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RetroClinic DataCentre Manual

1. RAM Command and then type MONITOR Page 76 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Press return a few times and you should get the No Disk Message This confirms that the monitor on the VNC1L is awake and ready for you to insert a USB device Now you have that message insert the USB Drive The VNC1L will look at the drive and should find the firmware file If it does then you will get the message Device Detected P2 Change Main At this point DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER OR PRESS ANY KEY Doing so may corrupt the upgrade and render your board useless Let this proceed it takes about 10 seconds after which it should come back with a few lines of message stating the new version of firmware and a No Upgrade message You can now type FWV To confirm the firmware is in place Remember to remove the ftrfb ftd file from the USB drive once you have done the upgrade as it is no longer needed If for some reason the upgrade fails then please contact me for assistance If you have put the wrong version of firmware on by accident then you can just proceed to put the correct version on in its place Page 77 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 9 More on the USB System The USB System on DataCentre revolves around a host chip called Vinculum It is an intelligent USB controller that allows simple communications between computer systems and virtually any USB Device DataCentre is provided in one of two conf
2. When High do not write data into FIFO Bit7 IRXF When Low data is available from FIFO WRITE Issue 2 boards only BitO IDREQ Inverted in CPLD When high Monitor set to data mode In this mode a direct to PC USB connection can be established from Port 1 using the correct drivers on the PC to act as a COM port Any data sent to the COM port will appear as data on the monitor and any data sent to the monitor will be transmitted to the PC COM port Bit 7 IRQEN When high this sets a latch that links the IRXF line to the IRQ line of the CPU via an open collector buffer This is used when it is necessary to interrupt the CPU every time data is available at the USB host port A read from amp FCF8 will clear this latch so to set the system to read another byte once the first one has been read this bit will need setting again This is so that a single interrupt can notify the computer that a device has been inserted without tying the computer up until the Host buffer is empty amp FCFA NVRAM Data Port O Bit O Data In Out to the 24LCxx NVRAM Direction is controlled by amp FCFB amp FCFB NVRAM Data Direction Register Page 85 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual o e amp FCFC o e amp FCFD O e amp FCFE O O amp FCFF O O Bit O When low data can be read when high data can be written If data is read when this is high it will reflect previous dat
3. See Chapter 7 for a more detailed description of DTRAP Page 36 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual DUMP lt fsp gt Purpose Produces a hexadecimal listing of a file on the screen Example DUMP SUMS Associated commands LIST TYPE Notes It is useful to use this command in page mode so that the file is displayed one page at a time on the screen lt CTRL gt N selects page mode lt CTRL gt O turns it off Page 37 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual ENABLE Purpose Some of the filing system commands produce irreversible effects To prevent them from being used accidentally it is necessary to require a user confirmation of the action This is either with a Y response to the Go Y N prompt produced or this can be omitted by using ENABLE before they become operational These commands are BACKUP DESTROY Example BACKUP 1 0 Go Y N If any other response than Y is given the error Not enabled Is produced ENABLE BACKUP 1 0 Will proceed without any further user intervention Notes ENABLE must be typed immediately before the command to be enabled Any name command typed in between nullifies the ENABLE Page 38 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual EX lt drv gt lt dir gt examine Purpose To display information about the specified directory The information is displayed across the screen in hexadecimal in the following order reading from left to right lt dire
4. DataLentre USB IDE and RAMdisc for the BBC Model B B and Master 128 From RetroClinic 2009 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Page 2 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual About this manual You will notice that some letters words and phrases in this manual have been printed differently from the rest of the text This is to help you to tell the difference between explanatory text words which appear on the computer screen including BASIC keywords and certain keys on the computer keyboard e Ordinary text appears like this or like this for emphasis e Text typed in at the computer or displayed on the screen or BASIC keywords appear Like this e Words like RETURN mean that you press the key marked RETURN rather than actually type the letters R ETUR N This manual is 2009 RetroClinic It may not be copied edited or distributed and must not be hosted on any web service or other storage medium without first obtaining permission from the author Rev 1 0 For RamFS 1 00 Page3 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Table of Contents 1 Welcome t DataCentre ncscccistcccsissvcccsints ceveibisasstabeavssansevedenteadevesveedbysavacsseeninnes 5 2 What is a RAM Filing system cccccesssssececceeessssseeeeecesssesnseeeeeeeesseeaeeeeeeeeeeseeeeea 8 Dre c 8 What the dise drive does nte trente reper peas aa aa avene ge eoe ve eve pd 9 Disc Filing Syste Mi ii
5. LIST lt fsp gt Purpose Displays a text file on the screen with line numbers Example LIST DATA Displays the contents of the file called DATA on the screen line by line with each line numbered Associated commands TYPE DUMP Notes BASIC is tokenised so listing a BASIC program file will display nonsense See the BBC Microcomputer User Guide An ASCII text file of a BASIC program can be obtained using the SPOOL command Files written with BASIC keyword PRINT can also be listed with this command In page mode the listing will stop after displaying each screenfull until you press either lt SHIFT gt key to make it continue lt CTRL gt N turns page mode on lt CTRL gt O turns it off Page 49 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual LOAD lt fsp gt lt address gt Purpose Reads a named file from the disc into memory in the computer starting at either a specified start address or the file s own load address Example LOAD HELLO Reads the file HELLO into memory starting at location 1900 hex which is the load address of the file when it was saved See example in INFO LOAD HELLO 3200 Reads the file HELLO into memory starting at location 3200 hex Other examples are LOAD HELLO LOAD HELLO 3200 Associated commands SAVE RUN Notes All the above are valid commands The quotation marks are optional but either a pair or none should be present The named file must be in the current di
6. RUN lt fsp gt parameters to utility Purpose This command is used to run machine code programs It loads a file into memory and then jumps to the execution address of that file Example RUN PROG Will cause a machine code program in the file called PROG to be loaded and executed starting at the execution address of the file Associated commands SAVE LIB for an explanation of parameters to utility Notes This command will not run a BASIC program Typing fsp is accepted as being RUN fsp and results in the file being loaded and executed if it is found in the currently selected drive directory or the library However if the program has the same name as a built in command from any of the installed ROMs or operating system then the built in command will be executed instead To run a program for instance called COMPACT instead of issuing the command COMPACT you would need to use either RUN COMPACT Or COMPACT Page 57 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual SAVE lt filename gt lt start address gt lt finish address gt lt execute addr gt lt reload addr gt Purpose It is important not to confuse this with the BASIC keyword SAVE they are quite different This command takes a copy of a specified section of the computer s memory and writes it on to the RAMdisc in the current drive directory It is put into a file of the given name You will mostly use this command to record your
7. filename Purpose To Import a disk image from the USB onto either Floppy disk or one of the RAM drives Example IMPORT GAMES SSD Imports the image GAMES SSD on the USB storage drive inserted into port 2 onto the default RAM drive IMPORT D02 PROGRAMS DSD Imports the contents of the file PROGRAMS DSD on the USB storage drive to floppy disk drives O and 2 Associated commands EXPORT DISK Notes Valid options are Drives 0 3 D and Q and must be preceded by a If no drive is specified the system will Import the image to the default RAM drive which was previously selected with DRIVE lt drv gt or Drive 0 if no previous drive was selected Using the option will override the default drive and Import to the drive specified You cannot import to Drives 4 or 5 so you will get an error message if you try If two drives are given in the option the image is presumed to be in Double Sided Interleave Format commonly known as a DSD It is usual to Import these types of images to opposing sides of the same drive as would be the case in a Disk System e g O and 2 or 1 and 3 but with RamFS you can specify any drive in any order for the Import Page 45 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual If the D option is used the import will proceed to a Floppy Disk providing one is connected and a suitable Disk Interface installed The disk interface must be capable of obeying OSWORD amp 7F commands The Flopp
8. is supported under RamFS as Drive 5 But it s not just for Catalog purposes that we use this drive number You can also save and load files directly to the USB drive without having to make an image or use the RAM Drive at all Doing this is extremely convenient for sharing single files but does have a few limitations In Basic the system works just as it would for any other drive so you can write a Basic program put a USB Storage drive in Port 2 and type SAVE 5 PROGRAM Or DRIVE 5 SAVE PROGRAM The filename is subject to the same restrictions for the other drives but it cannot use any directory and must be only 7 characters long The file can then be loaded in the same way and can also be seen in the catalog Machine code programs and data can also be used with SAVE and LOAD however one important limitation must be remembered The FAT filing system does not support Metadata this is the information that includes the Load and Execution address of a file Therefore when LOADing a file you must remember to give RamFS an address to load to Some examples Page 23 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual SAVE 5 SCREEN 7COO 7FFF Will save the contents of the screen if in Mode 7 LOAD 5 SCREEN 7C00 Will load the contents back in If you omit the load address 7COO the system will load the file starting at address 0000 and most likely crash You can t RUN a file from Drive 5 because no execution address is stored
9. not to confuse the source and destination discs If the source RAMdisc is blank the destination RAMdisc will end up blank as well Warning The contents of memory may be overwritten by this command If you have a program or some data in memory that you want to keep SAVE it before you use the command Page 27 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual BUILD lt fsp gt Purpose To create a file directly from the keyboard After typing this command everything else entered will go into the named file This is useful for creating EXEC files and the IBOOT file described previously Example BUILD BOOT will cause everything subsequently typed in to be entered into a file called BOOT Line numbers are displayed on the screen to prompt you to enter your text as follows gt BUILD BOOT 0001 FIRST LINE OF TEXT 0002 SECOND LINE 0003 Pressing the ESCAPE key on a line by itself terminates a BUILD command Associated commands EXEC LIST TYPE Page 28 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual CAT lt drv gt Catalog Purpose The command displays the catalogue of a RAMdisc on the screen showing all the files present on the disc lt drv gt is the number of the drive you want displayed If lt drv gt is omitted the current drive is assumed This works also on Drive 5 where it will produce a formatted catalog of the currently inserted USB Flash drive Example CAT 0 RETURN Note that the heading part of the cat
10. 2 What is a RAM Filing system If you have only ever used the BBC Computer with a Cassette before there are one or two new concepts which you need to learn Let s start by taking a look at a regular Disc Filing System A disc drive As you probably know computers have internal memory called Random Access Memory or RAM When you type in your program it is stored in RAM However when you switch off the computer everything stored in RAM is lost so if you need the program again you have to re type it To overcome this problem the computer must be able to transfer the contents of RAM into some form of permanent or non volatile storage before you switch it off The User Guide which comes with your BBC Microcomputer describes how to use a cassette recorder for this purpose Transferring a program from RAM to tape is called saving it transferring from tape back to RAM is called loading it The disadvantages of using tape are e The process of saving and loading is quite slow e You need to keep track of where on the tape each piece of information is so that you do not record over it e You have to wind the tape to the right place yourself e Winding from one end of the tape to the other is slow e Itis not possible to wind the tape to a particular point accurately A disc system does not have these disadvantages To help you to understand how a disc system works we shall draw some comparisons with a filing cabinet A disc system alwa
