HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

A place to discuss everything Dragon related that doesn't fall into the other categories.
jedie
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Re: HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

Post by jedie »

Can i CLOAD the HDB-DOS speed loader and SAVE it on a floppy with attached LAFUMAT disk controller and his DragonDOS 4.1 ROM?
... too many ideas and too little time ... Related stuff written in Python:
Dragon 32 emulator / PyDC - Python Dragon 32 converter: https://github.com/jedie/DragonPy
DWLOAD server / Dragon-Lib and other stuff: https://github.com/6809
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tormod
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Re: HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

Post by tormod »

Yes, CLOADM it and SAVE it.

Here you have a Dragon DOS binary, instead of the WAV file.
Attachments
dw4dgnhdb.ddb.zip
Dragon DOS binary file of HDB-DOS quickloader for DW4 Turbo mode
(687 Bytes) Downloaded 245 times
devo
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Re: HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

Post by devo »

I've spent a couple of hours today trying to get Drivewire 3/4 + usb serial invertor by Tormod + PC (Windows 8 / Linux) working with my Tano Dragon. When I first tried the serial connector a few months ago, I had one or two successful connections with Drivewire 3. I could read .dsk images using HDB-DOS commands. All other attempts to connect have failed, and none worked today using Drivewire 3 on Windows and 4 on both Windows and Linux.

I've tried all possible ways I can think of, using CLEAR 200, &H5FFF, 32/64 ram on (using EXEC), relevant HDB-DOS dsk in Drivewire drive 0, power off and on in between, as follows:

- all versions of HDB-DOS wav files on this thread - the DW4DGNHDB versions with DW4 give an OV error on the Dragon. The DW3DGNHDB version with DW3 gives the DW3 CC1 BOOT screen message followed sometimes by "FAILED", other times by a string of MMMs or, if after a hard reset I EXEC first into 64 ram with no CLEAR, then EXEC after CLOADM, the screen shows the boot message followed by dots ... ending in a ! (sometimes a ?) character, then nothing further. A soft reset followed by EXEC scrambles the screen
- on the Drivewire side, both 3 and 4, the log shows repeating errors of the kind: checksum error on DW 3, unable to read opcode on DW 4; both versions do appear to see the serial port.
- playing the HDB-DOS wav files from two different computers with Audacity and two different MP3 players.
- with turbo on/off on DW4

Coco 2 is selected on both DW 3 and 4 with default settings. The red LED is on on the USB board. I can't figure out if the problem is that I need to clear a different area of memory before CLOADM, whether HDB-DOS wav is not fully loading or the serial connection is falling down somehow. Perhaps I need to build an HDB-DOS wav specifically for the Tano?
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tormod
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Re: HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

Post by tormod »

If you use the hdbdw3dgn32ram.wav (that's the full 8K HDBDOS in one WAV file, which takes 50 seconds to load) you should use CLEAR200, &H5FFF as instructed in the first post.

If you use the quick-loader WAV files (the small ones that load in a couple of seconds) which I posted in later posts, you must use CLEAR200,&H5DFF as instructed in the included README.DWHDBDOS files. Since few people read README files, I should also have pointed that out in those posts, even if the post says "Please read the included README file"...

I hope that sorts it out for you!

Explanation: The quick-loader loads at &H5E00 and when it executes it loads the 8K HDBDOS (over DriveWire) into &H6000-&H7FFF as the full WAV file would do. If the CLEAR address is wrong, a part of the quick-loader is probably overwritten by the BASIC stack after it is loaded, before you can EXEC it.
devo
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Re: HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

Post by devo »

The fast load version on page one of this thread did the trick. A timely reminder to myself to read the readme properly next time. Thanks very much.
wgoodf
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Re: HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

Post by wgoodf »

devo wrote:The fast load version on page one of this thread did the trick. A timely reminder to myself to read the readme properly next time. Thanks very much.
you and me both - i have it working now too.

saying that, still trying to get the DIR to actually give me a directory tho.
another school-boy error i assume.
KenH
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Re: HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

Post by KenH »

wgoodf wrote: saying that, still trying to get the DIR to actually give me a directory tho.
another school-boy error i assume.
Make sure you are using DECB (CoCo) formatted disks. HDBDOS can't read DragonDos disks - they must be converted to DECB format.

Here is a sample converted disk. RUNM "EDDIE.BIN" should work.
To access disks mounted on drives 1-3, check tools/HDBDOS translation on the Drivewire4 server menu.
Ken
Attachments
ARCAD01A.dsk
SnarkHunter ARCAD01A / DECB format
(157.5 KiB) Downloaded 252 times
wgoodf
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Re: HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

Post by wgoodf »

Hmmm - interestingly, no!
Using Drivewire4 on the PC with the drivewire 3 dsk on the Dragon.

I can call a DIR and get a list of the files, but using one as an example:
RUNM"LUNATTAK.BIN" gives and NO ERROR
RUN"LUNATTAK.BIN" similarly gives an NO ERROR

both EDDIE.BIN and MINER.BIN just hang the machine with RUNM

DEVO - how is this for you?
KenH
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Re: HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

Post by KenH »

OK, since you are loading HDBDOS to RAM at $6000-$8000, any game that loads into that memory area is likely to crash.
HDBDOS is much more useful when burned on an EPROM cartridge.
You could write some code to load the game at a lower memory address, detach HDBDOS, relocate the game and run it.

Check out this disk which has BASIC games. They should be able to load and run (unless there's not enough free memory). M.BAS is a menu program that won't work as it uses DragonDos specific basic commands.
Attachments
games_01.dsk
BASIC games #1 / DECB format
(157.5 KiB) Downloaded 246 times
wgoodf
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Re: HDB-DOS for Dragon 32 and 64/Tano

Post by wgoodf »

KenH wrote:OK, since you are loading HDBDOS to RAM at $6000-$8000, any game that loads into that memory area is likely to crash.
HDBDOS is much more useful when burned on an EPROM cartridge.
... They should be able to load and run (unless there's not enough free memory)..
Cheers- the image worked, but as you say Out of Memory errors were pretty common. I can see that this is a bit of a problem without a burned EPROM - limits the use a little bit i would have thought?
i take it from that most folk have a burned imaged then.
hmmm...
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