Description

RookieDrive BASIC is an extension that comes with the Rookie Drive interfaces, which allow to connect floppy disk drives, pendrives and hard disks.

First version is Rookie Drive 720 that emulates a virtual floppy disk, then a second version has been developed as Rookie Drive NX with Nextor operating system.

Since version released on 8 January 2019, the firmware includes the Rookie Drive FDD BIOS created by Konamiman, it's a Disk ROM that allows using standard USB floppy disk drives, thus effectively turning Rookie Drive into an "old-school" MSX floppy disk controller with a few extra perks. The USB FDD must comply with the UFI protocol and be faithful to this protocol, otherwise it will not work.

Version 2.0 of this BIOS can detect if a storage device is connected to the USB port of the Rookie Drive, it will then automatically switch to disk image mode.

If these detections are both negative, the firmware will start a code that will detect the type of MSX, then will launch

• the 720kB disk emulation on MSX1 computers
• the Nextor driver on MSX2 or higher computers with at least 128kB RAM

At boot time, you can “force”

• the loading of 720kB disk emulation by pressing the “D” key ("7" key in firmware versions released before 13 September 2017)
• the loading of Nextor driver by pressing the “N” key
• the loading of USB FDD mode by pressing the "F" key
• boot mode 1 for disk image mode by pressing the TAB key (useful as an alternative to device unplugging when you have configured boot mode 3 or 4 if you don't want the corresponding file to be mounted at boot time)

More options are available at boot time. Press the "H" key when booting to access the Rookie Drive Boot HELP menu.

Instructions

This extension adds 16 new instructions and modifies CALL FORMAT. Most of them can only be used in a specific mode of the interface.

Note: CALL can be replaced by the character underscore (_). A space is not required after this character. See CALL for more info.