36 replies to this topic

[atari8warez]

This has been  probably discussed already but I can't seem to locate any info in the forums.

The question is whether APE is compatible (or rather can it coexist) with ramdisks. I know AspeQt can't, but since I don't own a registered version of APE I needed to ask. It's more of a curiosity than anything else as i don't think a peripheral emulator coexisting with ramdisks on an extended memory machine is really an important issue.

Edited by atari8warez, Sun Jun 17, 2012 9:08 PM.

[Rybags]

They're PC-side peripheral emulators, the Atari doesn't see them much differently than a real disk drive.

Ram drive coexistence is more a Dos kind of thing, either the Dos has one built in or can support it via a driver, or it won't work with a Ram drive at all.

Whether the Dos is booted from 1050, Ape, SIO2SD, or real IDE drive isn't really important.

[atari8warez]

I guess I know what a pc-side emulator is and does, maybe I should put it this way, I am curious as to whether APE is ramdisk aware or not?

I understand that APE/AspeQt run on PC and is/are clueless on what is going on the Atari side, they assume that they have to emulate all 8 drives, but the Atari DOS may have already setup a ramdisk on one of those drives (like Atari DOS does on a 130XE by setting up D8 as ramdisk). So is there any command line switches that will tell APE to exclude a certain drive# from emulation and ignore the requests made for the ramdisk. Unless of course Atari ramdisk handler does not use SIO at all, in which case accessing ramdisk on the atari would be transparent to APE/AspeQt.

With SpartaDos, when booted with AspeQt, RD.COM can not setup a ramdisk with any of the available drive numbers. AspeQt receives the requests and ignores them as invalid, so RD.COM fails.

Hope any of this makes any sense...

Edited by atari8warez, Sun Jun 17, 2012 11:12 PM.

[atari8warez]

Ok I guess I answered at least part of the question myself by doing a test with Atari DOS 2.5.

AtariDos does not seem to use SIO to access the ramdisk and therefore DOS's D8: does not conflict with D8: emulated by AspeQt, however D8: in AspeQt's emulated drives list becomes thus redundant and useless.

With SpartaDos things are different as explained above. RD.COM becomes useless when SpartaDos is booted from AspeQt as any disk requests sent by SpartaDos including ramdisks seem to go through SIO and thus handled (or rather ignored) by the peripheral emulator giving Device Timeout error.

So I am still wondering if that's also a problem with APE.

Edited by atari8warez, Sun Jun 17, 2012 11:37 PM.

[ProWizard]

You are probably confusing something. Iirc rd.com needs to be started as RD.COM yes with the dot com.

RD is a command iirc.

Ram disk is never going through sio, since it is not sio based.

There is no difference between using real equipment or peripheral emulators.

As soon sio is used ... There is something going wrong on your (Atari) side.

Try RAMJET ... Works much better anyway.

[Rybags]

D8: is only used as Ramdisk by some Doses.

The newer SpartaDoses support more drives via use of lettering so D8: can still be used by SIO.

In theory, SIO could be used for a Ramdrive but in the context of a PBI attached/compliant device where SIO commands can redirect to the device's Rom which could access it's own Ram.

[GoodByteXL]

atari8warez, on Sun Jun 17, 2012 11:36 PM, said:

With SpartaDos things are different as explained above. RD.COM becomes useless when SpartaDos is booted from AspeQt as any disk requests sent by SpartaDos including ramdisks seem to go through SIO and thus handled (or rather ignored) by the peripheral emulator giving Device Timeout error.

So I am still wondering if that's also a problem with APE.

Using big SIO drives requires a DOS that can handle them. Fortunately, those DOS are able to use D9: or higher as RAMDisk.
SpartaDOS X 4.1x & 4.2x from ICD, 1988, D9: (or I:),
MyDOS 4.5x from Wordmark, 1988, D9: (though not visible in the menu),
SpartaDOS X 4.21 & 4.22 from FTe, 1994, D9: (or I:),
SpartaDOS 3.2G(x) from FTe, 1994, D9:, (strongly recommended instead of 3.2D from ICD)
SpartaDOS X 4.45 from DLT, 2011, D9: or I: and J: to O: (15 drives, 3 RAMDisks max.)
Those all work fine with APE and AspeQt.

