BeebMaster's Domesday Machine

VFS ROM


The Videodisc Filing System was introduced by Acorn to control the LV-ROM player. It is adapted from ADFS but is a read-only filing system which incorporates many of the usual ADFS commands such as *BACK, *BYE, *DIR, *DISMOUNT, *FREE, *LIB, *MOUNT etc. There are also a set of commands for controlling the playback functions of the LV-ROM player such as *AUDIO, *CHAPTER, *PLAY, *STEP and others.

In addition, it has the software to control the mouse or tracker ball attached to the Domesday Machine.

I have two original VFS ROMs, both version 1.70 which I think this is the only version which was issued.

The picture above shows my first VFS ROM sitting in the ROMBOX connected to Station 1, although it is now inside the BeebMaster "AIV".

As with most filing systems, there is a short-cut key which can be pressed along with BREAK to select the Videodisc FS on reset. In this case it is "Q", athough why this key was selected I am not quite sure.

In addition to the * commands provided in the VFS ROM, it also gives two extra configuration options, VFSDir/VFSNoDir and Eject/NoEject. The VFSDir/VFSNoDir options are the same as the Dir/NoDir option for ADFS, ie. governing whether or not the filing system attempts to mount the disc when first selected. The Eject/NoEject option enables or disables uses of the *EJECT command.

The Videodisc Filing System is selected with *VFS although *LVFS can be used as well, as an equivalent to *FADFS.



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