[Floppertalk] Fw: Booting larger Image-formats with flopper
jleyda
floppertalk@oldskool.org
Mon, 6 May 2002 09:21:42 -0600
> A few days ago I loaded down the Program "Flopper" (release
> version 0.2.6 05/02/00) from www.oldskool.org.
the web page is woefully out of date. The latest version of flopper 1.0.1
can be located here:
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/flop_101.zip
> In the PDF-file which comes with flopper, it is mentioned
> that support for such image-formats can be added easily.
> Unfortunately I don't know all too much about
> assembler-programming (I just know how to install TASM, TLINK
> and how to compile an already-working .asm-file) and
> therefore am not able to add the support for such
> image-formats myself.
You'll have to edit 2 files I think. (It's been many, many days since I
worked on this portion of flopper)
equates.inc - look for this line:
SIZE720K EQU 2*09*80*512 ; 2 sided, 9spt, 80 tracks
add 2 more equates:
SIZE1200K EQU 2*15*80*512 ; 2 sided, 15spt, 80 tracks -
1.2mb disk
SIZE1440K EQU 2*18*80*512 ; 2 sided, 18spt, 80 tracks -
1.44mb disk
Then open diskette.inc - look for this stuff:
HST_LOOKUP_TABLE
.
.
.
dd SIZE720K, (80 shl 16) + (9 shl 8) + 2
add these 2 lines:
dd SIZE1200K, (80 shl 16) + (15 shl 8) + 2
dd SIZE1440K, (80 shl 16) + (18 shl 8) + 2
Make sure those 2 lines above are placed BEFORE the "dd -1"
I *think* that's all that you need to do.
I've been using microsoft masm for several years now, and it appears that I
may have broken support for compiling under TASM (at least tasm 4.0) because
I started using labels like "@@:" which tasm doesn't seem to like.
Unless you can find microsoft assember somewhere, you might not be able to
recompile this without re-editing all of my labels. Perhaps this is your
first introduction to assembly programming? ;)
If you can't find masm, let me know and I can easily compile this new
version for you. There's really no reason why 1.2 and 1.44 images shouldn't
be supported anyway.
>
> Could somebody give me some "newbie-advice" on how this is
> done or drop me a hint on some books/tutorials where one can
> learn assembler-programming from the grounds up ?
A book I liked when I was learning ASM was "Peter Norton's programmer's
problem solver" It had real world programming snippets in BASIC, C (or
maybe pascal?) and ASM, and clearly explained what each one was doing. If
you know any other language, this book made it easy to reference what the
steps were.
> As floppers' ability to change disk-images will be lost after
> booting DOS- or Linux - boot-images, I intended to put a
as long as the booted image doesn't completely wipe out the BIOS keyboard
handler, you should still be able to change disks once flopper is "booted".
Press the F12 key to get to a menu. From that menu you can change disks,
reboot the current disk, change the CPU throttling, write protect the disk,
etc.
Usually games written for the IBM-PC are the only programs that completely
disable the BIOS keyboard handler. Booting a DOS image should still allow
F12 to change disks.
> Does somebody know Turbo-Image ? If so, which problems might
> occur when using Turbo-Image within a flopper-booted image-file ?
>
I'm not familiar with turbo image, but it looks like a very interesting
program!
It's anyone's guess as to if it will work properly with flopper or not.
I don't think you'll need it though.
good luck, let us know how it works!
-jeff!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to
the floppertalk mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to
minordomo@oldskool.org with a subject of 'unsubscribe floppertalk'