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 81 
 on: April 16, 2025, 04:05:25 am 
Started by bmwcyclist - Last post by stepleton
It's just that this is a pretty massive project, and I think it would be a lot more exciting to reveal it all at once at an event like this than to reveal it piece by piece along the way.

I have to say that I'm unmoved. Filesystem discoveries are of such basic utility to Lisa enthusiasts that big-presentation glory for one particular project (however famous) doesn't really justify keeping the secret in my book, at least not for a patch that I expect amounts to changing a single-digit number of bytes. (It will be interesting to know if that hypothesis is correct!) Other people may have other projects they want to accomplish on their machines, and in my own opinion it's better for everyone if they don't have to wait for such a fundamental enhancement.

I assume that patching the ProFile driver is a relatively small part of your efforts. If that's correct, and if wanting to "be there first" is part of your motivation, I wouldn't overestimate the number of people with the will and the patience to try and accomplish the "hard part", which is to build the Office System and its tools. Who knows, but I would expect that a lot of people have other designs on their free time between now and June.

But let's say that you did get scooped because someone else gets their hands on a big ProFile: the worst-case scenario! Maybe they will get some story-of-the-day fame on hackaday and hacker news or something. You're still the one who's going to show all your work to an excited crowd at VCF; you'll be filmed and people are going to be able to ask you questions and talk to you in person. You know the deep lore and the technical details, and your care to share your knowledge (eventually  :) ) suggests to me that your work will wind up as the primary reference for how to do it.

You were not the first person to make a ProFile emulator, but ESProFile is now celebrated as one of the best and most accessible options out there, and rightly so. I expect the same outcome for your current project even if you aren't the first across the line. (Although I suspect you will be regardless.)

Big ProFile Technique is your discovery and so the knowledge is yours to do with as you wish, for now. But I may get a wild hair someday and try to figure it out for myself, and if I do, I will remain tempted to tell everyone how to do it. I'm still pretty busy, though. Maybe it's this evening that I'll finally get time to test those Monitor ProFile images...

 82 
 on: April 15, 2025, 10:58:14 pm 
Started by jamesdenton - Last post by sigma7
With dc42 images floating around in various working and non-working states

Since we recently had an issue with suspected corruption of ROM images on bitsavers, perhaps the reference catalog could include more than just disk images?

ie. also ROM images, including CPU, I/O, expansion boards, P6A & video PROMs, COPS, Widget & ProFile firmware...

 83 
 on: April 15, 2025, 10:22:28 pm 
Started by stepleton - Last post by sigma7
Quote
Quote
the IO ROM version shouldn't have any affect on COPS/KeyBoard/Parallel/Serial/Sound etc.
... some piece of code could be checking the version and altering behavior

Fair enough... the 68k may certainly behave differently due to what the 6504 communicates (and thus influenced by the IO ROM)... but ordinarily it does not (with a couple of exceptions*).

The intent of my post was to avoid someone having the impression that eg. if their keyboard didn't work IRL (In a Real Lisa™) then the IO ROM might be a likely suspect. The IO ROM doesn't directly control operation of the I/O Board beyond the FDC.

* some exceptions being:
- The "Startup From" menu will show two floppy drives for A8, and one floppy drive for 88 -- further edit... I'm thinking this is more complicated... maybe two floppies appearing requires earlier revision CPU ROMs too?
- Xenix assumes the parallel port hard drive is 5MB or 10MB depending on A8/88
- The hard disk icon in the Startup From menu and environments such as MacWorks changes between a ProFile and a Widget
- The clock speed of the 6522 VIAs is different (approx. 500KHz vs 1.25 MHz), 88 indicating the 2/10 I/O Board designated as having "fast timers" per the source code comments, requiring different time constants.

edit: exceptions

 84 
 on: April 15, 2025, 10:10:54 pm 
Started by jamesdenton - Last post by sigma7
would it be of any use?

Yes, I think it would be useful.

