Help with Ultra Satan Disk

[IainGrimm]

Hi everyone, first post here from a recently new Atari user. I used to be an Amiga & C64 only guy back in the 80's, since I got my C64 & Sega MD back last April though I have turned into an avid retro gamer instead of using the emulators. I now have another Miggy, Spectrum +2A, SNES, Gameboy & Game Gear and next month getting an Amstrad CPC464 with color screen. My retro stuff has spilled from the 3rd floor now into our bedroom, wife hasn't complained......yet!!!

 

So I got my 520 STe for Christmas and have already ugraded the ram to 4Mb and checked my DMA chip so all is good for an external hard drive.

 

My mum said the floppies will eventually fail (Some have on Miggy and ST already) so she bought me a USD last week from Lothareks site, this will be delivered by UPS next Tuesday.

 

I will be setting the SD card up using ICDPro as it is free software, seems easy enough to do following the guide on Jookies site

 

I have already pulled down all the DBug and PP hard drive apapted games and put them into tidy directories ready to just put onto the SD once it is set up (Everything named in 8 or less characters to be safe).

 

I have TOS 1.62 so believe the maximum partition size will be 512 Mb in size. Going to do 3x500Mb and 1x50Mb Boot and finally 1x450Mb on my 2Gb SD card so all should be good there. May use a 4Gb card so will just do extra 500Mb partitions.

 

So far so good, loads of research, reading up and so on.

 

 

Only bit now that is confusing me is getting the files off my Windows 7 PC Hard Drive onto the various SD card partitions. Windows cannot read Atari formatted stuff and vice versa. It will only recognise the SD card as 1 blank space.

 

I know about PP Drive Image program but with that you can't copy over full directories, just single files or multiples of single files. Good but a bit awkward when you have sub directories like AUTO with a file in them, not forgetting having to recreate the directories I already have done. I could be here all year!

 

So, how would you go about just dragging and dropping all these files onto the Atari ST formatted hard disk (SD Card)?

 

I do have a full version of Total Commander but that can't read an original Atari ST Floppy Disk so unsure yet if it will read the partitions on the SD card after it is setup on the ST.

 

Bit of advice needed, so close and would like to get to the bottom of this so I am ready once my drive gets delivered.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Hi everyone, first post here from a recently new Atari user. I used to be an Amiga & C64 only guy back in the 80's, since I got my C64 & Sega MD back last April though I have turned into an avid retro gamer instead of using the emulators. I now have another Miggy, Spectrum +2A, SNES, Gameboy & Game Gear and next month getting an Amstrad CPC464 with color screen. My retro stuff has spilled from the 3rd floor now into our bedroom, wife hasn't complained......yet!!!

 

So I got my 520 STe for Christmas and have already ugraded the ram to 4Mb and checked my DMA chip so all is good for an external hard drive.

 

My mum said the floppies will eventually fail (Some have on Miggy and ST already) so she bought me a USD last week from Lothareks site, this will be delivered by UPS next Tuesday.

 

I will be setting the SD card up using ICDPro as it is free software, seems easy enough to do following the guide on Jookies site

 

I have already pulled down all the DBug and PP hard drive apapted games and put them into tidy directories ready to just put onto the SD once it is set up (Everything named in 8 or less characters to be safe).

 

I have TOS 1.62 so believe the maximum partition size will be 512 Mb in size. Going to do 3x500Mb and 1x50Mb Boot and finally 1x450Mb on my 2Gb SD card so all should be good there. May use a 4Gb card so will just do extra 500Mb partitions.

 

So far so good, loads of research, reading up and so on.

 

 

Only bit now that is confusing me is getting the files off my Windows 7 PC Hard Drive onto the various SD card partitions. Windows cannot read Atari formatted stuff and vice versa. It will only recognise the SD card as 1 blank space.

 

I know about PP Drive Image program but with that you can't copy over full directories, just single files or multiples of single files. Good but a bit awkward when you have sub directories like AUTO with a file in them, not forgetting having to recreate the directories I already have done. I could be here all year!

 

So, how would you go about just dragging and dropping all these files onto the Atari ST formatted hard disk (SD Card)?

 

I do have a full version of Total Commander but that can't read an original Atari ST Floppy Disk so unsure yet if it will read the partitions on the SD card after it is setup on the ST.

 

Bit of advice needed, so close and would like to get to the bottom of this so I am ready once my drive gets delivered.

