MegaFlash Rom Manager ROM

[TheCorfiot]

Hello Folks...

With the help of our friend Bryce, I have finally built a MegaFlash and seriously enjoying it....

First ROM I installed was TFM's RMA+Booster in slot 15...
Again the software works pretty good and as a complete package it's all very professional, Nice one guys..

My query however is that when rebooting the CPC, the ROM Manager announces itself onscreen twice in succession with exactly the same header....Is this normal..?

Trying to find documentation for various toolkit and toolbox roms as indeed many others, is proving elusive.
Can anyone help please...

TC 

[TFM]

Hello Folks...

With the help of our friend Bryce, I have finally built a MegaFlash and seriously enjoying it....

First ROM I installed was TFM's RMA+Booster in slot 15...
Again the software works pretty good and as a complete package it's all very professional, Nice one guys..

Thanks' a lot for your kind words. That's a great source of motivation to polish ROManager even a bit more.

My query however is that when rebooting the CPC, the ROM Manager announces itself onscreen twice in succession with exactly the same header....Is this normal..?

Never mind that's normal. It's a characteristica of the ROM Booster. The first time it initializes the ROMs 16-31, the second time it "just" initializes itself. So no byte is wasted

Trying to find documentation for various toolkit and toolbox roms as indeed many others, is proving elusive.
Can anyone help please...

TC 

Let me know which kind of documentation you need, I will try to get it.

[TheCorfiot]

Hiya mate

Thanks for the kind offer, the programmers toolkit and toolbox are good starting roms for me, oh and the enhanced basic..

Regarding the RMA ROM, i'm going to be cheeky and ask if it can be set to only display once as it fills up the screen with duplicate info, ie scroll and tbh users may take first impressions that it is a bug..this is purely professional critiscism, I really like the software and user interface very much and it runs without error...

Thx 

[TFM]

Well, I'm not sure what you mean... Do you mean the help window, in which all the help messages get scrolled throug when you go to "ROM management" for example?

[redbox]

Regarding the RMA ROM, i'm going to be cheeky and ask if it can be set to only display once as it fills up the screen with duplicate info, ie scroll and tbh users may take first impressions that it is a bug..this is purely professional critiscism, I really like the software and user interface very much and it runs without error...

If you mean the Booster section of the ROM, then it displays twice because it initalises twice.  It bothered me too so I disassembled it but couldn't see another way of doing it unfortunately.

A much better solution is to patch the Lower ROM in your CPC so that this initalises all ROMs from 31-0 (Toto and Syx did this with their Firmware 3.1 revision).  Then you don't need the Booster ROM.

However, you need to either make the lower ROM attachment for your MegaFlash or if you have a Plus you can patch it in the cartridge by making a DIY cartridge.

[TheCorfiot]

Thanks for that, brilliant...
Looks like I will be removing the original rom from my motherboard then 

[redbox]

Thanks for that, brilliant...
Looks like I will be removing the original rom from my motherboard then 

Sounds like the best option if you can do it 

As I said before, you can use the Toto & SyX replacement, or you can alter things yourself.  Arnoldemu has a great disassembly of the Lower ROM on his website and from here you can see that KL ROM WALK and KL INIT BACK have the 16 ROM (&0f) limit which you can patch to 32.  There might be a couple of other things to do, but that is the essence of it.

And whilst you're at it, you can patch the "Copyright text changing to the copyright symbol" bug that is shown on the start-up of all CPCs - this is located at 0688 and you'll see the text string is "Copyright" followed by &1f,&02,&04 (which is the cursor relocate) followed by &a4 (which is the copyright symbol).  This one has always bothered me too 

[db6128]

And whilst you're at it, you can patch the "Copyright text changing to the copyright symbol" bug that is shown on the start-up of all CPCs - this is located at 0688 and you'll see the text string is "Copyright" followed by &1f,&02,&04 (which is the cursor relocate) followed by &a4 (which is the copyright symbol).  This one has always bothered me too 

Haha, I noticed this back when I was running WinAPE at a really slow speed for testing/laughs. I couldn't believe something like that had been left in*. I'm glad someone else is aware of it and I didn't just imagine it.

* especially because it's maybe even worse that – as obviously I didn't realise before, having only viewed the start-up rather than disassembling its code – it's all in the same string! I don't know which is worse, that or if they'd had two separate printing routines. Not that any method would have been excusable! : P

[TheCorfiot]

 @Redbox

No problem there my friend, soldering iron will be coming out later this evening..lol

Hardware is my forte, sadly my software skills are pretty out of date so patching the CPC rom maybe beyond my scope, mind you i've been lucky in the patches I have carried out on Acorn MOS and Discfiling Roms....

Let you all know when it's done.

TC 

[redbox]

patching the CPC rom maybe beyond my scope

If you want we can go through it here, would be an interesting exercise for others to see too.

And don't worry, physically changing the Lower OS ROM is well beyond my soldering skills...! 

[TheCorfiot]

Cheers my friend, that would be great...

On another note, my cpc is now fitted with a socket in the lower rom position and a quickly flashed eeprom.
And FW 3.1 looks pretty neat....have reverted to the non booster version of Rom Manager so my OCD is now satisfied, and I also installed Roman to give it a go...

TC 

[TFM]

Glad to hear that it worked w/o problems :-D

[redbox]

On another note, my cpc is now fitted with a socket in the lower rom position and a quickly flashed eeprom.
And FW 3.1 looks pretty neat....have reverted to the non booster version of Rom Manager so my OCD is now satisfied, and I also installed Roman to give it a go...

Wow, that was quick, nice work!

