MMC hard drive emulation?

[boba]

I had asked Dave about the possibility of adding extra ADFS partitions to the SD build and wondered whether adfs157 would recognise them as additional drives. Dave seemed to believe that it should.

So I'll try knocking up a card with a couple of ADFS partitions as an experiment this weekend to see if I know what I'm doing. I like to use Drive 1 as backups so this would be handy.

<edit>
Turned out to be trivial.
As an experiment I just shrank the MMFS partition by half and put a new partition in the space between that and the original ADFS one. (This saved me worrying about the original contents of each). Set the new partition ID as per the original ADFS one and found that ADFS157 could see it OK. Formatted with HDINIT - seems OK (though I'm not sure if I've set the sizes correctly as scanning the drives in HDINIT seems to hang something).
</edit>

[aotta]

sorry for popping-up and old thread, but i wonder if is there a way to use the ADFS157 modded for SD card with the IDE drive too.. i mean a way to choose if mounting SDcard ADFS partition, or real IDE ones, or togheter, one in drive 0 and one in drive 1, to make possible backup files on HD.. impossible, isn't it?

[soviet]

Sorry to reanimate this old thread, i read it from the start but got lost.
This is about using the Micro MMC thingy to get an ADFS hard disc image mounted on the micro ?.
If this is the case how it is done, theres a little guide or something on how to use the software ?.

[Coeus]

Sorry to reanimate this old thread, i read it from the start but got lost.
This is about using the Micro MMC thingy to get an ADFS hard disc image mounted on the micro ?.
If this is the case how it is done, theres a little guide or something on how to use the software ?.

I am not aware of any documentation. What position are you starting from? Because this version of ADFS, 1.5, comes from MOS 3.20 on the Master 128 it uses high workspace and 65C02 instructions so it will only work on a Master so step one is to have a BBC Master 128 or 512 rather than a plain BBC B. Then you need:

• Some kind of MMC hardware. I have one cheap generic one and a couple of these: Turbo MMC: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ACORN-BBC-MI ... 3862991593
• The ADFS ROM with SD card driver in. See: https://github.com/hoglet67/ADFS. That will need to be bullt into a ROM image and there are different builds for Turbo vs. other harfware. You could load that into sideways RAM of have it programmed into an EPROM. If it is one of these steps you need instructions for then please say.
• Finally you need an SD card with a suitable set of partitions on. The arrangement I have is one FAT partition to hold the BEEB.MMB file that holds an multi-floppy archive of mainly games for MMFS/Turbo MMC and then two further partitions, type AD for ADFS. If you need help with this step then again let us know.

[soviet]

Have a master 128, and a MICRO-SPI MMC from retroclinic uses microsd cards and also a pitube.

Now how to burn eproms (have an eprom programmer), what i never have done is using git and compile stuff from there.

Need some help on how the partition layout on the microsd card must be (partition types) and if i can do this from diskpart on windows or some special software is needed?.

Also if is possible to download the adfs roms already compiled ? that will make this a lot simpler for me.

[Coeus]

Have a master 128, and a MICRO-SPI MMC from retroclinic uses microsd cards and also a pitube.

Is this one of the ones that connects to the user port?

Assuming it is, one of the ROMS in the attached ZIP should be suitable. The one named SD is the one that expects the MMC on the normal user port, SD2 expects it at FE80 and SD3 expects it at FEA0.

For partitioning, you need an MBR partition (not GPT) with at least one partition of type AD (hex partition code). Here's an example:

Code: Select all

Device     Boot   Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sde1          2048  786427  784380  383M  e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/sde2        786432 1810433 1024002  500M ad unknown
/dev/sde3       1812480 2836481 1024002  500M ad unknown

I am using fdisk on Linux. I am not sure of the capabilities of Windows diskpart but essentially it needs to be a generate purpose partitioning tool that can create partitions and assign the type code to whatever you specify, not something that only lets you create the partition types that Windows uses itself.

[soviet]

Yes it goes to the user port, and have an eprom also that show up as mmc on the *roms command.
After burning the ADFS rom and inserting it into a socket it should show up as ADFS in the *roms command ?.

Then how the partition is formatted then and how do you copy software to the partition is posible to copy software to it on a PC ?.

Sorry for asking to many questions, really a noob in all of this

[hoglet]

There is a pre-built raw SSD card image linked earlier in the thread:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10519&p=136036#p136036

You can write this to the SD card using win32diskimager

This will destroy any existing data on the SD Card.

As far as I remember, it contains:
- a 1GB FATFS partition (that you can copy a BEEB.MMB file to for use with MMFS or TurboMMC)
- a 512MB ADFS partition (containing lots of stuff for PiTubeDirect, e.g. DosPlus and Panos)

Appologies for not documenting this better!

