The Newbrain Forum

Hi folks,

I'm pretty sure I've been the only person in the world actively working with the Newbrain server (nbserv_3) found here in the last couple of weeks. After getting a pair of floppy drives running and CP/M booting happily I found the server and details on how to make a serial cable so why not utilise my 5.25" floppy imaging PC to squirt programs directly into a 'brain?

I need to write this down before I forget it

Server: ooooold PC running win98 with 2 serial ports. Same machine I'd been using with TELEDISK to make CP/M floppies.
Cable: CAT5 network cable with RJ45-DB9 adapter wired as a modem*. Snip broken end off and fit Newbrain 2x3 end.

'Proper' DOS mode was necessary on the PC end so F8 at boot and select 'Command Prompt' followed by MODE COM1:9600,8,n,2. I'd used google translate to UK-ify the INI file but left it unchanged. With the server running I could start the 'brain and get to a BASIC prompt while the server noticed things happening on the serial bus. Trouble is I didn't know what to do to kick things off and the docs here don't say so I searched for 'newbrain nbserv' and found http://mything.nl/NB_Software/NBserver_UK.htm (the only hit) which told me to OPEN #0,9 - and a menu downloaded!

Happy days. I translated the menu program (MENU.BAS) too whilst working out what it did, essentially it gives you a list of programs and lets you select one, then prints the load instruction and NEWs itself. There followed a lot of downloading and gaming

This is a very condensed version of the last few days and misses out the misconfigured serial cable, trying to run the server in a command window and quite a bit of swearing at win98. At one point I considered building a pure DOS 6.22 machine...

Pictures as always on facebook.com/binarydinosaurs or I can upload them here.

*RJ45 adapter specs:

DB RJ Desc    Colour
1  7  DCD+DSR
2  6  RX      GR/WH
3  3  TX      WH/GR
4  4  DTR
5  5  GND     WH/BL
6  7  DCD+DSR
7  8  RTS     BR/WH
8  2  CTS     OR/WH

Cheers!