IDE interface for Altair 8800c

[mr_metra_nilak]

Hello Wayne,

My mistake, I was copying IDEUTIL to RAM (using AMON) and then trying to run it like that. When I run it from CP/M directly it works fine and I'm able to read data from the disk. I'm wondering how I can copy the data on the disk to RAM and run it from RAM. I don't see an option like that in the IDEUTIL menu. I would like to burn a simple program like that into ROM so that, when the computer is powered on, it executes the ROM program and loads CP/M from disk. I was getting close to having it do that but ran into issues where bytes were being skipped when it was being copied to RAM.

[Wayne Parham]

That's excellent! So you can read, write and initialize an IDE disk, right?

Have you made a CP/M 3.0hd boot diskette? You can find it in the "Disk Images" directory of the distribution archive. Use PC2FLOP to transfer the image to a 330Kb diskette.

Beyond that, I think you're also suggesting to make a bootloader ROM that will boot directly from the IDE drives. That would be an excellent contribution!

[mr_metra_nilak]

I have not made such a diskette because I did not want to boot it from a diskette (I'm assuming you meant floppies). I'm more interested in booting CP/M directly from an IDE disk. Based on what you said, that hasn't been done yet, right?

[Wayne Parham]

That's right. There's no boot ROM for the Altair that loads from the IDE device. One would need that to initiate the IPL, which could then transfer control to a bootloader track on the IDE media.

[mr_metra_nilak]

That makes sense. Maybe it's something that I will attempt.