Jantar 0801 - polish clone of Osborne Executive

    Dear All,


    Dear Osborne Executive (occ2) users. In the 1980s in Poland one company produced a clone of the Osborne Executive under the name Jantar 0801. This computer is not available for the time being. I have one copy and I don't know anyone else who has one in Poland. The Bios/Rom is version 1.3, it is reprogrammed by the company, it has Polish subtitles, the keyboard matrix has been changed (because the keyboard is not original from Osborne either).


    Jantar 0801, the Polish version of the Osborne Executive, has come back to life after 40 years. The reasons for not reading floppy disks were:


    Jantar 0801 first start after 40 y


    1. Separator chip FDC9216 (about $8.45 hahahahaha)


    2. Probably the 360k floppy drive I have from the old PC is different than the floppy drive from Jantar. Files TD0, IMD images recorded on the 360k floppy drive from the PC are not read in the Jantar. IMD and TD0 images writed using the original floppy disk on 5.25 disk from Jantar work and Jantar loads CP/M


    3. Gotek works fully as a floppy disk emulator. It reads the HFE converted from the IMD image.


    However, there is a technical and system problem. Probably Jantar had its own version of CP/M (polish version) adapted to a different keyboard, by a Polish company. After loading CP/M Osborne all the keys are swapped places. Working is impossible. A is instead of D, O instead of G etc.. The question arises in my mind, how is this possible? Is it possible to change the keyboard matrix programmatically? Is it similar to the keyboard layout in e.g. WINDOWS. Because after all, a US-101 keyboard can suddenly become a French AZERTY keyboard for example. Does anyone have an idea where OSBORNE programs this?


    Keyboard remaping after CP/M loaded.


    Q is Q

    W is U

    E is G

    R is W

    T is R

    I is ,

    O is M

    A is A

    S is E

    D is F

    F is H

    G is J

    H is K

    J is S

    K is D

    L is V

    Ł - not working. This is polish diacritic sign

    Z is T

    X is I

    C is c

    V is Y

    B is X

    N is N

    M is B

    0 is -

    Y - not work

    U – not work

    P – not work



    Does anyone have electronic documentation for the keyboard for Osborne? How is the matrix arranged and were there different versions of these matrices? All attempts to fire up anything on the Jantar give poor results. The keyboard is mixed up totally. It's like the designers re-invented a standard and it's lame. The keys are interchanged so trying to write anything borders on the miraculous. I wanted to edit the Jantar ROM directly and simply swap the character banks. S instead of J, Q instead of P etc. But it fails, because the ROM has a CRC checking routine embedded in it. Change one byte and selftest pops up that there is an error. Maybe you have knowledge where the checksum is in ROM ? Maybe it can be changed and then instead of looking for a way to CPM3.sys or the keyboard matrix, I will just modify the ROM. When I loaded German CP/M I can see other characters (umlaut)



    on the screen but the keyboard layout is still messed up. Let me know what you know and maybe you have some ideas for Jantar.


    I found it in Jantar ROM. From 1308 byte starts 8x10 matrix of charset.



    My younger brother, a programmer, wrote this browser for me. It will still do editing, show the address in the file and copy/swap matrices (80 bytes per character) but it still won't do anything, because changing even one byte causes the self test to scream about a system error.


    All the best

    Arek

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

    Hi Fritz,


    Thank you for this information. I am familiar with one of these sites, and have found much of the information from the other on the internet too. However, it's nice to have everything in one place. At this stage it's unfortunately already moving like a blind man, because I have no idea what else I can check, how to use chargen.com, what exactly cpm3.sys does and how the character setting can be manipulated. :( CP/M is total uncharted territory for me and hence my request to the community for support.



    all the best

    Arek

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

    Hi Fritz,


    yes, generally the whole computer works. I got the floppy disk image from the internet (http://www.retroarchive.org/maslin/). The American version and the German version of CPM. And real 5.25 stations and a GOTEK emulator where I can use HFE images. CP/M loads without problems and in theory I can play around on this computer, but the messed up keys effectively spoil the fun :D


    I still think Jantar had its own, Polish version of CP/M with code adapted to the keyboard layout. Unfortunately, I have no idea where or how to change it. All roads lead to the cpm3.sys file but my knowledge doesn't go that far


    OSBORNE keyb matrix (left) vs JANTAR keyboard matrix (right)


    all the best

    Arek

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

    As I have no Osborne System anymore ( the one on oldcomputers was mine) I can not get a fix for you.

