Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!oberon!eve.usc.edu!mlinar
From: mlinar@eve.usc.edu (Mitch Mlinar)
Newsgroups: comp.os.cpm
Subject: Re: adding a hard disk to your floppy-only system
Keywords: help, add hard disk
Message-ID: <16407@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 8 Apr 89 21:17:33 GMT
References: <7316@cadnetix.COM>
Sender: news@oberon.USC.EDU
Reply-To: mlinar@eve.usc.edu (Mitch Mlinar)
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 23

In article <7316@cadnetix.COM> rusty@cadnetix.COM (Rusty) writes:
>
>Well, I just bought myself a nice hard disk controller for my S100 system.
>Having looked over the CPM manual for a bit, it seems to me that I *should*
>be able to accomplish the task of adding the controller and hard disk to
>my system.
>
>Has anyone else added a hard disk to a CP/M system which was not originally
>configured for a hard disk?  Can I do the trick that Kaypro did and boot
>from either flops or hard?  Any words of wisdom? (Other than "Don't do it!" :-)

Quite a few of us have added bootable hard drives to our non-hard drive
systems.  There is only one way to do it: replace the ROM inside your machine
so that it uses the hard disk controller for boot.  Even better, is to have
it look for a hard drive and, failing that, to look for a floppy.

This is what the Kaypro 10 did and essentially all after-market upgrade ROMs
for the Z80 machines (Xerox, Kaypro, Morrow, Osborne) do for you.  Since your
machine is an S100, you will probably have to "roll you own".  Given that you
have the source for the current boot ROM, enough room for the code, and an
EPROM burner, you are most of the way there.

-Mitch