25 replies to this topic

[walter_J64bit]

Can anyone help me? I would like someone hack these two DOSes, why you ask I have HyperXF installed in my drive these two DOSes only see the drive as a 1050 with US Doubler, the drive can't format a 360K disk or read 360K disk with these DOSes but I can make 360k disk with MyDOS and Sparta DOS with no troubles.  Yes I know just use the other DOSes. I like using these too.   Thanks!

Attached Files

•  superdos.ATR   90.02K   40 downloads
•  DOS_XE.ATR   90.02K   39 downloads

[BillC]

I don't have a HyperXF ROM, but I tested both DOS's on a stock XF551.

I was unable to get SuperDOS (5.0 or 5.1) to format in any density, it would start to format then return an ERROR 138 while still formatting, from the length of time it took to finish I believe the format did complete but no filesystem was written.

I had no issues with DOSXE and was able to format both AT810(SSSD) and XF551(DSDD) with no problems. I believe your issue may be that as shipped DOSXE only supports 2 drives, and you're trying to use it with more. If this is the case you need to run SETUP.COM to configure for more drives/file buffers, then write DOSXE.SYS back to the boot floppy/ATR image. SETUP.COM also allows you to modify the default setting of the drive/density.

[walter_J64bit]

Did you boot SuperDos from APE? If so it doesn't like it, you'll get ERROR's like that,  you'll have to copy it by boot up something like DOS 2.5   DOSXE does odd things if your booting from APE too but all you have to do with DOSXE just copy the disk with using DOSXE. You have to use real Hardware when using these DOSes, I have on idea why but real hardware is needed.

[BillC]

walter_J64bit, on Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:44 AM, said:

Did you boot SuperDos from APE? If so it doesn't like it, you'll get ERROR's like that,  you'll have to copy it by boot up something like DOS 2.5   DOSXE does odd things if your booting from APE too but all you have to do with DOSXE just copy the disk with using DOSXE. You have to use real Hardware when using these DOSes, I have on idea why but real hardware is needed.

I was only using ASPEQT and a mini SIO2PC/USB from Sloopy to test SuperDOS, I had tested DOSXE using both ASPEQT and an original floppy I already had.

After making a SuperDOS boot disk I was able to boot from it and successfully format in all densities on the stock XF551.

[walter_J64bit]

BillC, on Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:23 PM, said:

walter_J64bit, on Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:44 AM, said:

Did you boot SuperDos from APE? If so it doesn't like it, you'll get ERROR's like that,  you'll have to copy it by boot up something like DOS 2.5   DOSXE does odd things if your booting from APE too but all you have to do with DOSXE just copy the disk with using DOSXE. You have to use real Hardware when using these DOSes, I have on idea why but real hardware is needed.

I was only using ASPEQT and a mini SIO2PC/USB from Sloopy to test SuperDOS, I had tested DOSXE using both ASPEQT and an original floppy I already had.

After making a SuperDOS boot disk I was able to boot from it and successfully format in all densities on the stock XF551.

Nice setup! I've looked into DOSXE setup.com that doesn't do much It let you cut on/off RAMDISK and cut on/off write verify.

[BillC]

walter_J64bit, on Sun Apr 29, 2012 9:16 AM, said:

BillC, on Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:23 PM, said:

walter_J64bit, on Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:44 AM, said:

Did you boot SuperDos from APE? If so it doesn't like it, you'll get ERROR's like that,  you'll have to copy it by boot up something like DOS 2.5   DOSXE does odd things if your booting from APE too but all you have to do with DOSXE just copy the disk with using DOSXE. You have to use real Hardware when using these DOSes, I have on idea why but real hardware is needed.

I was only using ASPEQT and a mini SIO2PC/USB from Sloopy to test SuperDOS, I had tested DOSXE using both ASPEQT and an original floppy I already had.

After making a SuperDOS boot disk I was able to boot from it and successfully format in all densities on the stock XF551.

Nice setup! I've looked into DOSXE setup.com that doesn't do much It let you cut on/off RAMDISK and cut on/off write verify.

Option 2 of SETUP.COM shows you the active drives, default is 1 & 2, and asks if you want to keep this configuration. If you answer No it will ask you to enter the drive numbers of ALL the physical drives(limit is you want active.

