Commodore Free 26/Commodore_Free_Issue_26_2009_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/micro iec 2

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 9KB | 289 lines

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           MICRO IEC REVIEW
                Part 2

But What About Multiple Disk Games?
Yes! you can work with multiple disk
images without having to go back to
BASIC. You will need to have a disk
change button or two connected to the
uiec (there are pins assigned for that
on the board: 15 and 16 of connector
1, for forward and back, connect the
other lead of each momentary-on switch
to pin 1) First, after copying the
disk images into the card or drive,
you make a file called a "swap list"
which is a text file containing just a
list of the image file names (and
paths) you need in the "set" (example
a swaplist file called PACGUYLIST or
whatever you wish to name it) the file
includes these lines representing the
names of the disk files in the disk
set:

PACGUYDISK1.D64
PACGUYDISK2.D64
PACGUYDISK3.D64

Then instead of CDing to the first
d64, you issue the command:

@XS;PACGUYLIST

This command opens the file and
automatically selects the first disk
image on the list. Once you have the
game going and it asks for the next
disk you push your diskchange switch
and uiec queues up the next on the
list (or previous if you have a 'back'
switch) If you go to the end of the
disk list it starts again at the
beginning and visa versa.

TRYING OUT UIEC WITH AN IDE DISK DRIVE
On the CF/IDE version, besides the CF
slot there is a header to plug in a PC
drive. CMD HD the drives used SCSI
interfaced hard disks which can be
troublesome to locate a replacement.
On the uIEC the hard drive interface
is IDE (aka ATA, not serial ATA). If
you do use a hard drive you will need
to use a separate power supply to
power the drive. You can get a simple
USB to IDE kit which includes a
compatible power pack pretty
reasonably on eBay, this is what I
used for my testing, or if you get a
big external USB drive enclosure you
could put the uIEC in it along with
the drive. (and not use the USB part
of the unit) I quickly formatted and
set up an old drive with some d64s on
the PC and then went to the 64.
Hooking up the drive you need to make
sure the red line on the cable is at
pin 1 of the pins on the uIEC (there
is no plastic guide on the circuit
board like PC motherboards have, but
it does indicate pin 1 on the PCB
text.) After that plug in the drive
power and turn on the 64, and very
quickly the uIEC is ready! Only a
second or two of wait at most instead
of 30 with CF, sure seems a bit
zippier, but also a lot more bulk with
that big drive (relatively) and cables
to deal with. Attempting to use the
IDE and the CF at the same time only
resulted in drive errors (should work,
will have to check, maybe it's a
master/slave select issue?) From Jim
Brain's Posting you should be able to
use two hard drives (master slave,
like on the PC) Some of the planned
expansion for the IDE part is uIEC
support for reading CD-ROMs which will
be very nice.

A LITTLE BIT ON CONFIGURATION
As mentioned you may at times need to
set uIEC as device 8 so you can load
some d64 images of games OK. To get to
device 8 you use the command (in
BASIC): OPEN
15,8,15,"u0>"+CHR$(8):CLOSE 15 - To
set to 8; this is similar to how you
do a soft device change on the 1571 or
later drive. to save the device
settings it so it remembers when reset
(and other settings you may wish),
just enter: @XW now every time it
powers up it will start with the
settings you want. Pretty darn easy
and no programs needed. Though I found
it took a couple tries to get the
settings to catch. But once they were
set everything works as expected.

MORE TECHNICAL EXPLORATION
Some of this is more a sysop view of
the uIEC, so bear with me if you get
lost, this is for the other techies
and Sysops out there.

DRIVE IDENTIFICATION
When trying CMD's Fcopy, the uIEC is
identified as a 1541, thus keeping
Fcopy from accessing partitions or
subdirectories. Jim is working on the
best way to provide compatibility with
such tools.