 

Windows can only read the first partition on a sd card/usb stick. So you can copy things to that first partition and then load the card on the ST and move the files manually to your other drives. I think you have to format the partition in a ms-dos compatible way. Alternately you can download a Live CD of Ubuntu and use the mtools package to mount all the partitions and copy back and forth on your pc. Thirdly, install VirtualBox on your pc and install a Ubuntu virtual machine. Then use mtools like the live cd.

[IainGrimm]

Right, going to try Option 3!!

 

This will be the first time I have used a virtual machine and Linux for that matter.

 

I have setup the Virtual Box giving it the 8Gb space needed, downloading a copy of Ubuntu (64 Bit wouldn't work so changed to 32 bit), Daemon Tools is ready for the image now, so lets see what happens next!

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Yes, WIndows can access only first partition on removable disks. And there is solution, what fixes that problem. However, IainGrimm has different problem - Windows does not recognises TOS type partitions. I'm who wrote Drive Imager. and I'm aware that adding files to TOS partition is not so easy when want adding a lot of ... However, there is much better solution, and it it the reason why I did not develop it further. It is called TOS/DOS compatible partitioning - so you can access all files on PC - DOS, Windows, Linux directly - with Explorer, Total Commander (recommended), or some other File Manager. Then attach to Atari, boot, and access all it fine.

Linux can have direct access to TOS partitions only if it is compiled into it's Kernel. What is not so easy, and I don't know how is with newer distros - is it supported anymore at all ?

So, I would say that option 3 will not work.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Yes, WIndows can access only first partition on removable disks. And there is solution, what fixes that problem. However, IainGrimm has different problem - Windows does not recognises TOS type partitions. I'm who wrote Drive Imager. and I'm aware that adding files to TOS partition is not so easy when want adding a lot of ... However, there is much better solution, and it it the reason why I did not develop it further. It is called TOS/DOS compatible partitioning - so you can access all files on PC - DOS, Windows, Linux directly - with Explorer, Total Commander (recommended), or some other File Manager. Then attach to Atari, boot, and access all it fine.

Linux can have direct access to TOS partitions only if it is compiled into it's Kernel. What is not so easy, and I don't know how is with newer distros - is it supported anymore at all ?

So, I would say that option 3 will not work.

 

Yes, Atari fs support is built-in to the kernel with Ubuntu. I use it all the time. But it has to have partitions with logical sector size 4K or smaller. But with mtools, I think this restriction doesn't apply. If I am wrong on that then yes, he cannot use his 512mb with option #3.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Hmmm, I was wrong then. I just tried it and I can't seem to use mtools with any partitions with logical sector size greater than 4k. So that would limit the partition size to 128MB max to be usable under Linux (which is what I use). Sorry about that.

 

So if you want 512mb partitions then it would be best to try out the TOS/DOS compatible partitioning. I don't know how to set that up though, so someone else will have to step in to help.

Edited February 13, 2014 by TheNameOfTheGame

[IainGrimm]

I do have Windows 95 & 98 original CD's which I could use in the virtual machine, is there some software for those 2 operating systems that will do what I need or once again issues with viewing the partitions.

 

Or am I going to have to buy PPera hard drive software (a lot cheaper than HDDriver)

 

This is really starting to stress me out! :S

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Hmmm you may have to wait until you get the ultrasatan. It's kind of a chicken and egg thing. You can use ppera's FLOIMG http://8bitchip.info/atari/floimgd.php to copy over the ICD driver to a floppy disk. The boot the ST with the floppy while the ultrasatan is powered and hooked up and the card inserted. Then load ICD software from floppy and it should see the card. Then you can partition and format the card and install the driver on it. Then you can boot from the card.

 

However, I don't know if the ICD software can format that special TOS/DOS partition that was mentioned earlier. You may have to use ppera's driver or hddriver if you want to use the card under windows too.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Here read this thread http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=23463

 

Here is a quote from it:

 

 

I tried very, very hard to get ICDDriver working with DOS compatible formatted SD cards,
Is that even possible?
I think there are only 2 drivers that supports DOS/TOS (hybrid) format.... HDDriver and Ppera's Drivers.
Both use different techniques, so you also cannot mix both versions together.

 

Sounds like ICD driver may not work for you if you want the TOS/DOS format. I did a quick search and there are several threads about the topic so you can read some of them to get a better idea.