11. Drives 0 3 when it detects a power on or any corruption in the DataCentre RAM If you find the drives are corrupted or you want to simply format them and start over this can be done as follows RAM amp FD80 0 Then do a lt CTRL gt lt BREAK gt This forces RamFS to initialise Drives 0 3 and its own workspace You can insert and remove a USB drive while the Beeb is on without any harm but when you re writing programs and images to it you must make sure that the USB access LED has stopped flashing and is either on solid or completely off depending on which operation has just been performed A Flashing USB activity light means that file access is still active not necessarily that data is being exchanged just that an operation is in progress With the USB Drive plugged into Port 2 type CAT 5 After a brief pause while the USB system is initialised you should see a catalog of the files and images you placed on the USB drive a moment ago If the names of the files on the PC are longer than 8 characters you will notice that they have been truncated and a 1 2 etc has been added The filenames have not been changed this is called the DOS 8 3 filename and can be seen with the USB drive on a PC by looking at the properties of a file DataCentre can still load and use these files Page 20 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual perfectly well but it cannot recognise the long filenames used by later versions of Windows so yo
12. Free 0 Files 002 Sectors 512 Bytes Used Displays free space in the current drive FREE 1 4 Files 038 Sectors 14 336 Bytes Free 27 Files 2E8 Sectors 190 464 Bytes Used Displays free space in drive 1 Associated commands COMPACT MAP Page 43 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual HELP lt keyword gt Purpose Displays useful information on the screen In the disc system this consists of a list of the filing system commands or the utilities depending on the lt keyword gt used The two keywords which produce a response in the RAM Filing System are UTILS and RFS If just HELP is typed the system produces a list of currently installed ROMs and a list of the keywords which will produce further information Example HELP RFS RetroClinic RamFS 1 00 ACCESS lt afsp gt L BACKUP lt src drve gt lt dest drv gt COMPACT lt drive gt COPY src drv gt dest drv gt lt afsp gt DELETE lt fsp gt DESTROY lt afsp gt DIR lt dir gt DRIVE lt drive gt ENABLE EX lt drv gt lt dir gt FREE lt drv gt INFO lt afsp gt LIB lt dir gt RENAME lt old fsp gt lt new fsp gt TITLE lt title gt WIPE lt afsp gt OS 1 20 Notes RUN SPOOL SAVE EXEC and LOAD are not included in these lists because they are Machine Operating System commands which operate outside the RAM Filing System HELP is a Machine Operating System command Page 44 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual IMPORT opt
13. Processing amp 40100 RamFS Scratch Workspace amp 40200 RamFS Catalog amp 40400 RamFS Filing Workspace amp 41000 Drive 1 Storage amp 73300 End of Drive 1 Storage Reserved for future use Page 87 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 80000 amp 81000 amp B3300 amp C0000 amp C1000 amp F3300 amp FFFOO amp FFFFF DFS Workspace Allocated for future use Drive 2 Storage End of Drive 2 Storage Unallocated For User Unallocated For User Filing System Drive 3 Storage End of Drive 3 Storage Unallocated For User Error Page End of Memory RamES Scratchram Workspace Memory MAP amp 00 amp 7F amp 80 amp 8E amp 8F amp 90 amp 91 amp 92 amp 93 amp 94 amp AO0 amp A3 amp A4 amp A5 amp D5 amp D6 D7 D8 D9 DA 9 mmm E amp DF EC amp EE amp F2 amp F3 amp F4 amp F7 amp F8 amp FF General workspace Identification String used for detection and startup Do Not Overwrite DTRAP Status 00 Disabled FF Active 00 Quiet FF Verbose flag for IMPORT EXPORT First Drive for IMP EXP amp FF if not valid Second Drive for IMP EXP amp FF if not valid 00 Target RAM FF Target Disk Option counter 32 number to convert to decimal decimal printing pad character 0 for none Reserved for future use Default Directory Default Drive Bootup Option amp FF if RAM amp 00 if service call 3 Initialisation flag amp 12 if power
14. User Manual If the D option is used the Export will proceed from a Floppy Disk providing one is connected and a suitable Disk Interface installed The disk interface must be capable of obeying OSWORD amp 7F commands The DFS must be selected as the current filing system before you can EXPORT to a floppy disk or you will get an error message Disk System Not Selected The Q option will silence all output from the command and is useful in programs and menus where the track progress is not required With this option active a successful export will simply return with a prompt but any error will display as normal Any existing file on the USB storage drive will be overwritten if the same filename is given When exporting from floppy disk if a disk error is detected the system will return with either Disk Error Or Drive Error Depending on the fault detected RamFS will then fill the remaining bytes of the image with zeros and leave the file on the USB drive This is to allow you to rescue any data that may have been recovered from the floppy before the error was detected Page 42 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual FREE lt drive gt Purpose To display for the specified drive the number of files that can be added to the catalogue together with the amount of space used and left to be used in terms of sectors in hexadecimal and bytes in decimal Example FREE 31 Files 31E Sectors 204 288 Bytes
15. bit IDE capable port as opposed to the 8 bit interface of the first generation IDE CF kits This is still fully backwards compatible with the CF IDE kit but goes on to allow you access to the full range of IDE devices available such as PC and Archimedes Hard Drives and also CD and DVD ROMs With an appropriate adaptor you can also use SATA type drives giving access to even more modern connectivity All these 16 bit devices will require Page 6 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual their own driver software as the ADFS currently available for the BBC is still only an 8 bit filing system Another core use of DataCentre is as a Central Library for all your data and was one of the reasons chose the name of the board as did You can now take all your home brew floppy disks and image them onto the USB flash drive with ease using a single command If you prefer to edit them first you can transfer the data from floppy direct to one of the RAM drives change what you need then Export the data from there so there is never any need to play with the data directly on that fragile 25 year old disk As well as then being able to archive and back the data up quickly on a PC or upload your entire library to your website you now have a master archive from which to recreate floppies from your originals No need to wear out an original disk to make copies one at a time just use the image stored on the USB flash drive or an image on one of the R
16. directory gt This is used in the same way as the DOS command to navigate through directories Specifcy a directory after the command and the Host will move to that directory then issuing another DIR will show you the files and directories available there Two special directories are available once you navigate into a sub directory single dot Means the current directory and effectively does nothing as it keeps you in the same directory IT is included for compatibility two dots Means the parent directory so in effect takes you back one level in the directory structure So as an example of navigation D gt DIR GAMES SSD PROGRAMS SSD UTILS DIR Page 71 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual D gt CD UTILS D gt DIR UTILS1 SSD UTILS2 SSD D gt CD D gt DIR GAMES SSD PROGRAMS SSD UTILS DIR D gt FWV This returns the current firmware version of the USB Host controller This firmware maybe upgraded by the user as described in a Chapter 8 MKD lt directory gt This command will create a subdirectory which you can then store files in Ideal for separating out different images with different uses e g utilities games music etc DLD lt directory gt This command will delete a subdirectory The subdirectory in question must be empty before it can be deleted DLF lt filename gt Deleted the named file from the directory Useful if you have an error while creating a file or need
17. goes through the IDE interface will be in 8 bit mode But because the system is capable of 16 bit communication it opens up the door for fitting other IDE devices such as CD and DVD ROM drives and also being able to use other PC and Archimedes Hard drives directly Again full functionality for the 16 bit capability will rely on third party developers but it is fully backwards compatible and you can continue to use it as an 8 bit system along with the CF adaptors and existing kit some users may already have Page 80 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 11 Changing filing systems Your computer can have several filing systems available other than the RamFS Filing System The following commands are all used to exit from the current filing system into the one named TAPE3 300 baud cassette TAPE12 1200 baud cassette TAPE 1200 baud cassette NET Econet filing system if fitted TELESOFT The Prestel and Teletext system if fitted ROM The cartridge ROM system DISC or DISK Enters the Disk filing system if fitted RAM Enters the Ram filing system Typing the command to enter the system you are already in has no effect Page 81 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 12 Using the filing system in assembler Section 43 of the Advanced User Guide is essential reading for anyone wanting to write assembler programs on the BBC Microcomputer Most of the necessary information for using the filing system in assemb
18. however you can still save a machine code program you just need to call it manually Say for instance a program exists with the following data GAME 00001900 00003156 00002A32 008 You could save this on the USB Drive as SAVE 5 GAME 1900 2A32 When coming to run it you could use a small Basic loader program such as 10 OSCLI LOAD 5 GAME 1900 20 CALL amp 3156 SAVE 5 GAMELD OSCLI is a safe way of executing a command from Basic Refer to the BBC User Guide for more information on OSCLI Now to run your game automatically direct from the USB you simply type CHAIN 5 GAMELD And it should run The system effectively supports OSFILE commands amp FF and amp 00 for direct access to the USB Refer to the Advanced Reference guide for more information on OSFILE and the command supported The next two chapters describe the filing system and utility commands that RamFS responds to and give details on using Random Access Files After that we shall discuss the other commands available to DataCentre through the RamFS Page 24 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 5 The filing system commands The RAM Filing System is a 16K byte program BASIC programs can be stored on a disc tape or memory card but the filing system is stored in Read Only Memory ROM inside the BBC Microcomputer The filing system controls the reading and writing of information to and from the DataCentre RAM the NVRAM and the USB Flash Drive a
19. or automatically LOAD RUN or EXEC a file called BOOT which must be in the directory on the currently selected default drive Example OPT 4 0 does nothing OPT 4 1 will LOAD the file BOOT ie a machine code file OPT 4 2 will RUN the file BOOT ie a machine code file OPT 4 3 will EXEC the file BOOT ie a BASIC file When OPT 4 2 is set and a machine code program i e BOOT is executed it is important to remember that the interrupt flag is undefined unlike RUNning the program where the interrupt flag is cleared It is suggested that your machine code IBOOT files contain a CLI to clear the interrupt flag Notes RamFS will first search the currently selected default drive or drive O if this has not been changed for a valid BOOT file if this option is set If the option is disabled e g set to O then it will search drive 4 The NVRAM If the option O is set the BOOT file need not be there With any other option the message Not found or File not found is produced if IBOOT is not found in directory on the drive where the option is set If a valid BOOT file is located the default directory is changed to from whatever it was set to previously If no BOOT is located the default directory is left unchanged Page 53 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual RAM Purpose Activates the RAM Filing System and ensures all future actions use the RAM filing system by default Example RAM Associated c
