Date   : Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:53:23 GMT
From   : Pete Turnbull <pete@...>
Subject: Re: Eprom Burning

On Oct 26, 15:01, Darren T. Brown wrote:

> There must be a simpler way than having to reload my original disks
and
> tapes when I have the image files already on my PC.

No.  Not unless you have a filing system that talks to the PC.
 DFS/ADFS talk to disk drives attached to the BBC, CFS talks to a
cassette recorder, NFS (Econet) talks to an Acorn (or SJ) fileserver,
...

There's a program called Xfer for transferring files and disk images
to/from a PC (or Unix machine) but it transfers files to/from the BBC
disk to the PC disk.

> How did one create a ROM image originally?..or was that not
possible...can
> Rom images only be created from pre-programmed ROMS? Or is it
possible to
> use, say, an Emulator- load in a program or game, and then spit it
back out
> as a ROM image?

No, you can't do that either.  Sideways ROM software is specially
written (in assembly language, and stored as machine code) to be an
extension of the operating system.  BASIC (and other) programs are just
data that can be loaded into memory and executed by BASIC (or whatever
language you're using).  If you want to store programs in ROM so that
they can be loaded into memory, you use RFS, which as I explained
before works like the Cassette Filing System.  You need a program
(originally listed in the ROM Filing System Application Note) to build
a ROM image, which you then burn into an EPROM.  In effect, you "save"
your programs/data into a single file along with headers (very similar
to the CFS headers which the OS creates automatically when you save to
cassette) and then you copy the single big file into your EPROM.  You
will find this very hard to do without a disk drive, and of course
impossible without an EPROM programmer.

> Sorry for all the questions- I have ordered some books so that I can
> familiurise myself with the machins a little better...but I am
itching to
> get Elite burned to an Eprom and installed in my machine. Currently I
just
> have original tape, as well as disk and tape images on my PC.

The disk images will do you no good until you get disks to put them on
and a disk drive to read them.  That's what they're for.  Well,
actually, what they're for is the *emulated* disk drive on a BBC
*emulator*.

-- 
Pete                                           Peter Turnbull
                                               Network Manager
                                               University of York