Currently I am not sure about RealDOS and Jiri's BeweDOS if they do the same with D9:.
And there might be some other DOS around using drives higher than D9:.

[atari8warez]

Marius1976, on Sun Jun 17, 2012 11:51 PM, said:

You are probably confusing something. Iirc rd.com needs to be started as RD.COM yes with the dot com.

RD is a command iirc.

Ram disk is never going through sio, since it is not sio based.

There is no difference between using real equipment or peripheral emulators.

As soon sio is used ... There is something going wrong on your (Atari) side.

Try RAMJET ... Works much better anyway.

Greetings Marius, you were correct in saying that i have to use RD.COM not just RD on the command line. I must have totally forgotten about that. Yes RD is a disk based command and I always thought that disk based commands don't need the .COM extention typed to run, but apparently this is not true for RD, it's odd, because RDBASIC for instance does not require the .COM extention to run even though it's also a disk based command....

In any case when I tried it as RD.COM Dx: it did run and setup a ramdisk which is transparent to the operation of AspeQt (since as you also indicated ramdisk is not SIO based).
Damn computers fool us all the time .....

Thank you for the tip.
Ray

[atari8warez]

GoodByteXL, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 12:50 AM, said:

atari8warez, on Sun Jun 17, 2012 11:36 PM, said:

With SpartaDos things are different as explained above. RD.COM becomes useless when SpartaDos is booted from AspeQt as any disk requests sent by SpartaDos including ramdisks seem to go through SIO and thus handled (or rather ignored) by the peripheral emulator giving Device Timeout error.

So I am still wondering if that's also a problem with APE.

Using big SIO drives requires a DOS that can handle them. Fortunately, those DOS are able to use D9: or higher as RAMDisk.
SpartaDOS X 4.1x & 4.2x from ICD, 1988, D9: (or I:),
MyDOS 4.5x from Wordmark, 1988, D9: (though not visible in the menu),
SpartaDOS X 4.21 & 4.22 from FTe, 1994, D9: (or I:),
SpartaDOS 3.2G(x) from FTe, 1994, D9:, (strongly recommended instead of 3.2D from ICD)
SpartaDOS X 4.45 from DLT, 2011, D9: or I: and J: to O: (15 drives, 3 RAMDisks max.)
Those all work fine with APE and AspeQt.

Currently I am not sure about RealDOS and Jiri's BeweDOS if they do the same with D9:.
And there might be some other DOS around using drives higher than D9:.

I am using SpartaDos 3.2g until I receive my Ultimate1MB from Candle, at which time I will switch to SDX 4.45, I stopped using Atari DOS many many moons ago, however I haven't used the ramdisk feature of SD for ages and thus apparently have forgotten how to run RD.COM . Marius's tip solved the mystery.... Apparently when RD.COM is run as RD, the request goes through SIO and fails, when run as RD.COM it works and sets up a ramdisk.

However setting up a ramdisk on Atari still renders that drive number useless in AspeQT/APE which may confuse a user if they also mount a disk image to the same drive number where the ramdisk resides (In SDX one can set the ramdisk above D8, so it won't be an issue with AspeQt/APE for now, until AspeQt starts supporting disk drive numbers above D8:, which it will soon) In my opinion ramdisks should have also been designed to use SIO calls to be compatible with physical disk drive scheme.

Thank you for the reply
Ray

Edited by atari8warez, Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:05 AM.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

atari8warez, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:42 AM, said:

I always thought that disk based commands don't need the .COM extention typed to run, but apparently this is not true for RD, it's odd, because RDBASIC for instance does not require the .COM extention to run even though it's also a disk based command....

Nothing weird about that.  RD (RMDIR) is the internal "Remove Directory" command  in newer Sparta-Dos versions.  Advice is to rename RD.COM to RM.COM as is done on the original supplied disks.

