New (alt) BIOS for Ultimate 1MB/Incognito

[Neo-Rio]

Thanks FJC, that worked!

 

Not really using the SIDE2's SIDE loader given that the U1MB takes over that role, but it is good to update it and it's old SDX as well.

Even though the SIDE2 was purchased new fairly recently, it came with old firmware

[flashjazzcat]

Great - glad to hear it worked and thanks for confirming that it does.

 

All retail units are currently sold with the original loader, BIOS, etc. Future batches will (I am told) have the new firmware, once suitable arrangements are made.

[Stormtrooper of Death]

Concerning the SIDE2, what can I do with the "256KB external flash application cartridge space" ? is it used for the XEX loader , or can i use the XEX loader and still put another program in the 256KB, for instance, Atmas II or TurboBasic ? that would be handy....

Edited July 14, 2016 by Stormtrooper of Death

[flashjazzcat]

Concerning the SIDE2, what can I do with the "256KB external flash application cartridge space" ? is it used for the XEX loader , or can i use the XEX loader and still put another program in the 256KB, for instance, Atmas II or TurboBasic ? that would be handy....

 

You can put anything you like there, providing it uses an appropriate banking scheme. The XEX loader only uses the first two 8KB banks of the upper half of the flash ROM, but you can obliterate those as well. Indeed, SDX itself (in the lower half) can be overwritten if you don't need it.

[bax001]

Do you mean it was working with the original BIOS or with a prior version of the new one? If the former, then it's something a couple of users already encountered. The outcome in both cases was that U-switch wasn't actually working correctly in the first place for whatever reason (I recall in one case the wrong BIN jumper position was used). It followed that stereo toggling had never in fact worked from the outset, even with the old firmware.

 

The original BIOS makes no attempt to ascertain if toggling M0 does anything at all (or if there's a stereo board in the machine), so will blindly allow toggling of stereo in the menu. The new BIOS tests for stereo hardware and then establishes if it can be turned on and off via the M0 signal. So the first things to check are the connections.

Hi, it was a problem with connection like you said (it didn't work before and I didn't test it because I'm still wondering how to set it up without drilling holes for audio sockets). It recognize stereo and as I can see I can enable/disable it using Covox. Many thanks

 

One more thing. Option for stereo pokey is grayed so to enable/disable it I have to use Covox, but once that option wasn't grayed and I could disable just pokey stereo without disabling covox

Edited July 14, 2016 by bax001

[flashjazzcat]

One more thing. Option for stereo pokey is grayed so to enable/disable it I have to use Covox, but once that option wasn't grayed and I could disable just pokey stereo without disabling covox

You've lost me there. The Stereo Pokey option will by definition be greyed out if the M0 pin isn't connected to the stereo board, since the BIOS will therefore establish that M0 does nothing. Covox, meanwhile, can't be detected in software, so the Covox option is always enabled. So, the fact remains that if you connect Stereo (or USwitch) to M0 and the Stereo option is still greyed out, something probably isn't connected up quite right.

Edited July 14, 2016 by flashjazzcat

[bax001]

Do you know if faulty GTIA can cause problems like that? I've just noticed when I run memtest the bottom line with info about function keys "reset or help to exit" is flashing. I also had a similar problems in few games. After replacing GTIA it doesn't flash anymore, but I'm afraid to mount dual pokey because I don't have more spare parts

[flashjazzcat]

I guess it's possible, especially if A4 happened to be picked off GTIA and the chip was failing.

[Beetle]

Hi folks,

 

i just wanted to let you know that the last upgrade of U1MB went without trouble.

 

I used uflash 1.28, on my Rapidus 1200XL, flashed BIOS, LOADER first and PBIBIOS

last, as the readme said. In 20MHz mode - that goes really fast

 

Beetle

[Neo-Rio]

Just on the topic of flashing the Side2 ...

Could you flash a game cart over one of the slots and get it to work?

