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SDrive-Arm (SDrive2) issues/questions


gargoyle

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Try the inverse key to quit...

I tried every form of reset and none would get me back to the D1: prompt in SDX.
Reset
Inverse
shift-inverse
shift-ctrl-inverse
Quiting doesn't exit the config program properly. Doing a Reset after will get the D1: prompt back but it locks if I try to access the Sdrive.
Here's my system
800XL
4Mb Antonia
XL/XE OS
8Mbit Atarimax build of SDX ver. 4.48
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Thinking about my problem with SDX cart. I could try booting from floppy first to configure the SDrive, then reboot the cart. But the OS doesn't let me boot the floppy with a cart inserted. Does anyone know if there is an alternative OS that allows this?

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I tried every form of reset and none would get me back to the D1: prompt in SDX.
Reset
Inverse
shift-inverse
shift-ctrl-inverse
Quiting doesn't exit the config program properly. Doing a Reset after will get the D1: prompt back but it locks if I try to access the Sdrive.
Here's my system
800XL
4Mb Antonia
XL/XE OS
8Mbit Atarimax build of SDX ver. 4.48

 

I've been thinking more about this and it seems to me that exiting the config program using Quit should just take me back to DOS without any problems. So is this really just a bug in the config program? What is the correct way to exit an application back to DOS?

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I have tried to duplicate the problem of yours, but inverse key always quits config program (SDRIVE.XEX) and restarts SDX with my mounted atr on D1:

 

Try adding the sdrive.xex to your autoexec.bat D1:SDRIVE.XEX on the last line after selecting your atr press the inverse key.

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Thinking about my problem with SDX cart. I could try booting from floppy first to configure the SDrive, then reboot the cart. But the OS doesn't let me boot the floppy with a cart inserted. Does anyone know if there is an alternative OS that allows this?

SDX and SDrive (classic SDrive in my case) has always been iffy. Once in a while it will boot the way you'd expect, that is straight into the SDrive configuration program. However, most times it will not.

 

If the system does boot straight to the SDX command line type COLD /N. This will disable the cartridge and allow the Atari to boot SDRIVE.ATR on your SD card. Now the configuration program will run normally. When you exit (ATARI key) the Atari does a cold start, the drive mappings will hold, the SDX cartridge will be re-enabled.

 

-SteveS

 

[Edit]

p.s. SDX does not like SDrive at very high speed. You can tell this when SDX starts to boot but just hangs. Set the SDrive's SIO speed to 56K.

 

Edited by a8isa1
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SDX and SDrive (classic SDrive in my case) has always been iffy. Once in a while it will boot the way you'd expect, that is straight into the SDrive configuration program. However, most times it will not.

 

If the system does boot straight to the SDX command line type COLD /N. This will disable the cartridge and allow the Atari to boot SDRIVE.ATR on your SD card. Now the configuration program will run normally. When you exit (ATARI key) the Atari does a cold start, the drive mappings will hold, the SDX cartridge will be re-enabled.

 

-SteveS

 

[Edit]

p.s. SDX does not like SDrive at very high speed. You can tell this when SDX starts to boot but just hangs. Set the SDrive's SIO speed to 56K.

 

oops, 56K limit was another issue.

 

SDX and SDrive is fine at 67kbits and usually 89kbits.

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I'm making progress. If I run SDRIVE.XEX using X to disable basic, then I can Quit back to SDX and get to the prompt. But I'm only able to access Dos 2.0 ATR's. If I try to read or write to an SDX ATR it locks. I can use CHKDSK and it tells me the ATR is 256 byte/sect and 360K capacity. This isn't quite right though because all my SDX ATR's are formated 180K. Just checked again and the ATR is DSDD and 360K. I can read it fine in emulation but not on the SDRIVE. ED formated disk images work fine.

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I'm having no luck getting double density ATR images to work on the SDRIVE^2. Could someone do me a favor and post an DD ATR image that they know works with the SDRIVE^2. I would like to test a known good file.

 

It will not works for a while - I already write before there is known bug - I still not fix it... (I'm on vacation now and far away from Atari... After my return I'll plan to fix it asap)

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It will not works for a while - I already write before there is known bug - I still not fix it... (I'm on vacation now and far away from Atari... After my return I'll plan to fix it asap)

That's good to know. I'll stick to SD and ED for the time being.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks again, using a different card and formatting it as FAT32 seems to have solved the issue. There is another one though - when the drive is connected, the audio output (via A/V output) humms terribly. My other SDrive of different construction does not cause this. Any tips? Maybe some kind of internal shielding?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Had my Sdrive2's for a few months now and hadn't really loaded them up until the last few days, then ran into similar corruption problems using the included '2 GB' MicroSD. Thankfully I've seen this problem before, so I recognized what was happening:

 

They are infact 'counterfeit'... likely defects re-sold as legit on ebay from China. I've seen these before buying cheap ones on eBay... Registering as larger than they actually hold, they may have re-programmed the system area to reflect larger as well. Not a big deal since it served it's purpose of providing the bootup ATR's and a few example games to copy to a larger MicroSD.

 

testing with a utility to detect this, 'H2testw' mine only had about 92MB of usable area.. So.. if you have a tool to create specific partition size (ie minitool partition wizard for windows), you can create a 90MB partition only so that you never put data in the 'bad part'. and still reliably use the card for small purposes....

 

output from H2testw testing first 256MB:

Warning: Only 256 of 1887 MByte tested.
The media is likely to be defective.
92.1 MByte OK (188667 sectors)
163.8 MByte DATA LOST (335621 sectors)
Details:4 MByte overwritten (8192 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
159.8 MByte corrupted (327429 sectors)
4 MByte aliased memory (8192 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x0000000005a1f600
Expected: 0x0000000005a1f600
Found: 0x5555555555555555
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 4.67 MByte/s
Reading speed: 14.1 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Hi, is there any progress regarding fixing DD support?

The issue is likely to be caused by the fact that with DD disks, only first three sectors are 128 bytes long and the following ones are 256 bytes.

I would like to see this as well. My sdrive2 is the only means I have of transfering files from my PC and it's tough being limited to 90K ATRs.

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Thanks, HiassofT, will your firmware work with the SDrive2 just by reflashing it?

No. The serial transmit bit-banging code is implemented in AVR assembler and is targetted for a Atmel running at 14.318MHz. Actually the whole code is for Atmel chips and won't run on SDrive2 / ARM unless you replicate most of the SDrive2 code changes.

 

But the other commits like enhanced density and format fixes could be useful for other SDrive firmware forks like this (not sure if all these issue have been fixed there).

 

so long,

 

Hias

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