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Happy 'Warp Speed Software' disk


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I have just installed a new 'Happy' board I bought from 'AtariMax' in to my equally new 1050 this afternoon. The mod itself looks extremely well made and a careful check-over with a lense showed no areas at all which required touching-up or reworking. Very high quality indeed and I recommend Steven Tucker's shop to anyone who might be interested in getting one.

 

However, sadly the "Warp Speed Software' disk that came with it was corrupt and therefore I cannot run the diagnostics or any of those other goodies. It does however work perfectly in DOS and SDX - with an extremely noticeable hike in transfer-rate at that. Very nice.

 

Do any of you chaps happen to have a complete image of the newest version of the "Warp Speed Software' disk? At 'Atari Mania' they only have versions 5.3 and 6.6 while I am certain it went up to at least v7 if not beyond. I cannot seem to find the 'Contact Me' link for 'AtariMax' so cannot approach the fellow directly.

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I think I found it with XL-search: http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/xlsearch/xlsearch.cgi?keywords=warpdos&sortby=Name

 

http://www.umich.edu/~archive/atari/8bit/Dos/Warpdos/

 

"This is the complete WarpDOS 7.1 master disk for the Happy Drive 1050. Also see happy7.arc or happy7.zip, which is the complete user manual for the Happy Drive 7.x Robert S. Ely - rely@ix.netcom.com"

Edited by Fred_M
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  • 2 weeks later...

The disk mentions the actual 'Warp Speed DOS' itself. How do you get this to boot up rather than the diagnostic stuff?

 

Update:

Having RTFM'd I now know how!

 

However, the same manual section mentioned 'Warp Speed DOS XL'. I have quite a large collection of DOS's, but not this. It sounds like it might be a mod of OSS's 'DOS XL'. Does anyone have a *.ATR of it? It is not in the the ATARI Mania collection.

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I seem to remember that Warp Speed Dos was a modification to DOS 2 (adding warp speed i/o routines) not a dos in its own right. I think the mod was a binary load file you loaded into DOS 2 (warpdos.bin?). I also seem to remember that one of the Happy Warpspeed Software revisions (6.3/7.0) has Warp Speed DOS as a menu option. I will check and hopefully be able to post further information / .atrs later.

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I seem to remember that Warp Speed Dos was a modification to DOS 2 (adding warp speed i/o routines) not a dos in its own right. I think the mod was a binary load file you loaded into DOS 2 (warpdos.bin?). I also seem to remember that one of the Happy Warpspeed Software revisions (6.3/7.0) has Warp Speed DOS as a menu option. I will check and hopefully be able to post further information / .atrs later.

 

Yep, that's exactly right cwc. You basically go through a process where you mod an existing DOS 2 installation. The manual talks about some sort of 'super' version "Warp Speed DOS XL" as well however. That seems to be pure vapourware though.

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Analog Issue 47 page 7 has a Happy advert which explains that "WARP SPEED DOS XL is HAPPY's own version of OSS DOS XL, and includes under cartridge, under ROM and AXLON RAM disk version, and is order number HC4G at $29.95" https://archive.org/download/analog-computing-magazine-47/Analog_Computing_47_1986-10_DLI_Tutorial_Deathzone.pdf

 

From Michael Current FAQ: "Software sold [by Happy] separately, each supports Warp Speed read/write:

- Customizer Program (create non-standard disks track-by-track)

- Warp Speed DOS XL (by OSS, modified by Happy Computers [see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_XL]

- TOP DOS 1.5 & up, by Eclipse Software

- SuperDOS for Happy ©1986 by H.C.I."

 

I also found a modified DOS 2.5 (.atr attached)

237.atr

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  • 8 months later...

Making this work was somewhat less straightforward than I thought it would be in June 2015! Back then, after several failed attempts to get the patched 'Atari DOS 2.0S' running I gave up and my interest moved on to other things. However, armed with a new machine I thought I would give this exercise another try and... success! It seems the 'Master Disk' image I had for 'Atari DOS 2.0S' was not the untouched clone it was supposed to be. This is the second DOS in the last few weeks I have found that while supposedly clean, has at some point in the past been customized and re-released in to the wild. Nevermind, that is a separate matter and I think I will have to spend a little effort getting hold of - preferably in VAPI format - some genuinely pristine editions of these disks.

 

Anyway; when using a new - if not stock, at least less messed around with - copy of the 'Atari DOS 2.0S Master Disk' I found the 'WARPDOS.BIN' patching process a breeze this time around. Moreover, once complete I must confess I am genuinely impressed with the results. Even without the recommended 'HighSpeed SIO' hardware mod (http://sio2sd.gucio.pl/wiki/HighSpeed_en) nor patching the OS software (http://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/#hipatch) the difference which 'Warp Speed' makes is truly remarkable. Obviously it doesn't compare with the SIO2xx devices operating at POKEY divisor 0, but it does reliably function on a totally stock machine. Just phenomenal! I can imagine how jaw-dropping this must have felt back in the 1980's when the 'Happy' board was brand new and I can also see why so much fuss was made about it in the magazines.

