***THROW AWAY PREVIOUS VERSIONS OF ALTFORM***
***AND THE FORMAT & COPY PROGRAMS BELOW. ***
***ALWAYS USE THE NEW FORMAT & COPY PROGRAMS*
***AND RETIRE THE ORIGINALS TO THE ARCHIVES**
See next to last paragraph regarding NEWFORM which adds the two new
formats to your distribution version of North Star CP/M.
VERSION 1.1 OF NEWFORM IS FIXED SO THAT WHEN ACCESSING FILES ON
A QUAD FORMATTED DISKETTE WITH THE ALTERNATE 80 TRACK FORMAT BUT
WITH THE DISKETTE MOUNTED IN AN OCTAL DRIVE, CORRECT READING IS
DONE FOR ALL 80 TRACKS. FIX IS MADE IN GENUSR45 ALSO. 11/3/82
RLP
GENUSR45 is new version as of 11/3/82. If anyone picked up a copy
of this program prior to this date, it is strongly recommended that
you start over with this new version. GENSYS41 has been changed,
and must be used instead of previous versions.
GENUSR45 supports an alternate format for 96 tpi drives when using
North Star CP/M version 1.1.0. The format byte is now D2H and gives
a block size of 2kb instead of the 4kb in the North Star release.
Both 96 tpi formats are supported. So your system can read and write
disks with either format. (As well as other defined formats in the
N* release) The block shift factor in the additional format is 4
instead of the 5 skew factor in the N* format (F2H).
GENUSR45 also now supports an additional format for Quad drives that
permits using 40 tracks per side. This has been done in such a way
as to retain the 35 track per side format and to provide complete
compatibility between the two formats. You do not have to make all
of your Quad disks either 35 or 40 track/side but can freely intermix
them. The format byte is D0H.
You will need a formatter that will generate the necessary formatting.
See NEWFRMAT.COM for a formatter that will do this. Also get a copy
of NEWCOPY.COM from my system for a copy program that will tolerate
the D0/D2H format bytes. You can also put these additional formats into
the distribution version of your CP/M system with NEWFORM.ASM without
all of the other features of GENUSR. It's a good idea to do this
because your distribution version will not be able to read disks
that you have written with these alternate formats otherwise.
For general information on GENUSR, see GENDOC30.DOC that accompanies
GENUSR37 which is for the Lifeboat bios version of CP/M.