20. the same type as those used by popular BBC Emulators and current programs such as Jon Welch s DFS Explorer They are SSD Single Side Drive DSD Double Side Drive IMG Image An IMG file and an SSD contain the entire contents of one side of a floppy disk that s the Programs Catalog and the Metadata the information that tells the computer where to load and execute the programs A DSD image is one that contains 2 sides of a floppy disk together so both sides can be loaded at once You will need to now locate some image files to put on your USB Drive The CD that comes with the kit has some samples for you to use in the SAMPLES directory or you can download your own from various sites on the internet Page 19 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Take a few of these files and copy them to the root directory of your USB Drive either by saving them there when you download them or dragging them across from the CD Once you have about half a dozen or so we can proceed to load them up on the Beeb Fire up your Beeb and make sure that RamFS is active You can activate it if it is not the default filing system by either holding down the R key when you do a lt CTRL gt lt BREAK gt or typing RAM If you try and catalog any of the Drives 0 3 at this point you ll notice that they are blank and pre formatted as if they were each an 80 track single density floppy of 320 sectors in length The System automatically formats
21. to clear unwanted files or images from your USB Drive You need to specify the exact filename including extension or you may get a Command Failed error message Page 72 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Commands can also be sent to the monitor one at a time without having to have the monitor active For example we can issue a DIR command by using DIR Or move to the GAMES subdirectory on the USB drive by CD GAMES Or delete a specific file DLF UTILS SSD This is useful for manipulating through the directory structure of a USB drive without having to enter the monitor every time Note that in Mode 7 on a BBC the character looks like a gt Right hand Arrow character If any command gets stuck you can use ESCAPE to exit from it There are a few small instances where a command may get stuck because either something has crashed or you have asked for some data from the USB drive and the system is unable to process it or you may have loaded a file into a critical part in the computer s memory In this instance the only way around the problem maybe to do a lt CTRL gt lt BREAK gt Doing a lt CTRL gt lt BREAK gt or even a regular BREAK always sends a reset to the USB Host controller This means that after any Break the USB system will be reset to the main root directory and will need a few seconds to initialise after a command is given before file transfer can begin BBC Master Temporary Filing
22. AM drives to make quick multiple copies of your disks Testing with a 1772 Disk interface and a modern drive running at the default speed you can Import or Export the entire contents of a single side of an 80 track drive in around 22 seconds much quicker than a disc to disc copy that would be necessary otherwise Finally the USB port is not just for use with USB flash drives it is a fully featured USB 2 0 device and can host virtually any USB peripheral you care to plug into it As with any USB device software is required to drive it and this is the same for the Beeb so don t expect to plug your DVB receiver in and get BBC 1 in Mode 7 immediately because that s not going to happen until someone decides to write some driver software for it But interfacing almost any device is possible and some notes on the communication protocols for the USB Host device are described in a later chapter in this manual As well as a USB Host port VDPS boards also have a USB slave port This is a USB B type socket and with this you can connect the DataCentre direct to your PC using the supplied USB A B cable Once connected drivers will need to be installed as described in Chapter 9 then the slave port can communicate with the PC one of two ways either directly through API calls or as a virtual COM port You can also connect to HyperTerminal on the PC and use that for bi directional communications Page7 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual
23. K command as well as RAM so when a program issues a DISK the Ram Filing system accepts that to Page 69 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual ensure it is still active RamFS will also lie when it is asked for its Filing System ID with DiskTrap active Normally it will respond with 12 but a Disk Filing System has an ID of 4 and this is what will be reported when this command is active Once last thing DiskTrap does is to capture most calls made through OSWORD amp 7F and process them as if it were a Disk Details on OSWORD calls can be found in Chapter 12 or in the Advanced User Guide These three things combined serve to fool the program into thinking it is still on a Disk Filing system so most programs will continue and not know any difference DTRAP Is a toggle command Use it once to turn the DiskTrap feature on and again to turn it off When used the machine will be automatically rebooted Some co processors do not respond correctly to the reboot command and may need to be reset manually with a lt CTRL gt lt BREAK gt after a DTRAP has been issued and if active a yellow DT message will appear after RamFS which will now be the default filing system The system will remember that DiskTrap is active even if a program wipes the BBCs main memory This is because the flag used to identify the status of DiskTrap is stored in the DataCentre RAM not on the main RAM of the BBC MONITOR and The MONITOR com
24. L Turns off the spooling and closes the file called FRED Associated commands BUILD EXEC LIST TYPE Notes BASIC on the BBC Microcomputer is tokenised This means that the lines which you type in your program are abbreviated inside the computer s memory and on the RAMdisc A program file will contain these abbreviated tokens rather than your original program text Page 59 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual TITLE lt disc name gt Purpose Changes the title of the RAMdisc in the current drive to the first 12 characters after the command It fills in with spaces if there are less than 12 characters Any characters are allowed Example TITLE MY DISC This sets the title to MY DISC with five spaces added on the end TITLE A DIFFERENT TITLE This changes the title to A DIFFERENT Anything after the first 12 characters is ignored The quotation marks are only required if the title includes spaces Page 60 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual TYPE lt fsp gt Purpose Displays a text file on the screen without line numbers Example TYPE HELLO Associated commands LIST DUMP Notes BASIC programs are not stored on the RAMdisc as text files when you SAVE them so this command will display nonsense if you try to display a BASIC program Page mode is selected with lt CTRL gt N and turned off by lt CTRL gt O Page mode allows you to see a screenfull of text at a time When the screen has fil
25. Page 75 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 8 Updating the Firmware As time goes on FTDI the company that produces the Vinculum chip will supply updates to the chips firmware These updates may be applied by the user if you feel they will be of benefit If the system is working fine as it is then the old adage If it ain t broke then don t try to fix it is always a good one to stand by as whilst Firmware Updates are usually very reliable there is always the off chance that something will go wrong and render your DataCentre board unusable in which case you will need to return it to me for repair However if you feel the need for an update this is how it s done Firstly you will need to go to the Vinculum website and download the latest version of Firmware This is currently located at http www vinculum com downloads html vfirmware The version you need will be dependent on what type of board you have so make sure you download the VDPS or VDAP version as per the label on your board You must also use the Reflash FTD version and NOT the Bootloader ROM version Once you have that file it will be called something like ftrfb_main_03_68VDPS ftd This file must be renamed to ftrfb ftd And then placed in the root directory of a USB Flash drive that you are going to use with your system Now on the Beeb power it up but do not plug the USB drive in yet Make sure RamFS is the default filing system by issuing a
26. Systems RamFS Also supports the Temporary Filing System supported by the BBC Master OS 3 20 onwards Commands such as this MOVE DISK 0 UTILPRG RAM 0 UTIULPRG Are supported Please read the Master User Guide for more information on this function Page 73 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Library Commands A few commands also available are not stored on the RamFS filing system ROM but have been pre loaded onto the NVRAM Drive for use as library commands We shall go through these now RCOPY lt src type gt lt src drv gt lt dest type gt lt dest drv gt This command allows you to copy between RAM and Floppy drive directly without having to use the USB system So for instance if you wanted to copy the floppy that is in drive 0 onto the RAM drive 0 you would use the command RCOPY DORO The D in the command line stands for Disk and the R for RAM Similarly to copy the Ram drive 3 to Floppy drive 2 RCOPY R3D2 Any floppy copied onto must be formatted first or an error will result You cannot use this command to copy Disk to Disk or RAM to RAM use the BACKUP command for the appropriate filing system to do that This command does not require the Disk Filing System to be the current filing system but it must at some point have been initialised with DISK or be in a higher priority socket so that it boots up first If using the system on a Master 128 with MOS 3 50 the DFS will not respond if it is not sele
27. a bit sent and not NVRAM Data bit NVRAM Clock Pulse this clock for each bit to be written read from NVRAM NVRAM Write Protect Issue 1 boards only When set high NVRAM is protected Not implemented on Issue 2 boards use JP3 on PCB for write protect PAGE RAM MSB MSB 4 bits of page ram register ADR16 ADR19 of SRAM IC This register does not have feedback PAGE RAM LSB LSB 8 bits of page ram register ADR8 ADR15 of SRAM IC This register has feedback and can be read to check contents and can use the INC etc command Jumper Settings J1 Power 1 N C 2 GND 3 GND 4 5v J2 Aux connections All LED outputs have current limiting resistors on the main PCB GND OMNAMNAWNE Av Supply to Dual CF Adaptors Power LED Cathode Power LED Anode IDE Activity LED Cathode IDE Activity LED Anode USB Port 1 LED Cathode USB Port 1 LED Anode USB Port 2 LED Cathode 10 USB Port 2 LED Anode Page 86 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual JP1 Closed Supply 5v to Power pin 20 JP2 Closed IDE Interrupt to CPLD Not supported in JTAG 1 01 JP3 Closed NVRAM Write Protect PCB Layout DataCentre Issue 2 PCB Power e amp Aux Power 16 Bit IDE NVRAM Write Protect DataCentre RamFS Memory MAP amp 00000 Start of Memory ADFS Workspace Allocated for future use amp 01000 Drive 0 Storage amp 33000 End of Drive 0 Storage Reserved for future use amp 40000 Reserved for RamFS String
28. accurately to the start of the first sector in the free space e Transfers a copy of your program from the RAM to the disc e Stops the disc drive All this is done without you having to think about it and is quite a bit quicker than saving a program on to a cassette tape When you save a program you have to give it a name This is true for the disc system as well as the cassette system However the Disc Filing System puts the name to special use The first two sectors on every disc are reserved for a catalogue when the disc is formatted The name of your program referred to as a file name is written into the catalogue together with the number of the sector on the disc where the information starts Note it may continue over several sectors When you want the file containing your program back again you simply type LOAD filename The filing system checks the catalogue to find out where on the disc to find the file and then moves the read write head to that exact place on the disc Page 10 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual The file is then loaded into the computer s memory RAM automatically This illustrates another advantage of a disc drive The read write head can be quickly moved to any point on the disc with great accuracy Incidentally the precision engineering needed to accomplish this explains why disc drives used to cost so much more than cassette recorders Now with everything including the kitchen sink being made in C
29. ad and run the BASIC program automatically Page 40 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual EXPORT lt opt gt lt filename gt Purpose To Export a disk image from either a floppy disk or a RAM Drive onto the USB storage drive Example EXPORT GAMES SSD Exports the contents of the default RAM drive onto the USB storage drive inserted using the filename GAMES SSD EXPORT D13 PROGRAMS DSD Exports both sides of the contents of the floppy disk in drive 1 using Drive 1 as the first side and Drive 3 as the second to the USB storage drive using the filename PROGRAMS DSD Associated commands IMPORT DISK Notes Valid options are Drives 0 3 D and Q and must be preceded by a If no drive is specified the system will Export a single side from the default RAM drive which was previously selected with DRIVE lt drv gt or Drive 0 if no previous drive was selected Using the option will override the default drive and Export from the drive s specified You cannot EXPORT from Drives 4 or 5 so you will get an error message if you try If two drives are given in the option a Double Sided Interleave Format image is created commonly known as a DSD It is usual to Export these types of images from opposing sides of the same drive as would be the case in a Disk System IE O and 2 or 1 and 3 but with RamFS you can specify any drive in any order for the Export Page 41 RetroClinic DataCentre
