DragonMMC Announcement.

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robcfg
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by robcfg »

The problem with Spectrum expansion is that when there's no separator tab in the expansion's female edge connector, it's easy to misplace the connector and as result you get a nice short circuit that can (and probably will) kill some chips, most probably the ula chip.

So better safe than sorry, just cut a small plastic bit from a cd case and glue it in the proper place.
Commodore
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by Commodore »

prime wrote:
Commodore wrote:Ah! I think it was DivIDE+.
The DragonMMC will definitely have to wait until Christmas at the earliest, as i have just bought a BBC Micro.
If you havn't found it already, be sure to head over to stardot and say hello there.

Cheers.

Phill.

Yes, been over to Stardot Phill. It seems a very friendly place.
Alastair
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by Alastair »

Phill, I've read the manual (v1.0) and I have a couple of questions.

The first is how do you change disk or tape images when a program is running and you cannot get back to the prompt to mount/unmount disk or tape images?

The second is in regard to the SD$ and WD$ variables, what happens if you try to run a program that uses these variable names for ordinary string variables?
prime
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by prime »

Alastair wrote:Phill, I've read the manual (v1.0) and I have a couple of questions.

The first is how do you change disk or tape images when a program is running and you cannot get back to the prompt to mount/unmount disk or tape images?
You can't do that (yet), if the program is written in BASIC, you can of course ammend it to use MMOUNT / MDISK as needed.
At some point in the future I will be writing a NitrOS9 driver and will hopefully provide commands (probably similarly named to the Basic ones for consistency to mount / unmount / dir the FAT volume etc.
The second is in regard to the SD$ and WD$ variables, what happens if you try to run a program that uses these variable names for ordinary string variables?
Then it will read the SD$ / WD$ from the card, if you try and set them it will cause an error because they are functions. I used the $ to remain consisttent with Dragon basic e.g. CHR$, it may be that the best thing to do is to rename them to something like WORK$ and SNAP$ which should cause less of a problem, will considder this for next firmware release.

Cheers.

Phill.
Alastair
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by Alastair »

prime wrote:
Alastair wrote:[H]ow do you change disk or tape images when a program is running and you cannot get back to the prompt to mount/unmount disk or tape images?
You can't do that (yet), if the program is written in BASIC, you can of course amend it to use MMOUNT / MDISK as needed.
Could this be a feature that can be added to the snapshot button? That is, alongside the current snapshot options there will be further options to mount (with the choice read-only or write-enabled mode) and unmount disk and tape images.
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robcfg
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by robcfg »

I got mine yesterday and it works flawlessly!

To my taste it's super easy to use, that's always a plus.

I've seen many points on the PCB which offer a lot of possibilities, like the RS232 ones. Are they for future expansions? Would it be possible to attach a wifi/bluetooth module (for example)?

Congratulations for such a fine work!
prime
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by prime »

robcfg wrote:I got mine yesterday and it works flawlessly!

To my taste it's super easy to use, that's always a plus.
That's good to hear, it's actually been in development on and off for about 5 years, though the most intense development has been that last couple.
I've seen many points on the PCB which offer a lot of possibilities, like the RS232 ones. Are they for future expansions? Would it be possible to attach a wifi/bluetooth module (for example)?
Well yes that is maybe the intention, basically if there is an un-used pin on the CPLD I tracked it out to a pad, that way it's much easier to run a wire to it if needed (had to do this several times on the prototypes). But I did have a thought of adding some IO and one of the FTDI USB serial to paralell chips, this looks like a USB serial port to Windows/Linux/MacOS, and an 8 bit I/O port to the Dragon side so bytes poked or written on the Dragon side come out of a (virtual) com port on the other side.

Bluetooth is another possibility, though I would probably not use the serial port as I use that for debug info from the AVR.

I Might be able to re-purpose the RS232 once most of the coding on the AVR side is done, or at least have a setting to completely silence debug output and functions to send data to it from the Dragon.
Congratulations for such a fine work!
Thank you very much :)

I'm happy to say most of the feedback I have had so far has been positive.

Cheers.

Phill.
pser1
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by pser1 »

Hi Phill,
I got the board, it is impressive, very professional, thanks a lot!!
I couldn't resist and got my card from the CoCo-SDC and have put it inside the MMC
First commands CAT and CATP work flawlessly as time related too.
Then MDISKI 1,"DSKNAME.VDK" and it gets mounted, but
as soon as I issue DIR 1 all I get is that awful message:
? IV ERROR ... and I am afraid it might be because my virtual VDK files are 'standard' ones
And I mean they work pretty well with XRoar, with Drivewire servers and CoCo-SDC.
It seems that the header of the file creates the problem (not sure), but Darren
Atkinson changed the firmware in the CoCo-SDC to accept headers from 12 to 256
bytes. Being the last number what makes them DW4 compatible, too
Will try to create a 'new' disk and save something inside ...
I hope I would not need to duplicate all of the VDK to have 'another' version for this
nice gadget!
Maybe I am doing something the wrong way, so if anyone could point me in the right way,
I will appreciate it.
cheers
pere
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robcfg
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by robcfg »

If that's the problem, solution is simple.

Instead of assuming 12 byte headers, just read the header size from bytes 2 and 3, and skip that from beginning of the file.

Of course, the meaningful data is still the first 12 bytes.
pser1
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Re: DragonMMC Announcement.

Post by pser1 »

robcfg wrote:If that's the problem, solution is simple.
Instead of assuming 12 byte headers, just read the header size from bytes 2 and 3, and skip that from beginning of the file.
Of course, the meaningful data is still the first 12 bytes.
Thanks Roberto Carlos,
fortunately this is NOT the real problem ... it's me :-(
I have issued the very first time:
MDISKI 1,"JOC1DW4" without the extension .VDK
And the system has created a nul file with that name!
Now I have 'seen' this on the PC and have deleted that file.
Now MDISKI 1,"JOC1DW4.VDK" has accepted the DIR1 command ... and it is damn fast!
Sorry, but I was going mad for no reason but me!

cheers
pere

Ps I have loaded binary files right from the card and work very well.
I had them there to test with drivewire ... so now we have THREE perfect worlds to live in:
- Drivewire
- CoCo-SDC
- DragonMMC

@Phill You are making Dragon Universe very pleasant, thanks a lot!
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