Development of Blake's 7 (was OASIS development)

[iss]

about 3" - I simply forgot that there are single side drives too .
about ijk joystick - your code works in Oricutron , but some details need to be considered...

EDIT:
1. Make sure that joystick is properly configured in 'oricutron.cfg' - use unquoted strings:
right: joyinterface = ijk / wrong: joyinterface = 'ijk'

2. According to the same page in DF-Wiki, when reading Port A to detect joystick Bit 5 means:

Code: Select all

B5 Low whenever IJK joystick attached so could detect IJK Interface

than the line 'BNE ijkPresent' is wrong, i.e. it should be 'BEQ ijkPresent' or 'BNE ijkNotPresent' ...

3. The code will work but PortA and PortB should be first properly initialized and than restored .

As result see the attached zip file with source and demo. Tested in Oricutron.
If I found my joystick I'll test the code with real Oric, but I'm not sure if it was IJK or something else...

joytest.zip

(33.13 KiB) Downloaded 96 times

[Symoon]

Oh, and another question more Is there a tool that could be used to duplicate a non-DOS disk from within the Oric? Something that copies sector by sector? Just to add it as a recommendation to backup the game disk.

Not that I know of - but I know very little about disk tools as I never used disks back in the golden age (so I've only used PC based tools to handle DSK files).
Now, could a sector-based tool work on any kind of disk ? (Sedoric, FT-Dos, OricDos, StratSed, other...)

You probably remember (we already discussed it somewhere on this forum), I tried to make a universal track-based copier, but it seems the FDC track read is bugged, so I gave up.

[Chema]

Thanks iss, I will have a look asap. I think the problem was I was not setting up the VIA properly. That bit should be included in the wiki...

Or maybe I just missed it

And yeah, Symoon, I remember. So there is no way to make a copy of a protected disk or disks with unusual structures.... That is a piy, as there is not a way to backup your game disk in a physical edition...

I'd say something that reads sectors into memory and copy them to another disk... until the disk is completely duplicated.

[Symoon]

I'd say something that reads sectors into memory and copy them to another disk... until the disk is completely duplicated.

Well I did that sort of thing for Sedoric, to backup a disk thru the tape port to PC, and build a DSK file from it. a very simple thing in Basic IIRC, using Sedoric commands.

The big question is: to backup disks, you need to know how many sides / tracks / sectors are on the source disk to duplicate. Letting the user manually enter such parameters is not really nice, so we'd need to check how to find this information on any kind of disk...
Not knowing that, I documented that my tool was limited to Sedoric, but I never had time to check on other DOS if / where it could be stored (that's when I took the unsuccessful track option)

Of course, we could also do a specific tool for the savegame disk.

[Chema]

I was thinking of come thing along that line, Symoon. You give the parameters and run a tool which reads/writes.

In fact, if you don't know the format and being quite ignorant about these thing, isn't it possible to simply do something such as :
- start with track 0 and read sectors until,the operation fails with Record Not Found. Now we know the number of sectors per track.
- Read sector 0 in subsequent tracks until a RNF error occurs. That is the number of tracks.

Sounds sensible?

[Symoon]

Sounds like a good idea, but actually you are reaching the point where I need to go back to books and docs
The only possible problem I see would be error handling: you may not be able to know if the disk is finished or if there was a reading error. That would be a pity to encounter a read error and say "Finished!".

I run out of time before my holidays to check all this in detail, so maybe after

[iss]

Well, attached is the updated version with support of ALTAI/PASE (both are the same).
I don't know if it's possible to detect its connection state. It works in Oricutron when you put:
joyinterface = altai or joyinterface = pase
It's nice that all joysticks IJK/ALTAI/PASE use the same bit masks. (i.e LEFT=0x01....).

joytest-1.zip.zip

(65.25 KiB) Downloaded 103 times

Else, for copying disks, some time ago I started such project... but it still nowhere.
I'll post about it in other thread to not spam more here .

[Dbug]

I was thinking of come thing along that line, Symoon. You give the parameters and run a tool which reads/writes.

In fact, if you don't know the format and being quite ignorant about these thing, isn't it possible to simply do something such as :
- start with track 0 and read sectors until,the operation fails with Record Not Found. Now we know the number of sectors per track.
- Read sector 0 in subsequent tracks until a RNF error occurs. That is the number of tracks.

Sounds sensible?

It's what most copy programs on Atari and Amiga are doing, the only issue is that we (on the Atari at least) had a parameter to define the largest track number to try to access, because some disk drive would break if you try to access track 82 (the head would be moved to far ahead on the travel screw and it would decalibrate the drive)

[iss]

About joysticks in Oriutron: I found a problem when normal keys (i.e. letters 'W','A'... etc.) are used for joystick emulation then they are no more send as normal keys. As nice workaround is to use key-pad and other 'special' keys which normally are'n send to Oric. Here is sample configuration for oricutron.cfg which work well for me.

Code: Select all

; Joystick interface for Atmos/Oric-1 mode. Telestrat has its own built-in standard.
; Options are 'none', 'altai', 'pase' or 'ijk'
joyinterface = ijk

; How to emulate joysticks attached to the above interface
; Options are 'none', 'kbjoy1', 'kbjoy2', 'sdljoyN' (where n is 0 to 9)
joystick_a = kbjoy1
joystick_b = kbjoy2

; How to emulate joysticks attached to the telestrat
; Options are 'none', 'kbjoy1', 'kbjoy2', 'sdljoyN', 'mouse'
telejoy_a = none
telejoy_b = none

; Keys to emulate joystick, set 1
; NOTE: "fire2" is only available on telestrat
kbjoy1_up = 'KP8'
kbjoy1_down = 'KP2'
kbjoy1_left = 'KP4'
kbjoy1_right = 'KP6'
kbjoy1_fire1 = 'KP5'
kbjoy2_fire2 = 'KP0'

; Keys to emulate joystick, set 2
kbjoy2_up = 'HOME'
kbjoy2_down = 'END'
kbjoy2_left = 'DELETE'
kbjoy2_right = 'PAGEDOWN'
kbjoy2_fire1 = 'INSERT'
kbjoy2_fire2 = 'PAGEUP'

The above demo works with this configuration. Hope this somehow helps .

[Chema]

Already fixed 25 bugs from the beta testing process... and it is not finished yet!

Problem is every time I fix one, I put two more inside the game!

Almost there... almost there...

[Chema]

Surprise surprise... http://blakes7.defence-force.org

[iss]

Thank you very much for your hard work and for the surprise! ... just on time for the weekend!

[coco.oric]

Thanks you very much.
A few weeks ago, i think that the release could be for christmas
A few days ago, for halloween

Now we got this for the week-end. But i think that we'll need more time to find the solution

[iss]

I just found that joystick's up/down directions are swapped. In Oricutron this is easy to be fixed with redefining the keys.
Unfortunately I still can't find my real joystick to test.
Else, thanks again for the game - it's pure fun to play!

[Chema]

Swapped? If you pull it the cursor should go up. Down when pushed...