firmware on it. I did this to my Model 3 and put 189 disk images on a USB drive so I have almost everything made for TRS-80 at my fingertips! Here is a video I made on it: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DmFtIaYe6pY.htmlsi=0cZfMIRCilAAENZa

@8BitRetroJournal Год назад

For some reason I haven't invested in a go-tek yet for any of my retro computers. I think I still have a fascination with the mechanical nature of disk drives (I'm even more partial to the QL's miniaturized single track 8-track tape replicas). In fact, I just invested in a pack of ten brand new 5 1/4 inch floppies. Grant it, I'm not focusing on the Model 3 so it's not like I'll be exploring every piece of software ever made for it...if I were to do that, floppies would become tedious really fast. That said, I haven't quite finished learning how those new floppies will actually help me other than being able to format them from the TRSDOS side. Can TRS-80 formatted floppies be read on a Windows machine with software so that I could transfer data to them? I'm assuming the format between TRSDOS and LDOS is the same!? I think my next milestone would be to load a game (or program) from floppy under one of those DOS systems.

@ohioterran7374 Год назад

@@8BitRetroJournal The easiest way I can think of to get files onto the TRS-80 from the Internet or a PC while keeping the disk drive intact would be to utilize an external floppy emulator such as the one I have attached to my Model 3 and demonstrated in my video starting around 1:26: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DmFtIaYe6pY.html

@stargazer7644 Год назад

Getting a directory on the other drive is dir :1 There were multiple different rom versions. TRSDOS 1.3 is very old and might not know about your version. None of the roms match in my model 4 in model 3 mode. Your TRSDOS disk doesn't have any of the usual TRSDOS utils on it. Hertz50 adjusts your clock if you're running on 50hz power instead of 60hz. You can't read the floppy on MS-DOS. Some emulators can read the floppies if you have a compatible floppy drive, but it is fraught with caveats due to density differences. If you want to know about granules, read the wikipedia entry for trsdos. I believe SYSTEM exits you out of basic. You can usually just hit enter at the time prompt, and sometimes at the date prompt. Having the tape on a 5.25 is write protected.

@8BitRetroJournal Год назад

Thank you for all the valuable feedback. I have a follow up that was supposed to be a deep dive into using both TRSDOS and LDOS but ended up being a quick clip because I could get nothing working. I think drive 1 is bad (or needs more cleaning). But I tried to format disks on drive 0 with no success in either TRSDOS or LDOS. They both just found all tracks had failed. Drive 0 reads both perfectly fine so I'm not sure what the issue is. LDOS has a fancier format command that asks for various things, including millisecond timings, and I tried a few to no avail. How can a drive read info perfectly but not format it?

@stargazer7644 Год назад

@@8BitRetroJournalIt sounds like the drive has a problem with the write circuit or write head.

@roysainsbury4556 11 месяцев назад

You exit out of BASIC with CMD"S". There IS a SYSTEM command, but it's a simple monitor thing forf loading and executing machine-code programs from cassette. I'm sure there's commands in LDOS to disable the date and/or time prompts. Not so in TRSDOS, but there is a patch file that will modify TRSDOS to do it. Files with the /BLD extension are actually simple batch files and you use the DO command, so DO HERZ50 will run that. BASIC is on the TRSDOS disk although it's hidden from the DIR command. If you do LIB, you will get a list of available commands, and HELP gives you basic help on any command, so HELP DIR will give you the various options with that command, and so on.

@nneeerrrd Год назад

Have you tried to just press enter on the time prompt in ldos?

@8BitRetroJournal Год назад

I don't remember...I'll have to try that.

@shelby50411 3 месяца назад

i found one of these in trash....with no floppy disk in the drive will anything show up on screen when powered on?

@8BitRetroJournal 3 месяца назад

After powering up you really see nothing, but if you hit the break key, it'll take you into BASIC. Check out my 2022 SepTandy videos where I load stuff from cassette using that technique.

@reddeder-xr7eu 3 месяца назад

no beep sounds?

@8BitRetroJournal 3 месяца назад

@@reddeder-xr7eu Did you watch my Sep 24, 2022 video? At the 6:20 mark I show how to put it in cassette load mode. Does yours do that?

@LanceMcGrew Год назад

it's pronounced "tris-dos" not TRS DOS :)

@8BitRetroJournal Год назад

I have never heard TRS pronounced TRIS before, so that's news to me. I've heard of the unfortunate Trash-80 nickname that some had given it, though to me, I really liked those early TRS-80 computers.

@stargazer7644 Год назад

@@8BitRetroJournalBack in the late 80s it was always tris-dos at my school. We also always called the computers trash-80s.

@8BitRetroJournal Год назад

@@stargazer7644 Interesting...I have never heard of TRS being called tris. Was it only for the DOS or the whole machine. I'll have to see who else I know in the TRS community. Not as embedded as I am in QL/Amiga.