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Post by tlr on Feb 12, 2007 17:30:13 GMT -5
Does this look ok? I'm a little puzzled by the Y's and N's at the bottom.
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Post by Ian Colquhoun on Feb 12, 2007 19:15:18 GMT -5
Does this look ok? I'm a little puzzled by the Y's and N's at the bottom. tlr, Yup, that looks right! Excellent! The Y's and N's all have various meanings. 8 of them indicate permissions to the "physical" file area directories, 8 of them indicate permissions to the "relative" file area directories, 8 of them I believe have something to do with system permissions that I can't remember yet. The CFMO are indicators for sysop chat availability, file area open/closed, and the MO I can't remember. Cube on this forum found some original docs for DarkStar '88 that he is generously sending me. '88 was the next version up, but the manual should jog my memory on some of this stuff. The endless *'s under Awaiting a call is the bbs trying to reset the modem. I haven't been able to get it work with my tcpser setup yet, so some hacking of the modem driver will likely be in order.
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Post by tlr on Feb 13, 2007 15:28:14 GMT -5
Yup, that looks right! Excellent! Ok, good. I want to produce something that contains something close to what was in the original distribution, so I have some questions: - What was in the original package? manual + two disks?
If not, what where the disks and what was supposed to be on them?
- I read something that there was a non-overlink mode version. Was that included in the package?
- ds31bbs.d64 is the unmodified original disk, right?
- If ds31support.d64 was disk2 at one point, which are the new files added by you?
Did you remove/modify any of the original files? below the double line, i.e +HE* and down?
- Could you take a photo of the disks and/or related material so I can duplicate copyright info and possible instructions.
Thanks. EDIT: re-read your earlier post where you explain about ds31support.d64 so that is fairly clear now, sorry for missing it.
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Post by expertsetup on Feb 13, 2007 15:39:13 GMT -5
So, watching an unarchived application go through all the steps to become archived has been interesting to no end. I purchased the 'Anatomy of the 1541' Abacus book on ebay so I can get up to speed with the drive code. Looking forward to running some code on the 6502 in there . Any additional recommendations for 1541 documentation?
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Post by tlr on Feb 13, 2007 15:54:59 GMT -5
Any additional recommendations for 1541 documentation? In book form: - "Inside Commodore DOS" by Richard Immers and Gerald G. Neufeld (published by Datamost Inc. 1984)
- "Das grosse Floppy-Buch" by Englisch & Szczepanowski (published by Data Becker GmBH 1984)
Web:
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Post by expertsetup on Feb 13, 2007 16:07:21 GMT -5
Any additional recommendations for 1541 documentation? In book form: - "Inside Commodore DOS" by Richard Immers and Gerald G. Neufeld (published by Datamost Inc. 1984)
- "Das grosse Floppy-Buch" by Englisch & Szczepanowski (published by Data Becker GmBH 1984)
Web: O.K, thanks for the quick response, I purchased Inside Commodore DOS on amazon and it should be here soon. Not sure about the second book as the language barrier. Doh.
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Post by tlr on Feb 13, 2007 16:14:49 GMT -5
O.K, thanks for the quick response, I purchased Inside Commodore DOS on amazon and it should be here soon. Not sure about the second book as the language barrier. Doh. It was one of my first deep encounters with the German language at age 12. "Inside Commodore DOS" + the All about your 1541 web site will get you far! There is a service manual on the web too. Can be useful. I also have SAMs 1541 repair guide somewhere which explains the inner workings in much more detail than the service manual. There are also a couple of sites with disassembled loaders and other drive source code.
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Post by Ian Colquhoun on Feb 14, 2007 19:24:08 GMT -5
tlr,
I'll do the best I can at determining what's what. Even though I do have an original disk, unfortunately I bought it second hand. I had the manual at one point but I can't find it. When Cube's package arrives that he's sending me I'll have a look at what's in it. Even though it's Darkstar '88 it'll at least help me determine what was what.
I'll then photograph everything, and post images of everything I can as close to as original as possible.
Eventually, I'll type in the '88 manual and try to put together a 3.1 manual based on that.
The non-overlink version I believe was called v3.0. I never saw a live v3.0 BBS because I didn't start calling out until about 1987 and by then they were all up to 3.1.
I'll let you know as soon as I get this all ready. I expect I'll have something in a week or so.
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Post by tlr on Feb 15, 2007 15:17:32 GMT -5
I'll do the best I can at determining what's what. Even though I do have an original disk, unfortunately I bought it second hand. I had the manual at one point but I can't find it. When Cube's package arrives that he's sending me I'll have a look at what's in it. Even though it's Darkstar '88 it'll at least help me determine what was what. I'll then photograph everything, and post images of everything I can as close to as original as possible. Ok, cool. Eventually, I'll type in the '88 manual and try to put together a 3.1 manual based on that. That would be very useful for someone starting a BBS. I couldn't understand much from just poking around. The non-overlink version I believe was called v3.0. I never saw a live v3.0 BBS because I didn't start calling out until about 1987 and by then they were all up to 3.1. Ah, ok that explains a lot. I've seen a 3.0 at zimmers.net. It's a freezed version of some sort. Said to be incomplete. Is the '88 just an improved version of the 3.1, or is it completely different? I'll let you know as soon as I get this all ready. I expect I'll have something in a week or so. Great! I intend to PM you preview versions of the Ascii and Color programs so you can see if they work correctly. I don't know enough about them to test them properly myself. Should have time to work a bit more on it this weekend.