30. age 66 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual X OPENOUT cinemas Y OPENOUT clubs The statements reserve 32K 128 sectors consecutively if the RAMdisc was otherwise empty It may be that you require more than 64 sectors for the first file cinemas If so you will need to write dummy records to the file to extend it to the required length before you open the second file e g 10 X OPENOUT cinemas 20 FOR A 1 TO 200 30 PRINT X DUMMY NAME FIELD 40 PRINT X DUMMY ADDRESS LINE ONE 50 PRINT X DUMMY ADDRESS LINE TWO 60 PRINT X ADDRESS LINE THREE 70 PRINT X POST CODE 123 80 NEXT A This program creates a file 79 sectors long with the dummy name and address written every 100 bytes By writing beyond the reserved area in this way you can effectively reserve as many sectors as you like You can then open other files in the remaining space on the RAMdisc EXT will give the position of the 3 after the last dummy address on the file 20000 The above method will only work consistently if you start with an empty RAMdisc If you want to create a random access file larger than 64 sectors on a RAMdisc with other files already on it there is another method First save the file with the name you want and with the number of bytes required Use the address parameters of the SAVE command to specify the number of bytes e g SAVE DATA 00000 08000 Will create a file of 128 sectors 32K called DATA Y
31. alogue shows the drive number the title of the disc the currently set auto start option of the RAMdisc and the currently selected library and directory The files are displayed in alphabetical order Not for Drive 5 reading across the columns A catalog can be generated from the USB drive directly using the USB Monitor by issuing the command DIR This is explained in more detail in Chapter 7 Associated commands INFO ACCESS TITLE OPT 4 n DIR DRIVE EX DIR Page 29 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual COMPACT lt drv gt Purpose Attempting to SAVE a program or file on to a RAMdisc may produce the message Disk full if there is no single space available on the RAMdisc big enough for the information It may be that there is enough space but it is split into several small sections This command appends all spare space on the RAMdisc to the end of the available memory When you delete a number of files the spaces they had occupied will probably be distributed over the RAMdisc with current files in between them COMPACT moves all current files to the start of the RAM occupied by that drive leaving the space in one continuous block at the end Example COMPACT 1 HELLO FFFF1700 FFFF801F 0003B 002 SUMS FFFF1700 FFFF801F 00098 003 As compacting proceeds all the current files are displayed in the order in which they occur on the RAMdisc Notes This facility will only do anything if there is spac
32. by the operating system and processed by calling OSFSC with A 10 hence this call has been added OSWORD with A amp 7F and amp 77 Call address at amp FFF1 A amp 7F indicates that a general read write operation is required to the floppy disc This remains unchanged A amp 77 does the same process as amp 7F but using the RAMdisc instead It is valid for Drives 0 4 so that includes the NVRAM Drive but not the USB Only Commands amp 53 to read and amp 4B to write are supported in RamFS On entry X low byte and Y high byte point to the instruction block Offset pB 4 0 Drive number IRE suas Vn ee RAM EU GA EUER Start address in memory of source or ns destination of the data 5 Number of parameters zT 4 6 i Command n 4 7 i Parameters onwards Eun a cu mami o sic ELI E Page 83 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Example Number of parameters 3 Command amp 53 to read or amp 4B to write Parameter 1 Track number Parameter 2 Sector number Parameter 3 amp 21 specifies sector length of 256 bytes and 1 to be acted upon Parameter 3 can be between amp 21 for 1 sector and amp 2A for 10 sectors IE a full track Do not use numbers outside this range as this may cause data corruption On exit 0 in the last parameter address 1 indicates a successful transfer On a disc system a failure is indicated by a di
33. cted so in this case you must use the command as follows for instance RAM 4 RCOPY R3D0 USBMSE This is a short demonstration program written in Basic which allows you to connect a USB type mouse to the system and draw pictures on the screen Not particularly useful for budding artists but it shows how to access the mouse as a generic HID device Other utilities may be supplied that were created after this manual was printed Please refer to any documentation that came with those Page 74 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Restoring the NVRAM Drive If you accidentally corrupt the NVRAM drive or delete some of the supplied library files and need to restore it to as it was shipped it s possible to do this In the Samples directory on the utility CD is an image called NVREST SSD Put this onto the root directory of your USB storage drive then plug it into DataCentre and import it RAM DRIVE 0 IMPORT NVREST SSD Once imported you can lt SHIFT gt lt R gt lt BREAK gt to run the utilitiy It will ask for you to confirm that you want to proceed to which you must reply with YES in capital letters Once confirmed it will prompt you to again press Y to begin the procedure Allow the program to run which will first Format the NVRAM drive then copy and organise the basic utilities and library files onto it The process takes about 45 seconds and once complete you will get a printout of the catalog
34. ctory name gt lt filename gt protection attribute load address execution address length in bytes start sector number Example EX Might give BOOT L FF1900 FF8023 00003B 205 MENU L FF1900 FF1900 000332 008 EX 1 D Might give D ROB FF1900 FF8023 000695 07B D WORK 000000 000000 000015 2A9 If no lt drv gt or lt dir gt is given the currently selected directory and drive is examined Associated commands CAT INFO Page 39 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual EXEC lt fsp gt execute Purpose This command reads byte by byte all the information in a named file as if it was being typed on the keyboard This is useful when you find that you are repeatedly typing the same sequence of commands Instead you can build an EXEC file consisting of all these commands and type EXEC lt fsp gt each time you want this sequence of commands BUILD lt fsp gt is an associated command used to create an EXEC file Example EXEC HELLO takes the contents of file HELLO and reads it one character at a time as if it was being typed at the keyboard Associated commands BUILD Notes One useful application of the EXEC command is in association with the autostart facilities described in Chapter 3 and in the section on OPT 4 in this chapter If you create a BOOT file containing the BASIC keyword CHAIN followed by the file name of one of your BASIC programs the effect of pressing lt SHIFT gt lt BREAK gt will be to lo
35. current Ram Drive O if you have not changed it and create an image of that data You can only use up to 8 characters for the filename as described above would recommend using the accepted extensions for images in this case SSD although the system will allow you to use any three letters the image may then not get recognised by other programs on the PC that use it such as emulators The same is true for double sided disks and for floppies The EXPORT command uses the same format for options as the IMPORT one so for example to create a double sided image from the floppy disk in drive O the command would be DISK EXPORT D02 DBLDISK DSD Page 22 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Again using your filename in place of DBLDISK Double sided images must always be 80 track and 320 sectors Anything else may cause corruption If you have an 80 and 40 track image on opposite sides of a floppy use SSDs to create one image for each side The IMPORT and EXPORT commands have one more option available which is Q When used this option will suppress all output from the commands and make them quiet rather than their default of verbose The operation will still proceed but will just return with a prompt unless an error occurs This is useful if you are programming your own menu and want to load images up without disturbing the current screen Loading and Saving direct to USB The USB storage device as we have already seen
36. difficult to find them again To solve this problem people usually put dividers into a filing cabinet drawer and often these are labelled alphabetically The result is that the information is grouped so that you can find it again quickly The same principle is followed when the computer puts information on to a disc When you first buy discs they are blank like empty drawers Before the computer can put any information on them the discs must first be prepared by having marks put on them which divide the discs into sectors A sector is the name given to a set of equal divisions created on the disc by the computer This operation is called formatting What the disc drive does When you insert the disc into the disc drive and close the drive door a rotating boss engages with the central hole in the disc and spins the magnetic disc inside its protective jacket In order to read or write information on to the disc the disc drive has a read write head This head is designed to move in and out along the head slot in the disc jacket This head actually rests on the surface of the magnetic disc as it rotates inside the jacket When you want to read some of the information on the disc you give the computer the name of the file containing that information The computer will move the read write head to the sector on the disc where the start of the information in the named file is recorded This is equivalent to you opening the filing cabinet drawer
37. disc The space occupied by the file becomes available for other information Succeeding file names in the catalogue are shuffled up but not the files themselves Once a file is deleted you cannot get it back again Example DELETE FRED Removes a file called FRED from the current directory on the current drive Associated commands WIPE DESTROY COMPACT Notes If the file is not found in the directory the message Not found Is displayed If the file is locked the message Locked Appears Once deleted a file cannot be restored Page 32 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual DESTROY lt afsp gt Purpose To remove specified files from the RAMdisc in a single action This command may take the ambiguous file specification so that groups of files can be deleted When you use this command a list of the files to be deleted is displayed A single Yes No question appears at the end of the list offering you the choice to go ahead and delete all the listed files or not Use this command with care because its effect is not reversible It will not attempt to remove locked files See ACCESS Example ENABLE DESTROY H A HELLO HELLO Delete Y N If you type Y in reply to the question all the named files will be deleted The message Deleted Is displayed when the job is done Typing anything else cancels the command Associated commands ENABLE WIPE DELETE Notes Once destroyed files cannot b
38. e between the files There will only be such space if a file has been deleted from between two others Compacting a RAMdisc happens slightly faster if you select mode 7 beforehand but is still very fast compared to the same operation on Floppy Disc Warning This command may overwrite the contents of memory If you have a program or data in memory that you want to keep save it before you use this command Page 30 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual COPY lt source drv gt lt dest drv gt lt afsp gt Purpose To copy a named file or files from one RAMdisc to another Example COPY 0 1 HELLO This copies a file called HELLO in the current directory on RAMdisc Drive O onto RAMdisc Drive 1 Associated commands BACKUP Notes The wild card facilities may be used to specify a group of files to be copied e g COPY 0 1 4 MY Copies all files beginning MY irrespective of which directory they are in Information already on the destination disc is not affected You can copy between Drives 0 3 and the NVRAM drive 4 but not to Drive 5 the USB In order to copy an individual file to the USB you must load it and save it manually Warning This command may overwrite the contents of memory If you have a program or data in memory that you want to keep save it before you use this command Page 31 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual DELETE lt fsp gt Purpose To remove a single named file from the catalogue of a RAM
39. e correct lt afsp gt The wild card facilities and may be used if you want information about a group of files Page 47 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual LIB lt drv gt lt dir gt Selects the library Purpose Sets the library to the specified drive and directory The default library and drive is always set to 4 to allow command utilities to be stored on the NVRAM Drive Example LIB 1 A sets the library to drive 1 directory A After this typing lt filename gt Will search directory A on drive 1 for the named file and if it is found the file will be loaded and executed just as if you had typed RUN 1 A filename Associated commands RUN Notes The library can contain files which are utility programs designed to act on other files e g sorts edits and merges are all common utility programs It is then possible to say SORT FRED Where SORT is the name of the file in the library and FRED is the name of another file in the current drive and directory This makes use of the fact that any text after the fsp is stored in memory and is available to your machine code program for interpretation A pointer to the start address of this text is available to your program via a call to OSARGS with Y 0 A 1 and X the address of the byte block in page O where the text is stored To read the text stored at this location you must use a call to OSWORD with A 5 Page 48 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual
40. e restored ENABLE must be typed before the command will work otherwise the system will ask you Go Y N You must reply with a Y to this otherwise the message Not enabled is displayed Page 33 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual DIR lt dir gt Set current directory Purpose To change the current directory to lt dir gt After a cold start the current directory is always set to To save files in a different directory in the catalogue you must use this command to change the current directory to the one you want and then SAVE them Example DIR A This sets the current directory to A You now have access to any files in directory A in the catalogue Any files now saved using SAVE or BASIC s SAVE command will be in directory A Notes Directory can be set to any character except these four exceptions This command does not alter the directories written in the catalogue It merely states which directory in the catalogue you have access to by default You can change drive at the same time and this takes the form DIR lt drv gt lt dir gt So if the current drive is drive 0 and the current directory is then DIR 2 A Will set the drive to 2 and the directory to A Alternatively you can set the drive separately using the DIR command DIR 2 Page 34 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual DRIVE lt drv gt Set current drive Purpose Changes the current drive to lt drv gt Any commands which fo
41. ed disk images you can specify any drive for each side as will be explained later Drive 5 is used to access the USB Flash Drive Not all functions of the RamFS filing system are available on the USB drive as it also performs other special functions You can SAVE and LOAD directly to Drive 5 but for other filing system housekeeping you need to use special commands that are described in Chapter 7 under the MONITOR command section The effect of including the drive number in the full specification is that 1 MYPROG is different from 2 MYPROG Although the file names are the same they are on different drives Page 14 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Directories The directory is a single character used to divide the catalogue into independent sections Files of the same name can be created on the same RAMdisc with different directories Although on the same drive 1 MYPROG is a different file from 1 A MYPROG because the directory is different File names The file name can be up to seven of most of the characters on the keyboard in any combination except as we mentioned earlier When we need to refer to the complete file specification in future we will use the abbreviation fsp Typing SAVE MYPROG Will automatically store your program in a file named 0 MYPROG Assuming you have not changed the current drive and directory Multi file operations Another common term used to refer to
42. ed to play with the configuration settings on HyperTerminal for instance the Communication settings need to be the default of 9600 8 N 1 This is the limit of connectivity included with the basic system It is up to third parties to develop software to utilise this feature Port 2 on the system can take virtually any USB device that has been invented but as with any USB device drivers are also needed RamFS along with the host firmware on the USB chip handles USB flash and hard drives which are formatted with the FAT16 or FAT32 file system Other devices will require their own drivers Some demonstration programs are included on the utilities disk supplied for connecting other devices to the USB port NOTE After rigorous testing of the slave port in various configurations have found that very infrequently if a USB flash drive is left in port 2 at the same time as port 1 is being used as a slave then the flash drive may get corrupted For maximum security remove any flash drive from the system whilst using the slave port Page 79 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 10 The IDE Interface The IDE interface included on the DataCentre board is a fully functional 16 bit interface This is in contrast to the 8 bit only interface that supply with the CF Interface Kit or is available from some other vendors The BBC is an 8 bit computer and so are its filing systems including the ADFS which makes use of it So currently any access which
43. en developed over the best part of a year and comes designed not only for ease of use for the novice user but for maximum flexibility for those with the experience The philosophy behind the DataCentre system was fourfold 1 To make the transfer of programs and data between the PC and the BBC as easy as possible 2 To provide a USB interface that is capable of connecting to any USB device on the market with the correct driver software 3 To provide an upgrade path for users who have the original RetroClinic IDE CF Interface System 4 To make a Central Library system to allow users to copy duplicate and archive their entire floppy collection For 1 had examined many of the current storage solutions on the marketplace for the Beeb and there are quite a few Not only my own CF IDE interface but others for Page 5 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual MMC cards as well of varying complexity and ease of use One thing these all have in common is that they need some sort of Transfer Software on the PC side some sort of extra step before the data can be used on the BBC wanted to create a system that didn t need that extra level of complexity something where you could simply download your data and put it on your Beeb without any fuss or hassle of using complex and unreliable software to manipulate the images think I ve achieved that with the DataCentre system In essence you simply use any USB storage drive of a
44. he information even with the power off so you can come back later and import that virtual image back into your RAM drive More information on how this works and how to do it is explained in Chapter 4 Page 12 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 3 RAM Disc files Probably the first thing you will want to do with the filing system is to save one of your programs to it You can do this simply by using the SAVE command in BASIC and the filing system takes care of the rest Note Not to be confused with SAVE described later in this manual When you have typed the program into the computer the SAVE command causes it to be copied from the computer s internal memory onto the RAM on the DataCentre board When saved the program must be given a name This is called the file name and is used to identify the program when you want to copy it back from the RAMdisk into the computer s memory Each program saved onto the same drive must be given a unique name The format of the SAVE command is SAVE filename where filename can be up to seven characters Letters and digits are allowed The characters have special meanings which are explained later The file name is written into the catalogue together with the sector number where the information starts Next time you refer to the file name the filing system checks the catalogue to see where the information has been placed and the old file is deleted and replaced by the new one The fil
45. hey are preceded by two bytes represented in the diagram by t and I t specifies the type of data which follows In this case the type is string so the first byte will contain amp 00 in hex as indicated in the table below t amp 00 String type followed by T followed by the string t amp 40 Integer type followed by four bytes containing the integer t amp FF Real type followed by five bytes containing the real number In our example the second byte represented by l gives the length of the string in hex The integer and real number types are of fixed length as indicated above so they do not require the byte represented by l to give the length Real numbers are stored in exponential format integers are stored with the high order bytes first in the file In the example we have used only the first 26 bytes of the file so everything written to the file fits into the first sector which is in a buffer in memory If we had gone on writing names the filing system would eventually have move the information in the memory buffer to sector 02 of the RAMdisc and load sector 03 into the buffer to continue This is still assuming that there are no other files on the drive otherwise different sectors would be used Remember that sectors 00 and 01 are reserved by RamFS for the disc catalogue Clearly then at the end of a sequence of writing actions we are left with a buffer in memory which may be partly filled with info
46. hina it all costs pennies Because of this accuracy a number of other facilities are available besides loading and saving programs These include the ability to copy delete build and rename files Additional facilities let you examine a disc catalogue restrict access to files or move directly to specific points within a file As a final comparison imagine an automatic filing cabinet where to find something all you have to do is specify the name of a document and paragraph number within it The filing cabinet drawer opens the correct divider is selected the document is located and then presented to you open at the appropriate page Controlling the filing system The filing system controls the storage medium be that a disc drive or in our case a RAM drive and we must be able to give instructions to the filing system Two ways are provided One is by typing a character followed by a special command Any of these direct commands can be incorporated in a program if required Commands used to control the RAM Filing system are described in Chapter 5 Differences between a Disc and RAM Filing System The DataCentre board has its own RAM separate from the main computer The BBC Model B will have 32K the B 64K or 128K and the Master also has 128K The DataCentre board has its own 1 Megabyte of RAM that s 1024K that can be used and accessed by the computer in various ways In a RAM Filing System this 1 Megabyte of memory is used to
47. igurations The first and most commonly used will be with one USB host port and one slave port This is called a VDPS system The host port with a USB A type connector is known as port 2 to the system This is where you can plug your USB devices into The slave port is port 1 This has a USB B type connector and can be used to connect the BBC directly to a PC via the USB interface We will go over a brief outline of how to use the slave port in a moment but more information can be found in the Vinculum Firmware datasheet supplied on the CD The other version of DataCentre will have 2 USB type A connectors and is known as a VDAP system It simply allows you to connect 2 devices directly without having to go through a hub but does not have the slave port function You cannot use a hub when connecting USB storage devices they must be attached directly to Port 2 So if you wanted to use many other devices at the same time the VDAP system is better suited for that purpose We will discuss the VDPS version here The DataCentre kit comes with two USB cables One is a USB A Plug to USB A socket this is used to extend the Port 2 host socket so when the board is fitted internally you can still connect devices to it easily The other is a USB A plug to USB B plug it is this one we will use now The USB Slave Port Plug the B type end into Port 1 on the DataCentre and plug the other end into a USB socket on your PC Before we can communicate we m
48. ing system ensures that each new file begins in a free spot and doesn t overwrite any space that s being used by something else File specifications The full specification for a file is Drive number Directory File name lt drv gt lt dir gt lt filename gt e g 1 Z MYPROG1 Page 13 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Notice the drive number directory and file name are separated by full stops These are needed so that the computer can distinguish the separate parts of the file specification Drive numbers Drive numbers for the 4 virtual discs must be in the range O0 to 3 and preceded by a colon The colon tells the computer This is the start of a file specification the drive number follows On RamFS two additional drives are available 4 and 5 Drive 4 is a non volatile RAMdisk which can be used the same as any of the other drives O 3 but it has some limitations It is only around 62K in size and cannot be imaged in the same way as the other 4 drives It is also slower to access than the other RAM disks However its main advantage is that it is non volatile This means that it keeps its data even with the computer switched off so is useful for commonly used utilities or for saving programs you re regularly working on The drives are numbered in the same way as for a Disc Filing system but you do not need to think of Drive 2 being the opposite side of Drive O for instance as when using double sid