    There is a Wordstar with German keyboard and it may be possible to find the differences to your system.

    As I remember (or believe) there is no character rom - they a soft characters and that`s why you have such a lot of 6116 chips on the board.

    (to other readers - if I'm false please correct me - I'm a technician - not a doctor)


    https://oldcomputers-ddns.org/public/pub/rechner/osborne/executive/bootdisk/wsgerkey.zip


    We had the problem with German keyboard on OSBEXEC here:


    Beitrag
    Osborne Executive mit deutsche Tastatur - Wie nutzen?
    Hi,

    ich habe mir vor ein paar Tagen einen Osborne Executive organisiert. Der Osborne hat eine deutsche Tastatur. Leider finde ich nicht heraus, wie ich einen deutschen Characterset oder Keyboard Layout laden muss, damit alle Tasten richtig funktionieren. Aktuell kann ich mir zwar damit behelfen, dass ich weiß welche Tasten im amerikanische Layout hinter den deutschen sich befinden, doch ist die Pfeilrunter und die Returntaste irgendwie doppelt belegt.

    Pfeil runter gibt es daher im Grunde nicht,…
    wizardofOz


    Please analyze (maybe with winmerge or other tools) the CPM3.SYS for your system, the German and the US version to get a little step forward.

    Mit freundlichen Grüßen


    fritz

    fritzeflink  JenGun


    You are GREAT! I am grateful is an understatement. I will check out what you have sent and let you know. It could be a great moment when Jantar (is an old polish name of amber) will be able to use his original keyboard :)


    all the best

    Arek

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

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    It almost worked. Almost. Unfortunately I can't use the

    keybd * [*] command or

    keybd a: [*]

    because there are no characters on the keyboard

    ] * :


    I can neither edit what's in RAM nor load the board from the floppy. :(


    all the best

    Arek

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

    Zitat von arekbr

    I can neither edit what's in RAM nor load the board from the floppy. :(

    You can edit the keyboard map directly in the IMD file:

    Ok. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong (I'm editing the IMD file in the hex editor) by swapping the characters from the QWERTY layout to show up in Jantar (qugwry). Unfortunately after uploading this image the characters are still in the wrong order.



    I will therefore look into remapping the keyboard using the keybd you have prepared. I will let you know when I have done this.



    all the best

    Arek

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

    arekbr In any case, you should exchange ; for : ... otherwise changing drives under CP/M will be "difficult" ... ;)


    One should assume that every CP/M 3.0 runs PROFILE.SUB on startup: the Osborne version doesn't do that until EXECST.COM (hidden "system file" for displaying the logo) is deleted ... ;)

    JenGun OK. I understand. So I will stay with the first solution with the keybd program. By the way, I would like to add that revisiting the keyboard electronically revealed some errors. After repairing the cables, we managed to get all the characters, including : i [. However, your solution with the K and P command will definitely make it easier to run Jantar. I will ask one more thing. Is there anything similar to autoexec.bat in CP/M. I was thinking that once I make a PL.KBD file such an autoexec could include automatic loading of keybd PL.KBD *. Then Jantar will immediately start up with the correct character matrix. Does this PROFILE.SUB allow for this?

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

    Zitat von arekbr

    Does this PROFILE.SUB allow for this?

    Yes, CP/M 3 loads profile.sub at every start but you have to have the submit.com in the path.


    With keybd.com you can write the keyboard definition back to the sysfile file and it will be there at the next start without the profile.sub as I understood.


