dreher.net

I would like to write an alternate UI for selecting and booting disk images. Is this possible from 6502 assembly? What sort of API does the CFFA3000 export, if any? Is it robust enough to allow a third-party program running on the Apple // itself to duplicate the functionality built into the CFFA3000 firmware -- listing, selecting, and deselecting disk images in the 2 virtual Disk II drives?

The firmware doesn't have the sort of API you're looking for (its only APIs are currently ProDOS and SmartPort calls).

Do you want to write your own image chooser as an interesting project in itself, or because the CFFA's UI direction feels wrong? Suggestions are welcome.

--Dave, The Firmware Guy

I like the UI. It works well and makes sense to me.

I do wish for a "insert blank disk" API to speed up creating images of floppies. I'm thinking of a program like ADTPro that automatically creates a new disk image for every floppy.

-Peter

An interesting project. The CFFA3000 firmware is fine for selecting images from a small list, but it doesn't scale very well if you have a lot of disk images. I once developed a graphical multi-game launcher based on DOS3.3Launcher, with screenshots of each game and autocomplete matching to select a game from a list of hundreds. It works well enough, but there are many games that don't boot properly with DOS3.3Launcher because they use non-standard RWTS routines. With the launch of CFFA3000, I was hoping to create an updated version that selected disk images from the USB stick and "booted" them.

To accomplish this, all I would really need is the ability to pass a disk image filename into the firmware and have it "insert" the disk image into the virtual S6D1 drive. How difficult would it be to expose that functionality to 6502 code?

petern wrote:I do wish for a "insert blank disk" API to speed up creating images of floppies. I'm thinking of a program like ADTPro that automatically creates a new disk image for every floppy.

That would be handy - otherwise, you would need to unplug the media, copy the file off, (maybe renaming it in the process), and plug it back in for each image made. (Interesting application for the outboard buttons... ;-)

petern wrote:I like the UI. It works well and makes sense to me.

I do wish for a "insert blank disk" API to speed up creating images of floppies. I'm thinking of a program like ADTPro that automatically creates a new disk image for every floppy.

-Peter

That would be a nice to have - I have lots of media I want to backup too.

Could swap cables manually but am considering getting something like this if there is no other easy way to do it : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817107510

That way I could write a quick app or script (cmd/powershell,pyton) to accept a name and move the file off the USB to my HD with that name
1) Copy the disk on the A2 to the USB drive (could write a basic app to copy then wait for a key press)
2) Switch the USB to my computer
3) Run my util to move/rename the file
4) switch the USB to the A2 (would this require any other steps to enable?)
5) goto step 1
if step 4 is as easy as just connecting the USB drive than this might be a pretty quick way to image everything. btw - How long does it take for the CFFA to mount the flash drive?
**somewhere in that loop I may also take a scan (photo) of the disk and store it with the DSK/NIB image. May add that to my desktop script if worth the time.

btw: I am not a beta tester but have thought about how I might accomplish copying a lot of media in an efficiant way with this card. This is currently my basic plan of attack unless there is a better way...
If/when test the script/process and it works well, I will post details here if anyone is interested. Should be pretty simple (except if I add scanner support) but may save someone a little time.