Lerm MicroMate - A Full Circle
Well, it's taken a long time... but while eventually making an image of my MicroMate cartridge I totally destroyed the original during the process. Feck ;)
Here's some code that will rebuild the important MicroMate components onto a real cartridge.
The code has to do some unusual/sneaky stuff:
1. Format the cartridge with a weird name (plus tweak the default blank sector name) to stop Trans Express, Andrew Pennell's copier, and a native CAT from being able to read and backup the cartridge.
2. Purposefully corrupt the header checksums of sectors 1 - 5.
3. Write code to specific cartridge sectors (including the corrupted ones!)
4. Write files with hidden names to cartridge (hence tweaking the blank sector name)
Any way, the rebuild program is supplied in a K7ZX super fast loading format, and has been loaded and tested with a real Spectrum 48k and Interface One Issue 2.
It should also be compatible with an Issue 1 Interface One but has not been tested with that hardware.
To rebuild Lerm MicroMate onto a real cartridge you should :
1. Load the rebuild program into your Spectrum.
2. Insert an unused microdrive cartridge intro drive 1, and when ready press enter to start the rebuild.
3. After rebuilding has finished, reset your Spectrum and type RUN to load MicroMate.
4. From the MicroMate menu, select the option to load MiniTape.
5. Playback the MicroMate tape into your Spectrum, and transfer the back, cat, catc, tap, tapc and tk files to your new ly created MicroMate cartridge.
YMMV as to whether you can fit all these files onto the one cartridge as I've not yet found a reliable method to perform an "extended" format.
Bob's your uncle! If you do check this out, please let me know how you get on...
Cheers
Jim
Here's some code that will rebuild the important MicroMate components onto a real cartridge.
The code has to do some unusual/sneaky stuff:
1. Format the cartridge with a weird name (plus tweak the default blank sector name) to stop Trans Express, Andrew Pennell's copier, and a native CAT from being able to read and backup the cartridge.
_hdname defb $10,$11,$15 defm "TRANS" ; defb $14,$ff
2. Purposefully corrupt the header checksums of sectors 1 - 5.
3. Write code to specific cartridge sectors (including the corrupted ones!)
4. Write files with hidden names to cartridge (hence tweaking the blank sector name)
Any way, the rebuild program is supplied in a K7ZX super fast loading format, and has been loaded and tested with a real Spectrum 48k and Interface One Issue 2.
It should also be compatible with an Issue 1 Interface One but has not been tested with that hardware.
To rebuild Lerm MicroMate onto a real cartridge you should :
1. Load the rebuild program into your Spectrum.
2. Insert an unused microdrive cartridge intro drive 1, and when ready press enter to start the rebuild.
3. After rebuilding has finished, reset your Spectrum and type RUN to load MicroMate.
4. From the MicroMate menu, select the option to load MiniTape.
5. Playback the MicroMate tape into your Spectrum, and transfer the back, cat, catc, tap, tapc and tk files to your new ly created MicroMate cartridge.
YMMV as to whether you can fit all these files onto the one cartridge as I've not yet found a reliable method to perform an "extended" format.
Bob's your uncle! If you do check this out, please let me know how you get on...
Cheers
Jim
Post edited by jp on
Comments
1. Load the rebuild program into your Spectrum.
2. Insert an unused microdrive cartridge intro drive 1, and when ready press enter to start the rebuild.
3. After rebuilding has finished, reset your Spectrum and type RUN to load MicroMate.
4. From the MicroMate menu, select the option to load MiniTape.
5. Playback the MicroMate tape into your Spectrum, and transfer the back, cat, catc, tap, tapc and tk files to your newly created MicroMate cartridge.
formatting
???TRANS?? shitload of numbers
testing
writing sectors
26 23 20 1D 01 05 04 03 02
saving files
??????????? 0000000000000000000000
Microdrive full, 0:2
Tried it on quite a few carts to rule out faulty ones all give same result.
Geoff uploaded a demonstration to Google Video a while back which shows how really useful it is.
Have a fiddle around with it under emulation and see what you think - QAOPM should get you off to a good start.
Hopefully, Max Desktop will shed some light on what's happened to the individual sectors on the [real] full cartridge.
Out of interest do you have just the one microdrive unit, or another one tucked away somewhere?
Here's how to get MaxDesktop onto a real cartridge:
2. With your choice of emulator playback the MaxDesktop TAP file into your real Spectrum
3. Have a cup of tea
4. Once MaxDesktop has finally loaded on your real Spectrum use the QAOPM keys (up,down,left,right,fire) to position the pointer over the "Mouse" icon (top left corner)
5. Press and hold M (fire) to display a menu - while still holding M press A (down) to select the "Customize" option.
6. From the "Customize" menu, position the pointer over the "Save" icon - press M to select to "Save"
7. Two files will be saved to cartridge - "max" (the program) and "run" the bootstrap.
8. Great, you've now got a working copy of MaxDesktop on cartridge! You'll be able to use this again in the future. ;)
OK, so to find out what's gone wrong swap over your new MaxDesktop cartridge [in drive 1] with the one that you'd previously created with the MicroMate rebuilder. Once you've done that:
2. The sectors on the cartridge will be analysed.
You should now have a scrollable display showing a summary of the sectors.
Sector 0 should be missing.
Sectors 1-5 should have a status of BAD
Sectors 6-180(ish) should have a status of UNU (meaning unused)
Sectors 180(ish)-254 should be missing
What are the filenames (hopefully "??????????") and status of the sectors on your real cartridge?
Cheers
jp
0 MIS
1-5 BAD
6-27 ????70?? ? GD
28 MIS
29 r GD
30-31 ????70?? ? GD
32 r GD
33-34 ????70?? ? GD
35 r GD
36-37 ????70?? ? GD
38 r GD
39-78 ????70?? ? GD
79 ????70?? ? BAD
80-210 ????70?? ? GD
211-254 MIS
:roll:
If you want to try again you can load the rebuild code back into your real Spectrum.
At the message:
Press break, then type in:
Wait for the Spectrum to reset, and then type in:
And have another go.
Cheers
jp
I've fired up my hardware this afternoon and have seen some more oddly named sectors that are taking up valuable space.
Badly commented source also included.
I still get more pleasure loading things from a Microdrive than my divIDE. :)