Hello. I left something unfinished in the previous forum, so here’s some context: I have a CPC464 with X-MEM, X-MASS, and (among other things) a NOVA card. I can read the date and time from the Nova using BASIC, but not in CP/M Plus.
I didn’t download the latest version of HDCPM.ROM or the modified version of RTC.COM hat @d_Kef posted for this situation in time. Does anyone know where I can download them?
Thanks in advance.
Here they are mate.
Good to have the forum up and running again!!!
d_kef
Hdcpm111.dsk (190.3 KB)
RTC33–.zip (1.7 KB)
Thank you very much!
That was fast!
I’ll try it out this weekend; I won’t have access to my CPC until then.
I finally got to try it and unfortunately, it doesn’t work.
I’ve come up with a workaround, since it does read the date and time from BASIC using a “boot disk” (wink wink):
On this disk, there’s a BASIC program that reads the date and time and writes it to a sequential file in the RAM disk. It then invokes HDCPM, which, upon startup, executes the PROFILE.SUB file. This file, among other things, calls a program written in Turbo Pascal (TIM. COM) that reads this sequential file and sets the date and time on the system, though not the seconds (Mr. Gemini helped me a little).
It seems a bit complicated, but once it’s done, it boots up quickly with the updated date and time.
Thanks a lot! I’ll be able to try it out this weekend. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.
Hello. I’ve tried this latest version of RTC.COM, but it still doesn’t detect Nova. I updated the HDCPM ROM to the latest version, but the result is the same.
Would it be possible to modify the |HDCPM command so that it writes the date and time to a file on the RAM disk? That way, I could read it just as I do now and update the time without needing to insert a floppy disk. Thank you very much for your interest.
Unfortunately that would be out of scope. You see HDCPM is just a bootloader with drivers for the various interfaces.
What I can do (in fact did) Is build a RTCN.COM that works only with NOVA, skipping the interface detection code.
If that doesn’t work then I’m out of ideas.
d_kef
RTCN10.zip (870 Bytes)
Thank you very much. Again I’m far from 464 to try, but it doesn’t sound like the file I took will weigh only 1kb.
I’ll try that NRTC.COM next weekend.
Nice!!!
Just keep in mind that it is not detecting the NOVA RTC. It will read whatever is in memory, if the RTC is missing.
Also, if you set the date and time in NOVA the values will be also written in the CPC464 memory as you can see here:
I’ll try to see if I can implement a permanent fix… sometime.
d_kef
