These news FDC emulators or FDC interfaces like FDC-Emu they are great but they require you to disconnect the internal drives of a turbo R for example and I don't want to do that.
Why not using a custom firmware to disable it on spacebar or any other key than ctrl or shift ? In this way, pressing shit it would only disable the internal drive not the external.
I tried opening the Emu-FDC to replace the rom but the thing is soldered into it. Doesn't sound much tinkerable for me.
So here my suggestion for new future designs: Change the key to disable it, simple thing just change on byte in the rom.
I tried opening the Emu-FDC to replace the rom but the thing is soldered into it. Doesn't sound much tinkerable for me.
This interface uses a flash-ROM so no need to unsolder it to change the content.
I think the only solution is to ask 8bits4ever how to flash the Disk-ROM of the Emu-FDC cartridge because you want reverse the Shift key function. This utility and the ROM seems not to be available for download. If so, that would be easy to change.
Do you mean you have to disconnect the internal drive physically by removing the connection to the disk drive? I don't do that and have been using emu fdc. When/what situation do you need to do this?
Also the disk ROM created by Konamiman for the RookieDrive NX can disable internal drives (it is called exclusive mode). It should be possible to port this feature to emu FDC.
And to answer your question st1mpy. Even with CTRL pressed you will still have 2 drives in your system and as such less free RAM in Basic, which impacts some software (but surely not most).
Oh OK, if its about freeing up memory, would we get more if we designed a disk interface (or emulator) where the disk rom/controller is run by its own cpu (so the drive has its own processor). So the disk rom I guess will be smaller...
I don't see how this could change anything. The MSX-DOS (and Basic) needs the drive descriptors area for each drive.
I don't think you can update the firmware if the pins needed to it are grounded (or VCCed) there is not much to do than remove it and put into a eprom programmer. They should be using PLCC or other low profile socket than soldering it into the board...
Yeah, if you use sofa run for ROMS you don't have this problem but for basic launched games (mostly Spanish games) then the second drive is a deal breaker.
The function that should be in all disk interfaces using Nextor is a screen to set the parameters of the interface (like the carnivore2) with a choice of slots to ignore at startup. This would make it possible to deactivate any firmware and internal interface that no longer work, for example.
