0.91 beta project page

Welcome to the home of the IDE Disk Operating System 0.91 for the IDE64 cartridge!

The next version of IDEDOS is comming, but it needs some more time to be finished. But this does not mean that there are no interesting features which can be tried out until it's fully finished. Also I'd like to know if the finished parts work as expected, or if there are some old features which do not work anymore. But as always:

This IDEDOS 0.91 beta release is not very well tested and could destroy your data!

IDEDOS changes since 0.90 20091029, which are done:

OFS 0.02 support removed

The old filesystem used by IDEDOS 0.89x is not supported anymore, as this is only taking up space and probably everyone has converted by now.

Protected BASIC, serial and PCLink routines.

There was an incompatibility with interrupt routines located in the ROM banking area when the BASIC extension, serial and PCLink routines were running, which caused crashes for some software. This should be no problem anymore on C64. (but this problem still exists on SuperCPU due to hardware limitation)

F-keys work with interrupts

Setting up a custom interrupt routine automatically disabled the hotkey support. This should not happen anymore, as this was a workaround.

Read ($DEF4) works under I/O

This allows faster disk operations in the monitor when loading under the I/O area, but can be used by user software as well. Probably some of the picture plugins will be updated to use this.

Autostart works from IEC devices now

This was an annoying incompatibility, which required the use of the KILL command before loading an autostarting program from floppy. Loading below $334 is still disabled for IDEDOS drives, to prevent accidental system lockup due to memory corruption.

PCLink load below I/O works now

Loading huge programs over PCLink should be no problem now. This was already a standard feature for IEC and normal IDEDOS drives.

SilverSurfer PCLink support, PCLink optional

In theory this should be possible now, but it was not tested on real hardware yet. Also now it's possible to completly disable PCLink support.

FAT filesystem read ($DEF4) and load

Now copying is much faster from a FAT volume, and loading files also works now. Probably this will increase the confusion of new people who forget to format a drive to native CFS and want to write to it, as everything seems to work except writing and seeking.

Combined CFS and FAT partitions, per partition filesystem support

Now if there are FAT partitions on a disk which has a CFS partition table then the FAT partitions are not hidden anymore, but are filling up the unused CFS partition entries in the CFS partition table as foreign partitions. To make this useful the limit of one filesystem type per drive is removed now and the filesystem type belongs to the partitions, like it should be normally. FAT partitions take up twice the space so there can be at most 8 if there are no CFS partitions.

Partition list for FAT and ISO9660

The partition list is automatically generated for FAT and ISO9660 volumes, so it's not an error anymore when there's no CFS partition table on disk.

Dynamic drive ennumeration, PCLink detection

The drive numbers are not hardcoded now (e.g. drive 1→primary slave), but are assigned in the order of detection. Also PCLink drives disappear when there's no hardware connected (e.g. no network card connected, but support is compiled in). 5 drives are supported, but only 4 of them can be a normal drive, the 5th can only be PCLink.

Read ($DEF4) and write ($DEF1) support on modifiable files

IDEDOS 0.90 only allowed character I/O on modifiable files, but this limitation was fixed now. This opens up posibilities to create high performance database softwares, read/write image file support (D64) or IFFL system with fast read/write support.

Timestamp update only if modified

The timestamp is only updated if the modifiable file was really modified, a simple open and reading is no reason for a timestamp update.

Seeking, modifiable and appendable files on PCLink

The PCLink drive gained standard features of normal IDEDOS drives. So now it should be possible to enter D64 files on PCLink too, or play Maniac Mansion over the network.

PCLink protocol changes

This was necessary due to seeking, and performance reasons. With the new protocol USB PCLink is ~40 KB/s for both read and write, and the ethernet PCLink is at ~60 KB/s in both directions (with SuperCPU it's 200 KB/s!). Unfortunately an updated ideserv is necessary, but Rush can be played over EPCLink now with proper frame rate.

Drive types

The internal architecture was reworked to understand drive types beyond ATA and ATAPI, for example PCLink is one of the new drive types now. This is an important change, but I guess it's not very interesting for users yet.