Dave

[soviet]

There is a pre-built raw SSD card image linked earlier in the thread:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10519&p=136036#p136036

You can write this to the SD card using win32diskimager

This will destroy any existing data on the SD Card.

As far as I remember, it contains:
- a 1GB FATFS partition (that you can copy a BEEB.MMB file to for use with MMFS or TurboMMC)
- a 512MB ADFS partition (containing lots of stuff for PiTubeDirect, e.g. DosPlus and Panos)

Appologies for not documenting this better!

Dave

Super cool thanks for the link.

[aotta]

I tested the Adfs 157 rom with the beeb and integraB BIOS, but it isn't seen as filesystem.
Some ways to make it working out of a master?

[soviet]

The sd card image worked fine, managed to get ADFS into an eprom and placed in the second socket on the master.
Changed the jumper to enable the socket for some reason shows to times in slot 6 and 7.

Unpluged the original ADFS and inserted the new one and now the sd card shows as a hard disc .
Also i was able to boot dos from the hard disc and test software.
What i was unable to do is boot panos, first switched the pitube to the 32000 cpu but when i type panos got a no message and nothing happens have to test this some more.

There is a way to copy software on the pc to the ADFS partition ?.

[hoglet]

What i was unable to do is boot panos, first switched the pitube to the 32000 cpu but when i type panos got a no message and nothing happens have to test this some more.

One thought... Sometimes you have to type *LIB LIBRARY first.

Can you post a photo of the screen after you have typed *PANOS?

What version of PiTubeDirect firmware are you running (you can tell if you switch to the 6502 Co Pro, then do OLD and LIST; the version is in the comment at the top)

Dave

[soviet]

Have a master 128, and a MICRO-SPI MMC from retroclinic uses microsd cards and also a pitube.

Is this one of the ones that connects to the user port?

Assuming it is, one of the ROMS in the attached ZIP should be suitable. The one named SD is the one that expects the MMC on the normal user port, SD2 expects it at FE80 and SD3 expects it at FEA0.

For partitioning, you need an MBR partition (not GPT) with at least one partition of type AD (hex partition code). Here's an example:

Code: Select all

Device     Boot   Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sde1          2048  786427  784380  383M  e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/sde2        786432 1810433 1024002  500M ad unknown
/dev/sde3       1812480 2836481 1024002  500M ad unknown

I am using fdisk on Linux. I am not sure of the capabilities of Windows diskpart but essentially it needs to be a generate purpose partitioning tool that can create partitions and assign the type code to whatever you specify, not something that only lets you create the partition types that Windows uses itself.

Another question about the ROM i tested it on the sideways ROM slot and work great .
Have seen that is very easy to build an adapter to replace the MegaROM for a 27c010 EPROM.
Is possible to replace the ADFS on the megarom for this modified version ?.

[hoglet]

Another question about the ROM i tested it on the sideways ROM slot and work great .
Have seen that is very easy to build an adapter to replace the MegaROM for a 27c010 EPROM.
Is possible to replace the ADFS on the megarom for this modified version ?.

I don't see why not, but you will probably be the first person to actually try this.

Let me think about this some more....

Edit: Think it should work with MOS 3.20, but not with MOS 3.50, bacuase ADFS and DFS call each other directly, as explained here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17475&p=242193#p242193

Dave

[danielj]

Am I right in thinking the SD-enabled version can't access floppies? Just worth bearing in mind if you're actually going to swap it for the version in the megarom...

d.

edit: I'm sure it says this in the thread, but I've not waded through all the pages...

[Coeus]

Another question about the ROM i tested it on the sideways ROM slot and work great .
Have seen that is very easy to build an adapter to replace the MegaROM for a 27c010 EPROM.
Is possible to replace the ADFS on the megarom for this modified version ?.

I have done that, in a sense. I have one of the switchable OS adapters which came with my master. Essentially it's a 4Mbit EPROM with a switch to set the highest address lines with the BBC Master driving the lower ones and this seeing one of three (because that's how many positions the switch has) 128Kbyte ROMs.

I have replaced the ADFS in the MOS 3.20 part of this with 1.57 and it works fine with one of Steve Picton's Turbo adapters - the ones that fit on the user port with no intervening cable.

MOS 3.50 doesn't have the equivalent SD card version of ADFS. It's virgin (SCSI) version is 2.03 rather than 1.50. I am sure there are plenty of similarities but there are differences too, like not including the floppy disk drivers and requesting floppy operations from the DFS instead. I am not completely clear if the reverse is true, i.e. whether the DFS would ever call the ADFS except as a callback from an ADFS to DFS call.