I have successfully configured DOSXE to use all 8 drives using SETUP.COM, DOSXE.SYS needs to be rewritten to the boot media for the drive changes to be persistent.

[walter_J64bit]

Ok, I'm in option two my HyperXF drive is listed as AT810 How do I change that to the right setting?

[BillC]

walter_J64bit, on Sun Apr 29, 2012 3:02 PM, said:

Ok, I'm in option two my HyperXF drive is listed as AT810 How do I change that to the right setting?

The listing appears to be for the disk format not the actual drive type, and defaults to AT810(SSSD) if there is no disk in the drive. When the listing includes (configurable) it means DOSXE has recognized that the drive is capable of other formats, while an actual 810 is SSSD only.

When I ran it with an enhanced density DOSXE ATR in an ASPEQT emulated drive it displayed that drive as AT1050, if there was a single density disk in the emulated drive it displayed it as AT810. When I formatted an XF551(DSDD) disk in my XF551 it then displayed as XF551 for that drive, where it had displayed as AT810 with my SSSD boot disk. It would be less confusing it they had just used disk sides/densities in the list, like they did with SSDD.

Your drive should display as XF551 if the last disk it accessed was DSDD!

[CharlieChaplin]

What kind of masochist must one be to use DOS XE regularly ?!? You could use DOS 3 as well, it is from the same author afaik. Well, to each his own, but as far as I can see, the majority of A8 users uses either:

a) a DOS 2.x variant (e.g. DOS 2.0, DOS 2.5, Turbo-DOS, Bibo-DOS, Super-DOS, Mach-DOS, DOS XL, DOS II+D, Smart-DOS, Top-DOS, MyDOS, XDOS, etc.) or

b) a Sparta compatible DOS version (SpartaDOS 2.x, SpartaDOS 3.x, SDX / SpartaDOS 4.x, Bewe-DOS, Real-DOS, etc.).

If you use DOS 3, DOS 4, DOS XE and other incompatible DOS versions you are pretty much on your own and incompatible to every other DOS out there. Regarding Super-DOS, the newest version is 5.1 (attached here), but it has the same problems as version 5.0. Try some ramdisk programs with it (e.g. demos or animations that copy files to the RD and run it from there) - do you notice that the ramdisk in SuperDOS is almost as slow as a 1050 with 19k2 Baud ?!? There are older versions of SuperDOS that work alright with the emulator and should also work ok with the Hyper-XF, alas I did not keep all of them. Wide spread older versions of SuperDOS were versions 2.9 (ultraspeed and non-ultraspeed versions) and versions 4.3 (again ultrapeed and non-ultraspeed versions). I do have the german/Abbuc version of SuperDOS 2.9 and if you use the ultraspeed (=Happy/Speedy version or SUPDOSHS.ATR, attached here) it should work with your Hyper-XF in ultraspeed. You have to format a new disk however (the Hyper-XF uses sector-skewing/sector-interleave which differs from the US-Doubler) and write the DOS, DUP and AUX.SYS files to it to gain full speed. SuperDOS 2.9 (the Happy/Speedy version) is therefore limited to 180k per disk. Maybe SuperDOS 4.3 does 360k, but I did not keep it, so I cannot say for sure...

I would recommend Turbo-DOS (allthough it says Turbo-DOS XE, it still runs on 64k Ataris) instead of SuperDOS 5.x, there is the original version for the XF551 and thanks to a patch by S.Dorndorf (author of Hyper-XF-OS) there is also a Hyper-Xf version of Turbo-DOS running in ultraspeed, when a new disk has been formatted and initialized with it. Turbo-DOS does 360k or DSDD, as well as batchfiles, DOS 3+4 conversion and much much more. Press the "Help" key or type HEL to get a complete command overview (e.g. BON= Basic on, BOF= Basic off, FMS=90k, FME=130k, FMD=180k, FMQ=360k, CLR= clear VTOC+DIR, etc.). Turbo-DOS has lots of built-in shortcuts, so when loading a .COM file, one can type LOA FILENAME.EXT which is extremely long or much shorter LOA F- (where "-" is the rest of the filename) or alternatively just F (one or more letters for filename) and then SHIFT-Return which will binary load that file; if there are several files beginning with the same letter(s), Turbo-DOS will ask which one to load. When using the drive device/spec. instead of D: or D1:-D8: one can also use D; or D1;-D8; and if using drive 1-8 a 1: - 8: or 1;-8; is enough (no D needed). If you prefer a DOS/DUP menu similar to DOS 2.5 I have also included a Hyper-XF version of TurboDOs with such a menu (named DOS XLE, alas, I did remove the ability to format DSDD / 360k / Quad some years ago and I cannot remember how I did it or how to bring it back)...

