-read.me 8/18/86 TurboROM Version 3.4 Notes Since the release of the TurboROM in November 1985, there have been a number of changes and additions to this product. A full description of these changes and additions, plus details of accessory software is contained in a TurboROM newsletter available from Plu*Perfect Systems. A summary of the TurboROM information is listed below. The currrent version of the TurboROM is 3.4. Prior versions distributed were 2.6, 2.9 and 3.0. New features of the current ROM: 1. Provision for integrating external device drivers -- e.g. MicroSphere and SWP ramdisks. 2. Support for more formats in MultiCopy's TURBOSET. 3. "Skipmap" patch that greatly accelerates warm boots for hard disk systems that are using Plu*Perfect's CP/M enhancements. 4. New version of MAKTURBO to automatically install the skipmap patch. 5. New version of TURBOMAP that indicates the type of floppy drive (48 or 96TPI) and has support for the new external device drivers. 6. Changes to the Advent RAM disk driver that results in more efficient file storage for RAM disks larger than 1 Mb. "Bugs" fixed by the current ROM: 1. Bug fix for '83 Kaypros with hard disk drives. This bug only appeared when using the ADVFMT hard disk formatter on unformatted hard disk drives. 2. A quirk in some of the floppy disk controller chips re- sulting in periodic floppy disk write errors. This problem is not very common; we have seen it in less than 5 Kaypros. 3. Fix to the WordStar patches supplied with the TurboROM. Early versions of the WSKEY patches tended to break WordStar 3.3's Run command ("R" at the opening menu). 4. The ZCPR1 command processor was re-assembled. Control char- acters are echoed to the screen during error messages to match the behavior of Digital Research's CCP. SPEEDING UP DISK RESETS WITH TurboROM AND P*PS ENHANCEMENTS Purpose: The CP/M operating system disk reset function causes the alloca- tion table for drive A and the currently logged in drive to be rebuilt. For a large hard disk with many blocks this can take a substantial amount of time making the system appear very sluggish during warm boots. The SKIPMAP.REL patch on this disk allows this shortcoming of CP/M to be removed for those who have both the TurboROM and Plu*Perfect Systems operating system enhancements. Installation: The MAKTURBO.COM utility included with the 3.4 (and later) versions of the TurboROM will automatically install the skipmap patch (SKIPMAP.REL) during the initial construction of the TurboROM operating (TURBOSYS.PRL) system if Plu*Perfect's CP/M Enhancements are detected. If the skipmap patch is not desired, the SKIPMAP.REL file must be modified with a text editor and all but the last line ";0000000000" of the file must be deleted before running the MAKTURBO.COM utility. How it Works: The Advent TurboROM reserves the high bit of the first byte of the extended DPH as a flag which specifies whether the allocation table of this drive requires rebuilding. The ROM initializes this so that all drives require building. Only those drives with a zero length checksum vector are assumed to have non removable media and only these are candidates for avoiding the rebuilding of the allocation table. Drive A is a special case as the must still be scanned for the occurrence of '$$$.SUB', this process is still considerably faster than actually rebuilding the vector. The skipmap patches are internal to the CP/M BDOS but require the space available as a result of the installation of the P*PS enhancements. CAVEAT: Any program which plays tricks with the allocation map should ALWAYS reset the high bit of the extended DPH so that the allocation will be forced to rebuild. Plu*Perfect Systems utilities such as PUTDS (version 1.2 and later) and PUTBG (to be released) always do this. If you are un- familiar with the extended DPH please refer to the notes available on the TurboROM developers support disk. The public domain utility, DUPEUSER, is an example of a program that can result in messing up the allocation map. DUPEUSER creates multiple directory entries for a file so that it "appears" in several user areas without actually making multiple copies of the file. If DUPEUSER is used create a set of "duplicate" files and one of the "duplicate" files is erased then the space allocated to all of the "duplicates" will be lost (as well as the data). TURBORST.COM The utility program, TURBORST.COM, is provided to force the rebuilding of the allocation maps. As an example, TURBORST can be used to prevent the loss of data that can occur when using DUPEUSER by running the TURBORST utility IMMEDIATELY after erasing any of the duplicates created by DUPEUSER. The use of TURBORST will force the re-building of the allocation map ensuring that the space (and the data) allocated to the "duplicate" files will not be lost. TurboROM Support Disks We have a several disks available to support TurboROM users. Much of the information of contained on the diskettes are avail- able from Kaypro bulletin boards and CompuServe. The disks can also be obtained from Plu*Perfect Systems or Advent Products, Inc. The following is a brief description of each diskette: 1. Developer's Diskette Software notes and tools for writing programs for the Turbo- ROM. Source code for the TurboROM BIOS, ZCPR1 source code, hard disk parking program, Warm Boot speed up patches, XON/XOFF printer driver, etc. Notes on the internal structure of the TurboROM and suggestions on how to select and install hard disk drives. 2. Applications Patch Diskette Menu-driven program to modify "U-ROM" application programs for compatibility with the TurboROM. Also, patches for AUTOMITE, MASMENU, and FASTBACK. Source code included. 3. External Driver Diskette Software notes and tools to write external drivers for 3.4 and later TurboROM. Includes drivers for SWP and Micro- Sphere RAM disks. 4. RAMDisk Utility Diskette CHGDISK utility to dynamically modify the block size, number of directory entries, and reserved tracks used by the Advent RAM Disk running with the TurboROM.