SOS: Please help using DIC with "humble" hardware

[andreas]

Hi,

while trying to image a rare original disk for an installer author, I'm having trouble using DIC with less than 1 MB mem (left!).

I actually have 1.5 MB, but the problem is that DIC does not work below OS 2.04+, which means that I have to softkick to 2.04 first, which only leaves me several hundred kBytes of RAM.

I tried the following line:

dic df1: disk1a skiptrack=70-159 size=450000

to no avail.

Output is:


limited reading of $6DDD0=450000 bytes

Read from df1: (trackdisk.device 1)
(blksize=512 heads=2 blktrk=11 lcyl=0 hcyl=79) size=901120)
Not enough free store (/alloc mem for disk)


[edit] OK, seems I sorted it out.
According to "avail", I had about 400K of chip and 400K of fast free, but DIC only seemed to interest for either fast or chip, not both.

Using 400000 instead of 450000 did work, but not with the disk:
11 (device access / read disk)

This disk is littered with long tracks, so seems I must use a warper.
I cannot use WWarp because I require an 68020 CPU.
Unfortunately Ferox' MFMWarp does not work either here and always hangs, even under 2.04. And the big problem is that the program seems a bit badly written since -- at least under 2.04 -- it does not tell anything about why it hangs, it just chokes with the drive light on.

[Wepl]

Originally Posted by andreas

dic df1: disk1a skiptrack=70-159 size=450000

for the first disk you dont need to specify skiptrack, and you can't read the second half of the disk using DIC because the image always start at track 0, the meaning of skiptrack is to fill this space with dummy values instead of reading from disk, you can't skip tracks in the image (only at the end using size)

[andreas]

Umm. Does that mean DIC cannot write any image below 880k?

[Wepl]

it can shorten the image at the end, but not at the beginning.

[andreas]

Thanks. So this will be fruitless without having space left for one WHOLE disk image, as the installer author needs the first AND second half. I can maybe size it down for the first half, but since you say, it cannot cut at the beginning, the second "half" will be empty, but - logically - be an 880k image on disk (uncompressed). And I do not have enough space left. Hrmm.

Looks I'm out of luck here. Thanks anyway.

But maybe all is not lost (yet). If someone can fix MFMWarp to run from floppy disk, I could image my disk that way then.

[Wepl]

you could use zoom, dms or similar imagers for standard dos disk.
as warper you could use nomad warp which should work fine as long as the cpu is <= 68030. the files are supported by the newer rawdic. be sure to use nomad warp 5.1a at least.
I doubt someone will put effort on fixing mfmwarp. but mfmwarp requires xpk AFAIR, do you have checked that?

[andreas]

you could use zoom, dms or similar imagers for standard dos disk.

Disk is reLINE production, and this company has been making heavy use of long tracks ever since.

as warper you could use nomad warp which should work fine as long as the cpu is <= 68030. the files are supported by the newer rawdic. be sure to use nomad warp 5.1a at least.

Nope, Nomadwarp 5.1a crashed, when it tried reading a certain track. "Software error - task held".
Codetapper might remember too that I reported him the same error when trying to image "Lin Wu's Challenge". "Unusual" sectors always make NomadWarp crash.
I don't have modules files for nmdWARP nor do I see an option to rip a COUPLE of tracks only. At least my version will always rip the whole disk. (otherwise I could skip the track where it crashes and rip the problematic track with another tool)

If you have a newer version than 5.1a, please let me know.

I doubt someone will put effort on fixing mfmwarp. but mfmwarp requires xpk AFAIR, do you have checked that?

Please check the images in the zone (winuae). It is definitely no WinUAE bug.
Floppy disk install fails to run, mirrored HD image install works, although no data was changed.
CMODE HFMN is the default, so the HD version does not complain if you use this default.

[edit] Bug confirmed and fixed version done by Codetapper - case closed.
This guy is quicker than I can say "Jack Robinson!"