That's partly why I thought this was a good idea: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13826

[Coeus]

Am I right in thinking the SD-enabled version can't access floppies? Just worth bearing in mind if you're actually going to swap it for the version in the megarom...

Yes, at the moment I could work around this by switching to MOS 3.50 which still has an unpatched ADFS, though obviously not to transfer from ADFS floppies to an ADFS SD card.

[hoglet]

Am I right in thinking the SD-enabled version can't access floppies? Just worth bearing in mind if you're actually going to swap it for the version in the megarom...

That's correct for the version that I released (which is the master branch here).

Steve (Zornslemma), Jonathan and others did more development work, and managed to save enough space to fit the floppy drivers back in. Then I think everything ran out of steam, and this was never finished / tested. You can see from the github network graph that there are currently thee parallel threads:
https://github.com/hoglet67/ADFS/network

Dave

[soviet]

Another question about the ROM i tested it on the sideways ROM slot and work great .
Have seen that is very easy to build an adapter to replace the MegaROM for a 27c010 EPROM.
Is possible to replace the ADFS on the megarom for this modified version ?.

I have done that, in a sense. I have one of the switchable OS adapters which came with my master. Essentially it's a 4Mbit EPROM with a switch to set the highest address lines with the BBC Master driving the lower ones and this seeing one of three (because that's how many positions the switch has) 128Kbyte ROMs.

I have replaced the ADFS in the MOS 3.20 part of this with 1.57 and it works fine with one of Steve Picton's Turbo adapters - the ones that fit on the user port with no intervening cable.

MOS 3.50 doesn't have the equivalent SD card version of ADFS. It's virgin (SCSI) version is 2.03 rather than 1.50. I am sure there are plenty of similarities but there are differences too, like not including the floppy disk drivers and requesting floppy operations from the DFS instead. I am not completely clear if the reverse is true, i.e. whether the DFS would ever call the ADFS except as a callback from an ADFS to DFS call.

That's partly why I thought this was a good idea: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13826

Is possible that you have complete rom images for the patched MOS 3.20 and the unpatched MOS 3.50 ?.
So i can burn them to eproms i can piggyback a second eprom on top and build a selector.

[Coeus]

Is possible that you have complete rom images for the patched MOS 3.20 and the unpatched MOS 3.50 ?.
So i can burn them to eproms i can piggyback a second eprom on top and build a selector.

So this is what I have the the machine for the MOS 3.20 and MOS 3.50 banks. The MOS 3.20 contains, as well as the OS core:

Code: Select all

S   DFS 79 (C)1985 Acorn
S   Master MMFS Turbo 7B (C)2011 Mather
SL  Edit 01 (C)1984 Acorn
 LC BASIC 04 (C)1984 Acorn
S   Acorn ADFS 57 (C)1984
SL  VIEW 04 (C)JGH & Acornsoft
SL  TERMINAL 01 (C)1984 Acorn

So this has the SD patched ADFS, the Master version of MMFS and the original DFS. What's missing from the original MOS ROM is ViewSheet - you can load into sideways RAM if you need it.
The MOS 3.50 contains, as well as the OS core:

Code: Select all

S   DFS 95 (C)1985 Acorn
S   Master MMFS Turbo 7B (C)2011 Mather
SLC EDIT 0A (C)1989 Acorn
SLC BASIC 07 (C)1988 Acorn
S   Acorn ADFS 03 (C)1984
SL  BCPL 07 (C) 1982 RICHARDS COMPUTER PRODUCTS LTD.
SL  TERMINAL 01 (C)1986 Acorn

The MMFS and patched ADFS are all for the Turbo hardware.

[aotta]

Thank you Coeus, i've the multios switch in my master, so i am thinking about burning your roms and test them, as soon as the turbospi harwdare will arrive (now i have only some smartpi available, my turbommc is inside a Compact hidden somewhere in my box...).

But i have a more new noobie question: can i use this mmc hd togheter with datacentre? can i mount sd drive instead of the ide datacentre as default?

i am afraid they are incompatible, but thanks to will confirm or not

[danielj]

You can probably use it alongside the ram drives, but you'll have to choose your adfs either to support the dc's ide or the user port sd. Personally speaking I'd have thought there's little point in using the user port option if you've got the datacentre? It just takes up the user port which you could use for a mouse or something else.

[jbnbeeb]

Hi , I have a couple of questions for hoglet..

I have an old version of MMFS ROM from 2016 alongside a ROM labelled "SD2".
I don't know the exact version. It is patched so that the sd card can be attached to the internal "modem socket" on a Master.

