Noob help please!

Everything about Andy Key's REMEMOrizer
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Lardo Boffin
Posts: 32
Joined: 04 Apr 2021 19:54

Noob help please!

Post by Lardo Boffin »

Hello all

I am new to the REMEMOrizer and the MTX world in general (got both of these in the last couple of weeks) and am struggling with what are doubtless and obvious concepts to experienced users.

I have an SD card with my REMEMOrizer that has a few disc images on it. I would like to:

1) Format / use a second SD card (once I find one) and put several images on it
2) Create a blank image / drive on my existing card and copy a C compiler to it

So my questions are:

1) How do I initialise a new SD card?
2) How do I create a new blank image on the existing drive and copy files to it from my Windows 7 PC?

I have installed cpmcbfs on my PC and I can map a drive to one of the images on my existing card OK and have tested copying files to and from it OK.
Using cpmcbfs how do I select a different image from the SD card when mapping it to a drive? Or can it only ever map image 0?

Many thanks!!!
MTX512 and REMEMOrizer (and a bunch of ZX81 add ons).
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Dave
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Re: Noob help please!

Post by Dave »

REMEMORizer (and CFX) use the SD (or CF) card as a raw device, the card is just treated as chunk of memory. Simplistically, the card consists of 8 x 8MB “disks”, laid out one after the other. Using CPMCBFS, a Type 18 disk is the first area of the card, Type 19 is the next etc. ( Up to type 1F). Any space after the first 8 x 8MB blocks is not used.

RECONFIG is used to tell CP/M which “disk” to load to each logical drive, e.g., RECONFIG B:18 uses the first card “partition” as disk “B”.

To use a “new” card, you need to delete any Windows or DOS partitions etc. and use the REFORMAT tool under CP/M to format the area that you want to create.

The easiest way to clone your current SD card is to use something like HDDRAWCOPY https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/
Lardo Boffin
Posts: 32
Joined: 04 Apr 2021 19:54

Re: Noob help please!

Post by Lardo Boffin »

Thanks Dave, that makes sense!

I don’t think I have ever deleted a partition from an SD card or similar before. Would I do the following in Windows do you know?

Open an elevated command prompt.
Run diskpart
list disk
Note the disk number that corresponds to your USB drive (it should be obvious going by size)
select disk X where X is the number from step 4
list partition
select partition 0
delete partition


While I am demonstrating my lack of knowledge...

DF8BF8B2-21E9-4DC6-B870-806D772E2DDE.jpeg
DF8BF8B2-21E9-4DC6-B870-806D772E2DDE.jpeg (3.21 MiB) Viewed 6805 times
Thats what I see when I boot (its how it arrived with me). It says drive A is mapped to B. Does this mean that both A and B are logically mapped to the same of the 8 discs?
MTX512 and REMEMOrizer (and a bunch of ZX81 add ons).
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Dave
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Re: Noob help please!

Post by Dave »

What you propose would likely work, but I don’t like using diskpart - just in case I screw up :-)

I use the free Minitool Partition Wizard to delete any partitions on the card.

On a MTX, under CP/M, Drive A is always the boot drive and mapped to it, so booting from B as Type 18, Drive A is the same as B

There is probably more data on your SD card.

Try entering Startup RECONFIG b:18,c:19,d:1a,e:1b then reboot
Lardo Boffin
Posts: 32
Joined: 04 Apr 2021 19:54

Re: Noob help please!

Post by Lardo Boffin »

Thanks. There is at least one more image. I thought there were three but if A and B are the same there may only be two.

Will hopefully give all that a go tonight.
MTX512 and REMEMOrizer (and a bunch of ZX81 add ons).
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Dave
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Joined: 11 Aug 2012 18:16
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Re: Noob help please!

Post by Dave »

When Andy shipped it, there was probably data on 19/“D”, the other partitions may be blank, but they will show up after using RECONFIG. You can then format them and use them to add extra stuff using CPMCBFS.

Similarly, you can swap in the higher number partitions as required. So you will have 8 useable “disks” on that card.

By the way, if you do try another card, it should be no bigger than 1GB.
Lardo Boffin
Posts: 32
Joined: 04 Apr 2021 19:54

Re: Noob help please!

Post by Lardo Boffin »

I’m up and running thanks!

Small C:

6471ABFC-0FEA-4952-B7EA-8A026AC25E17.jpeg
6471ABFC-0FEA-4952-B7EA-8A026AC25E17.jpeg (3.62 MiB) Viewed 6782 times

Some notes below (mostly as I will doubtless forget stuff if I don’t do it for a while!)
Last edited by Lardo Boffin on 25 Apr 2021 14:38, edited 1 time in total.
MTX512 and REMEMOrizer (and a bunch of ZX81 add ons).
Lardo Boffin
Posts: 32
Joined: 04 Apr 2021 19:54

Re: Noob help please!

Post by Lardo Boffin »

Formatting a disc image:

@ Select the image using RECONFIG, e.g. to format 1B (image / slot 3) use RECONFIG D:1B
@ Format the disc using REFORMAT D: (this will format whatever is mounted as D)
Last edited by Lardo Boffin on 25 Apr 2021 14:56, edited 2 times in total.
MTX512 and REMEMOrizer (and a bunch of ZX81 add ons).
Lardo Boffin
Posts: 32
Joined: 04 Apr 2021 19:54

Re: Noob help please!

Post by Lardo Boffin »

Copying to and from a disc (using Windows 7):

@ Install CPMCBFS (download and unzip to a folder)
@ Open Command (as admin), change the current dir to the extracted CPMCBFS and run CPMCBFS —install (this is a double dash)
@ Run CPMCBFS —status to make sure the service is running
@ Run CPMCBFS -i ? to get a list of drives and select your SD card - note the name e.g. \\.\PhysicalDrive1
@ Select the slot you wish to mount and amend using -f followed by:

memotech-type18 (slot 0)
memotech-type19 (slot 1)
memotech-type1A (slot 2)
Etc.

@ Type the full command to mount slot 2 for PhysicalDrive1:

CPMCBFS -f memotech-type1A -i \\.\PhysicalDrive1 -v

You should see “ Drive Z: should exist until you press Enter”
Drive Z is the default drive unless you specify one.

The drive is visible in Windows Explorer and can have files dragged and dropped to and from it.

CPMCBFS notes: http://www.nyangau.org/cpmcbfs/cpmcbfs.htm
MTX512 and REMEMOrizer (and a bunch of ZX81 add ons).
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