Fully upgraded system and SIDE2 partitioning/ATR Swapping?

[leech]

Hats off to flashjazzcat for doing the upgrades on my system! Everything is working great, though I'm trying to figure something out and figured it'd be better to ask in the forums instead of pestering him directly.

 

So the question is that now I have everything set up, I was attempting to play Gauntlet, which the v5 version I have on the CF that was shipped with the SIDE2 has 3 'Sides'. I go into the SIDE Loader, and select the disks with tab to get them set to D1:, D2:, D3:. Then hit enter on the first disk. It loads on up and then lets me select a character, at which point it then prompts to insert disk 2 and press start.

 

I was under the impression at this point I'd just push the little button on the top of the SIDE2 and it should switch to the virtual D2:. I do this, and it sadly doesn't seem to do what I'd like it to do, because it keeps flashing the same message when I press Start.

 

On the other side of things, some of the wonkiness of it reading the files (and of course wanting to always have a backup for testing) I ordered a SanDisk to move things over from the Kingston CF. Unfortunately it seems to not work just to do a DD, even trying to copy over each of the partitions individually it didn't work. They're both 8GB CF cards, though for some odd reason the SanDisk one has an extra 26mb. Linux will read the first partition just fine (pretty sure the second partition is APT). But when I plug the SanDisk into the SIDE2 it just errors out and says there are no partitions.

 

Is there a manual somewhere for partitioning this on the 130XE?

 

All help much appreciated.

[flashjazzcat]

Of course I'll end up answering anyway...

 

Make sure you've enabled the ATR swap button in the BIOS.

 

The manuals are on my website (see the APT section). FDISK is supposedly built into SDX these days at the download site.

[flashjazzcat]

BTW: when copying CF cards, do a raw copy, ignoring the partition table. I have no idea how Lotharek partitioned the Kingston card, but copying at the partition level won't work since even if the APT container partition is copied successfully, the pointers inside the container are absolute, not relative as I suggested they should be when APT was drawn up. Therefore the APT partition cannot be moved to a new physical location.

 

The extra space on the destination drive should be no problem at all.

[+kheller2]

dd should be raw copy. Make sure you are copying top level device to device and not referencing any sub partition device. Ie: /dev/sda not /dev/sda1. Your bs and count size might also need to be adjusted. And since you changed the target device wo telling the OS about it you should do a blockdev rereadpt or whatever the new kids use these days.

[leech]

Of course I'll end up answering anyway...

 

Make sure you've enabled the ATR swap button in the BIOS.

 

The manuals are on my website (see the APT section). FDISK is supposedly built into SDX these days at the download site.

Ha, figured you would. But on a public forum, it'll help other people that run into the same issue. Indeed, I checked like 8 times to make sure the ATR Swap was enabled in the BIOS.

 

BTW: when copying CF cards, do a raw copy, ignoring the partition table. I have no idea how Lotharek partitioned the Kingston card, but copying at the partition level won't work since even if the APT container partition is copied successfully, the pointers inside the container are absolute, not relative as I suggested they should be when APT was drawn up. Therefore the APT partition cannot be moved to a new physical location.

 

The extra space on the destination drive should be no problem at all.

Yup, I first did

dd if=/dev/sdg of=Atari-8bitCF.img status=progress

/dev/sdg being the CF through a USB3 Card reader, nothing else plugged into it. Like I said, it seemed to work as far as Linux was concerned, but the SIDE2 thought there were no partitions. Weird, eh? Then I tried even to copy the partition table with sfdisk, then made copies of both partitions and got the same result. Just odd that it looked exactly the same (except for the 26mb extra space) on both cards within Linux, yet did not work.

dd should be raw copy. Make sure you are copying top level device to device and not referencing any sub partition device. Ie: /dev/sda not /dev/sda1. Your bs and count size might also need to be adjusted. And since you changed the target device wo telling the OS about it you should do a blockdev rereadpt or whatever the new kids use these days.

Yup, used dd many many times. bs usually is autodetected at this point in time. One thing I did notice though, the sha256sum of the .img file and the one of the original Kingston were not the same. Guess I could try to dd it again to see if I can fix that. Third time's the charm?

[leech]

As a side note, anyone writing an APT filesystem module for Linux?

