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APT update for Ultimate, Incognito, SIDE and compatibles


flashjazzcat

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Given that people without SIO devices are pretty much forced to go thru an EPROM burner, how do you feel if I post once more the full 512K with SIDE2 soft driver 3.2?

 

You might want to look at this:

 

uFlash with SIDE support

 

Providing it works, this should be the answer for SIDE users without SIO devices. If you're already running the recently released SDX ROM, you should have FATFS.SYS on CAR:. So: prepare a CF card (using FDISK) with a FAT16 partition of no more than 31.9995 MB, and set up an "external" partition entry in the APT which points to this FAT partition. Put the card in the PC, format the FAT partition (ensure you pick FAT16 or FAT), copy uFlash and the SIDE ROM to it (using an 8.3 filenames: that's important), then put the card back in the A8. Boot the machine, and the FAT partition should be mounted under whichever drive number you gave it. Type FATFS.SYS at the DOS prompt, and hopefully you'll then have file system access to the FAT partition containing the ROM and the flasher. Type "UFLASH.XEX" at the prompt, go to Device->Open, pick "SIDE2", then select the SpartaDOS X slot, browse to the ROM, and hopefully you'll be able to flash it.

 

Let me know how you get on. :)

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-only for u1mb users?

-or - i can format my CARD only as FAT32, NTFS, exFAT

 

i run fatfs.sys, then matr, choose partition, but all dirs are empty

 

NO - not only for Ultimate users. To flash SIDE, turn off Ultimate SDX and PBI, enable SDX on SIDE cart, boot it, and follow the instructions above. MATR does not enter into matters at all.

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Here is the full 512K updated to SIDE2 soft driver 3.2.

And don't forget to donate http://www.atari8.co.uk/donate/index.html

 

On a different note anyone know if/when candle would fix that 1 byte bug in SideLoader?

side2-512K-onboard-flash-updatedLoaderAndSDX32.BIN

Edited by phoenixdownita
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Another bug-fix, this time for FDISK:

 

http://atari8.co.uk/news/

 

You can get the FDISK update as part of the SDX ROMs, stand-alone for use with the SDX Imager, or as part of the toolkit ATR. Just make sure you're using v.4.5 from now on. Electron (who has shown really keen interest in this software and has been a great help lately in nailing down problems) discovered that while the partition table was always written out correctly to disk with version 4.4, it was sometimes not made active. Worse yet, no error message was displayed when this happened. The RAM-based partition table was therefore an inaccurate representation of what was on the disk (if the partition table had undergone significant edits) until the machine was rebooted or power-cycled. Now, many people probably reboot after editing the partition table anyway, but the point is that this should not be necessary: the partition table as defined should become active immediately upon leaving the partition editor. This now happens reliably in version 4.5.

 

Another, sort of related bug resulted in the partition table never becoming active on leaving the editor if IDE Plus 2.0 was the host adapter in use, owing to the BIOS requiring DSTATS to be zero. This issue has also been corrected in version 4.5.

 

Many thanks to Electron. :)

Edited by flashjazzcat
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Electron (who has shown really keen interest in this software and has been a great help lately in nailing down problems) discovered that while the partition table was always written out correctly to disk with version 4.4, it was sometimes not made active. Worse yet, no error message was displayed when this happened.

I found this happened to me a few times. I just assumed it was something to do with my hardware.

 

I'd write the partition table out from FDISK and then reboot, only to find the disk had no partitions defined.

 

It was only after noticing the "write successful" dialog I realised that unless this message appeared, the table had not been physically written to the IDE hard-disk.

 

I just kept re-writing the table until the success message appeared. Sometimes it would take a few attempts before I received the dialog.

 

Have you updated the firmwares on your download pages? I noticed the IDE+2 firmware specifically mentions FDISK v4.5 but hadn't noticed on my previous download.

 

I updated a SIDE v1, my IDE+2 and an Atarimax MyIDE v1. Should I be re-flashing them again to get the latest FDISK?

Edited by UKRetrogamer
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I found this happened to me a few times. I just assumed it was something to do with my hardware.

 

I'd write the partition table out from FDISK and then reboot, only to find the disk had no partitions defined.

 

It was only after noticing the "write successful" dialog I realised that unless this message appeared, the table had not been physically written to the IDE hard-disk.

 

I just kept re-writing the table until the success message appeared. Sometimes it would take a few attempts before I received the dialog.

The issue addressed was not the writing of the table to disk, which was reliable. If you're using Ultimate 1MB, be aware that simply rebooting the machine does not re-read the partition table from disk, however, since doing so would obliterate mounted disk images and so make it impossible to boot an ATR. Rebooting or pressing Reset with SHIFT held or power cycling the machine forces the partition table to be re-read (this is all in the manual).

 

For this reason, every time you successfully save the partition table in FDISK, a media change command is immediately issued, causing the partition pointers in RAM to accurately reflect what's just been saved to disk. As I say, if the hardware works correctly, there was never any problem with the data written to disk. However, the carry flag would periodically be set (indicating that when writing the table to disk, an error had occurred which had already been reported to the user) when it should have been clear (indicating success). The problem would tend to arise after half a dozen edits had been performed on a table loaded immediately after starting FDISK. Because of the set carry flag (indicating a spurious error), FDISK would then fail to issue a media change command, assuming the partition table had never been written to disk in the first place.

 

Ensuring the carry flag is clear when no errors have occurred allows FDISK to properly activate the newly written partition table. At no point were failed partition table writes ever encountered, although the lack of a "success" message might have led the user to think otherwise.

Edited by flashjazzcat
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  • 4 months later...

OK, this post started as an awesome announcement for a major update to the APT toolkit. Really nice work there FJC! But, since then it has deteriorated into the usual "pissing contest" that has infected other threads in this forum. Personally, I use FJC's implementation of APT and uflash myself, mainly because of its ease-of-use and continual development. I have used the other flashing options, but really, for my needs uflash is what I need. This is not to say that any of the other options are not valid or useable, but really.. do we need to start this same war EVERY time one of them are updated? It seems kinda unnecessary and childish. Nobody is FORCING anybody to use any particular program, use whatever works best for you. I appreciate the work and long hours that have gone into the developement of ALL of these tools, without which none of the "goodies" I have installed in my A8 would be worth very much. Let's just settle down and enjoy our old-ass computers and call a truce so we dont have to hear the same tired arguments over and over. I appreciate everybody's work and LOVE having an A8 with the features I have in it now, that should be pretty much the bottom line for everybody. I'ma go play with my new Atari goodies now... Peace out.

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