Patches and discussion for Ensoniq VFX family

Hans,

Sorry, long and technical post !

I thought I could share some information on how I
successfully made an EDE diskimage (posted under the
Yahoo's VFX group file section). I did that in
February 2002, so forgive me if my memory fails !

First I read the "Ensoniq-DiskFormats" text file
(posted under Yahoo's VFX group File Section) to
understand how the floppy was organized. Got the
information I wanted: 80 tracks, 10 sectors (512
bytes) per tracks, 2 sides. Meaning that the standard
DOS disk access will not work ! And therefore
anticipating some problems with new OS (NT4, Win2000,
XP) that won't let a program access directly BIOS
functions to the floppy.

Sneaked the Internet for programs that would allow to
define # tracks and # sectors/tracks.
Ended up with the following list :
* Diskimage (we Korg 01w/fd lovers use for backuping
01w floppies)
* FDfrm18 (you know that FDRead that could in the old
days store more than 1.44 Mo)
* Floppy Image
* MDisk42
* TeleDisk (used by Akai to diskimage .TD0 files)
* WinImage v6.0

I also studied the EDE structure and found that I
could keep the headers and footers (hexadecimals) and
copy in between what I could grab from one of the
results of the above programs.
Found also that the EDE file does not have to be
806913 bytes long as long as the file ends up with the
footer (1A hex) and the hex info correspond to one
side (I can post the 2 files that generate the same
VFX floppy: one is 806913 bytes and 623027 bytes to
understand what I'm trying to explain !).

I succeeded using Win98. Don't remember if I booted in
DOS mode, but I believe so !

From what I remember, I generated the "plain image"
using either MDisk42 or FloppyImage. You have to
parameter the # of tracks and # of sectors/track
before making the image file.
WinImage v6 seems to be the easiest program that could
generate an image directly under Windows environment.
But the tracks/sectors parameters were not available.
I emailed the programer to include that in his next
versions. He replied that if there were requests, he
would implement it ! Maybe there is a new version
since one year ?

So got my plain image file (819208 bytes under
MDdisk42 and 738304 bytes under FloppyImage, don't
remember which one I used !). Then to create the
EDE-compatible file, I used an hexadecimal editor to
find "signatures" in both files and copy / pasted "my
floppy info" from the plain file into the EDE
template. You'll see EDE header stops somewhere near
0000:041F, this is where you copy your data.

The most frustrating part was that since my VFX died
(tried unsuccessfully to hard-calibrate myself !!), I
couldn't create the VFX floppy (needs formatting
directly on the VFX), I couldn't test my experience.

So I posted my EDE-compatible file, waiting for
feedback... Still waiting for feedback... At least,
someone who can say, YES, I created a floppy using
your EDE-file (and I love that Genesis intro using the
Florida-Keys !!!!)...

Hope it's not too chinese to everyone. If you guys
want more specific details, don't hesitate, I'll try
to do my best !

Long live the VFX !

Fred

=====
--
Si la pierre tombe sur l'oeuf, malheur a l'oeuf,
Si l'oeuf tombe sur la pierre, malheur a l'oeuf.
   Frederic (roidelaplage@...)

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