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Showing results for tags 'Corvus'.
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Since Phaeron added Corvus emulation to Altirra, and considering the excitement which sometimes surrounds these rare vintage HDD controllers, here's an XL/XE Corvus APT driver for SpartaDOS X: corvus_apt_driver_v.0.1.zip This works exactly like the SIDE, MYIDE and Colleen drivers which are already in wide use. Fire up Altirra, add a Corvus via System->Devices..., boot SDX, run CORVUS.SYS and then run the APT partition editor (FDISK) in the usual fashion. Be sure to select XL/XE compatibility (ports 1+2). Volume size is very limited at the moment since only a 6MB HDD is emulated, but it's fun nonetheless. Note: this driver uses the APT partition format, so if you happen to prep a disk (real or emulated), all your old Corvus partitions will be gone. Not sure where this is going, if anywhere, but the next task is to tighten up the driver and make transfers a bit faster (it's very slow at the moment since modularity has resulted in a lot of subroutine calls for every byte transferred). Error checking is non-existent and I have absolutely no idea how this will fare on real hardware. The firmware tracks should be safe since the driver only does block transfers in the user area of the drive. FDISK works transparently with the Corvus with the exception that the Firmware description string spills out of the APT device properties dialog, so I'll fix that eventually. All the APT tools I've tested work with it (APTDISK, APTDEV, etc), and you can explore the disk at the physical or logical level with KMK's excellent EDDY editor. You can even leave your Ultimate/SIDE HDD active and run it alongside the Corvus. Both devices show up in the partition editor. Speaking of Ultimate: if you're using the new BIOS, disable joystick input in the setup menu otherwise the Corvus will move the highlight cursor for you. The driver will eventually sense if it's working on an 800 and configure itself for PORTB, and avail itself of the extra joystick ports Incognito provides in XL/XE mode. Right now, it's XL/XE only. -
Attached are ATR Images of the SysGen and Utility disk for Corvus drives. These are modified to use PortA on joystick ports 1 and 2. Corvus_XL.zip Someone please try this on a real Corvus and XL. I did this with Altirra and it should work. I am not one of the lucky ones who own the actual hardware. Please report real hardware tests here! Backup your Corvus drive FIRST!!! Edit: If there is a problem on real hardware, it is because Altirra doesn't implement the Corvus firmware.
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