IDEDOS
IDEDOS is a hard disk formatting scheme designed for ZX Spectrum computers and clones. It was designed by Garry Lancaster for his +3e ROMs, and extended by Jarek Adamski to support his ZXVGS, CPM22QED and YaPaDOS operating systems.
Format
Note: The following is not an official specification, it has been reverse engineered from hard disk images and information collected from various sources. The labels given to bytes are entirely arbitrary and should not be taken as the official labels.
IDEDOS supports up to 65535 partitions on a hard disk, with a theoretical maximum partition size of 2TB. However IDEDOS does not support LBA mode therefore the hard disk capacity is limited to 128GB by the limitations of CHS addressing.
8-bit vs 16-bit interfaces for Z80 based computers
Since the Z80 microprocessor has as an 8-bit data bus and IDE requires a 16-bit data bus some circuitry is required to combine a pair of 8-bit read/write operations into a single 16-bit operation. This extra circuitry increases cost and complexity in a hard disk interface so some interfaces omit this circuitry and simply treat the IDE bus as a normal 8-bit wide I/O device. This means that when any 16-bit word is read from or written to the hard disk, the upper byte is simply ignored, therefore half the hard disk's capacity cannot be utilised by computer. IDEDOS supports these halved capacity interfaces as it simply means that each hard disk sector contains 256 bytes instead of the standard 512 bytes. Software which reads from an IDEDOS formatted disk should not therefore make assumptions about the number of bytes per sector as it depends on the hardware used to format the disk.
The IDEDOS System Partition
The IDEDOS System Partition is normally the first partition on the drive located at Cylinder 0, Head 0, Sector 1 (C0/H0/S1). The specification also allows placing the system partition at Cylinder 0, Head 1, Sector 1 (C0/H1/S1) to allow an MS-DOS Master Boot Record to be present.
The IDEDOS System Partition contains the Partition Table for the drive. The Partition Table consists of a number of Partition Table Entries each 64 bytes long containing the partition type, location, size, and additional type specific information.
The first partition entry in the table describes the IDEDOS System Partition itself and contains information about the drive geometry and initialisation information for the +3e system ROMs
Partition Table Entry Format
All partition table entries conform to the following structure
IDEDOS Partition entry - 64 bytes 0x0000 PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN 0x0010 PT SC SC SH EC EC EH LS LS LS LS XX XX XX XX XX 0x0020 XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX 0x0030 XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX Key: PN: partition name. 16 byte unterminated text string. PT: partition type. SC: starting cylinder. 16 bit little endian word. SH: starting head. EC: ending cylinder. 16 bit little endian word. EH: ending head. LS: largest logical sector. 32 bit little endian word. XX: partition type specific data.
There are numerous partition types defined
0x00: unused partition 0x01: system partition 0x02: swap partition 0x03: +3DOS partition 0x04: CP/M partition 0x05: boot partition 0x0F: movie partition 0x10: FAT16 partition 0x20: UZI(X) partition 0x30: TR-DOS disk image 0x31: +D/SAMDOS disk image 0x32: MB-02 disk image 0x40: ZX Spectrum +3 disk image 0x41: Elwro 800 Junior disk image 0x48: Amstrad CPC disk image 0x49: Amstrad PCW disk image 0xFE: bad disk space 0xFF: free disk space
The IDEDOS System Partition Partition Table Entry
The first partition entry in the partition table is the IDEDOS system partition. The starting head and ending head are either zero or one depending on where the partition table has been written. The drive geometry is written in the type specific data in the bytes 0x0020 to 0x0027
0x0000 50 4C 55 53 49 44 45 44 4F 53 20 20 20 20 20 20 partition name "PLUSIDEDOS " 0x0010 01 00 00 SH 00 00 EH LS LS LS LS ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? 0x0020 NC NC NH ST SC SC MP MP BA EA ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? 0x0030 DD ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? Key: NC: number of cylinders available to IDEDOS. 16 bit little endian word. NH: number of heads. ST: number of sectors per track. SC: number of sectors per cylinder (equal to NH * ST). 16 bit little endian word. MP: maximum partition. 16 bit little endian word. BA: +3e boot colour attribute byte EA: +3 BASIC editor attribute byte DD: plus3dos default drive letter ??: unknown
Partition Type 0x03 - +3DOS
The +3e ROMs create partitions of type 0x03 i.e. +3DOS partitions. The type specific data portion of the Partition Entries for these partitions contain a +3DOS XDPB (eXtended Disc Parameter Block) between 0x0020 to 0x003A and also the +3DOS drive letter to which the partition has been mapped (if any)
0x0000 PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN PN 0x0010 03 SC SC SH EC EC EH LS LS LS LS ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? 0x0020 DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP 0x0030 DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP DP ?? ?? DL ?? ?? ?? Key: DP: +3DOS extended disk parameter block byte DL: plus3dos drive letter ??: unknown
The eXtended Disk Parameter Block data is ordered as follows
0x0020 SPT SPT BSH BLM EXM DSM DSM DRM DRM AL0 AL1 CKS CKS OFF OFF PSH 0x0030 PHM sid tps spt fsn ss glr glf mms ff key: SPT: Records Per Track BSH: Block Shift: 128 * 2^BSH BLM: Block Mask: 128 * (BLM + 1) EXM: Extent Mask DSM: number of blocks - 1 DRM: number of directory entries - 1 AL0: AL0 directory bitmap AL1: AL1 directory bitmap CKS: size of checksum vector OFF: reserved tracks PSH: physical sector shift PHM: sector size sid: sidedness tps: number of tracks per side spt: number of sectors per track fst: first sector number ss: (sector size / 128) - 1 glr: gap length (read/write) glf: gap length (format) mms: multitrack/modulation/skip ff: freeze flag
Partition Type 0xFF - Free Space
A Type 0xFF partition entry as created by the +3e ROMs is all blank except for the type byte and the location and size information. The type specific information is not used.