APT Hard Disk Preparation and Utilities

[Roydea6]

I bought a few CF cards for Christmas. So I was wondering if any new beta's are going to be offered, before I FDISK them. I have finally got MATR figured out and I like it.

[flashjazzcat]

I bought a few CF cards for Christmas. So I was wondering if any new beta's are going to be offered, before I FDISK them. I have finally got MATR figured out and I like it.

Good stuff. I'm currently trying to work out a way of packaging partition names for "external" (i.e. FAT, CP/M) partitions, but I'm uncertain this will warrant another beta. I do want to get the system right before doing a proper release of FDISK. Of course there's already a lot of partitioned media out there, so everything needs to be backwards compatible. Hopefully it won't take long.

 

If you're not using those external FATs, go ahead and use the latest FDISK beta to partition the cards. The worst that will happen is that - if you want to add external partitions later on (for KMK's FAT and CP/M drivers) - a later version of FDISK may create an extra, special partition inside the APT to store partition names. I'll make sure it doesn't break existing APTs.

 

MATR still isn't finished. At the moment, I'm also rewriting the MOUNT utility so it's self-contained and works with any command-line DOS.

[flashjazzcat]

Done a lot of rewrites, so a final test version in case I broke something:

 

fdisk4_beta9_011213.zip

 

Changes/Bug Fixes

• New partition type $03 defined for "external" (FAT) partition entries. Metadata sector number is now stored in the partition entry for type $03, meaning it can be stored elsewhere than immediately before the partition data (which isn't convenient with FAT partitions, or indeed any data outside of the APT). Metadata sectors for external partitions are stored at the beginning or end of the APT, depending on the location of the external partition.
• For the reason above, external partitions can now be named
• Global metadata default flag is now stored in the APT. This means you can specify whether you want metadata (i.e. partition name stores) at disk initialisation time, although you can change this preference at any time and also toggle metadata on individual partitions
• Partition properties now allows you to toggle access flags, etc, in the dialog
• APT properties allows you to toggle the global metadata flag
• Checks for (and warnings about) potential data loss on populated partitions owing to partition table edits have been somewhat improved
• Writing the partition table to disk now no longer issues a media change command (which activates the revised table). Reboot or refresh partition table, or use "Write/activate", described below.
• New "Write/activate" option added to disk menu. This writes the table to disk and issues a media change so it immediately becomes active.
• Fill/Divide now allows you to specify a start drive number, as well as partition density and metadata. Thus can a partition table complete with drive numbers be created in a few keystrokes.
• External partition entries are now integrity-checked against the MBR, and are declared invalid and removed if the MBR partition they refer to no longer exists or has moved
• "Names" view can now be toggled with Ctrl+N.
• Device "ID" now has the PBI handler number in the second position. So, "1.0.1" means PBI device, device 0, master disk (slave is 2).
• The number of APT records as well as the APT revision is now displayed in APT properties
• The editor will no longer edit an APT with a higher revision number than that for which the editor is specced
• Instead of crashing, when the RC_GR8.SYS display driver is installed, FDISK will revert to the stock display if there's not enough RAM for the 80 column display (i.e. the user didn't run the editor with the "X" command).

Other minor stuff as well which I can't recall.

 

As I say, there have been so many changes that I won't rule out a breakage somewhere, so test out on non-critical media. If you've made external partitions with previous versions of FDISK, this version should update the external entries to the new format the next time you open the APT for editing. However, you may wish to start from scratch for maximum flexibility.

 

Also in the ZIP is a little program called TRACEAPT.COM which I wrote to verify the location of the external metadata sectors. I include it here because it's become quite useful and offers an insight into the geometry of APT. It's very simple, but will probably be turned into a proper integrity test / fix-up type tool at some stage.

 

MOUNT.COM (command line dynamic mounting tool for command line DOSes) is also being rewritten, MATR debugged, and some minor improvements have been made to the PBI drivers, so they'll be getting updates as well soon. In fact, this version of FDISK breaks dynamic APT partition mounting in the current Incognito and U1MB BIOSes, since that functionality in the drivers relied on a small error in the partition records. ATR mounting and such is unaffected. I don't honestly think people are using partition mounting that much anyway...

 

 

Edited December 1, 2013 by flashjazzcat

[Kyle22]

Does that mean I can't use mount /u a:? I do that sometimes to access SIO devices.