49. le A AB FREDA PGRAM1 etc INFO gives information on all files in all directories Take a look at the EX command which is related to INFO It gives similar results but takes different arguments and can be more useful for tracking the information on groups of directories or drives Page 16 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Auto start facilities Sometimes it is useful to make a program or a file on one of your images LOAD RUN or EXEC automatically when you Import the image and press lt SHIFT gt and lt BREAK gt This can be done using a file named BOOT BOOT is a special file name recognised by the filing system when you start the computer by pressing lt SHIFT gt lt BREAK gt If there is a file of specification x BOOT Where x is the currently selected default drive The filing system will do one of four things according to the option set on the disc using OPT 4 n see later chapter e Option 0 ignores BOOT e Option 1 LOADs IBOOT into memory e Option 2 RUNs BOOT as a machine code program not a BASIC program e Option 3 EXECs IBOOT See Chapter 5 The filing system commands under the section EXEC for an explanation of option 3 That section also describes how to use this auto start facility to make the computer run one of your BASIC programs automatically The options can be changed using the OPT 4 command On the RamFS the system will first check for a BOOT file on the currently se
50. le which is locked you will not be able to save it again with the same name This is because saving a file with the same name as one already on the RAMdisc causes the one on the RAMdisc to be deleted and replaced with the new file A locked file cannot be deleted Example ACCESS HELLO L This locks the file HELLO ACCESS HELLO Unlocks it again so that it can be deleted or overwritten Notes Once locked a file will not be affected by the following commands SAVE DELETE WIPE RENAME DESTROY If you attempt to use any of these commands on a locked file the message Locked Is produced Important Locking a file does not prevent it from being removed from a RAMdisc with IMPORT or from being overwritten with BACKUP Page 26 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual BACKUP source drv dest drv Purpose To read all the information on one RAMdisc and write it to another producing two RAMdiscs with identical information Example ENABLE BACKUP O 1 Copies all the information on drive O onto drive 1 Associated commands COPY ENABLE Notes ENABLE must be typed before the command will work otherwise the system will ask you Go Y N You must reply with a Y to this otherwise the message Not enabled is displayed You cannot backup a RAMdisc onto itself so the command BACKUP O O Will result in an error being displayed All information previously on the destination RAMdisc is overwritten so be careful
51. lected Drive in the S directory and if found will take the appropriate action If it does not find one either because it s simply not there or because the computer has just been turned on and the RAM disk is blank then it will look for a BOOT file on the NVRAM drive 4 and take the appropriate action there if the option on that drive has been set This is useful to allow the computer to auto start from just being turned on and take a set of steps and load programs and disk images that you regularly use As well as programs you may wish to store data on the RAMdiscs The filing system provides facilities for storing and retrieving the data quickly and selectively under the control of your programs One of the methods is to use a type of file called a random access file see Chapter 6 for more details Page 17 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Library directory The RamFS Filing System enables you to specify one drive directory as the library This will always be set to 4 when you start the computer It can be altered using the filing system command LIB All the utility programs should be located in the library This is because when you type lt utility name gt it is equivalent to typing RUN lt utility name gt Where the drive and directory are omitted and will be assumed to be either the current drive directory or the library As long as the lt utility name gt is not a built in command recognised by RamFS or o
52. led up instead of immediately scrolling the computer waits until you press the lt SHIFT gt key The next screenfull then appears Page 61 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual WIPE lt fsp gt Purpose Removes specified files from the catalogue and rearranges the catalogue This command differs from DESTROY in that it asks for confirmation that each file conforming to the specification is to be deleted rather than a whole list of files at once Example WIPE SU is a request to delete all files on the current drive beginning with the letters SU As each file is found the file name is displayed like this A SUM At this point only type Y if you want to delete the file Typing anything else leaves the file intact Associated commands DESTROY DELETE Notes Once deleted using WIPE a file cannot be restored Locked files are not removed See ACCESS Page 62 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 6 Random access files One of the major advantages of a disc filing system over a cassette tape is that the read write head of the disc drive can be moved to a specific place on the disc quickly and accurately A RAM filing system goes one step further as it has no read write heads and can access any portion of the data at any time without having to wait for heads to step into the right place This is one reason why RAM filing systems are so much quicker than their disc counterparts Imagine you have a data file o
53. ler is presented there In this chapter only the main differences between the DFS Filing System and the RamFS filing system will be mentioned The main points are summarised and a particular use of OSWORD is described in detail OSARGS This routine enables a file s attributes to be read from file or written to file The routine is entered at amp FFDA and indirects via amp 214 Some functions have changed with Y 0 They are A 0 will return in A the type of file system in use The value of A on exit has the following significance 0 No file system 1 1200 baud cassette file system 2 300 baud cassette file system 3 ROM file system 4 Disc file system or RamFS with DiskTrap active 5 Econet file system 6 Teletext Prestel Telesoftware file system 12 RamFS Filing System unless DiskTrap active A 1 will return the address of the rest of the command line in the zero page locations A 3 will read the LibFS same action as A 0 A 4 will read the used space on the currently selected RAMdisc A 5 will read the free space on the currently selected RAMdisc Page 82 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual OSFSC A 9 will process the EX command This is implemented through the OS on the BBC Master OS 3 20 and it is the MOS that makes this call In OS 1 20 the EX command is implemented manually A 10 will process the INFO command INFO is processed directly with OS 1 20 but on a BBC Master with OS 3 20 it is caught
54. llow will work on lt drv gt until another drive is specified Example DRIVE 1 Sets the current drive to 1 and CAT Will produce a catalogue of drive 1 CAT 0 Will catalogue drive 0 but the current drive is still drive 1 until you change it back to O or after a power on start Description Sets the current drive and leaves the current directory unchanged Page 35 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual DTRAP Toggle DiskTrap Function Purpose To allow the RamFS to take over the computer and pretend to be a regular Disk Filing System Example DTRAP Activates or deactivates the DiskTrap function Associated commands RAM DISK DISC Notes DTRAP is a toggle command Use it once to turn the DiskTrap feature on and again to turn it off When used the machine will be automatically rebooted and if active a yellow DT message will appear after RamFS which will now be the default filing system This powerful command allows the RamFS to effectively hijack your system and pretend to be a Disk Filing System When active all other ROMs apart from Basic and RamFS are disabled and the DISK DISC commands are trapped by RamFS and interpreted as RAM so any software that issues these commands should think it s in a DFS environment The Filing system ID is also adjusted to mimic a DFS and is returned as 4 instead of 12 Also OSWORD amp 7F calls are intercepted and claimed as if they were amp 77
55. looking along the dividers until you find the one you want and then preparing to remove the relevant file for reading At this point it is worth noting that your files may be too large to fit into the fixed size of one sector This is no problem A file always begins in a new sector but may occupy a number of sectors following the first Each sector can hold up to 256 characters or bytes Page 9 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Disc Filing System The main disadvantage of using a cassette recorder to store information is that you have to control the cassette recorder and keep track of the information on it When using a disc this is all done for you by the Disc Filing System The Disc Filing System is a machine code program produced by the computer manufacturer On the BBC Microcomputer it is stored in a special kind of memory inside the computer called Read Only Memory or ROM The program is not lost when you switch the computer off Once installed it is always there All the actions of the disc drive are controlled by the computer using this program When you prepare new discs by formatting them this is done by the Disc Filing System When you SAVE one of your BASIC programs the Disc Filing System does the following e Starts the disc drive working e Finds a free place on the disc big enough for your program e Makes a note of where it put your program so as to be able to find it again e Moves the disc drive s read write head
56. machine code programs Example SAVE PROG SSSS FFFF EEEE RRRR SAVE PROG SSSS LLLL EEEE RRRR SSSS Start address of memory to be saved FFFF Finish address EEEE Execution address see below RRRR Reload address LLLL Length of information Notes RRRR and EEEE may be omitted in which case the reload address and the execution address are assumed to be the same as the start address If enough space is available the information is written on to the RAMdisc and the file name is entered on to the catalogue in the current directory 16 Bit Start and Execution addresses may be specified but for compatibility with a Co Processor you may need to specify 32 bit addresses Please see the reference manual supplied with your Co Processor for further information Page 58 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual SPOOL lt fsp gt Purpose Prepares a file of the specified name on the RAMdisc to receive all the information subsequently displayed on the screen This is a very useful command particularly for producing a text file of one of your BASIC programs See notes below Example You can obtain a text file of one of your BASIC programs by loading it into memory and typing SPOOL FRED Opens a file called FRED on the RAMdisc ready to receive information from the screen You can then LIST the program which causes the BASIC program to be displayed on the screen and also written onto the file called FRED SPOO
57. mand is similar to starting another language but in effect it doesn t do that What is does it allow direct communications with the USB Monitor program on the Host Chip the VNC1L To start the monitor simply type MONITOR The USB system will initialise if it s not already done so and the monitor will be ready to use when you see a prompt The full command set for the monitor can be found on a PDF on the CD supplied VNC1L Firmware Manual pdf so won t go through all the commands again here just a few that we may need for diagnosis and navigating around the USB catalog Pressing lt ESCAPE gt will flush the USB buffer and return you to the current language Page 70 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual DIR lt filename gt When used with no filename this command will produce a catalog of the files and directories on the USB drive They are listed as one file or directory per line not formatted like the CAT 5 command is so may be a touch harder to read When used with a filename the command returns the filename with 4 hexadecimal digits after it which specify the size of the file in bytes So for example D gt DIR GAMES SSD Providing the file GAMES SSD exists will return something like GAMES SSD 00 20 03 00 D gt The 4 digits are a 32 bit file size returned in LSB gt MSB order so in this case the file is amp 32000 bytes long equivalent to 200K or a single 80 track side of a floppy CD lt
58. memory the equivalent of 64 sectors or the length of the previous file called cinemas if there was one on the RAMdisc for the exclusive use of the file cinemas If 16K is not available the file is not created and an error is produced 4 Evaluating PTR and EXT at this point will reveal that they are both set to zero 5 The filing system will have loaded into memory the first 256 bytes of the file This area of memory is specially reserved by the filing system for this purpose and is referred to as the buffer Notice that the first action of the keyword OPENOUT is to delete any existing file of the specified name If there were no files on the RAMdisc previously the effect can be illustrated as follows Total of 64 sectors reserved on disc Bytes ny 9123456 255 0 PTR EXT a First sector sector 02 in memory Nothing has been written on the file so the value of EXT extent is zero We can now use the BASIC keyword PRINT to write three cinema names into these slots of ten characters each as follows 340 A PTRIX 350 PRINT X VICTORIA 360 PTR X A 10 Page 64 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 370 PRINT X REGAL 380 PTR X A 20 390 PRINT X ODEON 400 PTR X A 30 In practice you can do it much more elegantly than shown above Nevertheless the result immediately after line 400 is Notice that the cinema names in this illustration VICTORIA are in the file backwards T
