Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

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ibisum
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Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

Post by ibisum »

So I've got the bug and I'm sitting down here to make a nice little DSK image I can burn for the kids to use on a regular basis with the operational Atmos+Microdrive configuration I have now.. It occurred to me that I ought to make a suite of .DSK's that can be booted in and out, and the recent HIRES images, as well of course all of Twlightes' games/demo's, and other things, easily booted. The kids actually love the ATMOS!

So .. whatever else do you guys think should be on an 'ultime 21st century' .DSK image for Atmos? Any necessary onboard tools/assemblers/etc? I think I will teach my kids computing with the Atmos in the next year or so, so if you think of anything else that you see in the archives that would make sense to add to the catalog, keep Mr. ibisum in mind .. ;)
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Re: Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

Post by Dbug »

For learning directly on the ATMOS, I think you should stick to either BASIC or LOGO.
It's very visual and almost instant.

Anything more complex like assembler is just frustrating because one single mistake can wipe a lot of work.

But things to compose music or make graphics, definitely a good idea.
Possibly also a sprite editor, character font designer.

What about Macadam Bumper: They can create their own pinballs and save them :)
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ibisum
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Re: Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

Post by ibisum »

Ah, some very good suggestions - especially about Macadam Bumper, didn't know it had disk saving abilities! :)
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Re: Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

Post by Dbug »

ibisum wrote:Ah, some very good suggestions - especially about Macadam Bumper, didn't know it had disk saving abilities! :)
Well, it has *saving* capabilities, never said it could save to disk :)

It probably requires some code change to make that to work, but that should probably be doable...
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Re: Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

Post by Symoon »

Might be wrong, but I seem to remember Macadam Bumper even used its own tape routines to save the pinballs. That means you'd have to activate hardware mode in Euphoric (haven't used Oricutron in a while, can't say if there's anything to do with it).
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Re: Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

Post by Dbug »

Symoon wrote:Might be wrong, but I seem to remember Macadam Bumper even used its own tape routines to save the pinballs. That means you'd have to activate hardware mode in Euphoric (haven't used Oricutron in a while, can't say if there's anything to do with it).
It should be possible to remove this code, and use the room to do something dirty that:
- swap to overlay
- call Sedoric save/load routines with the parameters it would have used to save on tape
- swap back to ROM
?

Of course that means disassembling to find the code :)
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ibisum
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Re: Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

Post by ibisum »

Well I spent a good portion of my free time last night hacking away, but for the life of me I cannot get a working .DSK file written to a floppy that my Atmos will read. I started the session with sedoric1.0 and 3.0 disks, and now all I've got is a bunch of sed 1.0's, which are the result of me verifying (after losing my 3.0 disks readability, somehow) that I could use the Atmos, at least, to copy disks. I can, phew.

So until I work out the arcane desires of writedsk some more .. I lost the CDROM I had made of this some months ago, alas .. I'm defeated a little in the effort.

However, while waiting for the endless failure at the end of a write session, I did manage to get OSDK set up and working, and it seems like I could at least get some code learning done in the meantime. Sure is wild to be thinking of the code to write ..
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Re: Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

Post by Dbug »

Since you have a real microdisc, I believe the ideal solution for you would be to buy a HxC floppy emulator.
http://lotharek.pl/category.php?kid=7

You plug it as a secondary floppy drive, and you use the SD Card to transfer stuff from your PC to the Oric.
Then you can create physical floppies from the HxC (used as a B drive) to your microdisc (used as a A drive).

So yeah, that's a 70 euros solution, but you can also use the HxC with other old machines like Atari or Amiga if you have any, so it's not a pure 'Oric investment'.
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Re: Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

Post by ibisum »

Yeah, I guess its time I bit the bullet and just got one .. still, I'd love to know why I can't make a floppy .. I guess I'll have to dig into the code for WriteDsk and find out ..
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Re: Making a really nice demo .DSK image ..

Post by Symoon »

Welcome to the land that drives you mad. Spent a huge time making real floppies again 2 months ago.

Seems it depends on the system version you use (have to be in real DOS, so booting with a DOS floppy is the best), then depends on the machine you use (PC I mean), then also depends on your floppy drives and disks health state.
Writedisk had nothing to do with it for me, except if you plan using not-so-standard formatting (like 19 sectors per track, which Writedisk can't format)

One thing to try: first format your floppy on the Oric, matching the track/sectors format of the DSK file you want to put on the floppy. Then use writedsk with this pre-formatted floppy.
This is the only solution for 19 tracks disks, and saves time with writedsk.

If this doesn't work, try with another PC... Had to try with 3 different ones myself.
Good luck!
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