In the same occasion, I updated the interface's OS to ESXDOS 0.8.6 beta 4. And then something strange happened.
This is the listing for the BASIC "boot" loader program for the TRD disk image file. It checks whether the Beta Disk it is running on is an ordinary one or a clone, e.g. the Brazilian Arcade AR-20, IDS-91 or CBI-95 interfaces - I test these interfaces with SpecEmu v3.1 build 01/10/17 and ROM files for the interfaces as well as for the TK-90/95 Brazilian clones supplied by Victor Trucco and Flávio Matsumoto. Their point of access for BASIC commands is 15363 instead of 15619 as with the ordinary Beta Disk:
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10 BORDER NOT PI: PAPER NOT PI: INK NOT PI: BRIGHT SGN PI: CLEAR VAL "24499"
20 LET d=VAL "15363"+VAL "256"*(PEEK 15363<>195)
30 RANDOMIZE USR d : REM : LOAD "ADB" CODE
40 RANDOMIZE USR VAL "24500"
Now, in ESXDOS 0.8.5 this gave me no problems. But in 0.8.6 beta 4 the file suddenly stopped working on the 48K. Soon I realized there could be something strange with the boot program and, after assigning the TRD image file to virtual drive A, I entered:
RANDOMIZE USR 15619 : REM : LOAD "boot"
and a LIST command showed me this:
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10 BORDER NOT PI: PAPER NOT PI: INK NOT PI: BRIGHT SGN PI: CLEAR VAL "24499"
20 LET d=VAL "15169"+VAL "256"*(PEEK 15619<>195)
30 RANDOMIZE USR d : REM : LOAD "ADB" CODE
40 RANDOMIZE USR VAL "24500"
Doing the same with a MERGE instead of a LOAD showed me that the 15363's in line 20 were left untouched instead.
I also ran a test with an emulated DivIDE in SpecEmu v3.1 build 01/10/17 and the results were the same.
To avoid problems and ensure compatibility I had to rework the boot program this way:
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10 BORDER NOT PI: PAPER NOT PI: INK NOT PI: BRIGHT SGN PI: CLEAR VAL "24499"
20 LET d=VAL "15169"-VAL "256"*(PEEK 15619=195)
30 RANDOMIZE USR d : REM : LOAD "ADB" CODE
40 RANDOMIZE USR VAL "24500"
I also updated the multi-language TRD and SCL files for Sophia accordingly, tested them successfully, and uploaded them to my website, where you can download them from if you experienced the same issues after updating the interface's OS to 0.8.6 beta 4. I will make them available in the SC archive as well of course.
Did anyone experience the same issue, or could anyone cast some light upon it, or both?
I wished to perform some tests with ESXDOS 0.8.6 beta 5.1 too, but I was unable to find a download link for it; moreover, I read several nasty stories about it - software incompatibilities, missing commands, crashes etc.