 

The only... not complaint, but slight regret I have is the 'WARPSPEED.BIN' patch only works on 'Atari DOS 2.0S'. It generates an error every time when tried with 'Atari DOS 2.5'. Obviously the image that cwc linked to above works, but it is a very heavily hacked version and rather visually unappealing. Obviously the field is also somewhat muddied by the vapourware 'Warp Speed DOS XL'. However, does anyone know if whoever made the 'Happy' mod originally - was it ICD? - ever released a version of their 'Warp Speed Software' and therefore 'WARPDOS.BIN' which officially operated on 'Atari DOS 2.5'?

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  • 7 months later...

Seems Warp Speed DOS XL isn't vaporware after all.

 

When I started working on my Action!-related Retrochallenge project a couple weeks ago, I decided it would be fitting to use an OSS DOS. I have two physical OSS floppy+manuals I acquired a couple years ago from a now defunct used electronics seller near me. One is OS/A+ and the other is DOS XL. I haven't used them until now.

 

After giving up on OS/A+ version 4 (having trouble enabling drives D3 and on), I started using the DOS XL instead and noticed my version number on the screen banner / title wasn't matching the ATR files found in the usual places (atariwiki.org, archive.org, atarimania.com). After searching around to find out more about the version, I came across this thread.

 

Attached should be an .ATR of OSS Warp Speed DOS XL Ver. 2.42w. The DOS XL was side "B" to a Happy "Warp Speed Software" rev 6.6 floppy disk. I was unable to create a copy of the Warp Speed Software. The manual that accompanied the floppy has "Version 2.30" on it's title page, so I don't think there's anything new to be found there. There are some .DOC files that may yield some help.

 

The label for the DOS XL diskette has the hand-written inscription "WS", presumably "Warp Speed". I don't know if this was added by the previous owner, OSS Inc., or Happy Computer, Inc. Besides a file called "HAPPY.DOC", there are 3 files in the directory listing with a "WS" prefix:

 

WSBUG65.COM

WSAXLON.COM

WSRAMXE.COM

 

Hope this fills a small hole in the Atari 8-bit universe.

 

DOSXL242.ATR


post-41212-0-59323200-1476405189_thumb.png post-41212-0-42022700-1476405233_thumb.jpg post-41212-0-11279300-1476405273_thumb.jpg
Contents of the text file HAPPY.DOC

The WS in front of the BUG65,AXLON,
and RAMXE files stands for WARP SPEED

The obvious difference between OSS
DOSXL and WARP SPEED DOSXL is the
faster speed at which it works.
One of the other changes is that we
added density smart routines to
automatically detect single or double
density disks without having to hit
the reset button when using the
HAPPY 1050 enhanced drive.

For those of you who own the MOSAIC
RAMDISK, we're sorry but we don't
have a version for you. We were
unable to obtain a MOSAIC RAMDISK
board set so we could not develop
and support software for that
configuration.

IMPORTANT CAUTIONS

The FAST WRITE WITH VERIFY is
automatically turned on for HAPPY
DRIVES. This means all writes are
write with verify. Also you MUST
NOT remove the disk from the drive,
or open the door after writing, until
the busy light goes off or else loss
of data may occur. The drive flashes
the busy light on and off when write
or verify errors occur.

If you press SYSTEM RESET after
writing to the disk, you must wait
until the drive busy light goes out
before doing any other disk operation
to ensure no loss of data. The drive
busy light does NOT flash on and off
for errors of this type.

For those of you who also have the
CONTROLLER installed in your 1050,
DO NOT write to a disk when the
slow/fast switch is in the SLOW
position or you will get some
incorrect data written! The only
time you should switch to slow is
when you are booting a protected disk
that won't otherwise boot. Also
DO NOT write to a disk that has the
FORCE SLOW MODE on it or the same
thing will happen.

 

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  • 11 months later...

I wanted to have a little fun and learn a little bit about Atari disk formats, so I did this little hack of the Warpspeed DOS XL 242 Axlon driver. The original driver, WSAXLON.COM, only supports an 883 sector single density Ramdrive. It was written for a 128K or larger Axlon board. I'm procuring parts to build a 512K board so I wanted a little more capacity. I created a new driver, WSAXLDBL.COM, that is an 883 sector double density Ramdrive. 883x256=220K storage capacity. It will work with a 256K or larger Axlon board. My next step is to add a second double density ramdrive. I'll also see if I can increase the number of sectors to utilize the full 512k.

