Can anyone explain how to dump floppy card bios rom \ VOGONS

Can anyone explain how to dump floppy card bios rom

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First post, by Robin4

Posted on 2013-08-11, 13:04

Robin4 Offline

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Hi all,

I have some problems with a floppy card. It came without the onboard bios.. And finding someone that having the same card too..
But he willing to make a copy of it, but he cant because doesnt know how to do..

Myself having a eprom reader / writer, but that guy doesnt.. The only way to get a copy is to using debug..

I dont have any experience with debug.. So i dont know how to use it..

I know that the floppy card using a 64kb rom chip on board.. But i dont actually know if the rom is also 64kb too.. I think i could be a lot smaller..

I like to know how to dump the file from his floppy card bios to file on harddisk or floppy disk..

~ At least it can do black and white~

Reply 1 of 5, by socram8888

Posted on 2013-08-11, 21:12

socram8888 Offline

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If the said ROM is inside the floppy unit, he's not going to be able to dump it without using a Willem reader or something like that.

That ROM stores the program that the CPU inside the disk drive (the Commodore 1541 for example uses a 6502, and Iomega ZIP drives use 8051-based ASICs) uses to parse the commands coming from the PC, like fetching a certain sector or moving the head. The PC can only send some "tokens" to the card, but it doesn't have raw access to the controller data bus. Unless the drive has a debug feature (which is very unlikely), your only hope is using an EPROM dumper.

Reply 2 of 5, by Old Thrashbarg

Posted on 2013-08-12, 03:46

Old Thrashbarg Offline

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He's talking about a standard ISA floppy controller... or at least I assume he is. The ROMs on those will show up as a standard option ROM, meaning that, if you can boot to DOS, you can dump the ROM with the DEBUG command, basically just by specifying the ROM address and size. There are also some easier to use utilities, if you don't like messing with DEBUG... Mike Brutman's PCJrCart should be able to do it.

Reply 3 of 5, by Robin4

Posted on 2013-08-14, 16:34

Robin4 Offline

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Yeah old thrashbarg have it right.. I did indeed mean from a 8-bit isa floppy controller card..

Do you know if this will work?
http://www.mess.org/_media/dumping/dumppc.zip

~ At least it can do black and white~

Reply 4 of 5, by elianda

Posted on 2013-08-14, 19:33

elianda Offline

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I usually use NSSI. It has a nice menu option to save specific or all ROMs to files. No manual fiddling with debug required.
The files are named by memory location so finding the option ROMs file is easy.

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Reply 5 of 5, by Robin4

Posted on 2015-01-10, 22:59

Robin4 Offline

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elianda wrote:
I usually use NSSI. It has a nice menu option to save specific or all ROMs to files. No manual fiddling with debug required.
The files are named by memory location so finding the option ROMs file is easy.

I have tried it now on my 8086 system, but it requires an 286 machine in protected mode to use the full options of this program.. On an 8086 it wil only in basic mode..

~ At least it can do black and white~

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