-K

Edited December 1, 2013 by Kyle22

[flashjazzcat]

 

Does that mean I can't use mount /u a:? I do that sometimes to access SIO devices.

 

No - unmounting will still work. You're probably better off avoiding a couple of drive numbers when partitioning anyway, and using them for serial drives.

[Kyle22]

Kind of complicated cause this is MyIDE cart, and I use AUTOEXEC.BAT to set things at startup, prompts paths, etc.

[flashjazzcat]

I mean when designing the partition table, leave D1 and D2 (for example) clear. You can have D3 as the boot drive and read AUTOEXEC.BAT from that.

[Kyle22]

That sounds worth a try.

[w1k]

partitions rewritten, no problems with compatibility for me

[flashjazzcat]

I'll take the relative silence following sixteen downloads as a good sign.

 

New version of MOUNT is nearly done:

 

 

This will require a BIOS update for U1MB/Incognito in order to work properly with the partition tables created with the latest editor. I found a couple of cosmetic bugs in the PBI ROMs while developing this (most notably their DEVINFO commands didn't return $01 for the Bus ID, and also numbered the Controller IDs 1-8 instead of 0-7: both fixed in the new ROMs), as well as the aforementioned mounting issue (mounting only worked because the partition IDs were stored in un-mounted partition entries, and they shouldn't be and no longer are).

 

"MOUNT /L" is a little slow with IDE Plus 2.0 since that interface doesn't yet implement drive mapping (which is simply a way of getting a map of all the drive numbers attached to the PBI device), so all fifteen drives numbers are polled for the partition IDs regardless of whether they're hard disk partitions or not, complete with the associated timeout delays. IDE Plus also doesn't return the hardware description via the DEVINFO command. Having said that, the IDE Plus doesn't implement dynamic mounting at all yet, so this utility may be of limited use with it anyway.

 

Just need to add support for providing the device ID (i.e. MOUNT /L 1.3.2 to get a list of partitions on the slave drive of PBI device #3), tidy up MATR, finish the BIOS updates, then that's that.

 

EDIT: Also discovered that partition tables created with the new FDISK don't work with IDE Plus 2.0 if you have the global metadata flag set, since it's not recognized by the IDE Plus BIOS; indeed this reserved bit, when set, causes the partition table to be deemed invalid. Temporary solution (pending BIOS update) is to go into APT properties in FDISK and turn off the global metadata flag. You can still have named partitions (i.e. metadata can be manually set on partitions), but the global flag is currently not compatible with IDE Plus 2.0.

Edited December 4, 2013 by flashjazzcat

[Roydea6]

I'll take the relative silence following sixteen downloads as a good sign.

 

EDIT: Also discovered that partition tables created with the new FDISK don't work with IDE Plus 2.0 if you have the global metadata flag set, since it's not recognized by the IDE Plus BIOS; indeed this reserved bit, when set, causes the partition table to be deemed invalid. Temporary solution (pending BIOS update) is to go into APT properties in FDISK and turn off the global metadata flag. You can still have named partitions (i.e. metadata can be manually set on partitions), but the global flag is currently not compatible with IDE Plus 2.0.

I have not gotten around to testing version9 of FDISK yet. But version8 of FDISK is solid enough for me that I will probably stay with it.

[flashjazzcat]

I have not gotten around to testing version9 of FDISK yet. But version8 of FDISK is solid enough for me that I will probably stay with it.

Well, I recommend against using any beta once version 4 is released. Beta 8 has the odd bug... hopefully none in beta 9. Not to mention the fact external FAT partitions now have their own partition type, recognized and checked by the forthcoming U1MB/Incognito PBI updates, so I won't entertain complaints about mangled partition tables from people using beta 8 with new PBI ROMs.

Edited December 7, 2013 by flashjazzcat

[flashjazzcat]

Another bonus with the final versions is that they now make better use of screen real-estate when S_VBXE.SYS or RC_GR8.SYS are present:

 

 

 

 

 

[w1k]

soo luxury for little XE/XL good luck

[phoenixdownita]

Well, I recommend against using any beta once version 4 is released. Beta 8 has the odd bug... hopefully none in beta 9. Not to mention the fact external FAT partitions now have their own partition type, recognized and checked by the forthcoming U1MB/Incognito PBI updates, so I won't entertain complaints about mangled partition tables from people using beta 8 with new PBI ROMs.

 

Hi there, still me with the XEGS issues.

