CF7 image needed

[+mizapf]

Could someone give me a sample CF7A/+ image? This could be done by copying the raw device contents from the flash card to a file (using dd in Unix OSes, and as I saw there is also a dd implementation for Windows).

 

Or you send me an old Flash card by normal mail with a sample formatting and data.

 

My objective is to finally add a CF7A/+ emulation to MESS. Unfortunately, most of the information resources for the CF7A or CF7+ are not available anymore. I still could not find out anything about the layout of the overall file system.

 

[Shift838]

Could someone give me a sample CF7A/+ image? This could be done by copying the raw device contents from the flash card to a file (using dd in Unix OSes, and as I saw there is also a dd implementation for Windows).

 

Or you send me an old Flash card by normal mail with a sample formatting and data.

 

My objective is to finally add a CF7A/+ emulation to MESS. Unfortunately, most of the information resources for the CF7A or CF7+ are not available anymore. I still could not find out anything about the layout of the overall file system.

 

 

Does it use the same file system (i would think so) as the NanoPEB?

[+Lee Stewart]

Could someone give me a sample CF7A/+ image? This could be done by copying the raw device contents from the flash card to a file (using dd in Unix OSes, and as I saw there is also a dd implementation for Windows).

 

Or you send me an old Flash card by normal mail with a sample formatting and data.

 

My objective is to finally add a CF7A/+ emulation to MESS. Unfortunately, most of the information resources for the CF7A or CF7+ are not available anymore. I still could not find out anything about the layout of the overall file system.

 

 

You should be talking to Fred. His TI99Dir does most/all of what you want to do.

 

...lee

[+Lee Stewart]

 

Does it use the same file system (i would think so) as the NanoPEB?

 

Yes.

 

...lee

[Omega-TI]

Click on the below link to download "Ti99Dir".

 

http://www.ti99-geek.nl/Projects/ti99dir/Files/ti99dir62a.zip

 

You'll easily be able to make the image you want for testing (example below).

 

 

[+Schmitzi]

OK, I took my smallest CF-Card, 32MB, and placed some DSKs on it. (Die üblichen Verdächtigen)

 

Here you can see the DSK-files before copying to the CF. Some are 400K as they have been on a CF-Card before,

so they are already CF-Volumes. Some are still V9T9 (90/180K as you can see)

 

01-MYDSKS-before-Upload.zip

 

 

 

 

I copied them with my batch-tool (which uses Fred Kaals DSK2CF-tool and the PrintF-tool) to the CF-card.

 

(see the latest version of my CF-Copy-Batch here, but not needed for this thread here)

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/236877-nanopeb-f18-v1-what-cf-card-would-you-recommend-to-use/?p=3295786

 

 

 

 

With TI99DIR 6.2a you then can see the volumes on the card. They arrived:

 

 

 

 

 

Then, just for control, I copied them back from the CF-Card, to my Harddisk, also with my Batch-Tool.

 

03-MYDSKS-restored-for-test.zip

 

 

 

 

Here in you can see, that all files/volumes now have the right size (400KB = 1 Volume)

So, the V9T9´s have been converted in the first step, while copied to the CF-card.

 

 

 

 

 

Then I just made an image from the CF-card (my USB-drive T: here), with the portable RawCopy-Tool from hddguru.com:

(no installation needed)

 

http://www.hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/HDDRawCopy1.10Portable.exe

 

 

 

 

 

so, finally, here is the image

 

nanoPEB32MB.zip

 

 

 

 

good night

 

 

 

 

[+mizapf]

@Omega: It seems as if you can create a single volume with it, but this is not the complete Flash card. My intention is that you can either plug in your CF card in your PC card reader and use it, or that you can create a dump of your CF card (similar to the hard disk dumps) and work with that file (and later copy it back on the CF card).

 

@schmitzi,

 

the image contents are somewhat strange:

 

 

0000000: 1148 4444 2052 6177 2043 6f70 7920 546f  .HDD Raw Copy To
0000010: 6f6c 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  ol..............
...

 

why is the dump prefixed with the tool's name? Also, the contents don't look like volumes; they look compressed.

 

Could it be that the tool uses an own format which can only be used with this tool (e.g. for the purpose of creating backups or copies)?

 

(Schick' mir einfach die CF-Karte zu, ist am einfachsten.)

[+Schmitzi]

yes, make I, goes on montag out

[TheMole]

Attached is my cf7+ image. This comes from a 2GB CF card with 6 images installed (and image 6 mounted as DSK1, most likely images 2 and 3 as DSK2 and DSK3 respectively).

cf7.bin.tar.gz

[+mizapf]

OK, that looks plausible. I somewhere got an information that only the bytes at even positions are used (0, 2, 4, ...), so the effective capacity is only half as high as declared on the card.

 

It seems as if your image is filled with zeros starting at address 3ef940, which means about 4 MiB used (effectively 2 MiB). It is of course possible that there are data from previous use.

 

Can I get a dump of the DSR somewhere?

[Tursi]

That's correct (every other byte used). But TI99Dir seems not to dump the unused bytes (my attached images are 16MB but come from 32MB disks). So that lends the question of whether to implement the raw format, or the (arguably?) most common backup format.

 

Are you planning to implement only the disk side of it (and not the serial/parallel side)? Life will be easier, since there are three versions on the I/O side but as far as I know the disk side has remained the same.

 

I've attached my old image slideshow demo -- mount the first volume as DSK1 and run EA#5 "CF7SLIDE". It will automatically change the mounted disk as it runs (by changing the index in VDP) so will be a good test for your mount emulation.

 

Cf7SlideWithPics.zip

 

I've also attached a dump of a utilities card Bill distributed at the Chicago Faire one year:

 

CF7_FROM_BILL.zip

 

I can't guarantee this dump is correct, as I don't remember how I got it and I haven't run it myself. But the header looks right, maybe it's a starting point. It is just the disk DSR, I thought I had the PIO DSR too but I can't locate it.

 

CF7+_DSR.zip

 

[+mizapf]

I'm going for the disk first (see how far we come). Since I want to emulate it using the original DSR, the image must somehow look like the data found on the CF card (as always in MESS).

 

Dumping the DSR should not require more than setting the proper CRU bit (unless we have banked ROMs, of course). However, with our TI we don't have to get past any kind of memory protection. I think I heard of systems that encrypt their ROMs.

[Tursi]

The original DSR doesn't see the unused bytes, they are not physically wired up. That's why it only uses half the card.

 

Not saying your approach is wrong, but the reason doesn't play into it.

 

Dumping the DSR is simple enough, I just don't have access to hardware to do it.

[+mizapf]

Ah, OK, that's important after all. I'll have to do the same "half-wiring" in the driver in MESS.