PCLink activity LED

The extra LED on the V4.1 cartridge is now used as PCLink activity LED. Before it was the error led, but it had a lot of quirks. (there was no way to tell which device was in fault, and if more than one was in fault, then sometimes it was not shown)

Additional editor function keys

In 0.90 the only function key was CONTOR+D. Now there are some more to move the cursor around, clear parts of line or toggle repeat/insert mode.

IDEDOS changes since 0.90 20090702, which are to do:

Relative files

Due to internal changes the relative file support is broken temporary.

Executable flag on files

It's ignored for now due to internal changes, future is uncertain.

SuperCPU support

Could be broken, as no testing was done yet.

PCLink

Done according to the spec, but no testing was done on real hardware yet. I only used USB, RR-Net and ETFE. Also ideservd 0.25 is not fully implemented yet.

Regressions

Some things could be broken, which already worked on IDEDOS 0.90 and are not on this list. Please help to find them.

Contact:

Changelog:

22.36.58

Initial upload

22.37.00

PCLink could delay the boot quite a lot in some cases, fixed now.

22.37.01

PC64 frame error fixes, and PCLink+CRC compile failure fix.

22.37.02

All PCLinks except ethernet corrupted a byte in RAM around ~$b300 during read because of a typing mistake.

22.37.03

If only write were used with special size to write a file then it could happen that the file was not marked as modified which prevented proper close.

22.37.04

The SuperCPU version does not crash on boot anymore and is now testable.

22.37.05

Error LED on V4.1 is now PCLink LED.

22.37.06

Kernal file table emulation

22.37.07

Kernal file table use for normal operation. No double channel use anymore, 10 open files only, but ACE works now ;)

22.37.08

Load allows to load to $2a7-$2ff now from IDEDOS devices.

22.37.09

Directory load below I/O is supported now, verify failing works over pclink.

22.37.10

Wrong data was written if the buffer had to be flushed first in blockwrite.

22.37.11

Blockread after last byte of sector position increment bug

22.37.12

Load hang/load error on directory load with JD support but without JD kernal

22.37.13

Only allow floppy autostart for BASIC load

22.37.14

Dual ROM support for IDE64 V4.1 (Automatically boot C64 or SuperCPU version based on hardware configuration)

22.37.15

Do full reboot after SuperCPU/C64 mode switch to prevent possible corruption.

22.37.16

Fix ETH64 compile problem

22.37.17

Vector table restore hack added, RR freeze hack added, CR corruption and bypass fix, multiple readers for the same file allowed, DolphinDOS fixes, 1541/1571 fastload freeze fix

22.37.18

Transfer test fixes (hwerror)

22.37.19

SCPU compile fix, device not present hang fixes for "@" and monitor

22.37.20

Manager updates (mkdir, pattern selection) Device number change with @# in monitor. Chkin/out y fix.

22.37.21

Extended editor keystrokes, insert mode

2010-07-11 13.14.50

Link handling works again, more function keys

13.14.51

Experimental IEEE488 support for modified CBM adapter.

13.14.53

Function key fixes, monitor function keys

13.14.54

Function key fixes, manager input function keys

13.14.55

Broken file hole handling fixed, recursive link copy fixed, monitor supports decimal, binary and octal numbers, pattern fill for monitor

Files:

Custom IDEDOS 0.91 beta download web page (2010.Jul.28)

Custom download page for all cases, use this!

IDEserv 0.25 beta for pclink (source only, 2010.May.24)

XPCLink, PPCLink, SPCLink, EPCLink, UPCLink server. Work in progress version, protocol not set in stone yet, so this is exactly for IDEDOS 0.91 beta 20091026. Cannot be used with the perom programmer.

IDEserv 0.25 beta for pclink (win32 binary, 2010.Jan.3)

EPCLink, UPCLink server. Precompiled binaries.

Documents:

IDE64 interface cartridge user's guide beta (pdf, 2010.Jul.28, ca. 1.2 MB, A5 paper)

Work in progress user's guide for IDEDOS 0.91 beta.