Frank Barberis

TIP: To quickly see what version of the Altair Peripheral Emulator you are using click on the “ape” logo in the upper right corner of the APE Screen.

 

 

“Serial Bus” communications are controlled from the APE Control panel located at the top of the APE Screen. Here dropdowns provide selection of COM Port, Baud rate, Parity, Number of data bits, Number of stop bits, and Handshaking. COM Port and Baud rate need to be selected to match those used by the Altair to be connected to the other end of the “Serial Bus.” Since APE is sending and receiving binary (8-bit) data the Parity, and Number of data bits should not be changed. Number of stop bits should be set to 1.5 for 300 baud and 2 for 110 baud. All other baud rates should use 1 stop bit.

 

 

The four APE Floppy Disk panels are used to connect a CP/M disk letter (“A:” to “P:”) to an “.ape” file stored on the PC. The file is made available to CP/M running on the Altair just as an actual Single Sided, Single Density, 8 inch floppy disk would be. This includes all read/write operations as well as boot operations for the Altair. The last completed operation of each APE Floppy Disk is displayed in the Track, Sector, Read, and Write indicators.

 

The dropdown at the left offers a list of the available CP/M disk letters (those already used in other APE Floppy Disk panels are not in the list) and a “blank” entry to indicate “not in use.” After selecting a CP/M disk letter, typically “A,” to allow Boot operations, either the “Open…” or “New…” buttons should be selected.

 

 

Allows selection of an existing “.ape” file through the “Open Altair Disk File” dialog. Often this will be a CP/M “system disk” to allow Boot operations. Once an “.ape” file has been selected its name will be displayed in the APE Floppy Disk panel and the sector size of the disk will be displayed next to “Size.” Floppy Disks with a sector size of 512 bytes provide an additional 48K of storage per disk as well as additional room for the CP/M BIOS stored in the boot region or first two tracks of the disk. While floppy disks created with this sector size are usually readable by most “soft sectored” floppy disk controllers the CP/M (and IBM) standard format uses 128 bytes per sector. APE supports both of these.

 

Allows the creation of a new “.ape” file which represents a floppy disk formatted for use with CP/M. The “New Altair Disk File” dialog is used to enter the new file name. If the file already exists a warning is displayed which will allow the file to be replaced (losing any data already there!) or cancelation of the operation. Once a file name has been selected the “Select Sector Size” dialog is displayed. Select “128 byte” for standard CP/M (IBM) format and “512 byte” for extended storage format. After the sector size is selected the new “.ape” file is created and “formatted.” Its name will be displayed in the APE Floppy Disk panel and the sector size of the disk will be displayed next to “Size.”