For a start you should know that the command line editor needs a vt100 emulator, I use the linux xterm to log in and that will work fine. 


Well g 9000 will start symbiosys as you'd probably already have worked out. and you should get the # prompt. 


ctrl s moves cursor left ctrl d moves it right , crtl a beginning of line ctrl f end of line. ctrl u deletes character forward and backspace deletes backwards. it inserts keystrokes at the cursor position. 

try the # date command and it will tell you if your clock is where it should be. to set the date you'll have to go in with supermon to set it up I have not done a commend for that yet. The # mon command will take you out to supermon and a G command from there should take you back into symbiosys command mode. 

Then will come the time to test the disk interface, and I hope that's been documented right for you, at any rate the # mkdir 0 0 0 command should create the root user area. now if that works you are truly in business. only the first parameter in mkdir is real, the other two params can be anything it was just something I did just to reduce the risk of accidentally issuing the destructive command by accident. it doesn't do much verification yet. 

If that works then do # mkdir 1 0 0 then # mkdir 2 0 0. 

try # ls * and it should successfully list an empty root user area. ls must have some wildcard definition I've been meaning to set the default * wild card for a no parameter ls command, I'll get around to it now if you're up and running.. 

you can tell ls to list another user area by prefixing the parameter with the user area and a colon. So if you ran those other mkdir's then you can do # ls 1:* and # ls 2:* 


At that point you could try creating a file with the # store command, execute it with no parameters and it will give you usage instructions (read arcane clues) . store % symbiosys.image 9000 fff should then save the rom images to a file which you can list with # ls * . The first parameter is the file colour which is basically a file attribute, the % is just for general non executable binary files. 

The colon by itself as a command will display the current user area and with a number parameter wil change the current user area to what you specify so you can move around your fil esystem with # : 2 and # : 3 . 


to store an executeable its file colour is  *

# store * filename beginaddr size

then specify the filename on the command line and it will load into memory and transfer execution to beginaddr.


Oh yes, and another symbiosys command that is good for testing as it doesn't need the disk is the hex dump. 

# hex 9000 9fff 

to dump the symbiosys kernel. 

actually that only leaves another few intrinsic commands rm, fetch, rae and 6000. 

# rm * 
deletes files in the current directory, it will ask for verification before deletion and like all the file commands that process wild cards the possible inputs at the verify prompt are 

return to accept this file 
tab to skip this file and go on to the next matching filename 
and ctrl c to abort and go back to the symbiosys command prompt. 

#rm 2:* 
deletes files in user area 2. 


# fetch * 
loads file into memory at the load point saved when the file was stored. (I must change that so you can load the file in anywhere). 

# rae 
executes the warm entry into the resident assembler 

# 6000 
executes a binary loaded into $6000, which is just a kludge to mae it execute whatever I'm developing at the time. 

The cp command to copy files is the first of the external executable command so I'll have to put that online so you can download it. It copies files to any user area now and batch file copying too.



the cp binary is now online as a papertape. 

here is the bugfixed cp binary. I think I've fixed the serious issues completely 

http://b5.net/sym1/cp.bin.6000-62cb.ptape 
the command for saveing this as an executable would be.. 

# store * cp 6000 2cb 

you chould then be able to execute 

# cp 

then try something radical like 

# cp * 2: 

and perhaps 

# cp cp 1: 

to copy cp itself into the common searched bin area ( area 1:) so you can call it from any user area. 

it's still under development so it prints out diagnostics which slow it down and confuse everyone. And when I just did a batch copy here is copied the last file twice so that would be a boundary issue. It also overwrites files with no warning.