PUTUSR is a utility for North Star CP/M. A similar utility is distributed
with Lifeboat's implementation of CP/M on the HORIZON, but not with North
Star's version of CP/M. The idea of writing this routine was inspired by
a book on CP/M and was realized in 3 hours, including debugging time.
The purpose of PUTUSR is to assist the North Star CP/M user in placing a
modified "user area" onto the system tracks without having to aginize
through SYSGEN, DDT and calculating load offsets.
2. REQUIREMENTS
PUTUSR will only run on North Star CP/M 1.1.0 or 1.2.0 and will report an
error message if it runs on a different implementation of CP/M or if the
BDOS serial number is corrupt.
For correct operation, the file USER.HEX must be present. The user is
fully responsible for ensuring that USER.HEX contains the correctly
ORGed code for a new user area (I/O patch area).
3. USE
NOTE: A response of CONTROL-C at any prompt will execute a warmboot.
PUTUSR is started without arguments. Any command line arguments are
ignored. The program will identify itself and then ask for the source
drive letter to be typed. Drive letters are entered in accordance with
CP/M's drive convention, rather than North Star's. PUTUSR will then
prompt for a carriage return, allowing a disk change. After pressing RETURN,
PUTUSR will read the file USER.HEX and translate it to binary code. Error
messages reporting file not found, read error or checksum error will
abort execution. When the file is translated, you are prompted for the
destination drive letter, using same conventions as above. Be sure to
specify a valid North Star CP/M drive. Again, the program now waits for
a RETURN to be typed, allowing disk change. NOTE: the destination disk
must be double density and it must contain a system track!
The user area is now written into it's appropriate spot on the system
track, at North Star sector 8, or CP/M sector 29. Next, you are asked
for more copies, allowing to quickly change I/O blocks on all your disks.
Note that the disk system need not be reset, since the I/O mode is similar
to North Star DOS.
4. BRIEF PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
The DCOM routine entry parameters (the BIOS low level disk driver) is
explained in great detail in the file DIRDUMP.ASM which is supplied with
all copies of North Star CP/M.
PUTUSR.ASM is not memory efficient. I have deviated from straightforward
coding to a somewhat modular approach, with a number of CALL instructions
at the beginning and all major functions coded as subroutines (which in
turn may call subroutines). Also, text display is achieved via normal
BDOS call #9, rather than using the infamous and untraceable ILPRT. No
range checking is done comparing the ORG of USER.HEX with the user area
in the running system, as it may be desired to integrate USER.HEX into
a system of different size from the running system.
The program uses two buffers, a 512 byte buffer which is sufficient to
hold the binary code, and a second buffer immediately thereafter, holding
the HEX file. The hex file is translated to binary without regard for
running location and errors will be reported if the checksum does not
match or if the code size exceeds 512 bytes. All errors reported in
PUTUSR are fatal.
In contrast to the memory-wasting structure of PUTUSR I have saved two
bytes on each warm boot jump by using RST 0 instead of JMP 0.
For any further questions feel free to ask me by leaving your message
on SENECA (the El Paso RCPM) any time at 1200 baud only. Also, please
feel free to modify the program to your liking, but please give me
credit for the original. And finally, I have tested the program on
North Star CP/M 1.1.0 and it works. However, don't blame me if for
whatever reason it doesn't in your system, especially don't ask me to
replace any disks you might wipe out...
PUTUSR.ASM should assemble under ASM, MAC, RMAC, M80, PDS and probably
a few other assemblers with no or minor changes and therefore I feel
it is unnecessary to distribute a COM file.
