XEX starting at $700

[+CharlieChaplin]

5 hours ago, Rybags said:

Hex editor?  Why?

 

Just delete the files from the disk and put your own on there.

Back in the day I used to have to create the initial disk manually though... copied the first 5 sectors then manually adjusted the VTOC bitmap to mark 4-5 in use.

 

Well, I am also not a fan of doing things manually this way - copy the whole disk, delete all files and put your own files onto it -or- copy the first five sectors onto another freshly formatted disk and then adjust the VTOC manually. Does there exist a kind of creator/initializer for this menu? One that writes the bootloader onto the disk and adjusts the VTOC automatically or even better, one that formats a disk (e.g. 90k, 130k 180k) and then writes the bootloader and adjusts the VTOC?

 

[Gunstar]

5 hours ago, Mr.Holub said:

Well these are binaries converted from tapes using loader "TURBO" which was frequently used in Europe in 80's and 90's. I has allowed higher loading speeds with modified tape drives.

Loading address was low on these, and when converted in XEX, it causes problems with most of loaders on real hardware.

I see, I hadn't thought about some of the binaries coming from source formats that were only on tape, something that, like you said, mostly only Europeans are familiar with since in the states anything that did originally come on tape had disk versions released, except for unique stuff like Atari's conversational language series that needs the audio track. I am familiar with the Turbo tapes though, I did a DIY upgrade from schematics to my 1010 for both Turbo 2000 and the English Rambit variant.

[Mr.Holub]

Thank you to everybody, especially to Wraithchild and xxl as I've used their solutions and can run programs on real hardware now with AVG Cart.

 

[Rybags]

I never bothered to write a program to initialize the menu.  I practically remembered the value to plug into the bitmap and just did that, not sure I even bothered to adjust the free sector count.

An alternate way could be to create a 2 sector file on the newly formatted disk then manually set it as deleted in it's VTOC name entry - that would stop overwrite but have the free sector count at a proper value.

Edited February 27, 2021 by Rybags