[JoSch]

I flashed the FJC's GUI OS on it. So, I assume, you can flash it with almost everything, which has a supported paging scheme.

[flashjazzcat]

Correct.

[Neo-Rio]

Cool.

 

A pity the SIDE2 doesn't have more flash or I might have been able to squeeze Space Harrier on it

SIDE3 feature request, perhaps?

[flashjazzcat]

How big is Space Harrier? 1MB?

[Neo-Rio]

How big is Space Harrier? 1MB?

Yep

[Roydea6]

I know that this thread is about the U1Mb and Incognito, but I was looking for help with the FDISK program and compatibility with the various version of IDE +2 hard drive 'CF' partitions.

 

The CF card I was using lost all of its partitions after using Fdisk Writing and Exiting and they were gone..

[Jinks]

How do you know if u1mb can upgrade to the new bios without special cables etc?

I am worried about bricking a perfectly good machine as it is my only one and only would upgrade if there was a easy way to do it with step by step instructions.

I read the pdf much of the terms make little sense to me.

I probably can not as I need to get a file onto the atari to load the bios and only have sio2bt to put files onto the machine.

Really the only thing I use it for is sio2bt so thats my only reason to upgrade.

[flashjazzcat]

I know that this thread is about the U1Mb and Incognito, but I was looking for help with the FDISK program and compatibility with the various version of IDE +2 hard drive 'CF' partitions.

 

The CF card I was using lost all of its partitions after using Fdisk Writing and Exiting and they were gone..

Which version of FDISK used with which IDE Plus 2.0 BIOS version? If a sector write to the physical disk device fails, the driver should return an error which will cause FDISK to report a failed write. If no error message appeared, then something else is to blame. It's not a situation I've seen or heard about, so it would be helpful to know what the contents of LBA sector 0 on the disk. You can find this out by running EDDY and opening the physical disk. A screen shot of both halves of sector 0 might offer some clues (or better yet, dump the sector to a ZIP file and post it here).

 

How do you know if u1mb can upgrade to the new bios without special cables etc?

As I said in the other thread: if the device is already capable of running the PBI BIOS, then it is capable of running the new firmware. You can enable "SIDE Hardware" and SDX in the old BIOS and then power cycle the machine. If "Ultimate PBI BIOS" is displayed at the top of the screen, you're good to go. Alternatively, you can poke $D1FF with 1 (assuming the PBI device ID is at the default 0, or 1 as it is reported in the old BIOS) and check if the contents of $D800 changed.

 

I am worried about bricking a perfectly good machine as it is my only one and only would upgrade if there was a easy way to do it with step by step instructions.

I read the pdf much of the terms make little sense to me.

I probably can not as I need to get a file onto the atari to load the bios and only have sio2bt to put files onto the machine.

Really the only thing I use it for is sio2bt so thats my only reason to upgrade.

Certainly if flashing the BIOS goes wrong, you need to resort to a USB programmer. As the developer, I have a USB programmer but tools have advanced to the stage at which it is rarely plugged in. Prior to the latest BIOS release I updated four U1MB machines and one Incognito 800 using UFlash without incident and without the aid of additional tools. I used SIO2PC but SIO2BT will do the job just as well. You have the choice of using the patched SIO2BT OS with the old U1MB firmware, or using a stock OS with the SDX SIO driver and an increased command timeout.

 

The BIOS manual includes step-by-step upgrade instructions and I included an ATR in the archive which autoruns UFLASH from the SDX prompt. You then simply navigate to the ROMs in the order suggested in the readme and the software does the rest. I honestly find it difficult to synopsise the procedure beyond what's already written.

 

Of course when upgrading from the stock BIOS, some uncertainty is understandable. Therefore you might feel more comfortable using the original BIOS with the SIO2BT patched OS. This will work perfectly well, so there's probably no pressing reason for you to upgrade at all.

