On 3/16/24 01:50, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:
Laddiealpha and DLplus do the same thing, they're just different
implementations of the server/disk side of the tpdd protocol. There are
some differences in how they map to/from 6.2 filenames and how they deal
with misnamed ASCII BASIC files. Probably some other features.
But for most functionality, they perform the same function. I assume
dlplus supports rex cpm too. But I know that rexcpm was developed
against laddiealpha.
-- John.
dl2 has specific support for REXCPM, in that REXCPM violates the tpdd
spec to load the large cpm disk image. Part of the spec is a 16 byte
field for the file size, which is physically impossible to encompass the
file size.
Any tpdd client is *supposed* to read that field to know when to stop
asking for another block of file data, but the way REXCPM gets around
that is it ignores that field and just keeps asking for another block
until failure. This can only possibly work with an emulator that is
willing to keep going beyond 64K and do -something- with the file size
field (I set it to 0). A real drive can not do it.
dl2 actually makes a very convenient REXCPM loader because you can use
the bootstrapper to inject-and-run the initial rxcini.DO in a single
step without ever actually copying or saving it as a file. Happily
rxcini.DO actually works with RUN "COM:..." like a tpdd2 bootstrap (so
thanks Steve!). And then the normal tpdd server to serve up the rexcpm
"firmware", cpm installer, and cpm disk image.
If you download all the files into a directory, you end up with this
short sweet command to do the whole thing (you have to do several manual
steps on the 100, but nothing more on the pc, other than press enter
once when it tells you to)
$ dl -vb rxcini.DO && dl -vu
Full directions to supply the "download all the files" and "manual steps
on the 100" parts:
https://github.com/bkw777/dl2/blob/master/ref/REXCPM.md
Adding tsend.ps1 to Laddie gives essentially the same convenience when
using Laddie on Windows.
https://github.com/bkw777/tsend
dl2 works on windows too in cygwin or msys2, but that's not convienient
unless you already wanted cygwin anyway, while tsend is just a
powershell script.
--
bkw
