108 replies to this topic

[Fox-1 / mnx]

You may have to move this to another topic. This thread is not about floppy disk loading problems.

[Sean39]

Hi

that ok I just thought Candle or Bob would have an answer to this problem,but after looking the drive over last night. Well the drive is not working
correctly..

Thanks you can have your thread back ,and I will just watch

Thanks
Sean

[bob1200xl]

Here is a video of WIDE searching for a file with wildcards. It is the electronic version of searching your floppy collection manually. I have over 300 'disks' on this CF card and I am looking for *.PIC files. For each one found, I have the opportunity to skip it, or stop the search. If I end the search, I will have the 'disk' image containing the file mounted on D2: and I have the option of mounting it on D1: (which I do, in the video). If I mount it on D1:, I can then boot the disk, which brings up the BellCom menu screen. From there, you run as if you had the floppy mounted.

You can also list every directory on every disk to a file - and print the file. (>85 pages on the CF card - need a database...!) Or, you can list/print every instance of a wildcard search. Or... write your own routines. Mounting any 'disk' is just a few POKEs.



Bob

[flashjazzcat]

Interesting, Bob. Do you fancy implementing the APT API for mounting volumes, instead of using POKEs? That way, everything is done through the SIO using standardised calls (although if your mounting application needs to parse the FS of the volumes, there's no way to avoid some direct probing of unmounted sectors). The APT spec has provision for mounted floppies, and using it would enable users to swap their media from one interface to another.

Edited by flashjazzcat, Tue Mar 20, 2012 10:34 AM.

[bob1200xl]

You lost me... right after the 'Interesting, Bob'. (I'm a hardware guy) What is the FS of a volume?

Regardless, WIDE hardware is two sets of IDE interfaces in the $D1xx address space, much like other CF/HDD implementations. $D6xx and $D7xx are enabled code/table space and PBI protocol is enabled and supported. Unless it needs some other hardware capability, I would expect that existing APT code would function reasonably well.

The video shows the search-and-mount possibilities of WIDE where it mounts and searches the directory of each disk on the CF card in real time. The first match is on disk #1068, which is disk 056 of the BellCom collection. This is done with a very simple BASIC program that the user could modify easily. Which is what I like about WIDE.

At power-on, you could load any number of disk access protocols. You could even probe the current CF card for its format and load from there...

Bob

[flashjazzcat]

By FS I mean filing system - sorry. I had assumed that unmounted volumes were being searched prior to being mounted, but from what you're saying now it seems they're mounted before a directory search is done. This makes a whole lot more sense.

If there's 512 bytes of RAM and at least 1.5KB of PBI ROM space, sure I have a drop-in PBI BIOS for APT which would work. The hardware sounds nice and flexible in that respect. I take it both sets of registers can take a master and slave device, thus permitting up to four disks. Any reason you didn't go for just master / slave on a single set of registers?

[Defender II]

bob1200xl, on Mon Mar 19, 2012 10:57 AM, said:

Here is a video of WIDE searching for a file with wildcards. It is the electronic version of searching your floppy collection manually. I have over 300 'disks' on this CF card and I am looking for *.PIC files. For each one found, I have the opportunity to skip it, or stop the search. If I end the search, I will have the 'disk' image containing the file mounted on D2: and I have the option of mounting it on D1: (which I do, in the video). If I mount it on D1:, I can then boot the disk, which brings up the BellCom menu screen. From there, you run as if you had the floppy mounted.

You can also list every directory on every disk to a file - and print the file. (>85 pages on the CF card - need a database...!) Or, you can list/print every instance of a wildcard search. Or... write your own routines. Mounting any 'disk' is just a few POKEs.



Bob

Nice. I would like to get this on my 1200XL. Thanks again.

[bob1200xl]

I planned on one internal CF card and one removable card, but I didn't want to require that either card be present when you power on, so I just configured two masters. No slaves... I think, but I'm not going to try it, that you can mix modes that way, also. Have one CF card talking 8-bit and one in 16-bit. Only way to copy between them, I'd guess.

We'll have to try APT, then.

Bob

[flashjazzcat]

I think if you hang a second drive off the bus and it's wired up right, slave devices are a given. I understand the reasoning behind the two interfaces, though. As for 8-bit PIO mode (if that's what you mean) - yes, you can have the master in 16-bit mode and the slave in 8-bit or vice-versa. That's what the MyIDE version of the SIDE driver does.

Edited by flashjazzcat, Tue Mar 20, 2012 2:33 PM.