 

As I mentioned earlier I just use 128MB partitions on my 2GB card and format them with 4K logical sectors so I can use them freely with Linux. But any bigger partitions and the logical sector size goes to 8k or 16k and then the Atari fs driver can't use them in Linux. If you try to use 4k logical sectors on a drive larger than 128MB you run into problems with available clusters.

 

Keep trying, you'll get it. We all found some way to get over the hump

 

I use hddriver and have always been happy. It was the best money I spent on my Atari besides ultrasatan. And the author Uwe has always answered my questions and been very helpful. But I realize it is an expensive outlay. ymmv.

 

I also bought ppera's driver to support his efforts and it seems good also, but I haven't much experience with it so I can't comment. Actually I am not even sure it can do TOS/DOS hybrids. I know hddriver can for a fact do them though.

 

Here's an article from jookie about this: http://joo.kie.sk/?page_id=302

Edited February 13, 2014 by TheNameOfTheGame

[IainGrimm]

I gave in and sent PPera an email last night, just going to get his driver. Will make life much easier and it supports multiple DOS/TOS partitions. Really easy to use watching the short video on his site, partitioning is 1 screen and extremely easy then just set C to boot and good to go, so will be able to do the 500Mb partitions.

 

At least his driver is much cheaper than HDDriver

 

Honestly, I have read up on so much stuff over the past few weeks I think I have confused myself!

 

PPeras driver lirerally supports IDE, Satandisk & USD which is ideal for what I am wanting. The HDDriver supports more types of input like CD etc which is why it is more expensive.

 

I spent 4-5 days downloading and putting all the games into Alphabetical named directories, nice structure keeping things tidy and easy to find, wouldn't want to have to recreate the huge structure (over 2000 directories and totaling around 25k files) so trying to avoid Drive Image!

 

Think over the next few days I am just going to stop reading up on stuff and fire up my ST and just enjoy it, should imagine PP will email me today at some point about the driver.

[+DarkLord]

Something is not right guys. I have the 2gig cards I use in the Ultrasatan in my STacy

formatted (with HDDriver) out to 4 partitions, slightly less than 512 megs each. They

are formatted to the native TOS specs.

 

I use mtools with kubuntu linux and I have no problems at all accessing everything

on the 2 gig cards....

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Something is not right guys. I have the 2gig cards I use in the Ultrasatan in my STacy

formatted (with HDDriver) out to 4 partitions, slightly less than 512 megs each. They

are formatted to the native TOS specs.

 

I use mtools with kubuntu linux and I have no problems at all accessing everything

on the 2 gig cards....

 

I would interested to hear how you are accessing them. With my 128MB partitions and Ubuntu 11.10 they all just automount and I use them as normal folders.

 

Never used mtools much. How do you access the partitions? Do you have to mount them first?

[+DarkLord]

 

I would interested to hear how you are accessing them. With my 128MB partitions and Ubuntu 11.10 they all just automount and I use them as normal folders.

 

Never used mtools much. How do you access the partitions? Do you have to mount them first?

 

Well, I'm using kubuntu 10.10 here, on an older comp so don't know if that makes a difference or not.

 

I simply insert my Atari 2gig card into a Targus card reader (usb), then open up a shell. I use the stock

mtools commands to read the directorys, copy, move, delete files,etc,...

 

Here are a couple of pics:

 

 

 

HTHs.

Edited February 15, 2014 by DarkLord

[IainGrimm]

Right,

 

Got my USD this morning and setup an SD card using PP Driver and partitioning tool

 

The Atari ST sees all the partitions so no worries there.

 

When I plug the card into my reader on the PC (Transcend USB 2 multi reader) it only sees the very first partition. From what I understand this has something to do with Windows.

 

When I look at the card in Windows Disk Management I can see the other partitions but can't do anything with them, same goes for Partition Wizard.

 

I have also seen a registry hack to make windows see the card as a partitioned hard drive, trouble is its only for 32 Bit systems and I am running a 64 Bit system.

 

I have tried using Ubuntu Live CD but cannot work it out at all, kind of reminds me of the Mac OS with its layout. One point I did manage to install the USB Driver but then I couldn't see the drive in my PC that contains all the files and I had no idea what I was doing.

