Home » News » Software » MSXDUMP 0.0

MSXDUMP 0.0

by popolony2k on 24-09-2012, 13:29
Topic: Software
Tags: MSX Disk Doctor, MSXDUMP, Utilities, MSX-DOS
Languages:

After setting up a new discussion group, Brazilian MSX user popolony2k set out to developing some new software. A first glimpse of MSX Disk Doctor - a new suite of file/disk maintenance tools for MSX-DOS 1 and 2 has just been released.

MSXDUMP is a common file/disk sector editor. At the moment the utility can only be used to view and edit files, but future releases will also support direct sector editing on disks, including IDE devices such as harddisks, CompactFlash or SD/MMC cards.

MSXDD is planned to be extended with, amongst others, MSX variants of the DD, ScanDisk and a defragmentation utility. For developers that like to help out, the complete (Pascal/ASM) source code of the project is available under a GPL v3 license in this repository.

Relevant link: MSXDUMP 0.0

Comments (7)

By Manuel

Ascended (18695)

Manuel's picture

25-09-2012, 21:44

Is there life after DiskView 2?

By popolony2k

Hero (544)

popolony2k's picture

26-09-2012, 02:48

Hi friend. I don't know about the DiskView 2, but I will download and try it. About the MSXDUMP, this software is the first that I'm planning for the MSXDD (MSX Disk Doctor utilities) and the MSXDUMP will support edit of sectors for IDE devices (sunrise like), too. I don't know if DiskView can do it but considering that DiskView was made in 1991 and IDE is about 1994, I think that DiskView doesn't support IDE (Sunrise-Like).

By Manuel

Ascended (18695)

Manuel's picture

26-09-2012, 21:10

I think it does, because there's not much special on the IDE. You can still just read sectors and stuff.

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

anonymous's picture

27-09-2012, 02:32

Huummm...

...I think that exist something " special" on IDE because it can handle devices with a really big capacity, like Compact Flash with 8GB, for example.

And exist another important detail....FAT16 partitions.

Consider one hard disk with the following geometry:

PART1 (FAT12) - 32MB - 65400 sectors (16 bit unsigned)
PART2 (FAT16) - 2GB - 4194144 sectors (24 bit unsigned)

If you try use the DOS calls (MSXDOS1 or MSXDOS2), to do a sector reading, the operating system can handle only with 16Bit operations, then you cannot use these calls to access sectors numbers after the limit of 16Bit (unsigned integer - 65535 sectors).

But IDE (sunrise-like) introduces some BIOS calls, extending the sector support for the limit of FAT16 (24Bit unsigned integer - 16777215 sectors).

Then I think that DiskView 2 doesn't can handle really big devices and FAT16 partitions.

[]'s
PopolonY2k

By Manuel

Ascended (18695)

Manuel's picture

29-09-2012, 10:56

As long as it's FAT12, there's no diff between IDE and normal floppies. FAT16 is a different story, indeed.

By snout

Ascended (15184)

snout's picture

29-09-2012, 11:15

Diskview2 (as a sector editor) and Improve (as a defragmenter) are great tools indeed, but both lack FAT16 support.

By popolony2k

Hero (544)

popolony2k's picture

30-09-2012, 17:29

Well...

...the MSXDUmp and the others tools of the MSXDD (MSX Disk Doctor suite) supports FAT16 and FAT32 (if exist in future), because are built to be scalable softwares.

[]'s
PopolonY2k