INSTALLATION OF CBM4WIN

WARNING! If you have already installed a previous version of CBM4WIN on your
machine, you have to uninstall it before installing a new version. For this, go
to the directory where the old version is located, and enter instcbm --remove. 


Note: If I tell you that you should enter a command "ABC", it means you should
enter ABC without the surrounding quotation marks!):



First of all, Windows must know about the driver. For this, we must install it.
Do the following:


- Make sure you have a supported operating system up and running.

- You need administrator privileges on the Windows machine to perform the
  following actions.

- At first, you have to make sure you have the needed hardware ready. Do the
  following:

  - Get your VIC 15xx drive (out of the basement, or wherever it is!

  - Moving cables with turned on equipment can damage either your PC, and/or
    the drive, so, be carefull!

  - Thus, switch off your PC and your VIC 15xx drive!

  - Connect your XA1541 or XM1541 cable to your PC. If you have a parallel port
    cable (XP1541), connect that one, too.

  - Connect your VIC 15xx floppy drive to the cable

  - Switch the PC on.

- Just download the binary package, and unpack it into an arbitrary directory.

- Get a command-line, and change into the directory you unpackaged the drivers
  into.

- Type "cd exe"

- Type "instcbm" and check the outputs. Its last line should look like No
  problems found in current configuration. The program might suggest a reboot,
  which you should follow. If it does not, don't worry, instcbm tries to avoid
  that if possible.

- You might want to have a look at the possible options for instcbm. They are
  available by typing "instcbm --help"

- If we had to reboot in the previous step, do the following:

  - Go to a command-line, and change into the directory you unpackaged the
    drivers into again.

  - Type "cd exe"

  - Type "instcbm --check". There should not be any further suggestion for a
    reboot. If there is, do not proceed, but contact me instead.

- If you want to use another port than LPT1, you must tell this to the driver.
  I assume you want to use LPTX, with X being the correct value, then type:
  "instcbm --lpt=X --update"



Here, the installation is complete. Anyway, it is wise to check if the
installation works as expected. For this, do the following:

- Now, it is time to switch on the floppy drive. Depending on the type of cable
  you are using (XA1541 or XM1541) and the parallel port of your PC, this drive
  might keep spinning endless now, because it is continuously resetted.

- Now, type "cbmctrl reset" and press enter. If it does not already, the red
  floppy drive LED should light up, and the drive should start spinning. After
  approximately one second, the red LED should switch off again, and the drive
  stops spinning.

- Now, type "cbmctrl status 8" to get the status (error) code from the attached
  floppy drive. If everythings works fine, your drive should answer which its
  identification string. For a 1541, this is something like 73,cbm dos v2.6
  1541,00,00, while for a 1571, this line looks like 73,cbm dos v3.0
  1571,00,00. There might also be some variant of this line, depending on the
  firmware version of your drive.

- Type "cbmctrl status 8" to get the status (error) code from the floppy drive.
  As the power on message has been read, your drive should answer with a 00,
  ok,00,00 string.

- Type "cbmctrl detect". This command tries to detect the types of drive which
  are connected on the cable. You should see the drive which you posess.

- Now, we want to check if we can send anything to the floppy drive. Remove any
  diskette from the drive and press "cbmctrl open 8 15 I0". (Make sure the "I"
  is an upper-case "I". A lower-case "I" will not work!)
  This command tries to initialize the disk. Anyway, since we don't have a disk
  in the drive, an error occurs. You should hear the floppy spinning, and in
  case of a 1541, the R/W-head should start bumping. After some seconds, the
  red LED starts starts flashing, indicating that an error occurred.

- Now, press again "cbmctrl status 8" to get the status (error) code from the
  floppy drive. As an error occurred before, an error string should be
  displayed. For my setup, it is the "21,read error,18,00" string. Furthermore,
  the red LED should stop flashing.


If you have come so far, you are sure that you send commands to the floppy, and
receive answers from it. This is very good so far. Furthermore, don't panic:
you do not have to enter these commands over and over again, these are only
tests to make sure that anything is correctly installed.

Now, let's proceed. If you have a D64 file or a floppy disc ready, you can try
transferring it over the cable. Do not use all of the followinng commands, but
only these one you want to perform.


- If you want to transfer an existing floppy from the drive to the PC, use the
  following command: "d64copy --transfer=serial2 --warp 8 A.D64", while
  replacing A.D64 by the name you want to give to the file. If you have a
  parallel cable up and ready, just try with that one: 
  "d64copy --transfer=parallel --warp 8 A.D64".

- WARNING THE FOLLOWING COMMAND OVERWRITES ANYTHING THAT WAS ON THE FLOPPY
  BEFORE, so make sure you do not need that floppy anymore.  If you have a D64
  or D71 on your PC, and you want to write it to a new, already formatted disc,
  enter "d64copy --transfer=serial2 --warp A.D64 8" if the file is called
  A.D64. Again, if you have a parallel cable, you might want to replace
  "--transfer=parallel".

- WARNING THE FOLLOWING COMMAND OVERWRITES ANYTHING THAT WAS ON THE FLOPPY
  BEFORE, so make sure you do not need that floppy anymore.  If you have a disc
  you want to format, you have two options: Either use the command "cbmctrl
  command 8 N0:NAME,ID", or use the cbmformat program.


If you want to completely remove the cbm4win driver from your machine, you can
do so by issuing a "instcbm --remove" command.

You can have a look at the available cbmctrl commands by issuing cbmctrl on
your command line. For the other programs, you get help by issuing the "--help"
option.

Currently, there is still some documentation missing. Anyway, you can find the
documentation in the cbm4linux docs. This is not true for the instcbm tool,
which is for Windows only.




The following options are available for the "instcbm" tool:

   instcbm
      Installs the DLL and the driver on the machine. The driver and the DLL are
      copied into the Windows system directory.

   instcbm --nocopy
      Installs the DLL and the driver on the machine. Unlike above, both files
      are not copied, but they are used just "where they are".
      If you use this option, the directory where your files reside must be
      accessible for the system while booting. For example, network drives,
      USB drives or FireWire drives are not allowed.

   instcbm --remove
      Uninstall the driver from the machine. The DLL and the driver file itself
      are removed if --nocopy was *not* given at installation time.

   instcbm --check
      Check if the installation was set up successfully.

   instcbm --lpt=X --update
      (With X a value from 1 to ...) Choose LptX is default port.

   instcbm --help
      Print out a short help describing the possible options.

Have fun!

Spiro Trikaliotis.
