MagiC & spinmxfs.xfs (iso filesystem for CDs)

[ThorstenOtto]

Does anybody use the filesystem driver of MagiC to access CDs? I just wonder how this is supposed to work.

The documentation seems to indicate, that this is only supported with MetaDOS (also indicated by the fact that the driver parses \auto\config.sys)

But while trying it out there are some mysteries for me: filesystem drivers (*.XFS) are loaded *before* programs from the auto-folder are run. However the driver calls Metainit() to check whether metados is installed. How can that be the case, if it was not run yet?
Next try was to put metados.prg as metaxbs.sys in the \gemsys\magic\xtension folder, so it is executed by the driver. But then there is another mystery: spinmxfs.xfs does it own parsing of config.sys in order to find out which gemdos drives should be served. It does this by checking lines with *DOS, and which have a driver named iso9660f.dos or hs-iso.dos. However when i use such a configuration, then the CD will already be served by that driver, and not by spinmxfs.xfs???

I'm a bit confused.

[czietz]

Have you read the documentation for SPIN? Imho it is explained quite well. You won't have any trouble with the German documentation, others please use Google Translate etc.

Short summary: You're not supposed to rename METADOS.PRG to METAXBS.* but you should use the separate METAXBS.PRG, which doesn't load DOS drivers. Therefore, it is up to the XFS to parse the CONFIG.SYS to find the appropriate DOS line.

SPIN.TXT from http://atariftp.czietz.de/pub/atari/Uti ... pin032.tos:

4. Installation des MagiC-XFS SPINMAGC.XFS

Kopieren Sie METAXBS.PRG in den AUTO-Ordner (die Position ist in
diesem Fall egal; er darf sogar METAXBS.PRX heißen). Kopieren Sie
SPINMAGC.XFS in den Ordner \GEMSYS\MAGIC\XTENSION.

Nach einem Neustart sollte der Zugriff auf das CD-Laufwerk ganz wie
unter normalem TOS möglich sein.


WIE ES FUNKTIONIERT
METAXBS.PRG ist eine abgemagerte Version von METADOS.PRG, aus der
alle Funktionen zum Laden und Einbindung von DOS-Treibern entfernt
wurden. Das spart nicht nur Platz, sondern verhindert auch die
Installation der DOS-Treiber, die nun unter MiNT und MagiC nicht
mehr benötigt werden. Beim Starten bindet MetaXBS wie gewohnt die
BOS-Treiber ein. Alle MetaDOS-XBIOS-Funktionen stehen danach wie
unter MetaDOS zur Verfügung.

Auch die XFSse lesen die MetaDOS-Konfigurationsdatei (aus
\AUTO\CONFIG.SYS). Sie suchen nach der nun nicht mehr verwendeten
Zeile zur Installation des DOS-Treibers und wertet diese selbst
aus. Beispiel:

*BOS, c:\auto\cdargen.bos, A:11

Diese Zeile wird von MetaXBS ausgewertet und führt wie bei einer
normalen MetaDOS-Installation dazu, dass der Treiber CDARGEN.BOS
geladen wird und als MetaDOS-XBIOS-Gerät 'A' für SCSI-Laufwerk 3 (8
+ 3) initialisiert wird.

*DOS, c:\auto\hs-iso.dos -c128, S:A

Dieser Teil wird nun von SPIN! ausgewertet. SPIN! sucht einfach
nach der Anweisung, einen DOS-Treiber zu installieren und übernimmt
diese Funktion nun selbsttätig. Erkannt werden dabei die Dateinamen
"ISO9660F.DOS" (Atari-MetaDOS) und "HS-ISO.DOS" (CD-Tool). Eine
Cachegrößenangabe wie bei CD-Tool (-cXXX) wird erkannt und ausge-
wertet. Im obigen Beispiel würde SPIN! also das GEMDOS-Laufwerk S:
installieren, darauf per MetaDOS-XBIOS-Laufwerk 'A' zugreifen und
dafür 128 KB Sektorcache reservieren.

