I'm currently working on a better version of the 'Defence Force Floppy Builder', which will become a standard part of the OSDK and will provide an easy way to create floppy based games. It is already possible to make these using Tap2DSK, but it is not very efficient for games or demos because it uses the normal operating system to load data, which means that 1) you do not have access to the overlay ram anymore and 2) a lot of disk space is wasted because the OS is present.
The current version of the Floppy Builder has been used since 2002, VIP4, Barbitoric, Quintessential, Born in 1983, ... all have been built with this tool.
The main issue, is that this tool is not able to create floppies, all it knows is how to patch them to insert data and make them bootable, which means that you have to provide a DSK file at the correct format at the source. It also means that any extra information that was present on the original disk is still present on the new one, which is not very tidy
The modifications I'm doing are based on informations gathered from Fabrice's tools, Twilighte's old messages, Sedoric A Nu, WDC datasheets, etc... and will hopefully allow me to make a version that can generate clean floppies with whatever parameter you want (16, 17 or even 18 sectors).
Right now my problem is the boot sector.
What I have is a bunch of 23 undocumented bytes, followed by 233 bytes of actual executable code:
The only information I have, is that the final 00 indicates it is a Master floppy, if it had been 01 it would have been a Slave floppy.00 00 FF 00 D0 9F D0 9F 02 B9 01 00 FF 00 00 B9 E4 B9 00 00 E6 12 00
Does anyone know what the 22 previous bytes are used for? Do they have the same meaning for an Atmos with a Microdisc or for a Telestrat? Will the floppy still boot if I write other values?
Thanks for any helpful answer
As far as I figured out, only the 3 first sectors or the first track are required by the Microdisc boot sequence, which means I'm pretty much free to use the rest as I want.