[atari8warez]

Fox-1 / mnx, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:02 AM, said:

atari8warez, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:42 AM, said:

I always thought that disk based commands don't need the .COM extention typed to run, but apparently this is not true for RD, it's odd, because RDBASIC for instance does not require the .COM extention to run even though it's also a disk based command....

Nothing weird about that.  RD (RMDIR) is the internal "Remove Directory" command  in newer Sparta-Dos versions.  Advice is to rename RD.COM to RM.COM as is done on the original supplied disks.

That's what happens when a SpartaDos 3.2d user switches to 3.2g without owning/reading a user manual I guess

[Rybags]

That's more a limitation of the OS than any DOS (using SIO access for Ramdisk)  - but Ramdisks these days are at a disadvantage to IDE devices, typically you can just use a HDD or flashcard instead and it's quicker.  Having SIO code as middleman would add even more overhead.

Possiblty what is needed is to have emulated floppy drives with a longer range of IDs.  Personally, I only really use emulated floppy to transfer stuff that gets put on IDE, occasional one-off boots and games etc.  So it would make sense to be able to assign a lesser used ID for the floppy.

[atari8warez]

Rybags, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:08 AM, said:

That's more a limitation of the OS than any DOS (using SIO access for Ramdisk)  - but Ramdisks these days are at a disadvantage to IDE devices, typically you can just use a HDD or flashcard instead and it's quicker.  Having SIO code as middleman would add even more overhead.

Possiblty what is needed is to have emulated floppy drives with a longer range of IDs.  Personally, I only really use emulated floppy to transfer stuff that gets put on IDE, occasional one-off boots and games etc.  So it would make sense to be able to assign a lesser used ID for the floppy.

You're right, thinking more about that, I am also coming to a conclusion that using SIO for ramdisks wouldn't have been a better solution given the constraints of the SIO system (i.e being limited to 19200 bps would have annuled any speed advantage over real hw at the time).

I once owned an MIO and used a HD but then later sold it as I was using my Atari less and less.  Today however I would not go for a HD solution or even a SD card, SIO2PC is all I will ever use unless i no longer have a spare PC to connect to. In fact I always have my Atari next to my laptop or desktop and even if i decide to play games on my 52" LCD i do have a media server next to that LCD that I can connect my Atari to. It's just a personal preference.

[Rybags]

They could have added extra SIO hooks in the XL OS.

Actually it could have been really useful, it would make booting from a Ram resident disk image a whole lot easier.

[atari8warez]

Rybags, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:42 AM, said:

They could have added extra SIO hooks in the XL OS.

Actually it could have been really useful, it would make booting from a Ram resident disk image a whole lot easier.

Yeah, they could have, especially if the ramdisk was battery backed, but I guess the ramdisk feature was just a quick and dirty Atari solution to convince us to upgrade to a 130XE (I for one fell for it and upgraded my 800XL to a 130XE selling the 800XL - although I still own a 800XL today), after all what's the use of extra 64K if nothing takes advantage of it.

Edited by atari8warez, Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:57 AM.

[GoodByteXL]

atari8warez, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:57 AM, said:

I am using SpartaDos 3.2g

If I had known this in the first place, I'd pointed out what Marius wrote. RD in SD3.2G deletes a Directory.

Quote

I once owned an MIO and used a HD but then later sold it as I was using my Atari less and less. Today however I would not go for a HD solution or even a SD card, SIO2PC is all I will ever use unless i no longer have a spare PC to connect to. In fact I always have my Atari next to my laptop or desktop and even if i decide to play games on my 52" LCD I do have a media server next to that LCD that I can connect my Atari to. It's just a personal preference.

This is not very comfortable when going mobile. A PBI device is the first choice then. Camper's equipment: 600XL, KMKIDE, MSC.

Edited by GoodByteXL, Mon Jun 18, 2012 11:50 AM.

[atari8warez]

GoodByteXL, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 11:50 AM, said:

atari8warez, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:57 AM, said:

I am using SpartaDos 3.2g

If I had known this in the first place, I'd pointed out what Marius wrote. RD in SD3.2G deletes a Directory.

