MiSTer FPGA Forum

Hello,

It would be real nice to use ZIP files like ROMS for the AO486 core.

The first step would be to mount ZIP files read-only, like a hard drive.
The second step would be to mount an overlay folder on that drive, fusing them into one.
(a bit like ROMS but for DOS, read from ZIP, write to the overlay)

This has multiple benefits (probably a lot more):
1. No manual conversion of games into VHD's
2. People could start configuring and share their own game profiles.
3. It saves a ton of disk space and time unzipping.
4. The overlay folder per game can be backuped,restored,modified,exchanged,deleted
5. Troubleshooting would be easier, since its so easy to restore/reset
6. Easy applying & rolling back game updates

Sources of interest:

ZIP mounting on Linux: fuse-zip
source: https://bitbucket.org/agalanin/fuse-zip/src/
Also an experimental ZIP-mount patch was made once: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=9591

OVERLAY mounting in the official DOSBox-SVN
topic: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f= ... 9&p=744958
source: https://sourceforge.net/p/dosbox/code-0 ... verlay.cpp

There are a number of ways to skin this particular cat.
SquashFS and overlayFS spring to mind, but neither are supported in the current mister kernel/modules/toolset.

More importantly, Ao486 (and minimig, mist, everything with VHD support) would need to be modified to mount directories of files as hard disk media, as opposed to the current vhd hardfiles.

Assuming the above was implemented, then yes it would work, but..... this sort of thing has been proposed in the past and sorg has gently turned down the idea (and I do mean gently, he's not always 'angry' sorgelig) on the grounds that it would harm the simplicity and usability of the project.

Personally I think he's got the balance right there. While I'm more than happy spending a few hours setting up bash script doohickery to save space and get more fun out of the mister, I'd be less happy to see the mister forums full of grumpy and confused people trying to get the same benefits with tools that were not designed to be easily understood.

toastboy wrote: ↑Mon Sep 27, 2021 6:40 pm More importantly, Ao486 (and minimig, mist, everything with VHD support) would need to be modified to mount directories of files as hard disk media, as opposed to the current vhd hardfiles.

Not entirely what I was hinting at
Wouldn't you agree that a 'local mount' within DOS would be highly practical?

Minimig has a shared MiSTer filesystem for workbench. If you want that in DOS, it could be a memory hog for needing a driver to do it and DOS is already a game of scraping the barrel to get free RAM. Amiga was a much saner system to accommodate things like this. Support for compressed VHD would be nice and should be doable on the Linux side.

Of course its not a memory hog. DOSBox has 632k free and does the same thing.
Their tools on the Z:\ drive are just external calls. The underlying OS or in this case DOSBox picks up the other end.

So this mounting problem has been solved before. Could that be adapted for AO486?

?????

ao486 already supports shared folders just like Minimig.

It's on the wiki https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/ao486_MiSTer
Check out the section relating to MisterFS

I can only find binaries, does anyone know where the source is? (for the misterfs.exe)

EDIT: found it, i was looking with my