nowind with rom images?

diskrom is a rom that adds disk support to MSX, and it can serve either physical floppy disk drive or virtual / emulated one (e.g. disk image on SD card, RAM disk or, in your case, PC files shared by nowind). On your system diskrom, IMHO, is inside your Nowind cartridge.

So no direct ROM support?

Also, if a diskrom is a rom with disk support, then what is the "rom" part exactly. When you specify the diskrom option (--diskrom or -j), you still have to specify an image (-i), which I now assume becomes the disk used by the rom? Which leads back to the question above (what is the rom in this case?)

"ROM Image" - this would be a dump of the binary information from a ROM or EPROM chip that was originally in a cartridge, and saved to a file. I.e. what an emulator uses to play cartridge based games, etc.

"diskrom" and "romdisk", I have no idea, and that's what I'm trying to figure out.

I have a "ROM Image", i.e. a dump of a cartridge ROM, that I'd like to see run on my real MSX1. The file loads and works fine with RuMSX, so I know the file works as a ROM. I have the nowind device and was under the impression that it could be loaded with a "ROM Image" and function as if you had actually plugged in that original cartridge. So far I have only been able to get the nowind to support disks. When I specify the "ROM Image" file, it accepts it, but rebooting the MSX just dumps me to BASIC instead of loading the expected program.

The "romdisk" and "diskrom" terms I was using come from the nowind "usage" information, and I have no idea what they mean or actually are. I was hoping that it was just another name for what I was calling a "ROM Image", but that does not seem to be the case.

I have been unable to find any details on using the nowind other than the limited manual and the "usage" that is displayed when your run the command line util. I started reading the code-base last night in an attempt to understand a little more, but nothing as of yet.

Any clarification would be great, and a definitive answer as to whether the nowind can act as a "ROM Image" would be helpful.

Thanks,
Matthew

Usage: usbhost [-2afgijmpz] [-i image.dsk] [-f firmware.rom]
Options: --image, -i    specify disk image or partition image
         --hdimage, -m  specify harddisk image
         --physical, -y specify physical disk
         --romdisk, -j  enable romdisk
         --flash, -f    update firmware (compatible for v1 nowind interface)
         --glash, -g    update firmware (faster, but does not verify nor update romheaders!)
         --dos2, -2     boot MSXDOS 2
         --phantom, -p  create phantom drives (like NOT holding CTRL on MSX)
         --allow, -a    allow more diskroms to initialize
         --dsk2rom, -z  convert 360 kB image to romdisk.bin
         --debug, -d    enable debug loginfo from libnowind
         --write,slot,subslot,address,code.bin,r
         --read,slot,subslot,address,dest.bin,size_to_read
         --test, -t[mode]  -traw
         --test, -t[mode]  -tread
         --test, -t[mode]  -twrite (send a fixed 'HELLO MSX' infinitely to MSX)
         --test, -t[mode]  -tdev (device test, not implemented on win32)

Examples: usbhost -i image.dsk
          usbhost -2 -i image.dsk
          usbhost --flash nowind.rom          usbhost -m hdimage.dsk inserts the first partition
          usbhost -m hdimage.dsk:0 inserts the first partition
          usbhost -m hdimage.dsk:1-3 inserts the second, third and forth

No, but somewhere on the nowind.nl site I thought I read that. Or I'm confusing terms, which is completely possible.

I don't think this was ever properly supported. (Maybe in the first host app versions...) At least it doesn't seem to be supported nowadays.