At the time, I had it to run in tandem with a Matchbox Copro to run DOS Plus/GEM from an ADFS SD card image.

First question: with this set up, am I able to access ADFS hd images that aren't specific to running the 80286 emulation / DOS Plus?

More specifically, I want to be able to buy a Pi zero, and use it with MMFS/"SD2" ADFS patched ROM to run RobC's Doom demo. This needs access to an ADFS hd image that Rob has created/.

Second question: Assuming the answer to question above is "yes".. I have forgotten what little I ever knew about ADFS. Once I've imaged the SD card with Rob's ADFS image file, how do I access the hd image on the Master?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Jason

[hoglet]

First question: with this set up, am I able to access ADFS hd images that aren't specific to running the 80286 emulation / DOS Plus?

There is nothing in the ADFS 1.57 implementation that is specific to 80286/DOS Plus.

So yes, you should be able to access it from any Co Pro.

Second question: Assuming the answer to question above is "yes".. I have forgotten what little I ever knew about ADFS. Once I've imaged the SD card with Rob's ADFS image file, how do I access the hd image on the Master?

I think this all depends on what format Rob's "ADFS image" is.

If it's an image of a complete SD Card (including partition table) that's previously worked with ADFS 1.57 then it should just work.

If not, then I'd need more details to be able to advice you further.

To access the files on the SD Card from the master you need to:
- *UNPLUG the build-in version of ADFS (1.50)
- *INSERT the SD card version of ADFS (1.57)
- *CONFIGURE HARD
- Ctrl-Break
- *ADFS
- *CAT

Dave

[jbnbeeb]

Hi Dave,
thanks for the swift reply.
I've tried writing the 314mb dat file to sd card with win32diskimager and followed the commands you listed. After the Ctrl-Break step it comes up "NoMBR!" on the top left of the screen followed by "*". I'm guessing this is because the ADFS image file isn't in the format that eitherMMFS or the image writing sw is expecting.

I don't think Rob has tested this with MMFS yet. I'll get in touch with him about the image file first.

Thanks,
Jason

First question: with this set up, am I able to access ADFS hd images that aren't specific to running the 80286 emulation / DOS Plus?

There is nothing in the ADFS 1.57 implementation that is specific to 80286/DOS Plus.

So yes, you should be able to access it from any Co Pro.

Second question: Assuming the answer to question above is "yes".. I have forgotten what little I ever knew about ADFS. Once I've imaged the SD card with Rob's ADFS image file, how do I access the hd image on the Master?

I think this all depends on what format Rob's "ADFS image" is.

If it's an image of a complete SD Card (including partition table) that's previously worked with ADFS 1.57 then it should just work.

If not, then I'd need more details to be able to advice you further.

To access the files on the SD Card from the master you need to:
- *UNPLUG the build-in version of ADFS (1.50)
- *INSERT the SD card version of ADFS (1.57)
- *CONFIGURE HARD
- Ctrl-Break
- *ADFS
- *CAT

Dave

[hoglet]

Hi Jason,

I've tried writing the 314mb dat file to sd card with win32diskimager and followed the commands you listed. After the Ctrl-Break step it comes up "NoMBR!" on the top left of the screen followed by "*". I'm guessing this is because the ADFS image file isn't in the format that eitherMMFS or the image writing sw is expecting.

I've managed to convert Rob's image to the correct format for ADFS 1.57, and write this to one the the ADFS partitions.

I've tested that I can load/run Doom, which seems to work very nicely.

I need to clean up the image (which may take a while), and I'll send you a link later.

Dave

[soviet]

i could love to get that link also

[soviet]

Hi Jason,

I've tried writing the 314mb dat file to sd card with win32diskimager and followed the commands you listed. After the Ctrl-Break step it comes up "NoMBR!" on the top left of the screen followed by "*". I'm guessing this is because the ADFS image file isn't in the format that eitherMMFS or the image writing sw is expecting.

I've managed to convert Rob's image to the correct format for ADFS 1.57, and write this to one the the ADFS partitions.

I've tested that I can load/run Doom, which seems to work very nicely.

I need to clean up the image (which may take a while), and I'll send you a link later.

Dave

Hi hoglet do you happen to have added doom to the mmc image

[hoglet]

Hi hoglet do you happen to have added doom to the mmc image

This is the image that Jason used at ABUG:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl04v9avrwcxvm2/doom.zip?dl=0

Dave

[soviet]

great stuff in this image

I can run doom it starts show the shareware version message and start loading the ...........
after a wile it will drop me back to the command line having the error "bad command" in a low res mode.