Laser 2001 & Salora Manager - official thread

[MADrigal]

Did you try opening the DR-30 case and looking at the circuits connected to that switch?

[carlsson]

Nope, but I found that the Play key does not reach the mechanism to put out the head, so it might be in order to be opened up sometime.

[@username@]

On the recent news update I noticed the pictures for SM disk controller and disk drive.

If the owner has these and a Laser 2001 or Salora Manager, could you possibly post an audio file of BSAVE $0,$ffff with the drive and controller attached?

This would complete the BIOS/FW dump for now.

Thanks.

[MADrigal]

I have sent the owner of the floppy disk interface an email, asking him to reply this thread.

I hope he's some time to reply and help you.

[Jarkko_p]

I´m happy if i can help, but i don´t have powersupplies for these Salora Manager and Floppydrive.
(I see there is other user in Finland who have Manager, but floppydrive need powersupply too...)

[@username@]

This really should have been posted a l-o-n-g time ago.

These are the BIOS/FW from both the Laser 2001 and Salora Manager.

We have verified them by dumping using two different methods. Nibble-dump to PC LPT port, and BSAVE, both performed by Scouter3D when we went back in time to the good old days of DOS and QBASIC

The only difference between the two is version and about 6 character maps.

[@username@]

This is my breakdown of the cassette file formats for both the Salora Manager and Laser 2001.

[MADrigal]

Thanks much for sharing the BIOSes and the precious information on the cassette file formats.

I have a question about the latter.
0A BA must be "10 PRINT", is that right? So the BASIC commands are stored in a "tokenised" format, that's much cleverer than the crap ASCII method used in the CV tape format and BASIC memory usage.
Does the BASIC also store the command in tokenised format?

One more question about the "CR" symbol (RETURN). I can't see it anywhere, there's just three zero's after the quoting symbol ($22).

Does "00 00 00" stand for "end of line" ?

Again, is this just the cassette file format, or does the BASIC expect three zero's at the end of the line?

[@username@]

0A BA must be "10 PRINT", is that right? So the BASIC commands are stored in a "tokenised" format, that's much cleverer than the crap ASCII method used in the CV tape format and BASIC memory usage.
Does the BASIC also store the command in tokenised format?

Almost. The line number is 16 bits, with 0 being invalid.

Here's what the example looks like in memory

Code: Select all

00005000   00 14 50 0A  00 BA 22 48  65 6C 6C 6F  20 57 6F 72  ..P..."Hello Wor
00005010   6C 64 22 00  00 00 FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  ld".............

To break this down, $5001 contains a 16bit pointer to the next line at $5014. As that pointer is zero - this is the end of the program.

Offset $5003 contains the 16bit line number, in this case $000A, which is 10.

$BA is indeed the token for PRINT. A full list of token/offsets/calls can be found here https://sourceforge.net/p/creativisione ... rce=navbar.

The EOL/CR character is always NULL, thus EOL + next line pointer gives the 3 nulls you refer to.

Again, is this just the cassette file format, or does the BASIC expect three zero's at the end of the line?

Hopefully, the hexdump above explains where the trailing nulls come from.

If we expand the example to have line 20 PRINT "Goodbye!", memory now looks like this

Code: Select all

00005000   00 14 50 0A  00 BA 22 48  65 6C 6C 6F  20 57 6F 72  ..P..."Hello Wor
00005010   6C 64 22 00  24 50 14 00  BA 22 47 6F  6F 64 62 79  ld".$P..."Goodby
00005020   65 21 22 00  00 00 FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  e!".............

Now $5001 -> $5014 -> $5024 -> $0000 marking end of program.

This method makes it easier to manage lines which are inserted or deleted, as rather than re-arrange the entire program, you just change a couple of pointers.

If you issue the NEW command, memory is changed to

Code: Select all

00005000   00 00 00 0A  00 BA 22 48  65 6C 6C 6F  20 57 6F 72  ......"Hello Wor
00005010   6C 64 22 00  24 50 14 00  BA 22 47 6F  6F 64 62 79  ld".$P..."Goodby
00005020   65 21 22 00  00 00 FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  e!".............

All the interpreter does is set the first line pointer to $0000.

[MADrigal]

Thanks much for the very detailed explanation. Everything is clear!