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Microsoft Chart 2.02

NOTE: The Microsoft Chart 2.02 disk below is not an original distribution disk.

The disk image contains “SPERRY Personal Computer MS-DOS 2.11 version 1.11 Copyright 1981,82,83 Microsoft Corp.” with a COMMAND.COM dated “3-16-87”. It boots but then crashes when COMMAND.COM attempts to display the current date.

COMMAND.COM appears to be loaded too high in conventional memory, because it builds the current date string above segment 0xA000, so when it attempts to print that string, DOS finds only garbage (0xFF bytes, and no terminating $). This suggests that either there is a mismatch between the IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM and COMMAND.COM files on this disk, or that there is something special about the BIOS found on a SPERRY computer that is critical to booting these files.

I’m sure with further debugging we could find out one way or the other, but let’s leave that for another day. It’s not clear it’s really worth the effort. To start, the IBMBIO.COM, IBMDOS.COM and COMMAND.COM files should be placed onto their own MS-DOS disk image and archived appropriately. A search for the rest of the SPERRY OEM distribution files should also be conducted.

[PCjs Machine "ibm5170"]

Waiting for machine "ibm5170" to load....

Directory of MS Chart 2.02 (Modified)

 Volume in drive A has no label
 Directory of A:\

IBMBIO   COM*     7321   7-17-84  12:00p
IBMDOS   COM*    17092   8-28-84  12:00p
CHART    COM     43858   5-23-86  12:00p
MC       COD     98784   5-23-86  12:00p
MC       SYS     44848   5-23-86  12:00p
MC       DAT     22960   5-23-86  12:00p
MC       HLP     67628   5-23-86  12:00p
CENSUS            1724   5-23-86  12:00p
FONTLIST           214   5-23-86  12:00p
CHART    PIF       369   5-23-86  12:00p
EXAMPLE1 MC       3609   5-23-86  12:00p
EXAMPLE2 MC       2543   5-23-86  12:00p
EXAMPLE3 MC       4149   5-23-86  12:00p
MC       INI       183   3-28-15  12:20p
HP7475A  GPD      3303   3-16-87  10:14a
COMMAND  COM     16229   3-16-87  10:14a
PARKS             1146   3-17-87  10:06a
       17 file(s)     335960 bytes
                       16384 bytes free