[flashjazzcat]

ATR swapping works since it was tested here (on video). Be sure not to confuse it with "D1: Swap", and indeed make that feature is turned off.

 

APT is not a filesystem, but perhaps a Linux SDFS driver would prove useful. That said, SDX reads FAT, and that takes care of most data transfer needs. See the section in the manual about "external" partitions.

Edited October 13, 2017 by flashjazzcat

[leech]

I'm wondering if it's just Gauntlet being stupid. I tried other versions of it and got the same thing, but I don't think I tried other multi-disk games. I'll try to test that tonight when I get home.

 

I'll have to see if the D1: Swap is off, pretty sure it is, don't think I mucked with that many settings. The weird thing is, I think it stopped doing the constant refresh when I was in Rapidus mode. I'll have to verify that again, but I didn't really change anything. Meh, not going to complain if it magically works

[flashjazzcat]

What do you mean by constant refresh?

 

But yes: salient point is there's a Rapidus in the system so what works one minute may not work the next. I'm inclined to stop installing the things completely if no machine behaves 100 per cent predictably with one present. And to clarify: that's not to say Rapidus doesn't work or isn't worth 160 Euros; just that anything more than a cursory five minute "see - it works!" test always reveals something not quite right when the most ubiquitous upgrades are also installed. So if it works, it probably is by Magic.

 

Lotharek's O2 pull-down idea looks worth a try re: SIDE2.

[leech]

Oh, the media shows up for a second or two, I selwct a folder then it acts like I had unplugged it then plugged it in again real fast, so it refreshes the list, then does it again a few seconds later.

 

I am still waitin on my resistors to install the pull down. From the videos, that seems to fix a reboot, and this machine has been extremely solid. I will try that out as soon as I get the parts in.

 

I will try to clone the CF card again too to see if specifying bytesize helps at all. I can totally see the Rapidus being useful for operating systems and applications for games.... you have to take a lot of speed to be able to play Karateka at 20mhz...

[flashjazzcat]

Oh, the media shows up for a second or two, I select a folder then it acts like I had unplugged it then plugged it in again real fast, so it refreshes the list, then does it again a few seconds later.

Nice... there's jitter on the card removal flag. That'll be fun to fix. If I get my Rapidus installed in a test rig at some stage I'll see if it can be programmed around.

[leech]

Sweet! That really has been the only problem I've had. Well, and trying to sort out the disk swap. I'm going to try a few other games, it could just be Gauntlet being stubborn (and worse comes to worse I have an SIO2SD/PC and Electrotrains' Ultimate Cartridge.

 

Still enjoying the crystal clear display, that's for sure!

[flashjazzcat]

Both the disk swap and button registers are on the SIDE2 so the problems appear focused on the cartridge. I really think it would be worth pressing on with the O2 fix.

[leech]

Parts say they're out for delivery, so I'll try to test this out either tonight or tomorrow.

[leech]

This is a capture of what I mean by refreshes. Now it does take LONGER to refresh than before adding the resistor, but it still does it. But it seems to do it randomly. Like if I boot up once, it'll work fine. Boot up again, it does this. Otherwise I've hand ZERO stability issues (which is GREAT!)

 

Also it only does this when I enable full blown Rapidus mode.

 

20171014105214.MP4

[leech]

Weird, so I ended up creating a few .map files to check the button out. Unfortunately it's still not working. I can only imagine at this point it's the actual button on the SIDE2 that isn't working right. I'd check the internals, but I believe there is a screw in the back that's covered up by Lotharek's label. Single disk items work fine, it's just the disk swapping that isn't.

 

Though it also looks like there should be a shortcut for Control+S to swap disks, but that doesn't seem to work either.

 

Is there any other way I can check the disk swapping?

[flashjazzcat]

1. Remove Rapidus, send back to Lotharek, ask for refund.

2. Enjoy fully working system.

 

Seriously: Rapidus installations are priced as repair jobs from here on in.

[+Stephen]

1. Remove Rapidus, send back to Lotharek, ask for refund.

2. Enjoy fully working system.

 

Seriously: Rapidus installations are priced as repair jobs from here on in.

Not a good track record at all - shame as I'd like to try one at some point, but I don't think now is the time.

