SpartaDos X

[cecrowder]

Is there a source for the SpartaDos X Cartridges? Last I heard was that a company had bought the rights and then disappeared.

[atarifan49]

Is there a source for the SpartaDos X Cartridges? Last I heard was that a company had bought the rights and then disappeared.

 

 

The company you're refering to is Fine Tooned Engineering (FTe). Mr. Mike Hohman was the gentlemen who bought the 8bit product line from ICD.

 

Source code for Spartados X has never been released. In fact, the final version made was 4.22, I think. I have 4.21 in mine.

 

Good operating system for the 8bit. Just wished they would've published more information on making the driver (.sys) files for it.

 

FTe disappeared from the market. Mike did managed to produce a few of his Sweet-16 boards later on from what I heard. I don't think any MARS-8 boards ever got released. He was also working on a replacement for the MIO that would have a Austin Franklin (Atari 800) style 80 column video (color) and IDE instead of SCSI interface.

[+Allan]

Glenn,

 

What were the MARS-8 boards you mentioned? Something like the MIO/Blackboxes? Hopefully when the Commodore ONe is finshed, Jerry, the woman creating it, will make an Atari-One and we'll finally have a 65816 Atari.

 

Allan

[cecrowder]

...a shame. I once owned a SpartaDos X cart along with the R-Time 8 Cart. I really liked it. I could boot in a few seconds using a Ramdisk on an ICD MIO. I used a pair of 720k floppies on a Percom board for storage along with a Happy 1050 and an Indus GT.

 

I really liked that 8bit setup. Found it as useful as my ST. Even had the Diamond GEM OS cart.

[ndary]

The SpartaDos X source code are floating around.. i have seen them with Polish text comment.. i am not sure if they where a translated comments to the native langaue from the original source or someone did a good disassembly of it

[Albert]

SpartaDOS X kicks major ass. I used it to run an Atari 8-bit board a long time ago, along with an R-Time 8 cart, and on top of that an Atari Rev. C BASIC cart (this was before the 130XE was available with Rev. C built-in). I also had a 1MB MIO board from ICD which was a godsend for running a BBS. High-speed serial ports, buffered printer I/O, hard disk interface, and RAM disk. Mmmmmmmmm, Mmmmmmmmm good.

 

I now have two SpartaDOS X carts, but I haven't plugged them in yet so I don't know what versions they are. I need to hook an 8-bit machine back up and try them out. I'm still looking for a 1MB MIO board if anyone ever comes across one.

 

..Al

[krisjohn]

I now have two SpartaDOS X carts, but I haven't plugged them in yet so I don't know what versions they are.  I need to hook an 8-bit machine back up and try them out.

Any chance I could buy one of these off you?

[Albert]

Any chance I could buy one of these off you?

 

I hope to get an 8-bit BBS up on one of my 8-bits someday, and then have another system to use as the one I tinker with, and I'd like to have SpartaDOS X carts for each. The carts are printed with different color ink (one purple, one blue, I believe) so they are probably different versions. As a label variation collector, they are also interesting from that standpoint. Also, one of them has the tabs on top broken off (the tabs that help open the dust cover when inserting another cartridge on top).

 

Sorry..

 

..Al

[krisjohn]

I've found a couple of places offering SpartaDOS 3.3c. Is there a page somewhere that lists the differences between 3.3c and X? Most pages I'm finding are just cart lists, or big FAQs, neither of which have enough detail specifically on SpartaDOS cartridge options.

 

Do both version have a piggy-back slot on the top? Are there any RAM expansion options that suit a slot like this?