Cumulus Firware Compilation

[barnsey123]

Hey Debug,

early days I know but what do you think the odds are of displaying an icon on the cumulus screen?

say you have game.dsk and game.ico (if game.ico does not exist on the card then either no icon is displayed or a default image - picture of a floppy?). Power cycling would restore the cumulus menu as normal.

Would also be nice to display the Oric logo + cumulus cloud logo on boot. What do you think?

[iss]

Yes. It's cool.
And one more thing: with single toy one can play two games: write programs for Oric and/or write firmware for Cumulus!

[Dbug]

I'm not quite sure how the memory management works, but I don't see why that would not be doable to have icons, just not sure it would be very practical because the screen is quite small.

About the boot picture, it's definitely doable, but that would slow down something which at the moment is instant.

Something I'm wondering about is if it's possible to store data in memory when Cumulus is not powered, perhaps by reserving a bank of flash or something like that?

If this is possible, then it would be possible to have a preference menu that actually do something, like selecting a color scheme, language, or whatever else you can think of.

[Dbug]

I committed a new update with now 12 files per page (instead of 10), and the third button is now used to force a media change detection followed by a reset of the Oric, so you can update your program and reset without even entering in a submenu.

[metadata]

Something I'm wondering about is if it's possible to store data in memory when Cumulus is not powered, perhaps by reserving a bank of flash or something like that?

the pic has 1kb EEPROM that you can use to save data.
http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/De ... e=en026331

[ibisum]

How do we talk to the PIC from the Oric - i.e.

Code: Select all

cload"s",dosomething

.. to load up 'next / prev dsk file' or things like that?

Would be nice to auto-load SEDORIC.DSK if its there ..

And I now find myself in the position of wanting to get as much onboard dev tools as possible, now that the Oric has near-infinite storage capabilities ..

[Dbug]

Something I'm wondering about is if it's possible to store data in memory when Cumulus is not powered, perhaps by reserving a bank of flash or something like that?

the pic has 1kb EEPROM that you can use to save data.
http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/De ... e=en026331

Good to know.
Is this 1k area overwritten when we flash with a new version of the CUMULUS.BIN or is it in a separate area?

Is there sample code somewhere to show how to read/write to this 1KB (apparently it's bytes, not bits )?

[metadata]

Is this 1k area overwritten when we flash with a new version of the CUMULUS.BIN or is it in a separate area?

this is a separate area. The firmware is in the 64KB Program memory.

Is there sample code somewhere to show how to read/write to this 1KB (apparently it's bytes, not bits )?

http://www.mcuexamples.com/PIC-internal-EEPROM.php
But i think there is a ready function in MPLAB X for that: eeprom_write(), eeprom_read()

[ibisum]

I got the firmware built and flashed it last night - so I'm ready to start contributing to adding features to cumulus. One of the first things I'd like is to have some options, such as:

1) configurable 'auto-mount if it exists' option. The user can select a .DSK file, and in the menu option for that .DSK file, specificy 'auto-mount this file on boot' - so that the disk image is available immediately after reset. Alternatively, there could be a menu option which says "remember currently mounted .DSK configuration", and there could be a config entry - either in a "CUMULUS.CFG" file on the SD, or in the Cumulus' eeprom, which enumerates these options.

2) I'd *really* like to have some way to mount .DSK's from the Oric OS' side of things, itself .. so I'll be spending some energy on investigating how that can be done. One option would be to have a non-used block number be the 'API endpoint' for communicating to the Cumulus - the Oric writes outside of its normal block boundaries to this "API block", and the Cumulus traps and reads the cmds. Being able to mount .DSK files from the Oric would mean we suddenly have a near-infinite supply of memory for the Oric, and could make things like a "Wikipedia Offline - for Oric" project possible.

3) There are some i/o pins spare on the Cumulus. I wonder what we could use them for? May it be possible that these pins could be used to add primitive networking capabilities, such that two Oric's that are connected with their Cumulus' could send packets back and forth to each other? That'd be a neat trick, and I'd love to find out more about if this is possible ..

[peacer]

I am afraid to ask a stupid question : Does cumulus only read .dsk images and run it or can we save files into disk images and alter them via Oric?

[metadata]

Does cumulus only read .dsk images and run it or can we save files into disk images and alter them via Oric?

sure you can save files in a dsk image. For the Oric the Cumulus is a normal microdrive.

[ibisum]

peacer: the .DSK file that the cumulus mounts is presented to the Oric as a complete 'virtual disk'. The Oric can save files "into" that virtual disk, as the .DSK file itself is just like a floppy image.

But the Oric cannot save 'outside' the .DSK file - if you save a file on the Oric, into a Cumulus-mounted .DSK image, that file will be packed into the contents of that .DSK file. So .. we use FUSE or something on Mac/PC/Linux to mount the .DSK image, to get the files out ..

I've been looking at the Cumulus firmware sources with the intention to divulge a method by which the Oric and the Cumulus can communicate 'metadata' to each other - i.e. the Cumulus sends in a list of .DSK files that are available, the Oric decides which one to mount and sends the mount command back - meaning we can programmatically control the Cumulus hardware from the Oric side. This would be my personal goal for new features to add to the Cumulus - a .DSK selection technique.

[peacer]

Thank you.

But I didn't understand the "fuse" thing..

Lets say, I saved my program to cumulus after choosing a disk image. Can oricutron or euphoric open that disk image and load it ?

[metadata]

Lets say, I saved my program to cumulus after choosing a disk image. Can oricutron or euphoric open that disk image and load it ?

yes. I tried that a minute ago

[peacer]

Thank you