There are two topics on this wonderful IDE (or CompactFlash) interface from Sunrise. In both, suggestions for improvements are mentioned. So far we have

- Optimize BIOS for turboR
- Auto-enable R800 during disk read/writes (instead of running an external patch in BASIC)
- Incorporate FDE-emulation options (if possible??)

Nice topic, snout. I do believe speeds larger than 280-300kb/s should indeed be possible. And about this FDE utility. I tried it out yesterday, but I'm not too happy about it. It often doesn't work here. What about this START.COM from Xelasoft? Does it the same thing? And HDDEMU......That doesn't work with *.DSK-files, does it?

And about R800-DR.BAS, you do know there is also a DOS-program which enables R800 during diskaccess? It was published on some Sunrise Picturedisk or Clubguide and it was made by one of them Sunrise/Genic guys......Don't remember his name atm.....

HDDEMU does work with .DSK images if you rename them properly. In the program, you can create your own disk images. Special information (bad sectors, extra tracks etc.) is stored in a separate header file, which makes HDDEMU run more soft than other emulators... FDE runs IllusionCity though

Yes, but those 2 files in HDDEMU, that's exactly what I mean. A .DSK-file is only one file, but HDDEMU NEEDS 2 files, right? I can't make that header file up, can I? Or will just renaming *.DSK to *.EM0 or something do the trick? So HDDEMU doesn't NEED this extra Header file to run the image?

Just get a normal disk (without rotten sectors and such), make an image of it in HDDEMU and you can use that header file with any .DSK image. (After renaming ofcourse)

About R800-DR: I think everyone who has a turboR should run this patch. There is no reason not to run this patch, hence it should be in the BIOS and not be run as an external program IMHO.

My opinion is never humble! I refuse being humble!!!!!

Oi!

Another improvement could be to run .ROM games from the IDE flash. Is that possible?

-Dan Derpaux / www.algorythms.com

Hmm it could be possible, but I think the IDE BIOS is a bit too risky to tamper that much with

It's not possible. It can only run ROM-images custom-made for the IDE BIOS since it doesn't support the common game ROM mappers (ASCII/Konami mappers) nor does it offer the address range they often use.

~Grauw

Hi

A few ideas for improving the Sunrise bios:
1. Add fdisk310 to the bios so a hdd can be partitioned, formatted etc without booting into dos.
2. Add a customizable (or fixed) boot manager to the bios (boot uzix, msxdos, part ## etc)
3. Since the msx partition format is not dos / windows standard why not add names to the partitions it could make point 2 very easy.

JP
PS I love my HD interface

I like all the suggestions of jpgrobler

Hi

Two other ideas - if someone will program them!

1. Add the cd driver to the bios also, and make it auto load in dos if a cd drive was found
2. Add fat16 driver to the bios (as dos command)
(Auto load Fat16 driver if a fat16 partition is accessed, unload if not?)

etc.

JP
PS If I knew how I would have - sorry 8)

another idea

- Attach drive-letters to partitions in the BIOS

Quote:

another idea

Hi, some discussion between me and Jon


JP:
1> Does the IDE interface use the Master Boor Record of the HDD?

Jon (the guru):
It only uses the partition info. It doesn't execute any code stored in this
sector 0.
On the PC sector 0 of the hd contains partition info AND code to execute (that's
why it is called master boot record). There is no such thing on MSX.

After init of all cartridges, the MSX disk operating starts and tries to boot
from A:. To do this, sector 0 of A: is loaded and the code is executed. Normally
this code tries to load MSXDOS.SYS. If it fails, MSX Disk Basic is started.

So making a 'bootmanager' can be done in two ways:
1. you intercept the init of the (IDE)cartridges and choose the partition that
is used for A:
2. you modify the bootsector of the partition that is normally mapped to A: in
such a way that it won't try to load MSXDOS.SYS, but that it executes your own
code. In this code, you could remap A: yourselve.

