Changing OS with Antonia 4-MB?

[+Larry]

Perhaps I'm not alone in sometimes not being able to remember what OS that Antonia is currently using? And for that matter, which OS are currently programmed in it? I normally just use the 320K Rambo setting, so that is not as much of a problem, but if you changed fairly frequently, it would be a similar issue.

 

I do have P-touch labels on top of my computer that shows the OS that are currently flashed. (Actually I have several P-touch labels plastered on my computers that remind me that this doesn't work with that, and no Ultra Speed with this or that, etc.) As the old saying goes "a short pencil is always better than a long memory."

 

But anyway, is there any way known to peek into Antonia to tell what number of OS and I guess ram setting number is being used? Since this is just reading and no flashing, seems like it should be possible. A Q&D .com program to tell us which number OS and ram setting is being used? And maybe actually changing the number(s) being used? That would be pretty useful, I think.

 

-Larry

[Roydea6]

Larry,

There is a new Antonia app just released by Drac030. He posted it to the forums about a month ago. In the FLASH window the slots will show the first two bytes of the installed OS and BASIC.

 

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/249405-new-4mb-ram-expansion/?p=3840693

 

This is the Thread Drac030 posted to.

Edited October 6, 2017 by rdea6

[+Larry]

Thanks, Roy. Missed that one, so I'll check it out.

 

-Larry

[+Larry]

I've checked it out on my system, and it certainly works fine for displaying the memory model selected and the OS number selected. That is very helpful, to me and pretty quick to load and verify what is being used.

 

BASIC checksums seem fine, but I'm curious about the checksums for the OS.

 

Here's what I have flashed and also what the checksums are

 

0 -- XLOS

1 -- 9211 (which is MyBios Beta 16)

2 -- 9211 (which is the XLOS with reverse BASIC and Hias patch)

3 -- C608 (which is the Konrad's 65816 OS version 2.37 IIRC )

4 -- 9211 (which is the XLOS with the Fast Math package)

5 -- 0868 (which is Omnimon XE)

6 -- 9211 (which is the latest WIP MyBios OS)

7 -- 9211 (which is the XLOS with reverse BASIC)

 

It is probably absolutely correct, but seems odd that fairly different OS (MyBios) would come up with the exact same checksum as the XLOS. I don't understand that, so perhaps someone could explain it?

 

-Larry

[Roydea6]

The MyBios variants don't use Check Sum system so these two bytes could be you own choice ---beta 16= 6001 as first two bytes.

Your #2 is what I have as #1 and #4 but my OS signature is different than yours.

My #3 is Rev2 with math pack are different OS signature than yours.

 

My 65816 OS is C101 I did modify it to hold my Favorite font..

Edited October 6, 2017 by rdea6

[drac030]

BASIC checksums seem fine, but I'm curious about the checksums for the OS.

 

Here's what I have flashed and also what the checksums are

 

0 -- XLOS

1 -- 9211 (which is MyBios Beta 16)

2 -- 9211 (which is the XLOS with reverse BASIC and Hias patch)

3 -- C608 (which is the Konrad's 65816 OS version 2.37 IIRC )

4 -- 9211 (which is the XLOS with the Fast Math package)

5 -- 0868 (which is Omnimon XE)

6 -- 9211 (which is the latest WIP MyBios OS)

7 -- 9211 (which is the XLOS with reverse BASIC)

 

It is probably absolutely correct, but seems odd that fairly different OS (MyBios) would come up with the exact same checksum as the XLOS. I don't understand that, so perhaps someone could explain it?

It is, IIRC, explained in the readme file. The BASIC ROMs do not contain a precomputed checksum, so the program computes own checksums. The OS ROMs, for the XL/XE type ROMs, *should* contain a precomputed checksum, so these are not computed by the program, just fetched from the place where they are expected.

 

But many modded OS ROMs disable the routines which check the checksums (recomputing the CRC is too difficult, but fiddling with the OS routines apparently is not). This is why modded OSes show the same checksums as the XL OS revision they have been made of.

 

I will probably have to fix this, i.e. modify the Antonia flasher so that it computes own CRC values for OS ROMs too.

[drac030]

Try this. Version 1.2, few minor improvements plus the checksum calculation mentioned above.

ant12.arc

[SenorRossie]

Somewhat related, at least on the ant12 front, I recently installed my antonia and tonight started flashing various ROMs.

 

Cycling through the selection and testing them one by one, I am currently running the 'Byte Eaters OmniMon' ROM. However, I am unable to run the ant utility (tried 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2).

 

Running it via SIO2PC will start the program, but scanning for ROMS crashed with love (a lot of heart characters where normally the dots are). I also tried running it from an Ultimate cart, this method does not even make it to the main screen.

 

 

Kind regards,

Senor Rossie

[drac030]

That is interesting. The ANT program works here with any version of Atari OS (even the 400/800 one), so maybe the 'Byte Eaters Omnimon' ROM is a damaged dump or the OS is incompatible for any other reason. Could you send me (or attach here) a dump of that ROM?

 

You can recover from this situation by joining together the appropriate jumper (or disjoining it, I do not remember at the moment). This will switch the Antonia ROM to the other half which has been permanently programmed with the regular XL OS. After recovering and switching the ROM slot to something else, you can swap the ROM halves again and reboot.

 

In meantime, I found a bug in the ANT 1.2, so here is the version 1.3. But I doubt if it would help.

ant13.arc

[SenorRossie]

Thanks for the swift response!

 

I probably won't have time to test before next weekend, but the ROM came from: ftp.pigwa.net

 

MD5 hash + Filename:

d5682f4cce96b34c4d02bc44182cff61 *OMNIMNBE.ROM

I will try the recovery method you mentioned and report back.

 

On a side note, I only updated the OS slots, the BASIC slots were kept default.

 

 

Kind regards,

Senor Rossie

[SenorRossie]

<snip>

You can recover from this situation by joining together the appropriate jumper (or disjoining it, I do not remember at the moment). This will switch the Antonia ROM to the other half which has been permanently programmed with the regular XL OS. After recovering and switching the ROM slot to something else, you can swap the ROM halves again and reboot.

I performed the recovery (remove the lower jumper, power on, run ant, select other OS, accept, wait for reboot) this evening, I now have a machine that can run ant again. Thanks for the hint!

 

In meantime, I found a bug in the ANT 1.2, so here is the version 1.3. But I doubt if it would help.

I have not yet tested this, not enough time to fire up the windows machine with Altirra to extract the arc