59. multi file operations is wild card facilities Some of the filing system commands can operate on a number of files instead of just one These are all followed by the abbreviation afsp instead of fsp afsp stands for ambiguous file specification INFO is an example of such a command It provides information about a named file eg INFO 0 MYPROG will display information about the file named MYPROG in directory on drive 0 Page 15 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual However it is possible that you want information about a number of files The wild card facilities enable you to specify several files for the command to operate on The wild cards are provided by the characters and which have special meanings when they appear in the file specification e g INFO 0 MYPROG means Display information about files called MYPROG in any directory on drive O INFO 0 MYPRO means Display information about all files on drive O in directory with names starting MYPRO followed by any single character eg MYPROA MYPROT and MYPROG and so on INFO gives information on all files with three letter file names in the current directory The character means multiple s to the end of the field eg INFO 0 M will display information about any files on drive O and directory whose names begin with M INFO A gives information on all files in the current directory with an A in them for examp
60. n You can t do that with a physical floppy but you can with RamFS IMPORT 31 UTILS DSD Instead of the first side going to drive 1 it now goes to drive 3 and vice versa That may confuse any program on the disk that uses side references but gives an example of the flexibility of the system Page 21 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Now if you have a floppy drive or two attached to your computer you don t just have to IMPORT it to RAM you can also make a physical copy of the image onto your Floppy You will first need to format any floppy disk you wish to image onto The DFS must be selected before you can IMPORT or EXPORT to a floppy disk or you will get an error Let s assume you have a double sided 80 track drive as Drives 0 and 2 and you ve put in a blank disk having formatted both sides Type DISK IMPORT D02 UTILS DSD We ve added the D option to the command line By default all IMPORTs and EXPORTS go to and from the Ram Drive but adding a D in the command tells RamFS to perform the operation to a physical floppy disk Exporting an Image Chapter 3 described how to use files and save and load programs so we won t go over that again here but once you ve had a play with the files on your Ram Drive you can then image it back to the USB Flash Drive with the following command EXPORT NEWDISK SSD Substituting NEWDISK for whatever filename you would like to call it This will take all the data on the
61. n cassette tape consisting of Names and Telephone numbers To find a specific telephone number the file must be loaded and read from the beginning until the required record is found If the file is long this will take some time On the other hand the RAM Filing System allows you to move to the required record instantly and just read that one Clearly this is much quicker To make this possible the RAM Filing System provides a pointer The pointer points to a particular character in the file It is the next character on the file to be read or written In BASIC the pointer is controlled by the keyword PTR The other keywords in BASIC which are used in connection with disc files are EXT and EOF EXT tells you how long a file is EOF returns a value of TRUE 1 if the end of file has been reached and FALSE 0 if not All the BASIC keywords used to manipulate disc files are explained in the User Guide They are OPENOUT OPENIN PTR EXT INPUT PRINT BGET CLOSE BPUT EOF To prepare a file to receive data the OPENOUT keyword is used In the User Guide the following example is given Page 63 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 330 X OPENOUT cinemas The effect of this line in a BASIC program is as follows 1 Ifa file called cinemas exists it is deleted A file called cinemas is entered on to the RAMdisc catalogue of the currently selected drive in the current directory 3 The filing system reserves 16K of
62. nd provides a number of useful facilities for maintaining that information It does not interact with the IDE Interface The following pages describe all the filing system commands They are words which the filing system program will recognise and act on They can be typed directly on to the keyboard or embedded within your BASIC program They are all prefixed with the character which signals the computer that a filing system command follows Each command is first presented with a syntax abbreviation and a few words explaining the derivation of the word lt drv gt drive lt fsp gt file specification lt dir gt directory lt opt gt options lt afsp gt ambiguous file specification Purpose A description of the command using normal computer jargon Example This section gives a few one line examples of the use of the commands These examples are only intended to be illustrative Associated commands This section lists commands which have similar functions or are normally used in conjunction with this command if any Notes Particular points to watch for or special applications of the command are covered by additional notes if necessary Page 25 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual ACCESS lt afsp gt L Purpose To prevent a file from being deleted or overwritten The command locks or unlocks a file You cannot delete overwrite or write to a locked file until you unlock it again If you load a fi
63. ne of the other service ROMs in the system then RamFS will first search the current drive directory for the file and then if it cannot find it there it searches the library Page 18 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 4 Using DataCentre At this point you may want to refer to the diagram at the end of App 1 along with the pinout information to familiarise yourself with the ports and connections on the DataCentre board This chapter will take you through using the DataCentre board for a variety of tasks including Importing an image to the Ram Drive Exporting an image back to the USB Stick and navigating around the USB catalog Loading a USB Pen Drive First thing you re going to want to do is get yourself to hand a USB Pen Drive Flash Drive Memory Stick or whatever the current terminology is for them would recommend using either a new one or one you have newly formatted to get started The Device must be formatted with the FAT or FAT32 DOS filing system DataCentre does not recognise the NTFS or EXT type filing systems I m also going to assume you re using a Windows based PC and let you work out the differences if you have a Mac or Linux based system So you ve got your USB drive and placed it in a USB socket on your PC Now we need some files to put on it The DataCentre uses special BBC Image files that usually have one of three file extensions the three letters after the dot of a filename These files are
64. ny capacity be that a solid state Flash Drive or a conventional Hard Drive in a USB Enclosure and as long as it is formatted with the FAT or FAT32 filing system it will be recognised Most modern PCs Macintoshes and Linux based machines will automatically recognise such a drive You then download the software you want directly to it or onto your PC hard drive and then drag the files across Once on the USB drive this is simply inserted into DataCentre and the BBC can now see all those files With a single command the image can be imported either to one of the 4 available RAM Drives or directly onto a Floppy Disk if you have the appropriate hardware You can then go on to modify that disk image whilst on floppy or in the RAM drive or even use your own floppy discs and export them back to the USB drive in one of two standard universal formats known as SSD or DSD These images can then be immediately used on the PC by plugging the Drive back into the PC USB port either to upload to your website or use in an emulator or to archive on CD etc The DataCentre board is also a natural upgrade path to those users who already own one of my CF IDE boards designed the DataCentre with the same connectors so a system already fitted into a BBC can simply be unplugged and the DataCentre inserted and the same modified ADFS is used as you had before to give access to your CF Hard Drive However the DataCentre board IDE Interface is now a full 16
65. ommands DTRAP Notes Whilst DiskTrap is active the RAM Filing system will also respond to the DISK and DISC commands and execute them as if they were a RAM command Page 54 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual RAMTEST Purpose To test the inbuilt RAM of the DataCentre board for errors Example RAMTEST Performs a test on the DataCentre RAM Notes This command will erase drives 0 3 of the RAMdisk and leave them in a blank state as well as resetting all the workspace information for the RamFS It does not test the NVRAM Drive 4 and does not alter its contents in any way Once this test is complete it is advisable to do a lt CTRL gt lt BREAK gt to re initialise the system Page 55 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual RENAME old fsp new fsp Purpose Changes the file name and moves it to another directory if required Example RENAME SUMS B MATHS Assuming that the current directory is the file S SUMS becomes B MATHS Notes RENAME 0 SUMS 1 B MATHS Is not allowed The file cannot be moved from drive 0 to drive 1 using RENAME You must use the COPY command to perform that function Only the directory and file name can be changed with RENAME If the file does not exist the message Not found Is displayed If the first file is locked Locked Is displayed If the new fsp gt has already been used the message Exists Is displayed Page 56 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual
66. on boot amp 56 if regular boot Monitor Prompt Counter Binary to decimal source number Binary to decimal converted number USB Disk Volume Label USB Disk Volume Serial Number Number of files in USB directory Number of directories in USB directory Temp copy of amp F2 and amp F3 Extracted image filesize Save BEC5 routine These addresses are subject to change without notice Page 88
67. ou can then open the file later in your program The file will contain miscellaneous data which you can overwrite with the information you actually want This second method causes the filing system to Page 67 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual search the RAMdisc for a free space large enough to hold the file Existing files will be skipped over if they would otherwise overlap with the new file Note 2 Up to five files may be open at any one time Each open file buffer is stored in the DataCentre memory rather than in conventional memory as the Disc Filing system would do This allows for more free memory for your programs Page 68 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual 7 RamFS Utility Commands As well as the filing system commands RamFS has a few utility commands that may prove useful Those commands that are built into RamFS are all mentioned in the list of commands in Chapter 5 and we will not go over all of them here but just take a look at a few that need a little more explanation as well as those that form part of the Library DTRAP DTRAP is short for DiskTrap It is a powerful command that drastically changes the configuration of your machine In normal everyday use of RamFS and DataCentre you may find that you never need it but it has been included for a specific purpose Back in the day when the software for the BBC was first being written 1MB of RAM like that supplied on DataCentre was not available to the average u
68. p 70 BBC Master Temporary Filing SYStEMs ccssscccccccsssssssseeeeeessssssseeeeeeessseeeeteeens 73 Library Commands retour eve eese Ba eee eno a RR VEN Y VEA UR u aD Gy e ER RP ER TS S 74 AR CORY 74 USBMSE Sorene aaea a a iaaa e eane aea eaa a eE a LEa Trn 74 Page 4 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Restoring the NVRAM Drive ccsssccccccssssesssneeeeceessessseeeeeeesseesaaeeeeeeseeeeaaeeaees 75 8 Updating the Firmware sis inuina sinia aaa X an IEEE DER RE ARR REN OB KB ORE SERERE 76 9 More on the USB System uuseesesssssssssesseshenhnnnanashhannsasssass assai sss s asas s asa aaa da 78 The IS EESEPCI ME 78 10 The IDE Interface monnonk ere nenne eee e ER aE e e te ue Y Enna e EEG 80 11 Changing filing systems esses nnne ennemi 81 12 Using the filing system in assembler seessseeenenneennnnnn nnn 82 APP1 DataCentre and RamFS Technical Information eeeseeeeeeenee 85 Control Addresses eec ente e Deae erret d Ea genu e Ee ae ee din 85 Jumper Settings eoe btt desee diete tides inermes tdeh eet ents Mu 86 PCB Layouts MM ER 87 DataCentre RamFS Memory MAP ccccccscccseceeeseeeeeseeeeessaeeeeessaeseeeneeeesseeeeees 87 RamFS Scratchram Workspace Memory MAP ssseR 88 1 Welcome to DataCentre Thankyou for purchasing this product from me This has be