I think 1. is the best.

JP:
> I am thinking about a bootmanager, If the MBR is used for booting then it would not be too difficult?
> Have you maybe given this thought?

Jon:
yes, but as most of the times: is it really needed? you can change which A:
drive to use by disabling/enabling partitions with IDEFDISK. I agree it would be
easier if you could just select this during boot time, but how many people
actually need it? Not many.

There is already something foreseen in IDEFDISK: you could set the bootpartition
with it. In this way you don't need to disable the partitions which are coming
before the bootpartition. However the latest IDEbios doesn't use this info. So a
first step could be to support this setting.

JP:
2> How is the partitions's drivenames allocated?
> Simply the first 5 (if more is active) in sequence of partitiontable position? Can it be manipulated?

Jon:
during boot the driveletters are assigned starting from A:. So the first (=with
the lowest slot number) diskromcartridge starts at A: and uses as many
driveletters as wished (max. 8). The next diskromcartridge (this can be an IDE
cartridge) continues where the previous cartridge stopped.

An IDE cartridge will occupy a maximum of 6 drive letters. This was done so that
in most cases there are still 2 drive letters left for the floppy and ramdisk.
If CTRL is pressed, the floppy diskroms will only create 1 drive. For the IDE:
if DEL is pushed, the IDE diskrom won't create any drives.

When creating drives, the IDE will start with the master IDE device, and next,
if there are still drives left (=less than 6 drives created), it will continue
with the slave IDE device.
For a CDROM or an unpartitioned medium it will create 1 drive. For a partitioned
medium it will create a drive for each partition that is enabled (and this until
a max of 6 drives are created for this interface (or until a total of 8 MSX
drives are created).

So if you could interfere here by letting the user choose which partition to use
for the first drive, then you would have a kind of bootmanager. Note that it is
not guaranteed that this drive will be drive A: !! Because if there is for
example a SCSI cartridge present in a slot before the IDE cartridge, then these
SCSI devices will for example become A:, B: and C:. Then your boot manager in
the IDE will only make a choice for D:, but the boot is done from the SCSI (A.
In case that you only have an IDE interface, it will work of course.

I could try to make something that lets you choose which partition number to
select for the first drive. It would also be nice if I check if that partition
is of FAT12 type and display the volume name if present.
However I don't know if this is going to be easy to put this into the current
code.

Regards,

Jon

JP
> Thanks

Quote:

yes, but as most of the times: is it really needed? you can change which A: drive to use by disabling/enabling partitions with IDEFDISK. I agree it would be easier if you could just select this during boot time, but how many people actually need it? Not many.

I think contrary. With the possibility to use compactflash, with Uzix and perhaps DOS3 coming up a think like this becomes quite essential if you want to drag the max out of your MSX

Quote:

There is already something foreseen in IDEFDISK: you could set the bootpartition with it. In this way you don't need to disable the partitions which are coming before the bootpartition. However the latest IDEbios doesn't use this info. So a first step could be to support this setting.

That would be a nice first step, however I'd like this data to be in some internal program rather than in an external program. My novaxis SCSI interface had a nice setup when pressing DEL during boot. I liked that a lot.

Quote:

In case that you only have an IDE interface, it will work of course.

OK, I forgot that non-IDE interfaces can interfere with the actual drive letter sequence, but at least it would be cool to be able to arrange them in the IDEBIOS setup.

What kind of puzzles me is that I bought the IDE interface with 512KB flash, because sunrise said 'we can add all kinds of functionality to the IDE interface, thanks to all this flash memory'. However, when the MSX community suggests additions, the programmer of the BIOS (Jon) always says 'no one needs this', 'I think this should be done by an external program' or things like that. I can imagine Jon doesn't want to code this, or doesn't have the time to code it.... (I'd rather see him finishing Compass 2 for that matter ), but I'd really like an optimized, more functional and user-friendly IDE-BIOS.