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Re: Where does the "16 SECTOR" message come from?
David Empson wrote:
> Tristan Mumford <xtristan.xmumford@xgmail.xcom> wrote:
>
>> It's probably a blatantly stupid question to most but before today I have
>> never seen the "16 SECTOR" or "13 SECTOR" boot messages. Where is it
>> stored? Is it in the diskII ROM or AppleSoft?
>>
>> Sorry for the question, but I can't find where it lives.
>
> Neither of the above.
>
> The Disk ][ controller firmware contains no displayed text at all.
>
> Applesoft predates any disk operating system so it knows nothing about
> sectors.
Thought as much about AppleSoft. But this left me doubtful. I have barely
ever used the controller that generated this message. It was in the
currently "sleeping" clone ][. it's now in my //e for the purpose of
testing my 3.5" adaptor.
>
> I'm not aware of anything which would display messages saying "16
> SECTOR" or "13 SECTOR" other than specific code loaded from disk,
> perhaps the "BASICS" disk which lets you boot a 13 sector disk on a 16
> sector controller.
That is truly interesting. Before my head-stepping microcontroller packed up
on me (working on building an adaptor to use one of my bigger ones) I had a
few failed attempts at prodos formatting and copying ProDOS to that disk,
which failed every time because of an error in my uC head stepping code.
So unless ProDOS has those messages on track 0 which would genuinely
surprise me, or this funny clone controller can boot 13 and 16 sector
disks, and perhaps alert people to a nonbootable disk of a particular type.
because it displayed "13 SECTOR" and "16 SECTOR" messages very neatly in
the dead centre of the screen.
>
> On a standard DOS 3.3 system master (late edition) the only code with
> support for 13 sector disks is the MUFFIN and BOOT13 programs.
> Everything else (including DOS 3.3 itself) expects 16 sectors.
>
Now I'm really curious. I think I have a dos 3.2 disk somewhere that I can
test 13 sector with, after I give one of the clone 5.25" drives a good
clean that is.
I like a nice little mystery. What gets me is the ROM would have to support
the normal Disk ][ stuff along with fitting at least "SECTOR" in there too
and a means of detecting and displaying the message. Now I'm really
curious.
Tristan.
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