Edited July 17, 2016 by flashjazzcat

[Roydea6]

Which version of FDISK used with which IDE Plus 2.0 BIOS version? If a sector write to the physical disk device fails, the driver should return an error which will cause FDISK to report a failed write. If no error message appeared, then something else is to blame. It's not a situation I've seen or heard about, so it would be helpful to know what the contents of LBA sector 0 on the disk. You can find this out by running EDDY and opening the physical disk. A screen shot of both halves of sector 0 might offer some clues (or better yet, dump the sector to a ZIP file and post it here).

 

Sorry I already freshly re initialized the CF card with Fdisk 4.5 version and now all is back to normal. IDE +2 Bios14.

This might have been one of the CF cards I set up with KMK Fdisk2. and did not remember. Its been a couple of years.

[Jinks]

Thanks for the response. I think leaving as is would be the best.

[Roydea6]

Okay I have a problem!!

 

Bios profile 2 is stuck will not allow me to get back into the Bios Menu. I must have change my Hot keys to bring up the menu or totally disabled them (FAT FINGERED) some how. Just wondering if there is a standalone program that will swap Profiles for me or a POKE sequence ..

 

Never mind I figured it out..

 

 

TIA

Edited July 19, 2016 by rdea6

[fujidude]

I haven't been keeping up with updating with each release right away lately. But when I had been I was doing so without trouble. Anyway I'm using Altirra 2.80t48. I'm emulating an 800XL with a U1MB. My current versions of ROMs flashed to the U1Mb are: PBI 1.61, BIOS/Plugin 1.00 / SC 1.00, SIDE Loader 1.02. I am attempting to flash to the latest versions of these three. When I run UFLASH.XEX (the latest 1.28 version) I get a warning to enable the SDX cartridge. It is. This happens no matter if I run UFLASH from the FAT volume with the loader, the PCLink device from SDX, or floppy A: from SDX.

 

Any idea what I might be doing wrong? Any additional info needed from me to help figure this out? Just let me know.

[flashjazzcat]

I suspect the SDX ROM is corrupt in that case. The program attempts to select bank 0 of the SDX ROM and then checks for the SDX signature ('SDX') at $A000-$A002. If the signature is not found, the program assumes SDX is not addressable. Check the first three bytes of the ROM.

 

Now that you mention it, I might as well modify this test just in case a) someone uses the SDX slot for a different purpose (making the SDX signature undependable), or b) SDX got corrupted and the flasher has been run from the XEX loader.

[fujidude]

Okay I did some additional troubleshooting and still have the issue. Here is what I did:

• Erased my altirra.ini and started configuring from scratch, as rarely I have had issues with upgrading altirra and it appearing to work with the existing config.
• After that I installed Altirra t49 and again cleared the config starting from scratch.
• Since clearing the config did nothing (nothing helpful anyway), I reverted back to my old altirra.ini.
• Taking your theory about the corrupt SDX image in my U1MB image, I switched to using the same 512KB U1MB.ROM file that you include in the .zip which already has SDX and the latest PBI, loader, and BIOS ROMs. Uflash also had the same complaint with this file, so it's not looking like corrupt SDX.

Any other ideas?

[flashjazzcat]

No, it's not looking like a corrupt SDX, but the fact is that the "Enable SDX and rerun" message (assuming this is the one you're referring to) is only triggered by one thing, namely the inability to read "SDX" at the very beginning of the flash ROM. Ergo, there's something getting in the way, masking the ROM. And yet, this SDX test is performed (if I understand my own code correctly) after the BIOS signature of the flash ROM has already been read and understood, which involves the exact same ROM banking mechanism used to inspect the first three bytes of the SDX image. Moreover, nothing changed in that area of UFLASH in recent revisions, and likewise nothing changed with recent firmware revisions which would tend to affect the behaviour of the flasher.

 

All I can suggest is ensuring there are no other emulated carts getting in the way, and that if SIDE2 is present, the PBI BIOS's HDD is also enabled (which gets the SIDE2 ROM out of the way).