 

Is there a program that I have yet to discover for Windows that will allow me to view all the partitions and allow me to transfer files over or am I literally stuck with 512Mb and having to just put specific stuff on there. Or would you say get another smaller SD card (512Mb) set it up as DOS/TOS and fill it with one of the directories, put it USD Slot 2 then copy over into a directory on the hard drive (I presume you do a drag and drop onto icon on desktop to copy a file)

[ParanoidLittleMan]

As I wrote in e-mail you can use temporary solution of copying files on Atari to final destination, from C. Can do it with 1 or 2 cards.

But by using Kobold2 it will be much-much faster than with Desktop.

I'm not sure what solution is good for 64-bit Win7 to see all partitions on removables - still use XP as it is best for my needs. Have Windows 8.1 too, but not much useful for me, so use rarely. Will test one day with possible hacks for seeing all partitions on removables ...

 

P.S. There is program called Winimage (free trial for 1 Month, as I remember) - if you make image of SD card, then can open it with Winimage and access all paritions. Not so comfortable as with Total Commander, but better than with DriveImage. After adding stuff, write it on SD card.

Edited February 18, 2014 by ParanoidLittleMan

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Right,

 

Got my USD this morning and setup an SD card using PP Driver and partitioning tool

 

The Atari ST sees all the partitions so no worries there.

 

When I plug the card into my reader on the PC (Transcend USB 2 multi reader) it only sees the very first partition. From what I understand this has something to do with Windows.

 

When I look at the card in Windows Disk Management I can see the other partitions but can't do anything with them, same goes for Partition Wizard.

 

I have also seen a registry hack to make windows see the card as a partitioned hard drive, trouble is its only for 32 Bit systems and I am running a 64 Bit system.

 

I have tried using Ubuntu Live CD but cannot work it out at all, kind of reminds me of the Mac OS with its layout. One point I did manage to install the USB Driver but then I couldn't see the drive in my PC that contains all the files and I had no idea what I was doing.

 

Is there a program that I have yet to discover for Windows that will allow me to view all the partitions and allow me to transfer files over or am I literally stuck with 512Mb and having to just put specific stuff on there. Or would you say get another smaller SD card (512Mb) set it up as DOS/TOS and fill it with one of the directories, put it USD Slot 2 then copy over into a directory on the hard drive (I presume you do a drag and drop onto icon on desktop to copy a file)

 

You can make a winxp virtual machine in vbox and then try the registry hack. Be sure under settings you check "PIIX3" chipset and "Enable I/O APIC". Check your inbox I sent a pm..

[IainGrimm]

I have it worked out, thinking outside the box a bit using a few suggestions from PPera (ParanoidLittleMan) and also TheNameOfTheGame on the Atari Age forums.


I installed Oracle Virtual Box (Virtual Machine).

I then created a Windows XP Virtual Machine, just used the light version of XP with Service Pack 3. I installed this into a Virtual 10Gb Hard Drive. Use either an old XP disk or have a look about the net, if you do get an ISO you can mount and install via Daemon Tools.

Once XP was installed, I had to install the Guest Additions which allows you to access folders from your main machine in the virtual environment via My Network Places (You have to go through the Wizard to setup a network place and point to the folder you select to share on your PC with all the files). So I set the folder that has everything in it to be shared within the virtual machine (Shared Folders settings and select the folder with all your files as a Transient Folder), once everything is setup you can now copy and paste everything direct.

I then had to enable the USB Card Reader I have via Devices at the top of the virtual machine.

Once I done this I followed PPera guide to do the hack on the driver. Much easier to do with a clean install of XP. I had 2 devices in the Device Manager that fit the description so I did the driver on both to make sure I had the right one.

 

http://atari.8bitchip.info/multpremxp.html

After restarting the virtual machine I now have all the partitions available in explorer and can just copy and paste all the files, already started to copy everything over and it is working great

Lesson learnt here, don't try messing with techie stuff when you are tired and feeling ill, it just makes you feel irate and a whole lot worse!!

 

Hope this will help some people out there, its a decent working solution which is easy to setup

[TheNameOfTheGame]

 

Well, I'm using kubuntu 10.10 here, on an older comp so don't know if that makes a difference or not.

 

I simply insert my Atari 2gig card into a Targus card reader (usb), then open up a shell. I use the stock

mtools commands to read the directorys, copy, move, delete files,etc,...

 

Here are a couple of pics:

 

mtools in action01.jpeg

 

mtools in action02.jpeg

 

HTHs.

 

Weird, I dunno, I could never get anything with tos partitions >4k logical sectors to mount. Using ubuntu 11.10. Must be something I am doing wrong. But I did the winxp registry hack using my virtualbox winxp vm and now it can read/write all partitions with the card partitioned under hddriver using tos/dos compatibility. Even with partitions 256mb and 512mb using logical sector sizes 8k and 16k respectively. Took around 5-10 minutes to get working so I am very happy with the extra room Glad this thread got started. Very helpful.

[bluemonday]

Hi, I'm a new Ultrasatan owner and am loving it so far. I had two questions.

 

1) I have a TOS/DOS-formatted card that I'm using to transfer stuff from a PC. I also have Lotharek's standard-image ICD card, which I'm using as my main card. Can I use the two SD drives in the Ultrasatan to view both cards at the same time so I can quickly copy between them? I've tried booting with both cards in but can never see the card in drive 2.

 

2) I can't see my floppy drive B if Ultrasatan is running. If I try to install it via the menu, it takes the place of Ultrasatan partition C. Are you able to use floppy drive B with Ultrasatan?

 

Thanks for any advice anyone can give.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Hi, I'm a new Ultrasatan owner and am loving it so far. I had two questions.

 

1) I have a TOS/DOS-formatted card that I'm using to transfer stuff from a PC. I also have Lotharek's standard-image ICD card, which I'm using as my main card. Can I use the two SD drives in the Ultrasatan to view both cards at the same time so I can quickly copy between them? I've tried booting with both cards in but can never see the card in drive 2.

 

2) I can't see my floppy drive B if Ultrasatan is running. If I try to install it via the menu, it takes the place of Ultrasatan partition C. Are you able to use floppy drive B with Ultrasatan?

 

Thanks for any advice anyone can give.

Little more details would be helpful in being helpful

What Atari model, which TOS version ? Hard disk driver ? What partitioning is used on Lotharek's standard image ? It seems that it is card you got with UltraSatan, with ICD driver ? ICD driver will not see TOS/DOS compatible card, for sure. Opposite should be the case, but only if there is less than 14 partitions on TOS/DOS card..

Floppy drive B problem is strange. Are you using Desktop Options, Install Disk Drive ? That indicates TOS 1.0x . It seems that icon of drive C just overlaps drive B icon, so all you need is to drag it away

Edited October 9, 2014 by ParanoidLittleMan

[Charlie_]

Right, sounds like two different hdd drivers that don't recognize partitions used by the other.

[bluemonday]

It's a 4MB STE with TOS 1.62. Lotharek's card is 8GB and has the ICD driver. The TOS/DOS one is a 2GB card with (I think) a 1GB image. Photos of boot screen attached for both.

 

Yes I was using Desktop Options > Install Disk Drive. And you're right, it was just overlapping. Cheers!

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Thanx bluemonday. Things are clear now. You used 1GB image with games, from here: http://atari.8bitchip.info/DiskImgPP1.html

Driver in it supports not access to other SD card, and supports not AHDI (TOS) type partitions - what is used with ICD.

You can order commercial version http://atari.8bitchip.info/pphdr.php

With that you will have not only access to second card, but partitioning SW, so you can use full capacity of your 2 GB card for instance.

I did some updates recently - most interesting is Windows long filename filtering in driver.

[bluemonday]

Thanx bluemonday. Things are clear now. You used 1GB image with games, from here: http://atari.8bitchip.info/DiskImgPP1.html

Driver in it supports not access to other SD card, and supports not AHDI (TOS) type partitions - what is used with ICD.

You can order commercial version http://atari.8bitchip.info/pphdr.php

With that you will have not only access to second card, but partitioning SW, so you can use full capacity of your 2 GB card for instance.

I did some updates recently - most interesting is Windows long filename filtering? in driver.

 

Thanks for the advice. That software looks good. How easy is it to use? I'm not an expert on hard disks, partitions etc (hence why I used the per-configured downloadable images!)

[galax]

 

Thanks for the advice. That software looks good. How easy is it to use? I'm not an expert on hard disks, partitions etc (hence why I used the per-configured downloadable images!)

 

Very easy to use, not really any more difficult than using the pre-configured images. I made a quick video that demonstrates how to partition a fresh SD card: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qoat_1cuBo