[ThorstenOtto]

Have you read the documentation for SPIN?

To be honest, no I tried with what is explained in the source of spinmgxs.xfs.

Short summary: You're not supposed to rename METADOS.PRG to METAXBS.* but you should use the separate METAXBS.PRG

Ah, ok, that explains something. I dind't know that there is a stripped down version of metados.

But it does not explain how this is supposed to work when run from the auto folder. IMHO it can only work (at all) when copied to \gemsys\magic\xtension

Have to check yet how MiNT handles this, but i guess it is similar. Apropos MiNT: the current source tree has an iso-fs, but it is not compiled by default (and gives some error when trying to do so), and also seems to be rather incomplete.

[mikro]

Apropos MiNT: the current source tree has an iso-fs, but it is not compiled by default (and gives some error when trying to do so), and also seems to be rather incomplete.

IIRC, this project had been started around the time when Frank got his health issues so it is just a work in progress thing.

[Frank B]

Is there a 68k distribution of Magic 6.23 on the cards?

[ThorstenOtto]

[it is just a work in progress thing.

I wouldn't call that "progress" after 14 years of nothing changed

I'm currently trying to reconstruct the source of libcdfs.lib from MagiC (it's only available in object form there), maybe that one can be used to also build the spin.xfs.

[ThorstenOtto]

Is there a 68k distribution of Magic 6.23 on the cards?

6.23? Which version is that?

[czietz]

But it does not explain how this is supposed to work when run from the auto folder. IMHO it can only work (at all) when copied to \gemsys\magic\xtension

Given that...
strings spinmagc.xfs
... yields "\auto\metaxbs.prg", "\auto\metaxbs.prx" and "\gemsys\magic\xtension\metaxbs.sys" among other things, I suspect that the XFS will actively check for METAXBS and run/load it before using MetaDOS functions.

Have to check yet how MiNT handles this, but i guess it is similar.

With MiNT, isn't one supposed to run MetaDOS from the AUTO folder before the MiNT kernel starts? The documentation for SPIN! even says so:

Kopieren Sie METAXBS.PRG in den AUTO-Ordner. Dabei muß METAXBS.PRG vor MINT.PRG ausgeführt werden!

[ThorstenOtto]

... yields "\auto\metaxbs.prg", "\auto\metaxbs.prx" and "\gemsys\magic\xtension\metaxbs.sys" among other things

Yes this is extremely confusing. There are 3 versions of the program on
gitlab, bin/cd-mxfs.prg (either quite old or maybe some test version),
bin/spinmagc.xfs and bin/release/spinmgxs.xfs. bin/release/spinmgxs.xfs
yields the strings

Code: Select all

CD filesystem 1.00
@(#)spinmxfs.prg 1.00, Copyright (c) Julian F. Reschke & Andreas Kromke, Jun  1 1997
@(#)libcdfs.lib, Copyright (c) Julian F. Reschke, May 30 1997

, and bin/spinmagc.xfs

Code: Select all

CD filesystem 0.29
Copyright (c) Julian F. Reschke & Andreas Kromke, Jun 12 1997
@(#)libcdfs.lib, Copyright (c) Julian F. Reschke, Jun  9 1997

The dates are automatically generated by a __DATE__ string, so they
only tell the compile date, and judging from the version i thought that
spinmgxs.xfs is newer. Also it can be exactly recreated from the
sources. But apparently the other one is newer, and the behaviour of
looking for metados.prx is also nowhere mentioned. Now i have to find
out what else might have been changed there.

At least that seems to be the only way it can work. As already said,
*.XFS are loaded before the auto folder, and putting MetaDOS before
magxboot does not help either because MagiC will just overwrite the
vectors. Given that it is supposed to be able to be started from ROM,
it does not make sense to change this, the old vectors may just be random
garbage.