So my suggstions are 1) don`t use DOS XE, except you really want to be incompatible to the two A8 DOS standards out there and 2) regarding SuperDOS, try to find an older version of SuperDOS that does DSDD, but does not have 4 or 5 floppy-speeders/drivers therefore built-in and an extremely slow ramdisk; alternatively try another DOS 2.x variant like Turbo-DOS...

-Andreas Koch.

Attached Files

•  SUPDOS51.zip   76.86K   29 downloads
•  TDOS21HY.zip   126.05K   32 downloads

Edited by CharlieChaplin, Mon Apr 30, 2012 4:24 PM.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

Andreas...

It's hard to turn a MacOS user into a Windows user.  About as hard as trying to turn a MyDOS user into a SpartaDOS one, or DOS2.x into BiboDOS, etc...  :-)

[CharlieChaplin]

Well,

I did not want to... I just wanted to let walter_j64bit to know that there are two DOS standards in the A8 world: a) DOS 2.x and compatibles (this includes not only DOs 2.0 and DOs 2.5 but also MyDOs, Bibo-DOs, Turbo-DOS, etc.) and b) Sparta-DOS and compatibles. Personally I don`t think it is a good choice to be completely incompatible to both of these standards by using DOS XE - but as said before: To each his own !

-Andreas Koch.

[BillC]

CharlieChaplin, on Mon Apr 30, 2012 7:04 PM, said:

Well,

I did not want to... I just wanted to let walter_j64bit to know that there are two DOS standards in the A8 world: a) DOS 2.x and compatibles (this includes not only DOs 2.0 and DOs 2.5 but also MyDOs, Bibo-DOs, Turbo-DOS, etc.) and b) Sparta-DOS and compatibles. Personally I don`t think it is a good choice to be completely incompatible to both of these standards by using DOS XE - but as said before: To each his own !

-Andreas Koch.

Try reading the first post, walter_j64bit stated that he does use MyDOS and SpartaDOS and that his HyperXF modified XF551 drive works fine with them but he was having an issue with formatting DSDD with DOSXE and SuperDOS. I don't use these DOS's but was attempting to see if I could help identify the issue he was having, even though my XF551 has stock firmware.

I definitely don't like DOSXE but I started out using DOS 3 when I got my first disk drives, so it is sort of familiar. I did get DOS 2.5 a year later but soon after got SpartaDOS 1.1/2.3 with a USDoubler upgrade, and have been a SpartaDOS user ever since.

Having read the benefits of the HyperXF ROM I will probably upgrade the XF551 once I locate my EPROM burner.

[walter_J64bit]

@ CharlieChaplin Thanks for the help and for these unique DOSes, I only use these DOSes from time to time, I do have a MyIDE drive so I've to use MyDOS all of the time but I found that there are apps that wont run on a MyIDE drive than it's back to the BASIC. SuperDos was my DOS of choice back in the day at the time it was the only DOS that I knew, I could get full use of the XF551.
Right now I just like to know why I can't get SuperDos and DOSXE to work with the HyperXF maybe these DOSes needs to be patched or find a workaround .

[Larry]

Small point -- pretty sure that Dos 3 was not by OSS/Bill Wilkinson.  Dos XE was from Bill & co.  But no matter, whoever produced it went by Atari's specifications.  Same (approximate) time period for Dos 3.0 for other decisions such as making the 1200XL the replacement for the 800 and making the 1050 "enhanced density."  Those guys had it nailed...

-Larry

[BillC]

Larry, on Thu May 3, 2012 6:29 PM, said:

Small point -- pretty sure that Dos 3 was not by OSS/Bill Wilkinson.  Dos XE was from Bill & Co.  But no matter, whoever produced it went by Atari's specifications.  Same (approximate) time period for Dos 3.0 for other decisions such as making the 1200XL the replacement for the 800 and making the 1050 "enhanced density."  Those guys had it nailed...