[leech]

Ha, I saw it working in the video on my hardware, so only thing I can think of is the SIDE2 at fault. I even tested the same demo you did on the final video. Was going to try the cartridge on my other 130xe, but of course that won't work without the PBI.

[leech]

1. Remove Rapidus, send back to Lotharek, ask for refund.

2. Enjoy fully working system.

 

Seriously: Rapidus installations are priced as repair jobs from here on in.

So, good news / bad news.

 

Good news is, pretty sure it's not the Rapidus causing my issue. I disabled the core, still couldn't get disk swapping working (you had it working in the video, and the only difference here is the SIDE2 itself). I even had the weird refresh of the CF with the Rapidus disabled.

 

If that isn't enough evidence of this issue not being the Rapidus, I yanked it out of the system, put my 6502C in that lovely stack of sockets you put in to raise it up above everything else, and booted it up and... low and behold, same thing!

 

Took apart the SIDE2 and checked, and it looks to me like everything is soldered nicely, but the button still doesn't seem to work. I'm going to contact Lotharek to see if he's ever seen this.

 

Rapidus actually has been extremely stable for me. As long as I'm not trying to load up multi-disk ATRs, everything seems to be going well.

Edited October 15, 2017 by leech

[flashjazzcat]

What kind of PSU are you using? I've got a 2A power supply here, but the original units were only putting out 1A or less. Although if you're still having problems with some of the extra hardware removed, maybe that's a blind alley.

 

I assume the SIDE2's switch is in the "up" position? Just grasping at straws really...

 

It's good to hear that Rapidus doesn't appear to be the culprit here, although this would imply that I was thrown a lot of curved balls during the post-installation tests. You should test other cartridges on the system too, in order to rule out MMU cable issues.

[leech]

Ha, was just about to shoot you an email asking if there is a different colour/led that shows when you push the button. When I opened the cartridge, it looked like there was a 'status' and 'hdd' one. The hdd one lights up on disk requests, the other one seems to do nothing.

 

I have one of the giant Atari bricks from Best Electronics. Output: +5v D.C. 3A. I bought two of these when I powered on my 130XE one day and got nothing... old epoxy brick decided to die after the couple decades I had it.

 

Yes, it's in the 'up' position, if I put it in the down position it does try to do the SDX loader bit, which of course during a disk swap just means it's confused and hangs.

 

I have tried out the SIO2SD/PC that I have and the Ultimate 1MB, which both seem to work. Unfortunately the SIDE2 works differently to either of them in how it handles ATRs. Only other way to test my theory for sure is to get a second SIDE2.

 

On another note, apparently Lotharek does prefer the Kingston cards, that's what he sells on his site. Ha! http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=141

[flashjazzcat]

On another note, apparently Lotharek does prefer the Kingston cards, that's what he sells on his site. Ha! http://lotharek.pl/product.php?pid=141

They're probably cheaper than SanDisk. Back in the SIDE1 days the Kingston "Flower" cards were broadly denounced since they never worked properly. I find the fact they're now sold with SIDE2 cartridges ironic to say the least.

[leech]

Buahahaha. I should record this.

 

In testing my other devices, ultimate cartridge (previously tested) works fine of course. Played some Karateka with Rapidus, died rapidly. Played some Gateway to Apshai. Also died rapidly, though this game didn't seem to really make things all that much faster than I remember (maybe a tiny bit, but the game always ran pretty well).

 

Then I plugged in the SIO2SD, disabled Sparta Dos X, and loaded up the menu program that let me designate D1: and D2:, which I did with Gauntlet (apparently the SD card I have doesn't have the 3 disk version with Deeper Dungeons) but various Side A / Side B versions. I picked a random one, and first time it locked up before it even told me to insert disk 2. Second time it loaded up, got to the point where it says 'press fire' to start the game and then.. I get 'Press any key to continue loading' Press a key and "now loading please wait' and back to 'press any key to continue loading...' over and over.

 

The joys of 'floppy disks'.

 

Anyhow, hopefully Lotharek has some ideas, but I'm pretty sure it's just a case of a faulty button on the SIDE2.

[flashjazzcat]

A lot of this behaviour could actually be caused by the O2 mod. The loader was working just fine when tested here. If SIDE is to blame, it's more than just a faulty button.