Quote

I once owned an MIO and used a HD but then later sold it as I was using my Atari less and less. Today however I would not go for a HD solution or even a SD card, SIO2PC is all I will ever use unless i no longer have a spare PC to connect to. In fact I always have my Atari next to my laptop or desktop and even if i decide to play games on my 52" LCD I do have a media server next to that LCD that I can connect my Atari to. It's just a personal preference.

This is not very comfortable when going mobile. A PBI device is the first choice then. Camper's equipment: 600XL, KMKIDE, MSC.

Going mobile with an Atari 8 bit would be cool had I owned one of these, until then SIO2PC will do

[Stephen]

atari8warez, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 1:05 PM, said:

Going mobile with an Atari 8 bit would be cool had I owned one of these, until then SIO2PC will do

Speaking of, where the heck has Beetle been lately?

[HiassofT]

Stephen, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 1:07 PM, said:

Speaking of, where the heck has Beetle been lately?

He's currently focussing on 16/32 bit Ataris. I met him a few weeks ago at the VCFe and he was showing his heavily modded Falcon :-)

so long,

Hias

[Stephen]

HiassofT, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 2:05 PM, said:

Stephen, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 1:07 PM, said:

Speaking of, where the heck has Beetle been lately?

He's currently focussing on 16/32 bit Ataris. I met him a few weeks ago at the VCFe and he was showing his heavily modded Falcon :-)

so long,

Hias

Cool - good to know he;s still working on Atari stuff.

[russg]

atari8warez, on Sun Jun 17, 2012 10:33 PM, said:

I guess I know what a pc-side emulator is and does, maybe I should put it this way, I am curious as to whether APE is ramdisk aware or not?

I understand that APE/AspeQt run on PC and is/are clueless on what is going on the Atari side, they assume that they have to emulate all 8 drives, but the Atari DOS may have already setup a ramdisk on one of those drives (like Atari DOS does on a 130XE by setting up D8 as ramdisk). So is there any command line switches that will tell APE to exclude a certain drive# from emulation and ignore the requests made for the ramdisk. Unless of course Atari ramdisk handler does not use SIO at all, in which case accessing ramdisk on the atari would be transparent to APE/AspeQt.

With SpartaDos, when booted with AspeQt, RD.COM can not setup a ramdisk with any of the available drive numbers. AspeQt receives the requests and ignores them as invalid, so RD.COM fails.

Hope any of this makes any sense...

Have you tried APE unregistered?  With an ATR loaded in D8: in APE for windows 3.0.6, registered, if you load a RAMDisk in D8: with 'RD.COM D8:'  the Atari sees only the RD, the D8: in APE
disappears, it still shows up in the APE menu, but the Atari can't see it.  I think you say if you do that with Aspeqt, you can't access either drive.  I'm using SP 3.2g FTe and RD.COM ver 2.3
7-14-86 1986 ICD.
edit:  AspeQT Win32 0.6 does the same as APE.  RD.COM is recognized, the D8: in AspeQT is ignored.

Edited by russg, Mon Jun 18, 2012 5:03 PM.

[atari8warez]

russg, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 4:49 PM, said:

Have you tried APE unregistered? With an ATR loaded in D8: in APE for windows 3.0.6, registered, if you load a RAMDisk in D8: with 'RD.COM D8:' the Atari sees only the RD, the D8: in APE disappears, it still shows up in the APE menu, but the Atari can't see it. I think you say if you do that with Aspeqt, you can't access either drive. I'm using SP 3.2g FTe and RD.COM ver 2.3 7-14-86 1986 ICD.

edit: AspeQT Win32 0.6 does the same as APE. RD.COM is recognized, the D8: in AspeQT is ignored.

Actually I was saying the same thing as you are saying now. If DOS sets up a ramdisk, say on D8:, the Atari will access the ramdisk at D8: and not the mounted image in AspeQt on D8:. I didn't try that on APE, but I was assuming the same thing would happen.

So if one uses a ramdisk on a given drive, APE or AspeQt will not know about this, and they will still allow you to mount a disk image on the same drive number that DOS have setup a ramdisk.