 

Today I took the PBI drivers from here http://www.atari8.co.uk/apt/ultimate1mb/Ultimate_1MB_PBI_BIOS_0.3.4.zip

and flashed them on my U1MB, on top of a stock U1MBv2 rom.

 

Now when i select an ATR from SideLoader ("L") with Enter instead of going to Basic it goes to SelfTest .

If instead I press space it very quickly mark it as D1 then when I press Enter it goes to Basic , with whatever was stock PBI on U1MB instead pressing Space would take a little bit before marking as D1 ... and with or without marking it landed me in Basic when I pressed Enter.

 

As Candle mentioned I cannot use XEGS mode to mount ATR in SIDE2, so I took out the jumper and I am testing normal mode only, and even no extra RAM and stock always starting U1MBv2 rom from lotharek site, then repeated test by replacing PBI roms thru theRomGenerator with 0.3.4 from the link and experienced the change in behavior reported]

 

BTW, I can't seem to find anyone with an XEGS + U1MB + SIDE2 to confirm/refute if the ensemble works for ATR mounting ("L").

Edited December 9, 2013 by phoenixdownita

[flashjazzcat]

Today I took the PBI drivers from here http://www.atari8.co.uk/apt/ultimate1mb/Ultimate_1MB_PBI_BIOS_0.3.4.zip

and flashed them on my U1MB, on top of a stock U1MBv2 rom.

 

Now when i select an ATR from SideLoader ("L") with Enter instead of going to Basic it goes to SelfTest .

When implementing a soft-reboot feature in the new (unreleased) PBI ROM, I discovered that a common way of ending up in the Self-Test following a reboot is by leaving the PBI ROM banked in (instead of the FP package). This causes the ROM checksum to fail, which brings up the Self-Test. Now, quite why that's happening in your case, I'm not sure, and sadly of all the machines in which I have U1MB installed, none are an XEGS. The nearest I can manage here is to emulate the set-up in Altirra (XEGS, U1MB, 1088KB, SDX on), and ATR booting works flawlessly using the exact same XEX loader and PBI ROM as on your system, as well as with MATR. Moreover, I have NEVER experienced the kind of issues you describe with ATR mounting, regardless of the set-up, either in emulation or on real hardware (real hardware in my case being 65XE, 1200XL, 600XL and 800XL). So really, without being able to replicate the issue in emulation (and not being in possession of a Turbo Freezer or similar equipment), while I'm dying to track this problem down for you, I'm at a loss where to begin, the first step being replicating said issue.

 

If instead I press space it very quickly mark it as D1 then when I press Enter it goes to Basic , with whatever was stock PBI on U1MB instead pressing Space would take a little bit before marking as D1 ... and with or without marking it landed me in Basic when I pressed Enter.

Mounting should be instantaneous regardless of the PBI ROM version: all that's happening is that the SIDE loader is passing the starting cluster number of the ATR to the PBI ROM. The PBI then opens the file, checks the ATR header, sets up density, etc, and mounts the image just like it was an HDD partition. The SIDE loader also informs the PBI ROM that the next reboot should boot from D1: (in case the HDD was set up to boot from D3:, for example), disable BASIC if necessary, and so on. The computer then does a coldstart, and boots from the ATR (the partition table in RAM surviving reboot) just as if it were a hard disk partition.

 

As Candle mentioned I cannot use XEGS mode to mount ATR in SIDE2, so I took out the jumper and I am testing normal mode only, and even no extra RAM and stock always starting U1MBv2 rom from lotharek site, then repeated test by replacing PBI roms thru theRomGenerator with 0.3.4 from the link and experienced the change in behavior reported]

 

BTW, I can't seem to find anyone with an XEGS + U1MB + SIDE2 to confirm/refute if the ensemble works for ATR mounting ("L").

The only change I can recall making which (possibly) made it into the latest publicly available PBI ROM was to remove the code which disables the external cartridge when the system is booted with SIDE hardware on, with button... this was done at Candle's request for reasons which now escape me, but everything still works here just the same way. As I say, I would love to nail this issue, but since Candle's suggestion regarding the XEGS mode jumper hasn't done the trick, I don't know how to assist right now. I'm sure, mind you, that yours is not the only U1MB equipped XEGS on this planet (I have seen photographs of another), so there has to be someone else who can verify ATR/HDD operability on this hardware platform.

