SpecOS Wiki

A multi-threaded-style OS for the Spectrum +3

Brought to you by: u6c87

Installation

Installation of the source code

The source itself can be installed anywhere. The only thing which needs adjusting is the path to the tools (which are all assumed to be placed in the same directory tree) in the Makefile.rules file:

TOOLS = /speccy/tools

Installation onto an emulated Spectrum

Since changeset 380:959e898b213a, the workspace build process spits out a disk image (in CPCEMU .dsk format). This can be loaded directly into an emulator such as fuse and booted immediately.

Installation onto an emulated Spectrum - manual method

There are many ways to install the files onto an emulated Spectrum. Using fuse, it's possible to load each output file (kernel/os/kernel.bin, cmd/.comr, cmd/.comf) directly into RAM at an arbitrary address (e.g. 32768), then save out the file using +3 BASIC (obviously substitute the correct file length):

SAVE "KERNEL.EXE" CODE 32768, 15769

Do watch out for crossing the 0xc000/49152 boundary, unless you are certain that RAM page 0 is in place during the load. Otherwise, part of the file winds up in RAM page 7 (which is paged in as scratch space for the +3BASIC editor), and the SAVE command from BASIC will switch out this in favour of RAM page 0, corrupting the binary written to disk.

The boot loader (bootstrap/bootloader.bin) is slightly different, in that it must be loaded to 28672 and run from there:

CLEAR 28671
PRINT USR 28672

This will write the boot sector to disk and boot it immediately. The disk can now be booted, either by resetting and selecting "Loader" from the main menu, or by manually typing:

LOAD "*"

A small boot loader BASIC program is included which automates this process. It can be saved as "DISK" to allow autobooting, which writes the boot sector. Subsequent boots will now use the boot sector instead of the BASIC program.

Installation onto a real Spectrum +3

There are three broad methods for transferring to a real spectrum:

Via DivIDE/DivIDE+:
1. Copy specos.tap on to a CF card
2. Insert it into a DivIDE or DivIDE+ interface with FATware
3. Insert a blank formatted disk into the drive
4. Use the NMI interface to select SPECOS.TAP
5. LOAD "" and wait for the "0 OK 30:1" message :-)
  This method has been sucessfully used to create a SpecOS disk.
Via disk: Transfer the disk image to the Spectrum, for example using a program such as libdsk+auxd (by John Elliot) to write out the disk image directly to the floppy disk.
Via tape: use the .TAP file to generate a tape signal which can be played to the spectrum via the EAR socket. This is more fiddly, as it will require manual stop/start of the tape, and there is no clue from the program for when to start or stop the tape.