PARTITIONS AND SUB DIRECTORIES
Partition navigation works like a CMD
in that if you partition the drive the
partitions are 'drives' to the device,
partition 0 is the current partition,
etc. Currently there is no
partitioning software for the uIEC on
the C64, you can use PC utilities to
do the job presently. A C64
partitioner/formatter is in
development. One thing I never got
into was subdirectories on my CMD
Drive, and from what Jim reported they
work similar on the uIEC. To move
things in and out of disk image file
you need to be 'in' the image but you
then you can access outside files; but
only if they are from a separate
partition. There is work on making
access of image contents more flexible
but it is a whole lot better then just
access only within an image. This
could make development of a C64 based
.d64 image utility much easier! 15
channels can be opened at the same
time. So no problem opening multiple
files.

NATIVE MODE
The "Native mode" of the drive is the
FAT file system which technically is
different than what many are used to
with 1541s and CMD drives. Part of
which is in native mode you don't have
that 16MB content size limit. But then
again, you don't have tracks and
sectors not in an image, so disk
editors, directory editors, and
utilities that may rely on direct
access to disk blocks will fail in
native spaces (Lynx is an example) For
utilities that rely on such access you
can use disk images. Also being FAT it
goes by FAT file naming conventions,
which means letters are not case
sensitive and the characters /  ? : ,
are in the list of no-no characters in
native mode file names, of all those I
think / would be the most common.
Someone informed me that there is a
file extension mode called x00 mode
which should allow for using all the
characters in Commodore file names, to
initiate you would use the command
@XE2, I haven't tried out this mode
yet. Relative file support in native
mode is operational but in alpha as it
has not been tested in length as of
yet. As more BBS guys get their hands
on these I'm sure they will put them
through the paces.

GEOS SUPPORT
I don't use GEOS/Wheels/Wings so I
can't really comment on those. From
what Jim said he needs help from a
GEOS guru to figure out the GEOS
fastloader to make it compatible.

REALLY TECHNICAL
For more information or to help with
the open source sd2iec DOS refer to
the sd2iec project home page.
http://snowcat.de/cgi-bin/
gitweb.cgi?p=sd2iec.git;a=summary

CONCLUSIONS
Overall WOW! This is the best thing
I've seen since the CMD HD, plug it in
and it works - no special software,
minimal conflicts. But even way better
as it works "cross-platform" its
conveniently small, and very
affordable. For sysops, I think it is
generally OK and getting better
(unless you don't already have
mass-storage, then it's really good),
at present it would make a great U/D,
text file and/or programs drive(s),
Though the lack of some of those
characters (which may not be an issue,
see "NATIVE MODE" above) in the file
name will be an issue to resolve on
some BBSs (i.e. Image BBS uses / in
some of its system and program files)
so you may have to do some BASIC
updates to the system and implement a
message/group/UD name filter to reach
compatibility. Lastly REL file
usability will be a factor if it is to
become a total BBS drive (at least for
the BBSs that rely on REL files.).

Detractions
- The 30 second start up when using CF
cards - this should be fixed soon to
just a second or two.
- The cassette/power wire is a
necessary thing, though I wish it
weren't

Always Room for Improvement
None of these would keep me from
recommending anyone to get the uIEC,
but these could make it better (at
least to me):

- A utilities disk it would be great
to have a 64 program to formant and/or
partition CF cards and hard drives.
- A menu/navigation program - so you
can quickly navigate all the
directories you will have on this
thing, it's is something that someone
who got a UIEC is probably is working
on right now.
- A "swap 8 button" to quickly
(temporarily) swap a device 8 drive
with whatever device # the uIEC is at
the push of a button (I use that
feature a lot on the CMD HD)
- A two IEC port version ( with the 5V
lead I need to keep it close to the 64
or route an IEC cable back from the
other drives and end the chain with
the uIEC, a ready made IEC
pass-through port would be nice in the
next version.
- An LCD readout (not really
necessary, but it would boost up the
cool factor, or better yet if you
could navigate directories using it...
that's probably asking for too much at
that price point though...)

ADDENDUM:
Jim Brain has announced there is going
to be an even smaller version (!) of
the uIEC CF, using an SD card instead
of a compact flash. This will be
replacing the UIEC CF version. Thanks
to these people for corrections: Ingo
Korb Greg King

COMMODORE FREE
I would like to thank Larry for
Permission to reprint his review; an
updated version can be found here
http://www.portcommodore.com/
uiecreview.php