DragonMMC Announcement.

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robcfg
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by robcfg »

Haahahahahaa!

At least it was a very easy problem to solve :mrgreen:
pser1
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by pser1 »

Hi,
I have been making some tests while reading the nice manual ...
I have found these problems, again it might be my fault :-(
1) Once saved AUTOEXEC.DGN I don't know how to change it and then save again.
The only way I have found is saving with another name, opening the Explorer to DELETE
the old file, close again to load the 'new' basic and save as AUTOEXEC.DGN, finally
open again the Explorer to Delete the other file. Seems very awful to be right, don't you think so?
- This outlines that if the explorer had two more options (that I have not found) as DELETE and RENAME
we could do a lot of work from that window.

2) I have a folder with some bin files, e.g. DOWNLAND.BIN
I can play that game issuing
CWD"GAMES"
MLOAD"DOWNLAND.BIN"
EXEC
But from the Explorer once the cursor points to Downland.bin if I press Enter I get the loading message
but the program freezes or the screen goes wild.

Has anyone tried this game? Any hint would be appreciated!
cheers
pere

EDIT:
To note 1) it serves MDELETE"AUTOEXEC:DGN" and then MSAVE ... sorry for not having spotted it earlier!
Anyway a MRENAME would be very handy!
prime
Posts: 266
Joined: Fri Apr 10, 2009 1:40 am

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by prime »

pser1 wrote:Hi,
I have been making some tests while reading the nice manual ...
I have found these problems, again it might be my fault :-(
1) Once saved AUTOEXEC.DGN I don't know how to change it and then save again.
The only way I have found is saving with another name, opening the Explorer to DELETE
the old file, close again to load the 'new' basic and save as AUTOEXEC.DGN, finally
open again the Explorer to Delete the other file. Seems very awful to be right, don't you think so?
- This outlines that if the explorer had two more options (that I have not found) as DELETE and RENAME
we could do a lot of work from that window.
As you noted below yes currently with the 1.00 firmware you have to MDELETE and then MSAVE again. The next version of the firmware which I have in testing does the same as Dragondos and renames the file to (in this case) AUTOEXEC.BAK before saving AUTOEXEC.DGN. I'll try and do some testing over the weekend and do a release of this on the wiki early next week. Will of course try and remember to do a post here too....
2) I have a folder with some bin files, e.g. DOWNLAND.BIN
I can play that game issuing
CWD"GAMES"
MLOAD"DOWNLAND.BIN"
EXEC
But from the Explorer once the cursor points to Downland.bin if I press Enter I get the loading message
but the program freezes or the screen goes wild.
What format is the BIN file in? I think Explorer assumes that a .BIN file is a cartridge image, if this is the case I can see why you are getting the results you are, as it's probably being loaded at the wrong address.

If BIN files are common, in some other format but not cart images We'll have to consider changing the behavior of explorer.

MRENAME, yep good suggestion, will probably implement at some point, probably not the next firmware release, but maybe the one after that.

Cheers.

Phill.
pser1
Posts: 1655
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Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by pser1 »

Hi Phill,
I am very pleased with the DragonMMC, I am posting here about a few commands that we can use with the CoCo-SDC
that would be very handy here too. But no need to hurry at all!
The binary files are those that have a header like that:
$55 - magic start number
$02 - file type (2=binary)
$LO, $AD - Load address
$LE, $NG - File Length
$EX, $EC - Exec address
$AA - magic end number
So pure binary files that work flawlessly with MLOAD:EXEC

cheers
pere

Ps Count on me for any test I could do
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by pser1 »

Hello Phill,
after having read the whole instructions docs and tested as much as possible,
I missed these functions:
- MCOPY in order to duplicate a file, for instance an EMPTY VDK file or a BIN one (maybe)
- MRENAME (as said before)
- MCREATE to build a virtual disk file from scratch
In my many tests, I did:
- MDISKI1,"NEWONE.VDK" - this creates a zero bytes len file
- DSKINIT1,1,40 that ends with an OK message and then DIR1 returns 175104 BYTES FREE but strangely the created file
once seen from Windows7 is still 0 bytes long (why?)
As a last try, I created a Basic program so that it writes every sector (40x18) with 256 chars
It runs very fast and the final result is a file still with 0 bytes. What is happening?
The DOS doesn't return any error code but the result is that nothing has changed!
Even DSKINIT this overwritten file doesn't get errors but no change at all

cheers
pere
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by pser1 »

Hi Phill,
this could be important ...
I am using a Kingston 8Gb microSD HC with an adapter for your board and for CoCo-SDC
I seem to recall that you didn't recommend that kind of support, should I change to a bigger one (in size)?
I think I could use a Sony 2Gb 'normal' SDC that I am using on my CoCo3 ...

cheers
pere
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by pser1 »

Hello,
back again ...
I thought I had found a way to have a whole disk despite MCOPY doesn't exist, doing so:
- MDISKI 1,"NEWDISK.VDK"
- MDISKI 2,"AGOODONE.VDK"
DSKINIT1
BACKUP 2 TO 1
And to my surprise, the backup works flawlessly and the result is that the new file is correct.
I have loaded a game from that 'new' disk and has worked without problems .... BUT
as soon as I have stopped Dragon and started it again, the disk was empty again, and gives ?IV ERROR again :-(
But it had data, where was it stored?
It seems that the problem is that this modified disk structure is not updated on the virtual disk file, pity!

cheers
pere
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by pser1 »

more on that last point
After making the BACKUP and verifying that the 'new' disk has real content,
I have created a SnapShot and then switched off and on the Dragon.
On starting DIR receives the ?IV ERROR as usual, then I load the Snapshot
and the DIR ... gets the same result again, so the data got not saved with the snapshot ...
Simply put ... I don't underdtand it, makes it sense to you?
cheers
pere
pser1
Posts: 1655
Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 7:32 pm
Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by pser1 »

Hi Phill,
I thought I should better upload here the DOWNLAND.BIN that runs flawlessly
with MLOAD and EXEC but fails from the Explorer
This game loads at $281d, is $48d4 bytes long => 18,644 bytes and its exec address is $281d
Once loaded the explorer (EXPV1.DGN) uses from $2401 till $5c5e (if I am not wrong), so not sure if some
binary programs could be overwritting a great part of the explorer ... preventing them to autoexec (?)
cheers
pere
DOWNLAND.ZIP
(6.7 KiB) Downloaded 487 times
pser1
Posts: 1655
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Location: Barcelona (SPAIN)

Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by pser1 »

Hello Phill,
This is what I have found about executing DOWNLAND.BIN from the Explorer.
The explorer issues a CLEAR 4500 for string space, and this means that stack will begin from $6e6a downwards.
PRINT HEX$(PEEK(&H21)*256+PEEK(&H22)) returns that value.
Downland ends at $281d + $48d4 = $70f1 this means it is overwritting totally the stack area and part of string area.
Not sure if this could be causing it, but ...
cheers
pere
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