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Post by Ian Colquhoun on Feb 16, 2007 9:00:48 GMT -5
That would be very useful for someone starting a BBS. I couldn't understand much from just poking around. No, I wouldn't expect so. From the sysop side of things it is definitely not menu-driven. Ah, ok that explains a lot. I've seen a 3.0 at zimmers.net. It's a freezed version of some sort. Said to be incomplete. I noticed that the first time I had a look at his BBS archive a few years ago. Unfortunately it definitely is incomplete and broken. Is the '88 just an improved version of the 3.1, or is it completely different? Yes, '88 was the next version. It contained a few improvements and further expanded the idea of overlinks. I think in '88 not only was the file section overlinked, but so were the message bases. Great! I intend to PM you preview versions of the Ascii and Color programs so you can see if they work correctly. I don't know enough about them to test them properly myself. Should have time to work a bit more on it this weekend. Excellent. I was chatting about the great work you've done on this at the TPUG meeting last night and there is at least one other old Darkstar user that is pretty excited about this too.
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cube
Junior Member
Posts: 58
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Post by cube on Feb 18, 2007 9:29:25 GMT -5
As I was telling Ian and someone else in another post somewhere I came across an original Darkstar '88 manual I'd acquired a long time ago. I had to do some brain wracking, but I believe it was given to me by a friend of mine who went by the name />amage Inc. I'd long forgotten it's existence but digging through my boxes of long-stored Commodore [stuff] brought it back to the light of day and I started peeking through it. Very quickly I realized I'd never actually seen a Darkstar BBS, or if I had - not from the Sysop's point of view. When I found this forum and Ian's interest in Darkstar I decided the manual would serve it's purpose much better in his possession so I made arrangements to send it to him - but just before I was about to mail it off I happened upon another box of 5 1/4" floppies that contained an original set of Darkstar '88 disks! Unfortunately the Master disk is unreadble, or at least on both my '41 and '71 - but the other two disks seem to have survived and were able to be read into .d64 without incident. I included everything in the package that *should* be in Ian's hands in the next business day or so if it didn't arrive on Friday. I took a picture of it all before I sent it which can be seen www.cubeinc.net/cube/img/pics/c64/darkstar.jpg <- there. As far as I can tell, everything was original and I hope it helps this project out. John
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Post by tlr on Feb 18, 2007 12:55:01 GMT -5
As I was telling Ian and someone else in another post somewhere I came across an original Darkstar '88 manual I'd acquired a long time ago. I had to do some brain wracking, but I believe it was given to me by a friend of mine who went by the name />amage Inc. I'd long forgotten it's existence but digging through my boxes of long-stored Commodore [stuff] brought it back to the light of day and I started peeking through it. Very quickly I realized I'd never actually seen a Darkstar BBS, or if I had - not from the Sysop's point of view. When I found this forum and Ian's interest in Darkstar I decided the manual would serve it's purpose much better in his possession so I made arrangements to send it to him - but just before I was about to mail it off I happened upon another box of 5 1/4" floppies that contained an original set of Darkstar '88 disks! Unfortunately the Master disk is unreadble, or at least on both my '41 and '71 - but the other two disks seem to have survived and were able to be read into .d64 without incident. I included everything in the package that *should* be in Ian's hands in the next business day or so if it didn't arrive on Friday. I took a picture of it all before I sent it which can be seen www.cubeinc.net/cube/img/pics/c64/darkstar.jpg <- there. As far as I can tell, everything was original and I hope it helps this project out. Cool! I think I have properly stripped the main program of all protection now. The color and ascii versions are two stand alone files now, and come in at slightly less than 90 blocks. It remains just to get the content of the disks in order if all is working. If the protection on '88 is the same as on 3.1 it might be readable eventhough you copy is broken. Ian can nibble it with mnib and we'll see. Your server seems to be down at the moment so I can't dl the picture. Will try again later.
