Date   : Tue, 28 Oct 2003 23:30:48 GMT
From   : Pete Turnbull <pete@...>
Subject: Re: NFS 3.60 ROM and the Electron

On Oct 28, 14:26, <chris.johns@...> wrote:

> >> I've been looking at the NFS 3.60 ROM (the 8K version)
> > I thought 3.60 is combinated with the DFS, and 3.34 is the only 8K
device for
> > NFS, but no doubt I must be wrong.
>
> I think this is acrually half the DNFS. The ROM name is "DFS,NET" but
it's had the DFS code removed by the looks of it. It's still (C)ROFF
tho :)

AFAIR this was not officially available from Acorn as an 8K ROM, but if
you knew the right people...  It is indeed the bottom half of the DNFS
ROM, but slightly modified.  And, indirectly, that's why you see so
many Tube addresses.  The Tube code resides in the NFS half of the DNFS
ROM; the DFS part fills its 8K but the NFS takes a good deal less than
8K.

In answer to Sprow's almost-question, yes, NFS contains the Tube code
(even in NFS 3.34), though it was also in the 1770DFS in later
machines.

There *was* an Econet for the Elk, but not from Acorn -- it was made by
HCCS.  I don't know what ROM it used, but I'd bet it was based on the
DNFS or NFS 3.34, since that's all there was at the time.  I don't know
if it was released commercially, though (the interface, I mean).

Amongst my collection of ROM image files I have the following:

    ANFS421,bbc   16 KB
    ANFS425,bbc   16 KB
    DNFS120,bbc   16 KB
    DNFS12x,bbc   16 KB
    NFS334,bbc     8 KB
    NFS335K,bbc    8 KB
    NFS360,bbc     8 KB

If you need to see the differences, I dare say I can make them
available.  Interestingly, most of the difference between DNFS120 and
DNFS12x is in the bottom half, but they both report as NFS 3.60.

There are some specific differences between 3.34/3.35 and later
versions (BTW, 3.35 and several others were not generally available):
3.34 has "privileged stations", station numbers > 240 can bypass *PROT
3.40 and higher allow you to hide your password
3.60 has differences in the printing protocol (can send ctrl chars)
3.4 (I think) and higher use IRQs differently (to allow
foreground/background ops)

As you'd probably expect, 3.35 and higher had some changes to fix minor
bugs/irritations (multicolumn *CAT listing, handling OSARGS, etc).

If you want to modify an NFS for an Elk, I'd stick to 3.6 or below.
 ANFS would probably be more difficult.  It makes assumptions about
being in a Master 128, such as being given reason code (service call)
39 after a reset, so it can claim the NMI, and using &B00-CFF for
workspace (which is soft key space and user-defined graphics on earlier
machines).

-- 
Pete                                           Peter Turnbull
                                               Network Manager
                                               University of York