Charging TK2 via NET

[Cristian]

Is it possible to transfer Toolkit2 via NET from a Trumpcard QL to an unexpanded QL (MGI) ?
If yes, could someone tell me how exactly should I proceed please?

[tofro]

The trump card ROM starts at $10000 and has a length of 32kBytes (and obviously contains much more than plain TK2).

You should be able to transfer that by

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a = RESPR(32768):LBYTES neti_1,a: REMark CALL a

on the target and

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SBYTES neto_1,65536,32768

on the source machine. You'll get the complete TrumpCard ROM onto the target. I am not sure if the "native TC part" would ignore the missing hardware when you CALL it and initialise TK2 nevertheless. Also the Trump Card does a number of complicated memory-re-mappings during startup. Needs a try.

The problem with TK2 in this ROM ist that it has apparently split off its initialisation routine and is initialised through the "Trump Card part" - So if you isolate TK2 from the ROM (which would end you about half the size of a transfer) you need to re-write an initialisation routine (I think someone has done this already - There must be a thread on that in the forum)

Tobias

[Cristian]

I am not sure if the "native TC part" would ignore the missing hardware when you CALL it and initialise TK2 nevertheless. Also the Trump Card does a number of complicated memory-re-mappings during startup. Needs a try.

Thank you very much Tobias. I'll make some proofs.
And what about transferring a suitable TK2 file from flp1 to the unexpanded QL?

[tofro]

And what about transferring a suitable TK2 file from flp1 to the unexpanded QL?

Now, that's easy:

Pick some TK2 ROM file from Dilwyn's site and do the same thing as before on the target QL and

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COPY flp1_tk2rom_bin TO neto_1

on the source side. The network works like any other device on the QL.

Tobias

[Cristian]

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COPY flp1_tk2rom_bin TO neto_1

Unfortunately this method does not work
At "LBYTES neti_1,a" it returns a BAD PARAMETER error.
I succeeded to LBYTES some screen dumps from NET1, but it seems impossible to LBYTES TK2 file from floppy.
I tried also to transfer Tk2 from Trumpcard using your very first method: the transfer itself seems to succeed without any error (anyway, when CALLed the QL freezes, probably because of the troubles you explained).

[janbredenbeek]

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COPY flp1_tk2rom_bin TO neto_1

Unfortunately this method does not work
At "LBYTES neti_1,a" it returns a BAD PARAMETER error.
I succeeded to LBYTES some screen dumps from NET1, but it seems impossible to LBYTES TK2 file from floppy.
I tried also to transfer Tk2 from Trumpcard using your very first method: the transfer itself seems to succeed without any error (anyway, when CALLed the QL freezes, probably because of the troubles you explained).

You might try COPY_H instead of COPY since LBYTES tries to read the file header from the network in order to determine how many bytes it should load.
Also, you cannot just CALL a ROM image since it starts with a specific header (which is actually an illegal 68000 instruction).
You can try this code:

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a=RESPR(16384)
LBYTES <ROM file>,a
CALL a+PEEK_W(a+6),0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,a 

Jan.

[Cristian]

You might try COPY_H instead of COPY since LBYTES tries to read the file header from the network in order to determine how many bytes it should load.
Also, you cannot just CALL a ROM image since it starts with a specific header (which is actually an illegal 68000 instruction).
You can try this code:

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a=RESPR(16384)
LBYTES <ROM file>,a
CALL a+PEEK_W(a+6),0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,a 

Thank you very much Jan for your suggestions. COPY_H seems to work very well. But unfortunately the QL still freezes as soon as I CALL a+PEEK_W.....
I can't understand where am I wrong. I tried various TK2 files (not the ones for use with emulators) from here:
http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/pe/index.html

Sorry to bother!

[janbredenbeek]

Thank you very much Jan for your suggestions. COPY_H seems to work very well. But unfortunately the QL still freezes as soon as I CALL a+PEEK_W.....
I can't understand where am I wrong. I tried various TK2 files (not the ones for use with emulators) from here:
http://www.dilwyn.me.uk/pe/index.html

Sorry to bother!

I've tried loading the TK2.ROM file from the QL2K distribution into the (emulated) QL using CALL a+PEEK_W(a+6) and this went fine. Maybe your ROM image is corrupt or not a real ROM image? If it is a real ROM image then PEEK_W(a) should give 19195 and PEEK_W(a+2) should be 1.

Jan.

[Cristian]

Maybe your ROM image is corrupt or not a real ROM image? If it is a real ROM image then PEEK_W(a) should give 19195 and PEEK_W(a+2) should be 1.

You hit the jackpot Jan! I don't know why, but the problem was indeed the downloaded ROMs. I tried with another TK2 Rom (from QemuLator) and it worked immediately The second QL didn't freeze when CALLed, so I could activate the toolkyt by typing TK2_ext.
Thank you very much for your great patience!