Run Flex with DriveWire

[Azerpy]

Hello all.
I spent some time to test different solutions to use FLEX on real or emulated Dragons.
For my pleasure, I have created a file with drivers to boot and run FLEX with DriveWire.
I wanted no DOS or modified disk, use any flex disk, load the date of DriveWire and auto detect emulation or real Dragon.
There are others ways to run Flex on a 64 K Ram Dragon (Xroar or Mame emulation, MMC card with special drivers, ...) but I wanted to use it with the "minimal DWLOAD Server" of Stew Orchard installed on a small Wifi Pizero (a little wonder !).
Thank you to Phil "Prime" who made the drivers for his MMC Card, what gave me the idea.

Here are 2 files for the same result
- a DWEEB that must be installed in the DriveWire folder, launched by DLOAD or DWLOAD
- the .BIN file ; it could be a .cas or .wav when there is no other way to EXEC it on a real Dragon

[Azerpy]

To test it, the best way is to install a flex bootable disk in DRIVE0 of a DW4 or PyDW server
for example the Compusense Disk below (rename it if necessary)
The flex files must be without header (dsk format). I cut the header of the vdk files with HxD file editor.

Then launch the .BIN file in Xroar
start xroar -machine dragon64 -cart becker -run "BTFLEX01.BIN"

If there is someone interested, I can explain a little more. A lot is in the .asm source code.

[wayland]

That does sound interesting. So to run FLEX I'd need to upgrade to 64k? The Drive Wire server is a WiFi Pico? That's amazing.

[Azerpy]

Hello Wayland, I'm not a magician yet.
Flex will always need 64 K ram.
About the Py DriveWire Server of Stew, I've installed it on a PI ZERO (not a pico).
"Pi zero 2 W headless" without screen, with a ssh access and wifi access to the pi memory content.
It would be an interesting project for you !
I did not go to the end of what we could do, like auto start or enter the bit banger signal directly on the serial input of the pi
without FT232 device.

[Azerpy]

If you are here because of "FLEX" and "DRIVEWIRE"
have a look on the great production of Stew Orchard that I just discover

https://gitlab.com/sorchard001/flex-os

[Azerpy]

A Compusense Flex disk created by the NEWDISK command contains the two boot sectors disassembled here
(see code below )
The first program is on the Logical Sector Number $200 (sector 3 of track 0)
If "OS" is present, the BOOT command of DRAGONDOS loads and runs the program at $2600
The second program is present on the sector LSN $000 (sector 1 of track 0)
It is loaded at $2500 by the former program and launched
Then all sectors of FLEX.SYS are loaded from $2700 to $4800
If no error, the boot ends by a cold start of FLEX at $CD00