 

About the only potential culprit I can think of in the meantime is the FAT partition on your CF card... and even that's a tremendous long-shot. If you could dump sector 0 of the card (the MBR, if it has one), plus any FAT boot records (first sector of FAT partition), I'd be delighted to have a look so we can eliminate software issues from the mix.

Edited December 9, 2013 by flashjazzcat

[phoenixdownita]

Just ordered a 4GB CF, just so I can make sure there's no other software stack dealing with the data.

It'll have 1 single FAT32, I assume that is all that is needed, or should I bother trying to create an APT piece driven by SIDE2 stand alone SDX?

 

 

I'll report once I retest.

 

On a different note, do you have a timeline in mind to release the whole nine yards of APT tools + PBI drivers?

It'd be great if new SDX roms/PBI roms are available for SIDE/SIDE2/U1MB/MyIDE/... to incorporate all your hard work.

[TXG/MNX]

Anyone has support for the Blackbox for this tool ?

[flashjazzcat]

Just ordered a 4GB CF, just so I can make sure there's no other software stack dealing with the data.

It'll have 1 single FAT32, I assume that is all that is needed, or should I bother trying to create an APT piece driven by SIDE2 stand alone SDX?

Yeah - for the purpose of mounting ATRs and running XEX files you should be fine with just a single large FAT partition covering the whole card, i.e. with the boot record in sector 0 (instead of an MBR partition table). For the purposes of your testing, however, an APT might also be a useful means of verifying HDD operation via the PBI ROM. Just use FDISK to give yourself a large FAT and a few hundred MBs of APT. Note the APT HDD is totally independent of SDX. The only time you require SDX is if you're using the "soft driver" (i.e. if you don't have U1MB PBI functionality). We already know the CF interface of your SIDE2 works, though (since you can run XEX files), so using the soft driver won't prove anything.

 

On a different note, do you have a timeline in mind to release the whole nine yards of APT tools + PBI drivers?

It'd be great if new SDX roms/PBI roms are available for SIDE/SIDE2/U1MB/MyIDE/... to incorporate all your hard work.

Should be very soon indeed. I'm just putting the finishing touches to the MATR utility, which now allows you to select the APT PBI device to use, and which FAT on said device (assuming there's more than one partition). I've been flat-out finishing these tools, actually, to the exclusion of all else, since managing them is like the trials of Sisyphus. I must apologise to those who have sent me emails and not received replies yet this past week... I've been grabbing spare moments between family visits, etc, this weekend, to get this stuff done.

 

Speaking of emails - I'm still waiting to hear from Drac030 regarding the "global metadata" bit issue with IDE Plus 2.0. I'd like this minor incompatibility rectified (on one side or the other) before releasing FDISK 4 (which is finished and waiting). All that's required is a change to the operand of a single AND instruction in the IDE+ BIOS, assuming that's the agreed solution arrived at.

 

PBI ROMs for Incognito and U1MB are done and ready to roll (just being tested). Minor changes to the soft drivers (for SIDE and MyIDE) will not take long.

 

Anyway: I really want this stuff out of the way this week if possible, so I can focus on the GUI to the exclusion of all other Atari matters.

 

Anyone has support for the Blackbox for this tool ?

No, because there's no APT BIOS for the Black Box. Nor is there one for MIO (although Steve Carden was trying to convince me to think about writing one the other week). Like I say, though - the trials of Sisyphus.

Edited December 9, 2013 by flashjazzcat

[+MrFish]

Like I say, though - the trials of Sisyphus.

 

Speaking of "Sisyphus"... there's a game called Sisyphos for the 8-bits. Probably the best Sokoban clone on the system (PAL only though).

[flashjazzcat]

Speaking of "Sisyphus"... there's a game called Sisyphos for the 8-bits. Probably the best Sokoban clone on the system (PAL only though).

Obviously your ears were burning.

[Mathy]

Hello Jon

 

... there's no APT BIOS for the Black Box...

As this thread doesn't involve the BlackBox, I haven't read all of it. What do you mean by this?

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[+MrFish]

Obviously your ears were burning.

 

Maybe, but I'm not alone on that one.

[flashjazzcat]

Maybe, but I'm not alone on that one.

Indeed!

 

As this thread doesn't involve the BlackBox, I haven't read all of it. What do you mean by this?

I mean this (below)...

 

Anyone has support for the Blackbox for this tool ?

[Mathy]

Hello Jon

 

What's an APT BIOS?

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy