LARKEN Diskette to TAP File Port Utility

1 message · 2004-09-27 → 2004-09-27 · Yahoo Group era · View archive on archive.org

Participants: hatulzabad

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Messages

1. LARKEN Diskette to TAP File Port Utility

hatulzabad · Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:37

Hello Everyone....

I am wondering what would be involved in creating a program that would
port program saved on LARKEN formatted diskettes to emulator TAP
files.  Information on the format of LARKEN diskettes can be found

http://www.timexsinclair.org/2068/peripherals/Larken/larkdisk.html

Gerton Lunder made the structural details of his TAP files available
in his manual for the Z80 emulator.  

It seems to me that it is just a matter of grabing the information
from the LARKEN diskette and putting it into the appropriat part of a
TAP file.  I have it pretty much figured out from where to grap from
the diskette and where to put in the TAP file. What I don't know is
how to make my programs tell the diskdrive how to pull information
from a non-IBM formatted diskette.  Can someone here help me on this
angle?

If I do this project, I will most likely do it in Turbo Pascal or
Borland Delphi which are two languages I understand the best.  I am
not sure how easy it would be to develop a program that works within
one of the emulators itself.  I would suspect that even in assembler
it would involve a high memory overhead.  (I, myself, have little
knowled of Z80 assembler programming but I do program in HiSoft Pascal
which compiles into pretty well optimized mc.)

I feel that if this is to be done, it should be done soon.  The
passing of time is not doing my 5.25" drives any good and I am sure
the the diskettes must be degrading too.  If I can develop a program
that works, I would be willing to post it to this board for anyone who
has need of it.

Thank you all in advance,

David Solly

Indexed under

Disk & floppy systems (Larken, AERCO, Oliger) · Utilities & applications · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX)