Does the SIDE/SIDE2 and Ult1MB work well w/MyDos?

[+Larry]

Thinking about adding a SIDE2...

 

What features do you lose with MyDos? Obviously, SDX, but what else, if anything?

 

If installed together, does it the system still see the SIDE as PBI with MyDos? (And Is there now an FDISK that allows the APT to be used with MyDos -- or can use the older regular FDISK2?)

 

Presume that you cannot emulate bank-switching carts (BXL, etc.) with this setup? So if you have the SIDE inserted, you can't use OSS carts.

 

Does the SIDE work with the Turbo Freezer 2011?

 

Thanks,

Larry

 

 

 

[Rybags]

I've got SIDE, Ult 1 Meg and IDE +2.

 

I see no reason to use MyDos - given that you can use a ROM-resident SpartaDosX, why bother with MyDos?

 

The pain of migration isn't that bad. I also don't much care for farting about with small partitions or disk images and the like.

If you're upgrading your I/O device technology, may as well go with the best Dos to support it.

 

As for PBI and SIDE, I've not played with that aspect - in fact my Ult 1 Meg hasn't been flashed since I got it. But I imagine the PBI functionality would work with MyDos but someone who's played around with it would be better qualified to answer that.

[flashjazzcat]

Better yet, the person who wrote all the PBI/APT stuff.

If installed together, does it the system still see the SIDE as PBI with MyDos? (And Is there now an FDISK that allows the APT to be used with MyDos -- or can use the older regular FDISK2?)

Yes, the system will still see the SIDE as a PBI hard disk with MyDOS, or with any other DOS which supports hard disks. I'm not sure why it would be supposed that this wasn't the case; I can only assume the SIDE soft-driver (which was dependent on SDX) has caused people to assume that APT is somehow tied up with SDX. It isn't, though.

Similarly, FDISK for APT (now at version 4.2) can be used with any DOS, and this has been the case for some time. You can find the latest build here. The "regular" FDISK2 only works with the old KMK/JZ / IDEa interfaces, or with IDE Plus 2.0 if you for some reason want to use the old partitioning scheme instead of the (superior) APT implementation on that interface.

Presume that you cannot emulate bank-switching carts (BXL, etc.) with this setup? So if you have the SIDE inserted, you can't use OSS carts.

Ultimate doesn't currently emulate any bank-switching external carts, but in theory there's nothing to stop you from making a BXL build which will flash to the upper half of the SIDE's ROM and work with the SIDE cart's base register. If you have Ultimate, you have the SIDE loader in the Ultimate ROM, and therefore the SIDE loader in the SIDE's ROM can quite happily be used for other purposes. No-one has bothered to use the upper 256KB of the SIDE cart for any other purpose yet, however, as far as I know.

Edited January 19, 2014 by flashjazzcat

[Marius]

Hi Larry,

 

If you want something interesting next to your MyIDE ][ I'd say: go for an IDE+ 2.0

 

IDE+ 2.0 is brilliant, and you do not need any special upgrades to your atari 8bit to make it compatible with anything you want.

 

Only two downsides of IDE+ 2.0 so far are:

 

1) On 800XL you need a very small mod to your atari internals (one wire) to put +5V on PBI bus. You might get this +5V also from the joystick port

 

2) There is (at this moment) not a feature that let you run binaries and atr's from a FAT32 partition. There is though a feature that let you run any binary (.xex etc.) and image (.ATR) from a partition; so it is incredible compatible.

 

I have:

 

MyIDE 1

MyIDE 2

BlackBox

Sio2SD, Sio2IDE, Sio2USB (Abbuc) and all kind of sio2PC

IDE+ 2.0

 

And from all these, the IDE+ 2.0 is my favorite... by far.

 

Ofcourse SIDE is cool, but I think it will not add that much to your collection, since you already have myide ][. Yes I know: with Ultimate 1MB together SIDE can act as a real PBI devices, with all kind of cool extra's... but then you also need Ultimate 1MB, which is fabulous, but then you can not simply move from one atari to another.

 

You still can purchase IDE+ 2.0 contact Stephen J. Carden or Simius. It's worth it.

[flashjazzcat]

Of course SIDE is cool, but I think it will not add that much to your collection, since you already have myide ][. Yes I know: with Ultimate 1MB together SIDE can act as a real PBI devices, with all kind of cool extra's... but then you also need Ultimate 1MB

 

Perhaps I misunderstood, but I deduced from the title of the topic that the OP already has Ultimate 1MB and wants to know if this coupled with a SIDE cartridge will give him a PBI hard disk which works with MyDOS. Wonderful as IDE Plus 2.0 may be, I hardly see that recommending it here is relevant to the original question. Unless you're on a commission.

[Marius]

@Rybags

 

I really do not like SDX for a few reasons. It's hard to explain, but I do not have that particular Atari 8bit feeling with it.

 

I'm more into SpartaDos 3.x disk versions, and XDOS for smaller partitions.

 

Larry is probably a bit like me, and not into SDX too. He has been using mydos for a long time, and he is really into it... can use it with his eyes closed.

 

MyDOS will (ofcourse) run on SIDE. On native partitions, and on ATR's too (if you have U1MB)

[Marius]

 

Perhaps I misunderstood, but I deduced from the title of the topic that the OP already has Ultimate 1MB and wants to know if this coupled with a SIDE cartridge will give him a PBI hard disk which works with MyDOS. Wonderful as IDE Plus 2.0 may be, I hardly see that recommending it here is relevant to the original question. Unless you're on a commission.

 

Hehe ... I wished that was true ... You are right, I did not see the Ultimate 1MB in the topic title.

 

Speaking of commissions ... I used to be a MyIDE evangelist, but that has brought me nothing ... so I'd better not start praying about other devices haha.

[Roydea6]

Thinking about adding a SIDE2...

 

What features do you lose with MyDos? Obviously, SDX, but what else, if anything?

 

If installed together, does it the system still see the SIDE as PBI with MyDos? (And Is there now an FDISK that allows the APT to be used with MyDos -- or can use the older regular FDISK2?)

 

Presume that you cannot emulate bank-switching carts (BXL, etc.) with this setup? So if you have the SIDE inserted, you can't use OSS carts.

 

Does the SIDE work with the Turbo Freezer 2011?

 

Thanks,

Larry

 

 

 

Hi Larry,

I have used my SIDE cartridge with Turbo Freezer 2011.. The only thing that has to be done is turn off the SDX cartridge on one of either interfaces..

Or If you are doing MyDos only I have not tried this yet, but it sounds like it might be a fun afternoon activity to setup Turbo Freezer and SIDE to work with MyDos Partitions..

I have even use the original MyIDE 3.1 cartridge and Turbo Freezer using SDX and the superior MyIDE.sys and APT fdisk by fjc..

[+Larry]

My main purpose in considering a SIDE2 is to test with the XL14. We are testing as much hardware as possible to get the maximum compatibility with the XL14. I do have several IDE+2's, and the Rev D (not C) does work with the XL14 at 7 MHz. Both the older MyIDE flash cart and newer MyIDE-II work very well with it. While most compatible hardware runs well at 7 MHz with the XL14, right now, only straight SIO will run at 14 MHz. SIO will give 7 to 8 KB/Sec with the XL14 -- it sounds like a buzzer at Pokey 0 using APE. MIO almost works -- it may yet. The internal MyIDE should work, but will require some new MyBios firmware. BB does not and probably never will. Unfortunately, the Turbo Freezer 2011 also does not work -- actually, the Freezer's expanded ram works, but only at 1.79MHz.

 

And thanks for the replies, even when suggesting that I use SDX... MyDos does everything that I want/need.

 

I do understand that SDX is very powerful and has many cool features. The folks behind the project are to be greatly commended for their hard work and fine product. My "hang-up" is that it seems that there is something amiss when you need a 200+ page manual to be able to effectively use a Dos with the Atari 8-bit. Every time I wanted to do something non-standard (often), I had to search the manual. The power comes at the price of complexity. But that is just my opinion.

 

I should add one "plug" -- Drac030 wrote "MyDup" which was a quite good clone of the MyDos DUP.SYS menu to use with SDX. I'm not sure that he ever released it, but it is a really nice utility. Pretty sure he wrote it in the days of SDX 4.42, so not sure if it still would work with the later versions.

 

-Larry

[flashjazzcat]

I do understand that SDX is very powerful and has many cool features. The folks behind the project are to be greatly commended for their hard work and fine product. My "hang-up" is that it seems that there is something amiss when you need a 200+ page manual to be able to effectively use a Dos with the Atari 8-bit. Every time I wanted to do something non-standard (often), I had to search the manual. The power comes at the price of complexity. But that is just my opinion.

This is a common conception among menu-based DOS enthusiasts (and even among disk-based Sparta fans), but I always felt the basic operations (listing directories, copying files, etc) in SDX are pretty intuitive. For more complex operations, it's worth remembering that modern SDX versions have quite copious online help. But for sure there's no point in badgering people to use something different when they feel comfortable using their favourite DOS. That's why I feel that software compatibility with as many DOS packages as possible is still very important.

 

I should add one "plug" -- Drac030 wrote "MyDup" which was a quite good clone of the MyDos DUP.SYS menu to use with SDX. I'm not sure that he ever released it, but it is a really nice utility. Pretty sure he wrote it in the days of SDX 4.42, so not sure if it still would work with the later versions.

MYDUP was released and is still distributed in the SHELLS folder of the SDX toolkit disk.