07 Moving Files In

Moving files in

Several routes. Once AMIX has networking, HTTP over slirp is by far the easiest; before that, tape and floppy are the working offline paths (a second hardfile does not work).

HTTP over slirp — the easy one (needs networking up)

Outbound through slirp is unrestricted and the Mac host is 10.0.2.2, so serve on the Mac and pull from the guest:

# on the Mac
cd ~/Documents/FS-UAE/AMIX/http && python3 -m http.server 8000 &
# in AMIX — lynx is installed; -source dumps raw bytes, so binaries work too
lynx -source http://10.0.2.2:8000/revsh.c > /tmp/revsh.c

This is a plain Python server on the Mac reached through slirp's host alias, not an FS-UAE feature. It is how the from-source builds (bash 2.05b, gcc helpers) and revsh.c were brought in. Keep served files in ~/Documents/FS-UAE/AMIX/http/.

Tape — the good one

A tape at SCSI ID 4 coexists with the boot disk; a second hardfile does not. Different emulation path (scsitape), so it does not trip whatever wedges the WD33C93. The install tape was on the bus for the entire 2.1 installation.

Build a directory of files plus an index.tape listing them in order — each listed file becomes one tape file:

uae_uaehf0 = tape0,ro,:/path/to/tape_xfer,0,0,0,512,0,,scsi4,SCSI1

Archives must be v7 format with numeric uid/gid:

tar --format=v7 --uid 0 --gid 0 -cf 01_ssh.tar *.pkg

AMIX's tar segfaults on ustar archives whose owner names do not exist locally — tar: problem reading group entry then Segmentation Fault - core dumped. v7 has no uname/gname fields at all, which avoids it. Verify by checking that the magic field at offset 257 is zeroed rather than ustar.

Reading it back:

cd /var/tmp
tar xvf /dev/rmt/4n

The n suffix is the no-rewind device: repeat the command to walk successive tape files. Plain /dev/rmt/4 rewinds on close and gives you file 1 every time. The tape rewinds when the emulator restarts.

/usr/ucb/mt is the BSD version and appends the n itself, so mt -f /dev/rmt/4n fsf 1 becomes /dev/rmt/4nn: cannot open — pass the base name /dev/rmt/4. If mt will not cooperate, read past unwanted archives with tar into a scratch directory and delete it.

Floppy — works, low capacity

Write the payload into an ADF and read the raw device:

dd if=/dev/dsk/fd0 of=setclk bs=512 count=17    # raw binary
tar xvf /dev/dsk/fd0                            # v7 tar archive

This is the mechanism Commodore's own patch disks use. FS-UAE reads floppy_image_* only at launch, so to get a new file in mid-session, overwrite an image already in the swap list and re-insert it.

Second hardfile — does not work

Do not do this. See FS-UAE configuration.