-Larry

Bill Wilkinson was definitely the author of DOSXE, There is this thread, a little over 3 years old, on the ASP Message Board from a member looking for information about it. Bill is still active on the site, and from the post count and email address he posted it appears he may be a forum administrator/moderator.

[Larry]

Thanks for the post/link.  Bill was a great Atari guy, and good to know he is still "kicking."
-Larry

[walter_J64bit]

BillC, on Thu May 3, 2012 10:07 PM, said:

Larry, on Thu May 3, 2012 6:29 PM, said:

Small point -- pretty sure that Dos 3 was not by OSS/Bill Wilkinson.  Dos XE was from Bill & Co.  But no matter, whoever produced it went by Atari's specifications.  Same (approximate) time period for Dos 3.0 for other decisions such as making the 1200XL the replacement for the 800 and making the 1050 "enhanced density."  Those guys had it nailed...

-Larry

Bill Wilkinson was definitely the author of DOSXE, There is this thread, a little over 3 years old, on the ASP Message Board from a member looking for information about it. Bill is still active on the site, and from the post count and email address he posted it appears he may be a forum administrator/moderator.

WoW, Bill had a version of DOSXE working on hard drive and Atari didn't want that!    D'oh!

[sup8pdct]

Don't use superdos 5.0. It has a bug in it. Use superdos 5.1.
Superdos 5.1 Sends the format command for DSDD with the high bit set. The XF sees this and formats with the correct sector spacing to suit high speed reads. The XF also has the 10th byte ($09) of the percom block set to $41 when ever a read percom block is used. Superdos also looks for that.
Re the slow ramdisk. Superdos can use axlon and XE ramdisks so switches both when using ramdisk access. It could be modded to stop the axlon from working and speed it up somewhat.
Will need to look into the source code to see where and what to change.

James

[sup8pdct]

walter_J64bit, on Fri May 4, 2012 8:27 PM, said:

WoW, Bill had a version of DOSXE working on hard drive and Atari didn't want that!    D'oh!

I dissembled dosxe to figure out larger sizes of drives for harddisks. Found once the sector map went past one sector, strange things happened. It may have been possible to get the sector bit map to map 2 or more sectors per mapping bit, but never found it. It does do this with 128 byte sectors.
If bill did get it working with HDD, I would like to know what size and what the drive table was.

James

[flashjazzcat]

I believe DOS-XE loads the entire bitmap for the drive into RAM, so I doubt use with large hard disks would be viable. Unless there was some experimental version I don't know about.

[walter_J64bit]

Flashjazzcat you most likely right about experimental version, I know if I had put that time and effort into coding  that option into DOXE, I would had put in as an Easter Egg or release as app for public domain.

[sup8pdct]

Go to this thread

http://www.atariage...._+dosxe +source

Download the dos xe formatter (one at end of thread) and set up a disk type for the hyperxf DSDD. It is very similar to an XF dsdd but different.
Also useful info contained in that thread.

James

[flashjazzcat]

Well - seems no experimental version was required. You can use DOS XE as is with a 16MB DD volume - you'd just have no RAM left since it caches the entire VTOC.

[sup8pdct]

16 meg won't work anyway. After a certain size, dos xe over writes the sector bitmap when saving files once a sector limit is passed. makeing it usless..

James

[Larry]

Hi James-

If you've looked at this, what would be the largest practical HD that could be used with Dos XE?  Just curious.

When I first got a HD many years ago, I made them 60,000 sectors.  Then I discovered fairly quickly that 90% of the stuff that I had in those 60,000 sectors was never used.  So I cut it to 30,000.  Then to 20,000.  Even at 15,000, plenty big for the way that I use my Atari.  From my perspective, the stuff that I use very infrequently is much safer and easier to find stored on APE images on my PC backup drive.  Just an opinion, of course.

Edit:  I remembered an article from Antic about Spartados X vs. Dos XE that provides a quick synopsis of Dos XE's major features and use.
http://www.atarimaga.../spartados.html

I've got to say, Dos XE is interesting.  It has a FRE(0) of 32,261 with Basic XL and 32, 274 with Atari Basic.  Considering what is included, that seems pretty impressive.  I'm moved to at least get out the manual!

-Larry