Midnight Mega

A simple file commander and disk mounting programme.

Work in progress.

Installation

Try only with backed up disks and .d81 ! The current state of this development will eat your files.

Check the project out and dive into folder llvm.
Use MOUNT "MIDNIGHT.D81" as programme disk.
Optionally use MOUNT "DATADISK.D81",U9 as a torture disk. Or use copies of your own disks.

Start

Currently MIDNIGHTMEGA PRG is the only programme. You find it within MIDNIGHT.D81.

The earlier file DBGMIDNIGHTMEGA PRG to see an additional disk/track/sector/read/write in the lower left of the screen is no longer needed. The overlay is configurable in the setup which you can reach with the [F9] key.

The second file EMUMIDNIGHTMEGA PRG no longer provided was the same as DBGMIDNIGHTMEGA but with additional delays for each sector read and written. It was used to examine .d81 on storage card behaviours or in XMega65 from the Xemu emulators suite. Both otherwise being quite fast to look at. The delay feature currently is no available.

The additional output shows like D1T40S1 R where D1 is the chosen disk drive number (currently 0 for the left screen pane and 1 for the righthand one). T40 is the track, S1 the sector number currently in operation. So R is reading while W is writing the disk (image).

Operation

The following keymapping is also shown when opened by pressing the [F1] or [HELP] key.

Most keys are shown in the feeter bar
[Ctrl][r] to rescan current file panel (left or right)
Due to Hypervisor limitations .d81 image files can neither be copied as a whole nor be created, use [Mega][F3] to reach the MEGA65 freezer menu to do so
[Mega][F5] copies all blocks (allocated ones if configured) of the selected side (left or right) to the opposite one, this will overwrite a whole disk (image) contents irrevocably
[←] in the upper left of your keyboard can be used instead of the .. directory entry to climb to the parent directory
Currently the left pane is always drive 0 and the right one drive 1, a later handling within the same drive is planned allowing you to copy files within one disk
[F2] ([Shift][F1] on the MEGA65 of course) is used for both switching from a mounted .d81 to the selection within the storage card and back
[Mega][F3] opens the Freezer screen. It is an in-application alternative to using a longer press onto the [RESTORE] key. After coming back the application is rescanning the drives like it does if the [Ctrl][r] combination of keys is used to ensure updated disk contents

Project subfolders here in Github

llvm

Downloaded the .7z file release from the llvm-mos Github repo and built my own make batch file for it. In this folder I'm currently adding functionality to my little file manager project.

Please be aware currently Midnight Mega is in an unstable state, it might handle your .d81 and real disk drive inserted diskettes maliciously. Expect data loss. Feedback welcome as issue tickets.

Tools and experiments

Also in subfolder llvm you find a script xemu-image.bat. This is currently used to populate an empty storage card image file to be used in Xemu. Upon receival of the MEGA65 it is planned to also choose in between image files and real seriel/network connections towards the hardware of course. You may want to look into to get some ideas for your own setup.

All the files beginning ht2... are a BASIC handler for screen memory based text outputs to be saved as SEQ files. This is eightees project of mine when I was simulating a Teletext on a C64. I thought this might be an idea to create the help pages for Midnight Mega but am now considering a different approach. Still using a SEQ file but no longer oriented on a full screen I could maybe save all the project's strings into a single SEQ file. Meaning to also include all message box texts and so on. This is not yet begun.

Requirements, project

Not yet in progress

greyed out function keys will get implemented.
function keys in the foot of the screen will be showing more modifier key combinations.
storage card and file entry flags need to be handled outside of the dirent to further support illegal dirent attributes.
Hyppo SD card handling as far as possible (writing not yet implemented on Hyppo side).
Creation of .d81 image files currently unsopported by Hyppo.
For llvm replace most fixed strings for screen output with their syntax. Maybe check how PETSCII differs from screen codes/attributes. Otherwise use the cc65 approach.
Maybe reading of a setting file to get configurable personal preferences a go, a seperate setup programme could be added to the disk.
[F1][Help] need to load a text file from the diskette and show the user, same routines to be used as for [F3].
GEOS VLIR filenames and file types are not displayed correctly, neither are they supported nor rejected.
Add the core's .d64 support.
In addition to .prg and .d81 create a ROM file with the programme to be used like so.

