thefleshrocket

Just got my carts in, finally. Bluemax, Donkey Kong, Defender, Basketball and Star Raiders. (They were sold as a bundle on Ebay.) They all seem to work properly. The Bluemax cart was a little finicky at first--I had to reinsert it a couple of times to get it to boot, but I've tried it several times since then no problem. So, I'm going to email Steve and see if I can send the MyIDE cart back for him to test.

I just hooked up the Transcend IDE drive and it's working properly. The BIOS autodetected it and it detected automatically in Windows. It's partitioned and formatted in FAT. I don't see any LEDs on the Transcend drive though, and I just finished copying almost 1GB of data to it just to give it a real test. (It's pretty quick too.) I fired off an email to Steven Tucker (from Atarimax) to see if he had any suggestions, but I figure he'll probably tell me to try another cart in the XEGS to make sure the slot is working. I'll let you guys know if he has anything else to say.

I have hooked up the CF IDE card to my computer yet, since the instructions said that it would first need to be configured using the MyIDE cart before connecting it to the computer. I didn't even realize that there was an LED on the MyIDE cart--it doesn't light up at all. I'm going to buy at least one regular cart to try it and see if my XE's cart slot is working properly.

I don't get anywhere at all! Your walkthrough starts out with: I connected the CF IDE card to the MyIDE cart, inserted it in the XE and turned it on. According to the directions, I should get the "Drive is Ready" screen. But all I get is the XE OS "READY" prompt that comes up whenever you boot an XEGS with no cart inserted. So far I have just tried booting without the external power connector connected to the Transcend CF IDE, since it should be getting power via pin 40 from the MyIDE cart. I'm not sure if I should try connecting the power connector, as I don't want to damage the CF IDE if it's already getting power from the MyIDE cart. Judging from your walkthrough, if the drive is not ready for whatever reason, I should get the boot menu but get a "Drive Not Ready" instead of "Drive is Ready", right? But if I try booting without the CF IDE inserted, I still get the XE's READY prompt, not the MyIDE boot menu. Is there anything else I can try? The directions thus far seem very simple and straightforward and I can't think of any way it would be possible to screw them up. Thanks for the help!

I got my MyIDE cart earlier this week. I tried it without a drive hooked up 'cause I didn't have one yet, and the XEGS booted to the READY prompt. Today, my Transcend CF IDE drive showed up, so I hooked it up to the MyIDE cart and tried booting again. I still get the READY prompt. Unfortunately, I don't have any other cartridges to use to test the cart slot on the XEGS. (It didn't come with any carts and I planned on just using MyIDE for all my games so I haven't bought any other carts.) So I'm going to Ebay myself SOMETHING so I can test with it, but is there any likelihood that the MyIDE cart is bad? Any other suggestions? I was really looking forward to getting the drive set up and playing some games tonight.

XEGS, sorry. That worked, thanks. Can't play it until my joysticks show up, but it was still nice to see it on the screen.

My XE showed up today. I can get it to boot to the READY screen, but I don't know where to go from here. I don't have any carts or joysticks yet (showing up in a few days hopefully) but I'd like to at least fire up Missile Command. How do I do that? Or, better yet, help me to help myself and link me to a PDF of the manual. I haven't been able to find one yet. Thanks!

I emailed and got this response, which confirms what Paranoid said. The $49 cart has been ordered. My XEGS should show up later this week, and I should hopefully have a pair of joysticks and the cart early next week. (I picked up an XEGS on Ebay with no sticks, but the price was reasonable.)

Cool, thanks for clarifying. I'm going to order one of the $49 carts tonight. I am just going to use a spare old IDE hard drive for the time being but will probably get a Transcend IDE stick at some point.

Okay, that helps explain it. But what's involved in changing the cart to allow power over pin 20? Is there soldering or just putting a cap over a jumper?

Is there any reason that you would NOT want pin 20 power enabled? Also, is enabling that jumper as simple as using a jumper cap across a header, or is there soldering involved? Considering that you can get one of the 128MB Transcend drives for something like $25, I figure there must be something else done to the $99 MyIDE cart since adding a $25 drive alone doesn't seem to justify the $50 price increase. Thanks!

Does anyone know the difference is between the two MyIDE models offered? Is the $99 one just the $49 one with a 128MB Transcend flash drive attached to it? Or are the other changes as well? Thanks!

Paranoid and Remo, thanks for clarifying the APE/SIO2PC and MyIDE stuff for me. That's exactly the kind of explanations I was looking for. While the APE/SIO2PC sounds pretty cool, I think I'd rather avoid the need to have a PC slaved to the Atari any time I wanted to play some games. I doubt I'll want to play more than a handful of games, and if for some reason I can't get one or two of them to work, I can probably just buy the cart. I like the idea of the set-it-and-forget-it MyIDE flashcart. Now, just to clarify, can I hook up any IDE device to the MyIDE cart? I ask, because I might have a small, old hard drive that I could hook up to it instead (I have an external power source for it) or perhaps want to use some other kind of card other than CF. Thanks again guys, you've made this a lot clearer and understandable!

Okay, for reference, what is APE and SIO2PC? I've seen the terms mentioned repeatedly but I'm not clear on what they are. And I'm also still not clear--how do I install the initial image on the MyIDE drive? Do I need to have a floppy drive hooked up to my XE to transfer the boot files to the hard drive?

I've been looking into the MyIDE stuff, but it's a little overwhelming. I'm a computer guy and have been for a long time. As far as I can tell, according to the Quick Start Guide here: http://www.atarimax.com/myide/documentation/chapter1.html I need the MyIDE cart, plus an IDE hard drive (and a 40-pin cable and something to power the drive with), but then it looks like I need to load the DOS software onto the cart somehow. The directions seem to mention a floppy, but does that mean that I need to buy a floppy drive as well? What I'm getting at is that if I want to play maybe 5-10 different games, is it worth the $50 for the MyIDE cart, plus whatever other supporting hardware I need, plus my time tinkering with it?