69. re resimini eren n Rn entend cu A need a eU RUE FK ege du FERE A Ese 10 Controlling the filing system eene nene 11 Differences between a Disc and RAM Filing System eeeeeeeeeeeeeeene 11 emn Berrajlc IUE 13 File specifications i ccce e RE Eua Ecce no ove doa deo Ea ER Reels 13 Drive MUMBO MS isis ics vets uscd dr ERE NR OT reaa apaapa a Egari EE o ties 14 Pllecl rf Rr 15 dIZHEILnI A P 15 Mu lti file operatiOlns reote rri coe RET Ronan ia ee rh Rekord cau Pea E rene er RR 15 Au to start facilities ce eee sesto se ERE eren bin EUR eae date 17 Library directory serere depen tena pe Pese d Ease ay pae neRu ssa Cock tendi Na ck se aiai RAE RENE 18 LESNGIIaPLciesnucceep 19 Loading a USB PeriDFiVe cet eire en sape runner ke cosas eeu Fa Re Rn nada haa aia Sa Pan oe ETAGE 19 Importing an IMAage ee cece cece cece cee eeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaeeeeeseeeaaaaaaaeeeeeseeeeaaaneneeeeeaaaaes 21 Exporting AIM ABC sso ete te engen etat eere e E et RO E E ROEE EENE 22 Loading and Saving direct to USB ssssssssee rms 23 5 The filing system commandis esses eene eene nnn 25 6 Random access files pte e a e e BR DERI SE REDE SERERE hd peo IRE 63 7 RamFS Utility Commands ccc cece cccccccccceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees 69 ibis EE 69 MONITOR and e
70. rectory on the current disc If the file is not found the message Not found is produced Please see a later chapter for information and limitations on loading and saving to the USB storage drive 5 Page 50 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual MONITOR Purpose To allow direct communication with the USB Host Controller monitor Example MONITOR Enters the USB Monitor mode Pressing lt ESCAPE gt will exit from the Monitor mode Associated commands Notes Chapter 7 describes using the Monitor and sending commands directly to the USB controller with Page 51 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual OPT 1 n Purpose This command enables or disables a message system which displays a file s information the same as INFO Every time a file on the disc is accessed the information is displayed n can be any number greater than O to enable the feature n 0 disables it Example OPT 11 or OPT 1 1 Enables the messages OPT 1 0 or OPT 1 0 Disables the messages Associated commands INFO Notes A space or acomma between OPT 1 and its argument n is essential Page 52 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual OPT 4 n Purpose Changes the auto start option of the disc in the currently selected drive There are four options to choose from 0 1 2 or 3 Each option initiates a different action when you press lt SHIFT gt and lt BREAK gt on the computer The computer will either ignore
71. rmation We must make sure that this information is written to the disc This is done with the CLOSE keyword in BASIC Page 65 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual This empties the buffer and frees the channel on which we opened the file X in the example We can now read the information back from the RAMdisc if we want to OPENIN is the BASIC keyword used to do this e g 5 DIM cine 3 10 X OPENIN cinemas 20 B 1 30 FOR A O TO 20 STEP 10 40 PTR X A 50 INPUT X cine B 60 B B 1 70 NEXT A Line 10 of the example opens the file cinemas loads the first sector into the buffer and sets PT R to zero and EXT to the length of the file Lines 30 to 50 of the example read each cinema name into an element of the array cine advancing the pointer to the start of the next name after reading each one Now you can see why we stored each name in its own 10 byte record This makes it much easier to write a program to find the names again The important principle about using random access files is that you must keep track of where each item of information is written You can then set PTR to point to it again when you want to read or change it The examples illustrate the basis of a very simple technique There are a number of others which you can devise Note 1 As shown earlier in this discussion OPENOUT reserves 64 sectors for a file Other files opened may reserve sectors which immediately follow e g P
72. sc error number however since a transfer from a RAMdisc cannot fail this is always O Note that with DiskTrap active the RamFS will capture OSWORD amp 7F and process them as if they were amp 77 It will still continue to capture amp 77 as well so any routine that uses amp 77 and amp 7F to copy between RAM and Disk may fail or provide unexpected results if DiskTrap is active OSFILE OSFILE is supported fully with Drive 0 3 and the NVRAM Drive 4 under RamFS Refer to the advanced user guide for more information For Drive 5 the USB only amp FF and amp 00 commands are supported This is to provide load and save functions for Basic and the SAVE command direct to the USB drive Metadata is not stored because it is not supported by the FAT filing system This is not an issue for Basic programs but for machine code and data a load address must be supplied or the file will start loading from 0000 the default load address supplied by the Operating System and will most likely crash the machine Page 84 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual APP1 DataCentre and RamFS Technical Information Control Addresses amp FCF8 VNC1L Data Port O Data In Out to the VNC1L A Read or write to this address automatically strobes one byte in or out of the Monitor amp FCF9 VNC1L Control Port O O READ Bit O IDACK When low connection is established on slave port 1 Not implemented on Issue 1 boards Bit 6 TXE
73. ser without spending thousands of pounds As time went on the price for memory started to fall and hardware like the Opus Challenger which has a 256K or 512K RAM Drive started to appear But for all intents and purposes most software that was being written for the BBC was written to be either used from Tape or Disk with just a small proportion written for other storage mediums such as the ADFS ROM Filing system or the Doomsday system As such all software that ran from disk expected to see a disk drive A lot of programs were compatible with all mediums and so ran faultlessly no matter if they were on DFS ADFS or ROM But some mostly games tend to be a bit picky and can issue calls such as DISK during loading look for a specific filing system ID number or use direct access commands through a call known as OSWORD to access the disk direct This is all fine if running from a Disk system but if you try running that program from a RAM drive then issue a DISK command it will fail as the Ram Filing system has been deselected or the DISK command may not even exist if you don t have a disk drive and the hardware to go with it This is where the DiskTrap command comes in In effect it hijacks your system and turns off all other ROMs and filing systems apart from the ones built into the OS which are TAPE and ROM and utility ROMs and just leaves RamFS and Basic active It also signals to RamFS that is can now accept the DIS
74. store programs much like a floppy disc The RAM is split up into various sections that are used for different purposes 4 Sections are used as virtual floppy discs meaning each can store the same information as a single side of an 80 track single density floppy which is 200K Bytes With 4 of these virtual disks that leaves just over 200K of space in the RAM which is used for general workspace and can also be accessed by the user for their own programs Page 11 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual The main advantage of a RAM Drive is speed Programs load almost instantaneously much faster than even a floppy disk Also there is no wear and tear you can keep reading and writing to your heart s content as there are no heads to clog or discs to wear out However one drawback you may realise straight away is how do you change discs If the RAM drive is fixed to just 4 virtual discs then that could be a bit limiting Add that to the fact that unlike a floppy when you turn the power to the DataCentre board off just like normal RAM all the data on the RAM Discs is lost it seems to have a disadvantage over its floppy cousins Not so This is where the DataCentre system comes into its own Once you ve put some programs or data onto a RAM drive instead of taking a physical disk out as you would do a floppy you create a virtual disk called an image onto an external storage device such as USB Flash Drive This Flash Drive then stores t
75. u may wish to rename your image files using only 8 characters maximum plus the 3 after the dot then they will display properly Importing an Image We re going to take as an example an image called GAMES SSD and load that into the Ram Drive You would use whatever filename of the image you wish to load in its place IMPORT GAMES SSD You should then see the image load into the Ram Drive O Once it s completed and the prompt has returned type CAT And you should now see a catalog of Drive 0 with the files that were contained in the GAMES SSD image just as if it were on a floppy disk If the image is bootable as most games are then lt SHIFT gt lt BREAK gt or lt SHIFT gt lt R gt lt BREAK gt if RamFS is not the default filing system will allow the image to boot and run the game Now let s say for example we have a Double Sided image called UTILS DSD On a floppy system if you were to put the physical floppy that image came from into your Drive 0 the data for the first side will be on Drive 0 and the second side will be Drive 2 so to load that in a similar manner in RamFS we would use the command IMPORT 02 UTILS DSD The 02 has introduced an option into the IMPORT command It is telling RamFS that the image is double sided because we have specified two drives and we have also told it which drive to put the first and second sides onto We could do the same as putting it in floppy drives 1 and 3 but upside dow
76. ust install drivers For Windows machines running Windows 2000 up to Windows XP these are located on the CD supplied in the drivers folder For other machines and operating systems where the driver is not supplied on the CD please download the required driver and supporting documentation from the FTDI Website For programming access through a DLL http www ftdichip com Drivers D2XX htm For use through a Virtual COM Port http www ftdichip com Drivers VCP htm Page 78 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual Initially the PC will not see the USB device you ve connected so we must first activate the slave port On the BBC type amp FCF9 1 MONITOR This will allow us to setup a direct link Your PC should now have detected a new device When asked browse to the appropriate drivers on the CD and install them Once the drivers have been installed you should have a new serial port device on your computer but you may need to look in device manager to get the COM number assigned The BBC should display the message Slave Enabled When you get this you know that the initial setup is complete Load a program such as HyperTerminal on the PC and set it up to communicate with the new USB Virtual COM Port that has just been installed When connection is established type something on the PC keyboard and it should come out on the BBC conversely type something on the BBC and it should appear on the PC HyperTerminal Window You may ne
77. y disk must be formatted and be of the same or higher capacity or the Import will fail The DFS must be selected as the current filing system before you can EXPORT to a floppy disk or you will get an error message Disk System Not Selected The Q option will silence all output from the command and is useful in programs and menus where the track progress is not required With this option active a successful import will simply return with a prompt but any error will display as normal All existing files on the destination Ram Drive or floppy will be overwritten When importing to a floppy disk if a disk error is detected the system will return with either Disk Error or Drive Error Depending on the fault detected No further transfer will take place and RamFS will flush the USB buffer of the remaining data Page 46 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual INFO lt afsp gt Purpose Displays information about a file or group of files It includes details not given by CAT such as the length of the file and its location It is displayed in the following order across the screen Directory File name Access Load Execution Length Start addr addr bytes sector Example INFO A HELLO displays A HELLO L 001900 00801F 00003B 003 Associated commands CAT EX Notes If the file is not found on the specified or assumed drive and directory the message Not found is produced The command must be re entered using th
78. ys includes at least one disc drive The BBC Microcomputer s disc drives come usually in 2 different sizes either 5 25 or the newer style 3 5 On the front is a small light and either a spring flap called the disc drive door or an eject button On most 5 25 Drives the door can be opened or closed but must be closed while the disc drive is supposed to be working On a few 5 25 drives and all 3 5 Drives a disc is simply pushed into the slot and the eject button used when you need to remove it These are floppy disc drives as distinct from Hard Drives Compact Flash or MMC based storage systems which you may have heard of Page 8 RetroClinic DataCentre User Manual The disc drive can be compared to an empty filing cabinet with no drawers in it yet Just as a filing cabinet is pretty useless without drawers so a disc drive cannot do much without discs The discs hold the information Just as you can put different cassettes in a cassette recorder you can also put different discs into a disc drive but the computer can only read information from one disc at a time A disc may have lots of different groups of information on it and these groups are called files Files can have any information in them Typical examples would be one of your programs or some data generated by a program which you wish to keep Returning again to the comparison with a filing cabinet opening a drawer and throwing all the papers into it at random would make it

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