Now I ask myself:
Has the SF3 more versatile ways to inject Roms?Yes, they are named Rombanks.
Imagine that you need to have two or more Rom arrangements. I mean, various Rom configurations at boot, selectable at the touch of a button.
Do we Enterprise users need that? Seriously, I think that EXOS allows a huge amount of Roms to be integrated all at the same time on the system. But this doesn't happens on a CPC. If you install more than 16x16K Roms the system hangs, due to not have place for the stack, because every Rom needs to add a descriptor.
The solution: On a CPC you can place more, up to 128 Roms if memory provided, but only the first 16 will be on the system Rom list.
This situation leads us to the Rombank method, that we have inherited from the CPC SF3 development. The need to have at hand a lot of Roms integrated on the system.
The only advantage this system gives us is that is a lot faster than the usual INI Rom definitions, but it needs to leave the Rom without its real name.
The implementation of this method works as this: just before the INI file execution, the SF3 searches on its SD for a directory named BANKXXX on the path SD:EP/ROMTABLE/. XXX is a number from 000 to 999. If found, the Rom files found on it will be injected on memory. If not found, the normal procedure, searching for the INI file is continued.
Where are the files injected?
The Rom files have this name format: ROMXXX.BIN, with an associated descriptor file ROMXXX.TXT to store the name of the file. XXX is the target segment number on decimal. On the same BANKXXX directory an additional file can be found: BANKNAME.TXT , that contains the name of the Rombank.
Once injected the selected Rombank, the searching for the INI file is executed, so it can be that the previous Rom configuration could be thrashed by the INI's Rom or Ram definitions. Is the user who must control how the boot configuration is executed.
Usually the default Rombank is 000, but the SF3 has commands to change it, or you can press the Right button on the OLED screen to select other bank of the present Rombanks.
All that rename, create files and DIRs can be made with a simple Basic program, attached to this message. The only rule is to have the Roms we want to put on the Rombanks on a DIR on the SF3 SD(or the USB), to be find by the program.
On the Rom Manager program, transcribed from the CPC Basic program, the segment positions of the Roms are from 96-127 decimal, 60-7F hexadecimal, but on the Enterprise you can put by hand other Roms on other segment positions.
Remember that this arrangement will only work on Zozo's modified EXOS Roms, on the stock EXOS Roms only the 60h and 70h(96 and 112 decimal) segments will be searched for Roms.
Once the Enterprise+SF3 booted, you will see something like this:
The second line means that the left button below the OLED screen re-connects Wifi., the middle button is still not defined, and the right one points to Rombank 0. I have already defined it, and some others more for tests. If you press the button it will lead you to a dialogue to select other rombank, only if you have defined it.
Remember, on the boot sequence, first goes the Rombank, and then the INI itself, so the later has priority over the first.
