MiSTer FPGA Forum

I'm trying to use the secondary SD card (on the analogue board) for the BBC Micro. It's my understanding that you need to do this if you intend to save data.

However, I don't seem to be able to get the core to 'see' the card. The card has been formatted FAT32 and is empty except for the BEEB.MMB file.

How do I proceed from here? Currently (having renamed the original VHD file so the core can't see it) it's saying there's no image, and I can't see how to select the one on the second SD card from the menus.

I suppose another question would be: is there a surefired way of verifying that the MiSTer can even see the card?

Many thanks.

...aaaaaand once again following up to my own question: just tried with another, smaller (2GB) card that I formated FAT (not FAT32), copied the BEEB.MMB file over and it works.

So I suppose my question would be, is the issue with the FAT32 aspect or the card size aspect? The original card was 16GB.

GreyAreaUK wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 9:03 am ...aaaaaand once again following up to my own question: just tried with another, smaller (2GB) card that I formated FAT (not FAT32), copied the BEEB.MMB file over and it works.

So I suppose my question would be, is the issue with the FAT32 aspect or the card size aspect? The original card was 16GB.

You can just put the beeb.mmb as boot.vhd on the primary sd card

alanswx wrote: ↑Thu Mar 10, 2022 11:55 pm

GreyAreaUK wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 9:03 am ...aaaaaand once again following up to my own question: just tried with another, smaller (2GB) card that I formated FAT (not FAT32), copied the BEEB.MMB file over and it works.

So I suppose my question would be, is the issue with the FAT32 aspect or the card size aspect? The original card was 16GB.

You can just put the beeb.mmb as boot.vhd on the primary sd card

You can, but you won’t be able to save data to any blank disks in it. It’s effectively read-only. Or, that’s my impression at least.

GreyAreaUK wrote: ↑Fri Mar 11, 2022 6:31 am

alanswx wrote: ↑Thu Mar 10, 2022 11:55 pm

GreyAreaUK wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 9:03 am ...aaaaaand once again following up to my own question: just tried with another, smaller (2GB) card that I formated FAT (not FAT32), copied the BEEB.MMB file over and it works.

So I suppose my question would be, is the issue with the FAT32 aspect or the card size aspect? The original card was 16GB.

You can just put the beeb.mmb as boot.vhd on the primary sd card

You can, but you won’t be able to save data to any blank disks in it. It’s effectively read-only. Or, that’s my impression at least.

I feel like I was able to write to the disk on either the Electron or the BBC - I don't remember which. I am pretty sure I was able to modify it.

I tested BBC yesterday again, and was unable to make a save in games using floppy drives (not vhd). Something gets saved, but upon loading these saves corrupt games. This was in Master mode, because I'm not sure how to use floppies in B mode - the vhd gets in the way, and if I unmount it then I get "?card" errors.

On Electron, there's only vhd (or tape) and when I tried saving games tell me that it's "read only".
I don't have the secondary SD.

When I tried writing to a blank disk in the BEEB.MMB file on the primary slot I got a disk error. When I tried using the secondary card slot it worked fine.

This was on the official BBC Micro core - I haven't yet tried it with the the version that supports individual disk images.

GreyAreaUK wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 9:26 am When I tried writing to a blank disk in the BEEB.MMB file on the primary slot I got a disk error. When I tried using the secondary card slot it worked fine.

This was on the official BBC Micro core - I haven't yet tried it with the the version that supports individual disk images.

So the beeb.mmb renamed to boot.vhd on the primary card in the bbcmicro folder is read-only. If you have a beeb.mmb file on a secondary card it will be read/write.

What unofficial version are you referring to?

_paul_ wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 11:45 am

GreyAreaUK wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 9:26 am When I tried writing to a blank disk in the BEEB.MMB file on the primary slot I got a disk error. When I tried using the secondary card slot it worked fine.

This was on the official BBC Micro core - I haven't yet tried it with the the version that supports individual disk images.

So the beeb.mmb renamed to boot.vhd on the primary card in the bbcmicro folder is read-only. If you have a beeb.mmb file on a secondary card it will be read/write.

What unofficial version are you referring to?

'Unofficial' is perhaps the wrong term, but this one: download/file.php?id=4874 - 'BBCMicro_20220123.rbf'

To be clear, everything is working happily now (well, apart from the slight graphics issue but that's another matter entirely!)

GreyAreaUK wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 11:51 am 'Unofficial' is perhaps the wrong term, but this one: download/file.php?id=4874 - 'BBCMicro_20220123.rbf'

To be clear, everything is working happily now (well, apart from the slight graphics issue but that's another matter entirely!)

Thanks for sharing that version. I just checked; that version supports read/write for SSD/DSD disk images stored on the primary SD card.

_paul_ wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 12:41 pm

GreyAreaUK wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 11:51 am 'Unofficial' is perhaps the wrong term, but this one: download/file.php?id=4874 - 'BBCMicro_20220123.rbf'

To be clear, everything is working happily now (well, apart from the slight graphics issue but that's another matter entirely!)

Thanks for sharing that version. I just checked; that version supports read/write for SSD/DSD disk images stored on the primary SD card.

Oh, interesting -I somehow missed that myself! Thanks.

It does not work for me, I have tried it with couple of text adventures. Can you give some working examples I could try and replicate?

EDIT: Scratch that, I've tried some other games, also saving BASIC program to disk and it does actually work. Guess I was just unlucky with the games I've tried. Maybe they need separate save disks, will have to look into that later.

akeley wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 1:08 pm It does not work for me, I have tried it with couple of text adventures. Can you give some working examples I could try and replicate?

EDIT: Scratch that, I've tried some other games, also saving BASIC program to disk and it does actually work. Guess I was just unlucky with the games I've tried. Maybe they need separate save disks, will have to look into that later.

Heh...it's pretty typical that I just finish (kind of) writing my own MMB file handler for Windows, and now I won't need it!