I've installed an A2Pico board in a newly restored Apple IIe, and would be interested in any advice on a couple of issues I've run into using it for Z80-based CP/M.
First, after flashing the A2Pico with firmware to emulate an Appli-Card (Z80 CP/M), I've been trying to figure out the best way to boot into that mode. I have a Yellowstone disk controller in slot 6 with a wDrive as drive 1, and Floppy Emu as drive 2. Right now I'm booting a ProDOS .dsk from the wDrive, then selecting pcpiboot.do on the wDrive and executing "IN#6" to start it. Sometimes it starts cleanly, sometimes not, and I think there might be an issue with the Yellowstone's config and presence of the Floppy Emu (which is in single 5.25" mode).
The other issue I'm having is trying to put together one or more .dsk of CP/M files in order to run a Z80 assembler. I have the ZASM files but have been running into problems getting them into .dsk files. I've tried CiderPress, Virtual ][, and cpmtools but have run into various obstacles. Any suggestions on an easy way to work this would be great.
I don't think I have ever tried it from my wDrive, but I have had no trouble at all running the PCPI disk from a Floppy Emu connected to a regular old Disk ][ Controller Card hooked up as drive 1. Curious as to why you don't put the PCPI image on your wDrive and boot directly from it? I don't see any reason why that shouldn't work? I guess I could try it, I've got a wDrive and an A2VGA card with the AppliCard firmware on it here. Maybe I will give that a try tomorrow.
pcpiboot.do is on the SD card in wDrive. If I select it and power-cycle the computer, I see the following:
-- "LOAD DRIVERS" appears for a couple of seconds, then screen blanks
-- The following appears:
83.5K Printer Buffer in use.
CP/M Ver 2.2
[Text block with DRI and PCPI info]
Rd Bios Err=FF D=A: T=0003 S=00
R(etry E(xit A(bort
Whereas if I load a ProDOS .dsk first, then select pcpiboot.do on the wDrive and execute "IN#6", it will briefly say "YELLOWSTONE DISK II MODE", then "LOAD DRIVERS", then the same as above ("83.5K Printer Buffer in use", etc) but instead of the error will end up on the "A>" prompt, from which I can execute CP/M commands successfully.
That's if everything goes well. Yesterday, however, I tried this approach, and after selecting pcpiboot.do on the wDrive and executing "IN#6", the screen refreshes and then "Apple //e" appears and slowly flashes on and off continuously.
It looks like I have the boot issue solved. Apparently the Yellowstone needs to be in Disk II mode to prevent the error I was seeing on booting. The easiest way I've found to do this is to put pcpiboot.do on drive 1 (a wDrive in my case), select it in the wDrive controller, then power-cycle and hold down Control+D while powering up. This is consistently getting me to the A> prompt without dealing with loading DOS/ProDOS.
I'm still looking for an easy way to copy CP/M files into a .dsk file. For some reason, CiderPress classic seems to treat CP/M disk images as read-only, even if the .dsk file is clearly read-writable. I have a couple of leads to try out.