USER PORT UTILITIES USER GUIDE ROM SOFTWARE V5.0R High Speed serial data transfer for the BBC B and Master Series |by Martin B Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 5 What you need .................................................................................................................................... 5 The custom BBC Micro “User Port” to RS-232 cable .......................................................................... 6 9-pin RS-232 UPURS cable .............................................................................................................. 6 Parts list ........................................................................................................................................... 6 The serial port ..................................................................................................................................... 7 Legacy RS-232 serial ports .............................................................................................................. 7 A USB to RS-232 serial cable ........................................................................................................... 7 Serial Port assignments ................................................................................................................... 7 Installing the UPURS suite in the BBC Micro ........................................................................................... 8 Notes on using UPURS from disc ........................................................................................................ 8 Installing UPURS to Sideways RAM ..................................................................................................... 8 Installing UPURS into a spare Sideways ROM socket ......................................................................... 8 Getting up and running with UPURS and an FTDI USB to RS232 cable .................................................. 9 Installing the FTDI drivers in Windows ............................................................................................... 9 Uninstalling older FTDI drivers ........................................................................................................ 9 Installing the latest FTDI drivers for Windows .............................................................................. 12 Installing the FTDI drivers in Linux .................................................................................................... 13 PC side software .................................................................................................................................... 14 Software for Windows ...................................................................................................................... 14 Configuring the settings ................................................................................................................ 15 Software for Linux ............................................................................................................................. 16 Configuring the settings ................................................................................................................ 17 Using UPURS ......................................................................................................................................... 18 Known Incompatibilities ................................................................................................................... 18 Overview ........................................................................................................................................... 18 Creating a physical floppy disc on the BBC Micro from a received disc image ................................ 19 Creating a disc image from a physical floppy disc ............................................................................ 21 For Windows ................................................................................................................................. 21 For Linux ........................................................................................................................................ 22 Advanced options ......................................................................................................................... 24 UPXSSD Error codes ...................................................................................................................... 25 Using *UPLOAD ................................................................................................................................. 26 2 *UPLOAD <addr> .......................................................................................................................... 27 *UPLOAD @ .................................................................................................................................. 28 *UPLOAD R<id> ............................................................................................................................. 28 Extracting ROM images using *UPXROM .......................................................................................... 29 Usage ............................................................................................................................................. 29 Listing current ROMs ..................................................................................................................... 29 Exporting a single ROM ................................................................................................................. 30 Exporting multiple ROMs (Advanced users) ................................................................................. 30 UPCFS .................................................................................................................................................... 32 About UEF files .................................................................................................................................. 32 Decompressing a UEF file .............................................................................................................. 32 UPCFS Compatibility ......................................................................................................................... 32 Using *UPCFS .................................................................................................................................... 33 Supported commands with UPCFS ............................................................................................... 33 Loading a program from UEF on a BBC Micro .................................................................................. 34 Loading Frogger from Superior Software ..................................................................................... 34 Loading Psycastria 2 ...................................................................................................................... 34 Reporting issues with UEF files ......................................................................................................... 34 Troubleshooting .................................................................................................................................... 35 General connectivity issues .............................................................................................................. 35 Resolution ..................................................................................................................................... 35 Clear to Send responds but data will not transfer correctly ............................................................. 35 Resolution ..................................................................................................................................... 35 BBC Micro reports “No Rx Data!” ..................................................................................................... 35 Resolution ..................................................................................................................................... 35 When receiving data, the screen went blank and now the computer says “BBC Computer 16K” even when I press CTRL+BREAK. ....................................................................................................... 36 Resolution ..................................................................................................................................... 36 After receiving data, I press BREAK and see a “Bad Sum” error. ...................................................... 36 Resolution ..................................................................................................................................... 36 When listing the ROMs in my BBC Micro with UPXROM, I see duplicate entries and the listing differs from *ROMS .......................................................................................................................... 36 Resolution ..................................................................................................................................... 36 When writing to a floppy I see a “Write error” message. ................................................................ 36 3 Resolution ....................................................................................................................................