Trying to streamline the user experience

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floam
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2011 11:39 pm

Trying to streamline the user experience

Post by floam »

I'm trying to make the workflow as simple as possible with the SD HxC. I have a system with two floppies where the first floppy never changes and the second floppy does get changed. I've got a little list of aspects I have been trying to dial in, these are either me asking how they are accomplished or sharing suggestions should they not be possible.
  1. Can I hide the HXCDFE.CFG file?
    I see the HXCDFE.CFG file in the file list on the HxC. Can I hide it as it is not a valid image? It seems it would make sense to ignore it by default: every device needs one to be used, and it is not a valid selection, so why require the user to have to skip past it?
  2. How do I write protect specific HFE images?
    I want to protect certain images from being altered as if they were floppies with the write protect tab open. It seems to me that all formats that support writing can be written to, is this the case? I don't want to disable all writing on the SD card like the manual explains. Is there some way I could export a HFE that the HxC will treat read-only?
  3. Can I disable the file selector and select drive B floppies only?
    I would like to use a system boot disk that is always inserted into drive A. So picking an image is always only choosing the floppy for drive B. But I think if I disable the selector in the configuration and force STARTUPA.HFE I am not actually accomplishing this. But I haven't been able to test all the combinations of the various autoboot-related settings yet, maybe I am wrong? Also ideally I could even omit STARTUPA.HFE from being shown on the list somehow as it would not make sense for my purposes to insert the boot disk into Drive B.
  4. Which if any FAT32 file attributes does the HxC take into account?
    It just occurred to me maybe two of the above might simply be accomplished if HxC respected certain FAT32 file attributes. I haven't tried this yet to see if that is how it works. Read Only (0x01) to write-protect the image, and Hidden (0x02) might cause a file to be skipped over in the list?

Jeff
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Re: Trying to streamline the user experience

Post by Jeff »

floam wrote:
  1. Can I hide the HXCDFE.CFG file?
    I see the HXCDFE.CFG file in the file list on the HxC. Can I hide it as it is not a valid image? It seems it would make sense to ignore it by default: every device needs one to be used, and it is not a valid selection, so why require the user to have to skip past it?
Actually no, but i will try to do this in the next firmware.
floam wrote: [*]How do I write protect specific HFE images?
I want to protect certain images from being altered as if they were floppies with the write protect tab open. It seems to me that all formats that support writing can be written to, is this the case? I don't want to disable all writing on the SD card like the manual explains. Is there some way I could export a HFE that the HxC will treat read-only?
Yes but the option is not in the software. To protect the HFE file you need to set to zero write_allowed in the file header with an hexadecimal editor (offset 0x14).
https://hxc2001.com/floppy_drive_emulat ... format.pdf

I have add this feature because some viruses attack the file selector disk (autoboot.hfe...) on Atari ST
floam wrote: [*]Can I disable the file selector and select drive B floppies only?
I would like to use a system boot disk that is always inserted into drive A. So picking an image is always only choosing the floppy for drive B. But I think if I disable the selector in the configuration and force STARTUPA.HFE I am not actually accomplishing this. But I haven't been able to test all the combinations of the various autoboot-related settings yet, maybe I am wrong? Also ideally I could even omit STARTUPA.HFE from being shown on the list somehow as it would not make sense for my purposes to insert the boot disk into Drive B.
No, but i will see what can be done.
floam wrote: [*]Which if any FAT32 file attributes does the HxC take into account?
It just occurred to me maybe two of the above might simply be accomplished if HxC respected certain FAT32 file attributes. I haven't tried this yet to see if that is how it works. Read Only (0x01) to write-protect the image, and Hidden (0x02) might cause a file to be skipped over in the list?[/list]
For the moment no one, but i keep the idea ;)

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