Hi everyone,
A lot of people seem to be repairing their Widgets these days
For that reason, I've finally got round to fixing an important shortcoming in NeoWidEx. Now you can force it to believe that a working Widget is attached to the Lisa even when the Widget refuses to let you read block $FFFFFF. It only took me about three years...
Background: Before executing a Widget-specific command, the prior version of NeoWidEx checks to see whether a Widget is attached to your Lisa. It does this by reading the "virtual block" $FFFFFF, which Apple parallel port hard drives fill with useful information about the drive (size, type, etc.). If the drive claims to be a Widget, NeoWidEx goes ahead with the command, otherwise it says "YOU NEED A WIDGET TO DO THAT" and stops.
This behaviour is not so useful if you're trying to troubleshoot a broken Widget, since a Widget will only fulfill an ordinary read request to $FFFFFF if it passes its power-on self test. NeoWidEx could still be helpful for diagnosing such a Widget by reading status information and so forth, but instead it would simply refuse to operate.
In the new version, NeoWidEx still tries to read $FFFFFF, but if it fails to collect evidence of a Widget, it gives you the option of overriding the failed detection. A screenshot of the process in LisaEm 1.2.6.2 is attached.
Of course LisaEm 1.2.6.2 doesn't emulate a Widget, so the operation fails. Other Widget commands cause NeoWidEx to crash in emulation. It's probably best only to pretend you have a Widget when you actually have a Widget.
More information appears
in the manual. Code and a new .dc42 disk image are available now
on GitHub.
Author
Topic: NeoWidEx 0.4: now your Widget doesn't need to pass the self test (Read 10576 times)