[czietz]

FYI: The version for which I posted the link contains "spinmagc.xfs 0.32, Copyright (c) Julian F. Reschke & Andreas Kromke, Jul 6 1997". But it's binary only. It was uploaded to ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de in August 1997.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Don't know if it would help, but I have one here that's version 0.34. It's attached here.

[ThorstenOtto]

Argl another version i have to check But thx alot.

[Ektus]

IIRC, 0.34 was the last beta and available only on request (not for general distribution). I've got it, too, but it's been a loooooong time.

[gstoll]

IIRC, 0.34 was the last beta and available only on request (not for general distribution).

The 0.34 was the last official version, I know. The last version I have is the 0.37beta from 2000.03.15. But like you wrote "do not distribute this beta version without my written permission."

[ThorstenOtto]

Sources for the libcdfs.lib are now available on https://github.com/th-otto/MagicMac , so the XFS can now be compiled from it. There is also a small history in changes from the old version to 0.34. I'm still looking for that 0.37beta version, maybe someone can send me a copy?

For the curious, there is also a "original" branch in the repo with sources that compile (almost) to binary identical versions. The version in the master branch is slightly different, with fixes for problems that i discovered.

[ThorstenOtto]

BTW. i have still difficulties in testing this. My problem mainly is that i can only test it on a emulator (Hatari & Aranym), and i'm accessing the cd-rom of the host through the NatFeat interface of those emulator, that makes it available as some generic SCSI device. This currently works with Extendos when using its drivers cd.bos & unidrive.dos, but then its of course extendos who is managing the driver, not the xfs. Unfortunately, there seems to be no equivalent of extendos that only loads *.BOS drivers like the metaxbs.prg, and when i just omit the unidrive.dos from extendos.cnf, extendos seems to remove itself from the XBIOS functions.

When using MetaDOS, i can't get it to work, apparently because the *.bos drivers don't seem to recognize the freshly added interface. Trying different combinations, by using Metados with drivers from Extendos & vice versa didn't work either. Maybe someone can test the new version? It's attached below.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

I would test this but my MagiC is in ROM and the files boot off of ultrasatan. I've never found a way to hook up my cdrom since the ultrasatan doesn't have a pass-through.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

BTW. i have still difficulties in testing this. My problem mainly is that i can only test it on a emulator (Hatari & Aranym), and i'm accessing the cd-rom of the host through the NatFeat interface of those emulator, that makes it available as some generic SCSI device. This currently works with Extendos when using its drivers cd.bos & unidrive.dos, but then its of course extendos who is managing the driver, not the xfs. Unfortunately, there seems to be no equivalent of extendos that only loads *.BOS drivers like the metaxbs.prg, and when i just omit the unidrive.dos from extendos.cnf, extendos seems to remove itself from the XBIOS functions.

When using MetaDOS, i can't get it to work, apparently because the *.bos drivers don't seem to recognize the freshly added interface. Trying different combinations, by using Metados with drivers from Extendos & vice versa didn't work either. Maybe someone can test the new version? It's attached below.

Did you ever get this tested?

I set up your spinmagc.xfs on my Hades and used it with spin_sd.bos and the iso9660f.dos driver from metados.

I tested a CD and I could read the disk and display the contents. Are there any specific tests you would like me to try?

[ThorstenOtto]

Did you ever get this tested?

No, because of missing hardware. I can only test it with emulators, and accessing the CDROM of the host through the SCSI Natfeat interface, but that does not seem to work with MetaDOS.

I set up your spinmagc.xfs on my Hades and used it with spin_sd.bos and the iso9660f.dos driver from metados.
I tested a CD and I could read the disk and display the contents. Are there any specific tests you would like me to try?

Good to know, so basically it seems to work.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Btw, for any English speakers wanting to try out Spin, the late Peter West (rest his soul) provided a translated text for version 0.34.

SPIN.TXT

[TheNameOfTheGame]

...

*edit* - issue was resolved.