My initial inclination would be to md5 only the data (exclude the tags), and to skip the DC42 header.

Further, the catalog would store the value for the ultimately uncompressed data/result (so the md5 value would be the same for a disk image encoded as binary, dc42, zip, sit etc.).

Perhaps two values should be stored, one for the above, and one for the file as-is (including tags and DC42 header after zipping or whatever).

 85 
 on: April 15, 2025, 09:52:16 pm 
Started by jamesdenton - Last post by jamesdenton
With dc42 images floating around in various working and non-working states, I was curious to know if anyone has compiled a list of (md5?) checksums for known-working dc42 images. This would avoid a copy operation and subsequent failure, and maybe even help reconcile images of varying names to an exact disk. I'm mainly concerned about the legit Apple install media versus random images. Does something like this exist already and, if not, would it be of any use to anyone besides me?

 86 
 on: April 15, 2025, 09:05:29 pm 
Started by stepleton - Last post by Lisa2
Quote
tried each IO ROM

For IRL hardware, the I/O Board ROM is used exclusively by the Floppy Disk Controller's 6504... the 68000 can't even access it.

So the IO ROM version shouldn't have any affect on COPS/KeyBoard/Parallel/Serial/Sound etc.

The 68000 can certainly make inquiries of it, as it displays the I/O ROM version in the top right during boot/diagnostics.

NO, this is not correct, the 68000 cannot access the IO ROM directly as James said.   What happens is that the IO ROM version is written into the shared RAM by the 6504, and the 68000 reads that.   Try it, If you were to remove the 6504 from your IO board and POST the system IO ROM displayed will be gibberish.



 87 
 on: April 15, 2025, 08:56:10 pm 
Started by stepleton - Last post by pablo_marx
Quote
tried each IO ROM

For IRL hardware, the I/O Board ROM is used exclusively by the Floppy Disk Controller's 6504... the 68000 can't even access it.

So the IO ROM version shouldn't have any affect on COPS/KeyBoard/Parallel/Serial/Sound etc.

The 68000 can certainly make inquiries of it, as it displays the I/O ROM version in the top right during boot/diagnostics. So it seemed feasible, but certainly very unlikely, given the error report that some piece of code could be checking the version and altering behavior based on the value (e.g. enabling some quirks mode code path when dealing with the COP), resulting in the behavior described.


 88 
 on: April 15, 2025, 01:25:24 pm 
Started by stepleton - Last post by sigma7
Quote
tried each IO ROM

For IRL hardware, the I/O Board ROM is used exclusively by the Floppy Disk Controller's 6504... the 68000 can't even access it.

So the IO ROM version shouldn't have any affect on COPS/KeyBoard/Parallel/Serial/Sound etc.

I'd suppose that if you find one of these things is affected by the IO ROM version in the emulator, that might merit a bug report.

The exception is that the PRAM is in fact the 6504's RAM that also can be accessed by the 68000, so there is the potential for the I/O Board ROM to interfere with access to, or alter the PRAM.

 89 
 on: April 14, 2025, 11:04:32 pm 
Started by stepleton - Last post by TorZidan

Thank you, pablo_marx@, for the clues!
I built and run LisaEm version 1.2.7-RC4_2022.04.01, and I still had the repeating keys issue.
So I started digging into the preferences and menu items, and I finally  figured it out: In the "Key" menu, somehow I have chosen "Raw Keyboard".
Changing it to "ASCII Keyboard" fixed it!
I have no idea what are these different keyboard options, but am glad that this case is closed.


 90 
 on: April 14, 2025, 10:57:12 pm 
Started by stepleton - Last post by pablo_marx
On my initial Linux build with Ray's repo, I let lisaem build and install wx-widgets, so it appears to be v3.1.5-gtk.  I'd be hard pressed to guess why wx-widgets would only affect the keyboard with these Monitor disks...   I've also tried each keyboard locale and each IO ROM (but not every combination of them) and haven't had any keyboard issues. 

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