BeebMaster's
Domesday
Machine
Videodisc
Filing System
ROM
The Videodisc Filing System was brought out by Acorn to control the Laserdisc player. It is a read-only filing system which incorporates many of the usual ADFS commands such as *BACK, *BYE, *DIR, *DISMOUNT, *FREE, *LIB, *MOUNT etc, as well as its own set of commands for Domesday like *AUDIO, *CHAPTER, *PLAY, *STEP and quite a few others.
In addition, it has the software to control the mouse or tracker ball attached to the Domesday Machine.
The version I have is VFS 1.70. I think this is the only version which was issued.
The picture above shows my VFS ROM sitting in the ROMBOX connected to Station 1. I am keeping it there at present although it can be moved into the BeebMaster Domesday Master 128 if required.
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.