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Newbie writing a diagnostic App

Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2020 3:27 pm
by RetrogamerRhys
What assembler would be useful to know when writing a diagnostic tool for the Amiga 500. I want to be able to check if the read and write procedure of the floppy disk drive works correctly by reading and writing sectors of a 3.5inch floppy disk. I want it to be able to test floppy disks for corruption as well as the drive. If someone could tell me what libraries I need to include and how to use them for example. Thanks.

Re: Newbie writing a diagnostic App

Posted: Fri Feb 28, 2020 5:44 pm
by RetrogamerRhys
I believe the best way to do this is using Amiga OS, Exec library to control disk access.

Re: Newbie writing a diagnostic App

Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2020 12:14 pm
by matibee
I skimmed through this recently.. I should think everything you need is in here;
https://archive.org/details/1990-beats- ... d/mode/2up

I owned this book in '91 but it didn't mean a lot to me as I didn't start programming in C until '94.

Re: Newbie writing a diagnostic App

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2020 3:15 pm
by RetrogamerRhys
Could you please post the name of the book as I can't seem to get the link working, thanks.

Re: Newbie writing a diagnostic App

Posted: Thu Mar 05, 2020 7:50 pm
by matibee
Sure. It’s the Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manual. But there are others, such as the Hardware Reference Manual. Try this link for pdf downloads...
https://www.ikod.se/download/documents/
Cheers

Re: Newbie writing a diagnostic App

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2020 11:29 am
by RetrogamerRhys
Thanks for the link It was very useful, obviously this project is going to take some doing accessing the kernel rom and hardware at a very low level.

Re: Newbie writing a diagnostic App

Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:39 pm
by matibee
Here's another interesting link (your project is still in my thoughts obviously :)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Amiga-Disk-D ... SwHr9eBh4m

Book: Amiga Disk Drives Inside Out
Publisher: Abacus
Ebay Auction. £40 (UK)

Internet archive copy: https://archive.org/details/Amiga_Disk_ ... s/mode/2up