Disc Wizard: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:22, 14 August 2013

The Disc Wizard was an addon from Draysoft & Evesham Micro Centre that allowed you to make dumps of the CPC memory to external storage, pretty much like the Multiface and similar interfaces.

Technical

Button triggers NMI
8K ROM data has 4 regions. There is an NMI vector at offsets &0066, &0866, &1066 and &1866 within the ROM data. This suggests each of the 4 regions is selectable and mappable into the range &0000-&7ff.

What is not clear is that when the chosen region is mapped into the Z80 memory space if the region in &0000-&7ff is repeated through to the end of &3fff.

- Region 0 appears to be for saving "DraySoftONE". - Region 1 appears to be for loading "DraySoftONE" - Region 2 appears to be saving for "DraysoftTWO". - Region 3 appears to be for loading "DraysoftTWO"

It seems that the "1/2" switch on the PCB chooses between which 4k (assumption it is connected to A12 of the EPROM), then the "load/save" switch chooses between the 2k within that 4k (assumption it is connected to A11 of the EPROM).

Dissassembly of the code indicates it uses direct FDC disc access for loading/saving.

Dissassembly of the code indicates it uses an I/O port &f0e0, and sends the data 0,1,2 or 3. It is not clear the function or the exact decoding of this port.

Pictures

Draysoft & Evesham Micro Centre Disc Wizard
Front View
Back View
PCB Top
PCB_Bottom

better pics by Terje Grind
Front View
Back View
PCB Top
PCB_Bottom

Manual

Download

DiscWizard v1.2 zipped ROM file (ROM image for Emulators)

Links

Disc Wizard at the English-language Wikipedia (Disc Wizard is mentioned in the Multiface's Similar products section)

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 * Button triggers NMI
-* 8K ROM data has 4 regions. There is an NMI vector at &0066, &0866, &1066 and &1866 which indicates each of the 4 regions is selectable and mappable into the range &0000-&7ff. What is not clear is if the regions repeat or not in memory space.
+* 8K ROM data has 4 regions. There is an NMI vector at offsets &0066, &0866, &1066 and &1866 within the ROM data. This suggests each of the 4 regions is selectable and mappable into the range &0000-&7ff.
-* Region 0 appears to be save using a filename of "DraySoftONE".
+What is not clear is that when the chosen region is mapped into the Z80 memory space if the region in &0000-&7ff is repeated through to the end of &3fff.
-* Region 1 appears to be load. It has the text "EVESHAM MICROS PRESENT DISC WIZARD (v1.2) Loading".
-* Region 2 appears to be saving for "DraysoftTWO".
-* Last appears to be loading for two.
-The 1/2 Switch chooses between which 4k, then the load/save chooses between the 2k within that 4k.
+- Region 0 appears to be for saving "DraySoftONE".
+- Region 1 appears to be for loading "DraySoftONE"
+- Region 2 appears to be saving for "DraysoftTWO".
+- Region 3 appears to be for loading "DraysoftTWO"
-* Uses direct FDC disc access for loading/saving.
+It seems that the "1/2" switch on the PCB chooses between which 4k (assumption it is connected to A12 of the EPROM), then the "load/save" switch chooses between the 2k within that 4k (assumption it is connected to A11 of the EPROM).
-* Uses an I/O port &f0e0
+* Dissassembly of the code indicates it uses direct FDC disc access for loading/saving.
+* Dissassembly of the code indicates it uses an I/O port &f0e0, and sends the data 0,1,2 or 3. It is not clear the function or the exact decoding of this port.
 == Pictures ==