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Post by tlr on Mar 1, 2007 18:13:42 GMT -5
Hacked up a small gcr scanning utility for .g64 images. '.' is a normal sector ' ' is a track without sync (probably unformatted) The digits are FDC error codes, (2=sector not found, 4=data block not present, 5=data block checksum error) No half-tracks: metal-rox-mk3:g64tool$ ./g64scan arkiv/darkstar31/ds31bbs.g64 g64 version=0, 84 track entries of max 7928 bytes each. highest track 42.0, 0 half tracks, 0 speed offset blocks. 0 1 2 3 4 123456789012345678901234567890123456789012 +------------------------------------------+ 0 |................................25. | 1 |...............................422. | 2 |................................22. | 3 |...............................425. | 4 |................................22. | 5 |...............................425. | 6 |................................25. | 7 |...............................422. | 8 |................................22. | 9 |...............................42.. | 10 |................................2.. | 11 |...............................425. | 12 |................................22. | 13 |...............................425. | 14 |................................25. | 15 |...............................55.. | 16 |................................25. | 17 |..............................+-----------+ 18 |........................+-----+ 19 |.................+------+ 20 |.................| +-----------------+ metal-rox-mk3:g64tool$
With half-tracks:metal-rox-mk3:g64tool$ ./g64scan arkiv/darkstar31/ds31bbs_ht.g64 g64 version=0, 84 track entries of max 7928 bytes each. highest track 42.5, 42 half tracks, 0 speed offset blocks. 0 1 2 3 4 1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|0|1|2| +------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 0 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.2.2. .52.55.. | 1 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.5.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.5.5. 4.2.22.. | 2 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.5.5.2. ..5.25.. | 3 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.2.5. 4.2.5... | 4 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.5.2. ..2.5..2 | 5 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2...2. 4.2.5... | 6 |.2. . . . .4. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.5.2. ..2.5... | 7 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.5.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.5.2.2.2. 4.2.2... | 8 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.2.2. .52.2..2 | 9 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.5.5.5. 4.2.5... | 10 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.2.2. ..2.5... | 11 |.2. . . . .4. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.2.2. 4.2....2 | 12 |.2. . . . .5. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.5.2.2.5. .52.5... | 13 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.2.2. 4.2.5... | 14 |.4. . . . .5. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.2.5. .52.55.. | 15 |.2. . . . .5. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.5.2.2.2.5. 5.2..... | 16 |.2. . . . .5. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.2.2. ..2.55.. | 17 |.2. . . . .5. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. .2.2.2.2.5.2+-----------------------+ 18 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2.2. +-----------+ 19 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2+-------------+ 20 |.2. . . . .2. . .2. .2.2.2.2.2.2.2| +----------------------------------+ metal-rox-mk3:g64tool$ Note the apparent "stagger" on track 32.0. On 32.5 many of the sectors from 32.0 seem readable too, even though they were supposed to be staggered. You can also see that all sector headers are found (no 2's) on both track 32.0 and 32.5. This means that the headers are written as a "FAT" track, i.e prefectly in sync between 32.0 and 32.5. After the headers were written, the "staggered" data blocks could be added with a normal data write for each block, moving the head half a track between each sector write. The tool can dump the actual gcr data along with the decoded representation to verify this.
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Post by mrloadstar on Mar 6, 2007 10:54:47 GMT -5
For what it's worth, LOADSTAR uses an autorun at the top of the disk that loads and runs "star". I bloaded it to $c000 to take a look -- a lot of $02's -- then finally some code. I checked out its load address -- 0/1 -- which would be the beginning of page 1. The $02s just wipe everything out. ?!!!! But finally, I checked out some of your comments -- it must do a reboot of some sort. Anyway, here is the code (beginning at the address after all those $02's): 100 - 202 filled with $02's
0203 A9 00 LDA #$00 0205 20 90 FF JSR $FF90 ; What is this? 0208 A9 02 LDA #$02 020a A6 BA LDX $BA ; Get drive number 020c A0 01 LDY #$01 020e 20 BA FF JSR $FFBA ; And this? 0211 A9 04 LDA #$04 0213 A2 35 LDX #$35 0215 A0 02 LDY #$02 0217 20 BD FF JSR $FFBD ; And this? Set filename? 021a A2 FF LDX #$FF 021c A0 FF LDY #$FF 021e A9 00 LDA #$00 0220 20 D5 FF JSR $FFD5 ; LOAD! To $ffff 0223 86 2D STX $2D 0225 84 2E STY $2E ; store end of load at 2d/2e 0227 A9 00 LDA #$00 0229 85 7A STA $7A ;[/tt] set bottom of basic 022b A9 08 LDA #$08 022d 85 7B STA $7B 022f 20 60 A6 JSR $A660 ; Reset Basic? 0232 4C AE A7 JMP $A7AE ; Don't know 0235 asc "star"
Any suggestions about what the JSRs do will be appreciated. Dave
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Post by gmoon on Mar 6, 2007 11:45:31 GMT -5
These three are well documented in Comm 64 Prog Ref Gd:
JSR $FF90 SETMSG (kernal msg control flag)
JSR $FFBA SETLFS (set logical file params)
JSR $FFBD SETNAM (yep, set the name)
------------- From "Mapping the Comm 64"
JSR $A660 (into BASIC CLR routine (skips a couple bytes))
JMP $A7AE NEWSTT (sets up next BASIC statement for for execution)
------------ Leave it to you to workout the nut & bolts of routine operation...
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