Bible Series I and II reviewed - and possible problem

[Mike]

Following up a PM exchange with orion70 ...

If anyone else needs assistance for transferring *.d81 files to 3 1/2" disks for the 1581, and both a SD2IEC and the 1581 are available, I can whip up a transfer program in a spare hour. [...]

... here's d81trans (download). Assuming the SD2IEC drive is device 8, and the 1581 drive is device 9, the user shall proceed as follows:

• copy "d81trans.prg", "bible3.d81" and "pentateuch.d81" into the root directory of a SD card,
• on the VIC-20, check with LOAD"$",8 and LIST, that all three file names appear with uppercase letters and with PRG file type (that one to the left, outside quotes!),
• format the 3 1/2" disk in drive 9 with OPEN15,9,15,"N0:NAME,ID":CLOSE15 and finally
• start d81trans with LOAD"D81TRANS.PRG",8 and RUN.

In the prompts, enter:

Code: Select all

SRC DEV.? 8
FILE? BIBLE3.D81 (or PENTATEUCH.D81 for the second disk)
DST DEV.? 9
FILE? # (<- given as default prompt)

User gets a display of 80 tracks being copied with a progress bar for 40 sectors/track. When "READY." appears and the drive LED goes off, the disk image has been written.

Please check beforehand, that SD2IEC and 1581(-type drive) actually work when both are connected to the VIC-20 and are switched on - I am noting this because some cheap SD2IEC devices are missing necessary bus amplifiers and only work on their own on the IEC bus!

[orion70]

Thanks Mike, as always . This further adaptation of Mike's transfer program comes from a request made by an Italian forum member. Thanks to him, I became aware of the existence of this modern version of the 1581 disk drive, made available as a kit by Francesco Pontecorvo. Googled it, but didn't come up with a link.
Armando?

[armypavarmy]

Thanks Mike for the program." D81transfer"
It works well but it's very slow.
Maybe if it was in LM it would be faster?.
Do you know if it can also work with the C64?.
Francesco Pontecorvo supplying the new Kit is on Ebay or can be contacted on Facebook.
Greetings Armando

[Mike]

[d81trans] works well but it's very slow.

The tool could be even more slower, had I written it entirely in BASIC, however ...

Maybe if it was in LM it would be faster?

... the relevant part (the sector-to-sector copy) already is written in machine language. Notice the SYS statement in the main loop and the FOR loop reading in the machine code from DATA statements?

The speed is mostly limited by the slow IEC bus routines in the standard KERNAL. These routines transfer 1 KB/s at most, which results in 1 hour to copy/transfer a whole 3 1/2" disk.

Install JiffyDOS in your VIC-20 and your disk drive (SD2IEC drives understand the JiffyDOS protocol already out-of-the-box), and you will see a noticable speed increase. Not only with the disk copy, but also with any other drive use.