CP/M Cartridge

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Milli
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CP/M Cartridge

Post by Milli » Fri Aug 28, 2020 10:40 am

Anyone ever have or make a CP/M Cartridge? If you haven't heard of this CP/M has the ability of loading a 32k RAM disk from cartridge to external RAM when you boot it. According to the meager docs I found http://adamarchive.org/archive/Adam/Tec ... 20Adam.pdf (Page 6) A CP/M cartridge is a directory and up to 30k of code and that the cartridge starts with a header of CA 53 (Normal ROMs with CV title are 55 AA, no title is AA 55). I created a simple cartridge image but unfortunately AdamEM will not load anything but standard cartridges (55AA or AA55). Here is the relevant text in the boot disassembly and I am attaching the sample ROM I made. I don't have a RAM expansion right now so I cant test this on real hardware.

Capture.PNG
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160ROM.zip
Sample CP/M cartridge ROM
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Wmaalouli
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Re: CP/M Cartridge

Post by Wmaalouli » Sat Aug 29, 2020 9:25 am

It's not possible to load from cart straight into main memory without the need for expansion RAM?
That's what we do on the TI 99/4A...

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Milli
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Re: CP/M Cartridge

Post by Milli » Sat Aug 29, 2020 8:11 pm

Sure you can but the way CPM cartridges worked is that they are a simple 32k Copy of a RAM disk. You could have Microsoft Basic on the cartridge, boot cpm and then run MBASIC with M:mbasic at the A> prompt since it was copied to the ramdisk at boot up.
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