Using the U1MB SIDELoader as a floppy emulator in SDX

[morelenmir]

I am a very big fan of the 'MATR' SDX tool. It mounts *.ATR files that it can see in the filesystem as if they were real floppy disks. I have recently had some issues with my SIO2PC-USB, so 'MATR' has become more useful than ever. Sadly, it does seem to have some of its own problems and I do not believe there are plans in the future to continue its programming. However, when combined with the PBIBIOS of the U1MB I understand it is now possible to use that device's 'SIDELoader' in the same way.

 

Which is good!

 

However for some reason I just cannot seem to work out how to mount an *.ATR image as a floppy drive using it! I can shell-out from SDX to the U1MB and then SIDELoader, attach the *.ATR but cannot for the life of me return to the same SDX session! It always reboots and loses the disk mount.

 

I wonder if someone could give me step-by-step instructions on how to do this?

[JR>]

I think some of Jon's toolkit utilities would work for you:

 

https://atari8.co.uk/apt/toolkit/

[flashjazzcat]

You cannot return to the same SDX session from the loader since starting (and exiting) the loader requires an OS restart. If you need to mount ATRs directly from the command prompt, use ATRMNT in the aforementioned toolkit. You'll need to place ATRs in a FAT16 partition and make said partition readable by SDX via the FATFS.SYS driver.

 

Given sufficient opportunity, I'll probably make a RAM-based version of the current loader which you can simply run interactively from DOS. It'll be a fair bit of work but less involved than actually fixing the bugs in MATR. The new loader was initially based on MATR but has undergone a complete re-write during the past three years, as has the mounting API on which MATR depended.

Edited August 9, 2018 by flashjazzcat

[morelenmir]

That explains it--glad to know for once it it wasn't just me/my machine as I feared!