    So you have 2 solutions.


    KEYBD.DOC:

    Thanks. I'll be trying to do that. CP/M is the system I first saw a few days ago :) I grew up with the VIC20 and the Commodore C64. :) But I see that now I'm in for a great adventure again


    all the best

    Arek

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

    Hi JenGun  fritzeflink


    It was successful in a way. I have a working keyboard, because unfortunately editing in keybd is impossible. I don't have all the function keys. When I want to finish editing the key map I have to press - and here I don't know if I'm thinking right ^RET - which is what? CTRL+RETURN?

    In my case, unfortunately, I don't have a working CRTL key because when I press it the number 6 is shown. I found the byte that corresponds to this key - 00003BC0. However, I have no idea what HEX code should be there. Do you know how to check this with Osborne? Because the CRTL key itself does not generate a character but is only scanned and used in combinations with others. However, I have no idea which byte it is in the original Osborne. But I am already very far along in changing the keyboard map anyway. All the lower case keys work. Tomorrow I will do a mapping of the version with CAPITAL letters. The hardest part will be finding the keys where SHIFT, CAPS LOCK, UP Arrow, DOWN Arrow, LEFT Arrow, RIGHT Arrow, ESC are. The total number of keys in Jantar is 75.


    If you can help me and give me the HEX codes for the indicated keys - I will find them by trial and error.


    all the best

    Arek

    Zitat von JenGun
    Zitat von arekbr

    I'm editing the IMD file in the hex editor by swapping the characters from the QWERTY layout to show up in Jantar (qugwry). Unfortunately after uploading this image the characters are still in the wrong order.

    This is weird ... swapped the Z and Y keys this way and in MAME it worked ...

    I am very curious to see if the ROM from Jantar will run in the MAME emulator. Please find attached the ripped contents of the JANTAR 1.3 EPROM. Can You check it?


    All the best

    Arek

    Dateien

    jantar_ok.bin.zip 6,28 kB – 2 Downloads

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

    Zitat von JenGun
    Zitat von arekbr

    and here I don't know if I'm thinking right ^RET - which is what? CTRL+RETURN?

    Yes, ^ symbolizes the CTRL key which is very often used under CP/M (CTRL-C) and the programs (i.e. WordStar) there ...


    Unfortunately MAME will not recognize the Jantar-ROM "out of the box" as it checks for specific filename and SHA1 ... however, that should be easy to change ... :)

    Super... then are you able to help me find the HEX codes corresponding to pressing a key without a character, like just CTRL, SHIFT etc? Maybe some simple command in Basic Osborne will do it? I am so close to success :D


    Regarding the checksum. In my first idea, I wanted to change the characters with places in the Jantar ROM. However, changing even one byte causes a checksum error. My knowledge of the Z80 assembler and Osborn ROM is nil, so I have no idea where the ROM checks its checksum. But I'm sure it's possible, after all the Jantar has an altered ROM relative to the Osborne. For example changing boot subtitles to Polish, Polish diacritics etc.


    all the best

    Arek

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

    Hahaha... You are amazing! I'm now with a rather hampered internet connection, I managed to open the site. Hahaha congratulations!!! I'm going home tonight so I'll be enjoying the whole thing already 🤣


    All the best

    Arek

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

    Zitat von JenGun

    Attached is a first patch to support the Jantar 0801 in MAME ... pressing RETURN works now with the Jantar-ROM (renamed to jantar13.bin), but the keyboard is "messed up" in CP/M: RETURN outputs \, SPACE shows = ... this should be the same on the real machine though ... some key values are very likely still wrong ... ;)

    Hi JenGun


    Yes. The keyboard is messed up, but if you want, I will send you the IMD of the CPM system where I made the changes to the matrix. There are a few keys missing like CTRL, SHIFT etc. The letters and numbers are changed and the keyboard works fine. You may find my work useful.


    All the best

    Arek

    I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.