Can you test something for me? If you're using Firmware 3.1 can you load a utility ROM (anything with RSXs, like Maxam or Protext etc) in one of the high positions (but not 16 or 23) in the MegaFlash and try to access the RSX commands of that ROM...?

Reason being I looked at the code for the Firmware 3.1 and can see it initialises the ROMs but am not 100% sure it accesses the commands properly on real hardware.

[TheCorfiot]

I can certainly do that my friend....

I have Maxam but no manual so I dont really know any of it's RSX commands...
If you could give me some of these commands and syntax I will try to test this tonight or tomorrow...

Be nice to clear this issue up 

TC

[Bryce]

To list the commands of any installed ROM use the help command (it's one of Maxams commands and also in Utopia ROM).
|HELP, 3 will list the commands that the ROM in position 3 has to offer. |HELP (followed by no ROM number) lists all the ROMs installed. The command to start the main MAXAM program is |M

Bryce.

[steve]

The Maxam manual can be downloaded from here
MAXAM - CPCWiki

Other pages on cpcwiki cover maxam 1.5 and maxam 2

[redbox]

|HELP (followed by no ROM number) lists all the ROMs installed. The command to start the main MAXAM program is |M

Except the Maxam ¦HELP commands are coded to only do ROMs 0-15.  But yes, ¦M should start Maxam regardless.

Be nice to clear this issue up 

Well I got some time today and I tried it on my 6128 Plus and the higher ROMs do work when put into slots 15-31 and using Firmware 3.1.  If you could check they also work on your (I'm assuming) normal 6128 then that would be helpful.

I'm guessing that the KL FIND COMMAND etc in the Firmware still work because the CPC only physically "sees" ROMs 0-15 anyway and there is some hardware which pages in slots 15-31 etc...?  This would explain why KL FIND COMMAND in the OS still works even though it's limited to ROMs 0-15 - all we have to do is initialise the higher ROMs and the hardware takes care of the rest.  Can someone with hardware knowledge confirm this?

Anyway, if you like Firmware 3.1 then that's great.  If you want to patch the original 6128 OS to work with ROMs 0-31 in the MegaFlash then all you need to do is patch two locations using a Hex Editor.  Location &0327 needs to be changed from &0f (15) to &1f (31) and location &0337 needs to be changed from &10 (16) to &20 (32).





I've attached the patched ROM to this message too.

[Bryce]

Well from a hardware perspective, any ROM from 0 to 255 is "paged in" one at a time. They don't come in bunches 0-15 or whatever. The firmware sends the ROM no. on the databus which then pages just that one ROM so that it's visible from &C000 onwards.

Bryce.

[redbox]

I also patched my 6128 Plus cartridge to initialise all MegaFlash ROMs in positions 0-31. 

Amstrad Plus System Cartridge Patch v1.1 by redbox
English (QWERTY) Keyboard Layout
v1.0    The annoying f1/f2 menu on reset has been removed. To play Burnin' Rubber, type either |GAME, |JEUX, |SPIEL or |JUEGO .
v1.1    The initialise message has been altered to remove the 'Copright' bug and change the stated version from v4 to v4.1.
v1.1    The MegaFlash BIN file also initialises ROMs 0-31. Please note this version will not work in the WinAPE emulator.

[redbox]

Well from a hardware perspective, any ROM from 0 to 255 is "paged in" one at a time. They don't come in bunches 0-15 or whatever. The firmware sends the ROM no. on the databus which then pages just that one ROM so that it's visible from &C000 onwards.

So why does ROM 15 over-ride ROM 7 then?  Or am I getting confused...?

There must be something going on because KL FIND COMMAND only allows RSXs to be found in ROMs 0-15, yet if you initialise ROMs over 15 then the RSXs still work.

[Gryzor]

And whilst you're at it, you can patch the "Copyright text changing to the copyright symbol" bug that is shown on the start-up of all CPCs - this is located at 0688 and you'll see the text string is "Copyright" followed by &1f,&02,&04 (which is the cursor relocate) followed by &a4 (which is the copyright symbol).  This one has always bothered me too 

Wow, you learn something new every day indeed. Why on earth would they leave it like that?

[TFM]

Probably they want to have the word (all letters) in the ROM, but only display the (c) character.

[Bryce]

So why does ROM 15 over-ride ROM 7 then?  Or am I getting confused...?

There must be something going on because KL FIND COMMAND only allows RSXs to be found in ROMs 0-15, yet if you initialise ROMs over 15 then the RSXs still work.

I'm not sure how the firmware actually handles RSXs when you call one. As far as I know, some of the info is stored in RAM. but the rest is only on the ROM. You'd have to ask a firmware guru about this though. I haven't a clue.

Bryce.

[arnoldemu]

I'm not sure how the firmware actually handles RSXs when you call one. As far as I know, some of the info is stored in RAM. but the rest is only on the ROM. You'd have to ask a firmware guru about this though. I haven't a clue.

Bryce.

true there is a a list stored in ram.

When a RSX is registered you pass it a datablock for the firmware to use. Part of this block is filled with a pointer to the previous registered RSXs.

As for why it only allows roms up to 16.. probably a limitation in the firmware that can be patched.
the command search works the same for rsx and rom commands, it just uses a different list as the search.

[Bryce]

Ok, but what information is in the list in RAM? Does it just list what ROMs are installed and in which slot, or does it also store which commands each ROM holds?

I suspect that the 0 to 15 in KL FIND COMMAND could be a limit that a ROM can only have 16 RSXs, not that it only searches in ROMs 0 to 15. Or am I talking crap?

Bryce.