The effect of this is not really serious, it may however confuse a user of APE/AspeQt if somehow the user is not aware or forgets that a ramdisk was setup on that same drive.
For example Atari DOS 2.5 which came with the 1050 drive, automatically set up a ramdisk on D8: (if the booting computer was a 130XE or a compatible memory upgraded Atari 8 bit)
In such a case it's possible that the user may forget that the DOS already set up a ramdisk on D8: and may mount a disk image in AspeQt using the same drive number. When a request is made to access drive D8:, the DOS will access the ramdisk and not the mounted disk image in AspeQt.

So I am thinking of adding a command line option to AspeQt to "reserve" a drive # as a ramdisk, so AspeQt won't enable that drive for image mounting to prevent possible confusion.

Edited by atari8warez, Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:24 PM.

[russg]

atari8warez, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:15 PM, said:

russg, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 4:49 PM, said:

Have you tried APE unregistered? With an ATR loaded in D8: in APE for windows 3.0.6, registered, if you load a RAMDisk in D8: with 'RD.COM D8:' the Atari sees only the RD, the D8: in APE disappears, it still shows up in the APE menu, but the Atari can't see it. I think you say if you do that with Aspeqt, you can't access either drive. I'm using SP 3.2g FTe and RD.COM ver 2.3 7-14-86 1986 ICD.

edit: AspeQT Win32 0.6 does the same as APE. RD.COM is recognized, the D8: in AspeQT is ignored.

Actually I was saying the same thing as you are saying now. If DOS sets up a ramdisk, say on D8:, the Atari will access the ramdisk at D8: and not the mounted image in AspeQt on D8:.I didn't try that on APE, but I was assuming the same thing would happen.

So if one uses a ramdisk on a given drive, APE or AspeQt will not know about this, and they will still allow you to mount a disk image on the same drive number that DOS have setup a ramdisk.

The effect of this is not really serious, it may however confuse a user of APE/AspeQt if somehow the user is not aware or forgets that a ramdisk was setup on that same drive.
For example Atari DOS 2.5 which came with the 1050 drive, automatically set up a ramdisk on D8: (if the booting computer was a 130XE or a compatible memory upgraded Atari 8 bit)
In such a case it's possible that the user may forget that the DOS already set up a ramdisk on D8: and may mount a disk image in AspeQt using the same drive number. When a request is made to access drive D8:, the DOS will access the ramdisk and not the mounted disk image in AspeQt.

I see what you're saying.  Confusion if one forgets they have a ramdisk in the aspeqt or ape loaded drive.  The ramdisk in a 1 meg MIO is faster than a local ramdisk I think.  Either one would be fast.  The MIO will keep
its info even when the computer is turned off.  Most ramdisk are RESET proof, but not power off.

[atari8warez]

russg, on Mon Jun 18, 2012 9:23 PM, said:

I see what you're saying. Confusion if one forgets they have a ramdisk in the aspeqt or ape loaded drive. The ramdisk in a 1 meg MIO is faster than a local ramdisk I think. Either one would be fast. The MIO will keep its info even when the computer is turned off. Most ramdisk are RESET proof, but not power off.

Yes, actually since ramdisk access will not produce the same SIO sounds and it's faster than SIO access, the user's confusion will not probably last too long . It's just one of those "knit picking" things that occured to me while I was trying to solve the RD.COM mystery . I guess from now on I will never forget that RD is remove directory in SD 3.2g and not the ramdisk command like it is in SD 3.2d.

[ProWizard]

To be even more clear:

Forget about ape/aspeqt and all those.

Boot SpartaDos from your Atari 1050/XF551 diskdrive. Then run from the SpartaDos disk the RD.COM by typing this:

RD.COM D1:

And then you can not access your floppydisk in the 1050 anymore.

This is 100% the same as with Ape/Aspeqt or whatever program you use (even in Emulator)

The ATR (The floppy disk) is still mounted ofcourse. Just see all those .ATR images as a real, physical floppy disk, and everything becomes clear.