Tasks

✓ Text based GUI, Midnight/Norton Commander oriented
✓ copying of complete disk images, real diskettes respectively
✓ proof of concept accessing .d81 mount handling
✓ copying of single/multiple files in between real/virtual drives, mounted images
message boxes for errors and warnings in different colours/sounds?
Handling of subdirectories (sub-partitions of file type CBM) inside diskettes
[Ctrl][u] to swap mount situation, mind swapping the complete attic too ☹
ability to use the same drive number on both sides of the commander to copy files onto the same disk
Unmounting to gain full access to the underlying real floppy drive is not yet implemented
✓ Full disk copy, meaning only within already mounted .d81 disk image files or with real floppy diskettes
✓ proof of concept abstraction layer real/virtual floppy image
proof of concept reading floppy (sub-) directories
✓ proof of concept reading files, sectors, tracks
✓ proof of concept writing files, sectors, tracks
refactoring for code runtime optimisation
test data copy by exceeding the maximum number of allowed blocks
test unmounted drives, empty disks and other error handling
better visualise disk and mounting errors
remove dirent sectors if empty after file deletions, retain track chain
✓ show a status feeter with number of blocks available
Involving the user to handle same name files/directories
s[] and OPTION option are maybe data to put to different places, s[] could be the same pointer as p2sbuf

Bugs

Copying files into subdirs currently allocates BAM outside the subfolder tracks.
The help file display routine is currently limited to one block of data instead of four for a full screen.
✓ ~~Additional dirent blocks are placed outside track 40~~ ~~and this is not what Commodore did.~~
✓ ~~Additional file blocks are also placed within track 40.~~
Updir within disk root folder unecessarily re-reads the headers
After file delete BAM seems to be written in the according function as well as in nav.c
better check with DEBUG on
~~BAM and dirent blocks are read/written way too often. With~~ ~~the now cache for two disks (left and right) in place this~~ ~~can be optimised.~~
A BAM flag could be used to only read it back in case disk operation need access to it/alter it. Also BAM and dirent should be handled in one go as the double logical sectors for both share same physical ones on a disk.
✓ ~~The disk controller always reads/writes two logical sectors~~ ~~at a time because of course it acts on physical 80 sectored~~ ~~dual sided media. The now abstraction make in no way optimal~~ ~~use of that.~~
✓ ~~Either reading one sector could keep the other in a cache or~~ ~~UpdateSectors() could be optimised to read them all at once~~ ~~in a proper numeric order.~~
✓ ~~dirent is currently not fully updated, additional sectors~~ ~~are currently not added automatically.~~
✓ ~~dirent currently uses a full 255 bytes page of data which of~~ ~~course is completely unnecessary.~~
✓ ~~dirent currently is read beginning with the first block of~~ ~~file entries not supporting the disk name block at track 40~~ ~~sector 0.~~
✓ ~~The yet state of development only uses the left file list so~~ copy actually only duplicates files on the same disk
✓ ~~BAM is only supported for one sector, tracks 41 to 80.~~ ~~therefore not yet covered.~~
✓ ~~BAM is not yet in attic RAM, therefore multiple discs not~~ ~~cached.~~
✓ ~~Improve handling of DEL type files.~~
✓ ~~reading/writing .d81 always takes two logical sectors at once,~~ ~~writing of a single one should first read its accompaigning one.~~
✓ ~~reading the last sector 39 results in side 1 and an invalid~~ ~~next track.~~
Modifier key handling could be improved/optimised to treat keys different that don't require modification at all.
Flickering in Xemu when e.g. cursor up is performed multiple times because of how modifier keys are currently handled.
✓ ~~If a file is only read the drive's LED doesn't switch back off.~~ ~~It seems this is done by _miniinit() which needs to be checked~~ ~~anyway.~~

C environment

Additions to `mega65-libc`

are in file llvm/conioextensions.h and are quirky because of most in conio.c being static
conio.c was copied to llvm and massively edited to get rid of not needed stuff. This freed 3+ blocks of code.
the full removal of KickC based include files from folder llvm/include

Additions to llvm-mos

The following line does autodeclare DIRENTPAGELOW in case it is not defined elsewhere. Its value would be indetermined.

#define readdir_direntasm DIRENTPAGELOW
__asm__(".set readdir_dirent, " XSTR(readdir_direntasm) );

nobruinfo/midnightmega