Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!penndrls.upenn.edu!GTHEALL From: GTHEALL@penndrls.upenn.edu (George A. Theall) Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec.micro Subject: RE: BIOS calls for Rainbow, for DS floppy driver. Message-ID: <8912192036.AA14548@remote.dccs.upenn.edu> Date: 19 Dec 89 20:02:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 68 >I'm wondering if anyone has a list of BIOS calls for the Rainbow under >MS-DOS. I am going to try to write a device driver to handle TEAC >FD-55F floppy drives (double-sided, 96-TPI -- replacements for an RX50). An interesting project, Ray. I'd recommend you retrieve the file RBIODIF.ZIP from the INFO-DEC-MICRO files archives; look for it in the [.prog] directory. This ZIP contains difs and a discussion on changing the Rainbow's BIOS so that a pair of TEAC 96TPI drives can be used in place of the RX50's. It's the work of Richard Thomsen back in 1987 and by all accounts it works. Here's a few tidbits from the file READ.ME included in RBIODIF.ZIP: ----- snip, snip, snip ----- Modified Rainbow BIOS The files in this archive are files containing the differences between the original Digital Equipment Corporation files for the Rainbow BIOS and the new ones that I wrote to allow the Rainbow to support double-sided disks. This archive and all differences are Copyright 1987 by Richard Thomsen, but are released for public use for anyone, as long as it is not sold for profit. Contributions are welcome (of course), and may help pay for a new monitor to replace the one currently on my Rainbow. The files are the differences between the original version as supplied by DEC, and my version to use double-sided disks. Since the DEC version is copyright by DEC, I am not allowed to release it, so I can release only the changes. If DEC decides to release the source files, and gives me written permission to distribute my changes, then I will be willing to release the entire changed code for public use. Other changes made were for the console. I first pulled out the console routines into their own file, then modified the console driver to extend the type-ahead buffer and to allow keys to clear the type-ahead buffer and to terminate a running process. I added IOCTL routines to allow the user to specify which keys activated these functions, or to turn them off. Since I got the basic idea from someone else, I have not included these files either. Given written permission from the original author, I will give out these files as well. The FORMAT, MSBOOT, MS-DOS Floppy Boot, and some other files were not provided to me with sources, so I had to disassemble them and then make the changes. The Z-80 programs had to be changed to work with the public domain Z-80 assemblers that I have. The 8088 programs all use MASM. [ description of each file deleted, GAT, 19.12.89 ] Richard Thomsen Mountain Route 234 Jemez Springs, NM 87025 ----- snip, snip, snip ----- I don't have Richard's email address handy, but you might grab some of the archived messages from INFO-DEC-MICRO and grep that. Look first at the stuff from 1987Q4 as I'm pretty sure that's when he was posting to IDM/csdm about it. Lastly, scan back issues of _Rainbow News_ for 1988 as Richard wrote an article for RN describing the project. George --- BITNET: GTHEALL@PennDRLS Dept. of Economics Internet: GTHEALL@PennDRLS.UPenn.Edu University of Pennsylvania AT+TNet: 215-898-3419 Philadelphia, PA 19104-3987