 

 

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I wanted to have a little fun and learn a little bit about Atari disk formats, so I did this little hack of the Warpspeed DOS XL 242 Axlon driver. The original driver, WSAXLON.COM, only supports an 883 sector single density Ramdrive. It was written for a 128K or larger Axlon board. I'm procuring parts to build a 512K board so I wanted a little more capacity. I created a new driver, WSAXLDBL.COM, that is an 883 sector double density Ramdrive. 883x256=220K storage capacity. It will work with a 256K or larger Axlon board. My next step is to add a second double density ramdrive. I'll also see if I can increase the number of sectors to utilize the full 512k.

 

I made some more progress on the driver. It now creates two drives, D3: and D4: sized 242K each! I was able to copy 80k from D3: to D4: in 15 seconds. :) My next step is to figure out how to add arguments to the driver to allow options like how many drives are created and their drive numbers.

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  • 1 month later...

I found a bug in my driver. Please delete DOSXL242_AXDD.ATR if you have downloaded it. Bug will corrupt files in the ramdrive. Missing a CLC instruction. :dunce:

I posted fixed versions of my Axlon ramdisk drivers here supporting both 256k and 512k compatible boards. I also hacked the Axlong RAM test program to test 512k.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/256464-designing-an-axlon-compatible-board/page-2?do=findComment&comment=3861693

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  • 2 weeks later...

Seems Warp Speed DOS XL isn't vaporware after all.

 

When I started working on my Action!-related Retrochallenge project a couple weeks ago, I decided it would be fitting to use an OSS DOS. I have two physical OSS floppy+manuals I acquired a couple years ago from a now defunct used electronics seller near me. One is OS/A+ and the other is DOS XL. I haven't used them until now.

 

After giving up on OS/A+ version 4 (having trouble enabling drives D3 and on), I started using the DOS XL instead and noticed my version number on the screen banner / title wasn't matching the ATR files found in the usual places (atariwiki.org, archive.org, atarimania.com). After searching around to find out more about the version, I came across this thread.

 

Attached should be an .ATR of OSS Warp Speed DOS XL Ver. 2.42w. The DOS XL was side "B" to a Happy "Warp Speed Software" rev 6.6 floppy disk. I was unable to create a copy of the Warp Speed Software. The manual that accompanied the floppy has "Version 2.30" on it's title page, so I don't think there's anything new to be found there. There are some .DOC files that may yield some help.

 

The label for the DOS XL diskette has the hand-written inscription "WS", presumably "Warp Speed". I don't know if this was added by the previous owner, OSS Inc., or Happy Computer, Inc. Besides a file called "HAPPY.DOC", there are 3 files in the directory listing with a "WS" prefix:

 

WSBUG65.COM

WSAXLON.COM

WSRAMXE.COM

 

Hope this fills a small hole in the Atari 8-bit universe.

 

attachicon.gifDOSXL242.ATR

Contents of the text file HAPPY.DOC

The WS in front of the BUG65,AXLON,

and RAMXE files stands for WARP SPEED

 

The obvious difference between OSS

DOSXL and WARP SPEED DOSXL is the

faster speed at which it works.

One of the other changes is that we

added density smart routines to

automatically detect single or double

density disks without having to hit

the reset button when using the

HAPPY 1050 enhanced drive.

 

For those of you who own the MOSAIC

RAMDISK, we're sorry but we don't

have a version for you. We were

unable to obtain a MOSAIC RAMDISK

board set so we could not develop

and support software for that

configuration.

 

IMPORTANT CAUTIONS

 

The FAST WRITE WITH VERIFY is

automatically turned on for HAPPY

DRIVES. This means all writes are

write with verify. Also you MUST

NOT remove the disk from the drive,

or open the door after writing, until

the busy light goes off or else loss

of data may occur. The drive flashes

the busy light on and off when write

or verify errors occur.

 

If you press SYSTEM RESET after

writing to the disk, you must wait

until the drive busy light goes out

before doing any other disk operation

to ensure no loss of data. The drive

busy light does NOT flash on and off

for errors of this type.

 

For those of you who also have the

CONTROLLER installed in your 1050,

DO NOT write to a disk when the

slow/fast switch is in the SLOW

position or you will get some

incorrect data written! The only

time you should switch to slow is

when you are booting a protected disk

that won't otherwise boot. Also

DO NOT write to a disk that has the

FORCE SLOW MODE on it or the same

thing will happen.

 

Vindicated again... thank you for unearthing yet another truth and treasure!

 

Thank you once more for actually running your disks and paying attention, a number of things exist out there that the label may not identify or at best have user scribbles that mean nothing to the rest of the planet.. a check mark, a star, a couple of letters, or 'this one' might be the only thing identifying it. Heck even Atari did this with black dots or hole punches.... only way to know is to use it and pay attention or perform image comparison...

 

Way to go!

Edited by _The Doctor__
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it's a strange one that - even with 30+ years of advanced tech, these upgrades

Happy, IS Plate, USD etc - still retain a small portion of proprietary uniquity, but it's nonetheless enough to create some incompatibility

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