Fairlight-CMI

Hi Steve,

> did you work on the Series IIL?
> 
> Did you mean the Series IIIL - (3L) - I can't recall a Series 2 with
the "L"
> modifier.

Ah, maybe that's it.  This is the machine I have in mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOP1IKdc4UI


> Specifically, could the CMI boot QDOS and the CMI software from the
HD, and
> what happened to the notion of the "LEFT" and "RIGHT" drives in that
case?
> 
> As far as I remember,  with only one floppy in the system and a hard
disk
> controller, the operating system (QDOS or CMI DOS) would boot from the
> floppy first, if a hard disk controller was present half way thru
the boot
> up it would swap over to the hard drive and boot the remainder of the OS
> from the hard disk. There was not a way to boot directly from the
hard disk.
> Once the system had booted, the floppy drive was then assigned the
"data"
> drive or drive 1.

OK.  Do you remember which version(s) of CMI DOS could recognize and
use the HD?  Did it do so just by noticing that an HD driver ROM had
loaded?  I see in a disassembly of the boot ROM how it scans the
peripheral registers looking for valid STATUS registers, and loading
the driver ROMs into RAM when it finds one.  So, I guess it could just
decide to always use the HD as the data drive if it sees an HD driver
was loaded.
 
Was that IIIL configuration based on the Q077, or did it also use the
Q777?  I see in that video that the machine (which looks like a
II-class machine) has a streamer tape as well as the HD.

When CMI DOS used the HD for the data drive, was it just like 1 big
floppy?  (No directories, etc.)

> Then came along OS9, this was a totally different beast and new Q077 and
> Q777 ROMS could boot to the hard disk directly.

In the video, it looks like he booted from a floppy.

Thanks!
Joe