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Wrathchild

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Posts posted by Wrathchild

  1. Posted

    Just recently I've had up and running a MyIDE interface.

     

    The tools disks for this comes with MyDOS and the APE

    stuff seems to favour MyDOS.

     

    What I've come across though is that there is a file to folder

    limit of 64 entries, so just being able to dump across a folder

    or set of folders from an APE connected drive to an internal HD

    isn't possible unless you organise you folders properly in advance.

    Even them, I haven't found a recursive copier for MyDOS yet.

    Does anyone have one?

     

    Maybe I'll have a go at setting up an HD with SpartaDOS instead.

     

    So a simplistic summary would be that MyDOS and SpartDOS

    have an advantage over AtariDOSes due to the folder support.

     

    Another consideration maybe to think in terms of helpful loader

    menus. The newer (slimmer?) DOSes appear to support these well

    but I don't have much experience of them.

     

    Regards,

    Mark

  2. Posted

    This latest test disk is great! Now detects my USB devices that the older disk didn't. :)

    These are an IRDA device, Flash HD/MP3 player and an Ethernet adaptor.

    The IRDA and Ethernet adaptors can use small buffers for data transfer and so I might play with the Ethernet adaptor on occasion.

     

    Are there any hint docs at how to program the non-HID devices?

    Or just follow the USB spec docs? One thing I have downloaded is the HHD USB monitor (http://www.hhdsoftware.com/usbmon.html).

    Is that about the best (free) tool for helping to work out what's going on between a PC and a device?

     

    Thanks,

    Mark

  3. Posted

    We used a glue gun to put some blobs of glue on the chips in order to hold things down. But after my first attempt didn't work I had to separate them - hence the glue still on the RAM chips. In the end, all I had done wrong was to put the IDE cable on the HD the wrong way around and that was why it didn't work :roll:

  4. Posted

    Finally I've got around to getting a digital-camera and so first things first... take a few shots of the MyIDE internal setup :)

     

    One thing troubling me at the moment, perhaps someone can shed some light on it, I get some trouble with Player/Missile graphic corruption. It looks like a timing problem as they jitter about. If the cables are unpluged from the MyIDE board after a game has loaded from the drive, the corruption goes away. Just unplugging the HD is not enough. This makes me thinks its not because of where I am tapping the power for the HD from. Maybe something got buggered during the soldering? Any ideas what maybe causing this, interference?

     

    The MyIDE interface itself sits to the right of the cartridge slot with cables coming from it which are then nicely folded and glued down.

     

    The Hard-drive itself sits on top of the RAM chips. Note that the (smoothing?) capacitor previously bridging power and ground is de-soldered and put on wires to make space for the HD. This works quite well as the metal shielding case can still be installed before putting the keyboard and top cover back on.

     

    I'm have also been pooling some <1GB drives found on Ebay so that, once a batch of MyIDE boards can be made, I can install them into other machines for re-selling, or maybe even offer an install service.

     

    The alternative 2.5" adapter looks like it would work well in a 65XE as the HD can be mounted under the vents a the top-rear of the case.

     

    Hope that helps.

     

    Regards,

    Mark

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  6. Posted

    Now's probably a good time to announce a project that has sat on a back burner for a (long) while whilst work (relentlessly) keeps me so busy I'm getting no time for anything :x

     

    After earlier reverse-engineering the Infocom engine and then relocating it to the cart-mem area (search AA for Hitchiker's), I then set about getting together all of the A8 released games and then produced two sets of images for carts (Thanks to JetBootJack and Jindroush for their help with that). These were 256K (1Mbit) versions with 3 games each and 1024K (8Mbit) versions with a cart per genre, e.g. Fantasy, Mystery etc. Therefore these are playable and allow you to save states to disk. However, [email protected] supplied me with the routines to write to the flash cart and so my aim is to incorporate this into the original interpreter to replace the disk write routines. I also wanted to add title graphics (cover scans) for all of the games. So with the space required for the saving, assuming more than one slot will be used, means that the number of titles per cart is reduced (4 or 6 - I'll clarify the titles->cart later).

     

    So I need to all of you to give me a proverbial kick up the backside to get this completed, however I do envisage the daytime being pretty full-on until April!. The finished product should end up being available through Atarimax, so that may affect the releasing of 'images' for emulators :(

     

    Screenshots to follow

     

    Happy New Year!

     

    Mark

  7. Posted

    I tend to pick up <1Gig laptop drives Ebay and these work OK in an 800XL due to the larger power supply. I'm not sure of the power requirements for a flash card (but I'd imagine they'd be less) so they could be a more sensible option for an XE machine with a 1A power supply.

     

    I guess if you're 'working' from the drive then the TOC entries will be updated regularly, but if you are simply loading loads of EXEs and BINs for running games then this part of the disk isn't going to be updated that often.

  8. Posted

    Talking of Sky DLIs, does anyone know of an A8 demo with an effect similar to that seen in Paradroid 90 when the game's over (I used to play the ST version) where night falls on the city-scape?

     

    Even static skies like that in Hardball still look cool on the A8.

     

    Regards,

    Mark

  14. Posted

    Joy of joys, my XL's internal myIDE interface does work

    and the 2.5" hard disk works from the XLs power supply.

     

    FYI: we used a meter to look at the current drain and this is what

    we saw. Normal XL - about 0.8A. Bootup with HD, jumps to 1.5A,

    drops to 1.2A during initialization and then drops again to 0.8A

    once settled (maybe 0.9A, can't quite remember).

     

    I have some 65XEs too, so I guess putting the I/F into these

    would require a separate power supply for the HD as the

    XE's 1.0A power supply would load up on initializing the HD?

     

    :dunce:

    My earlier problems were my fault - I'd put the IDE cable in the

    wrong way around, the power goes to the pins towards the outside

    of the drive, not those by the master/slave pins

     

    The HD check programs appear to work OK so on Friday I intend

    to partition and format the drive and start to transfer so software

    to it.

     

    Regards,

    Mark

     

    Aside question: I saw the insides of a 65XE for the first time yesterday.

    There appear to be spaces for extra RAM chips, so can a 65XE be made

    compatible with 130XE fairly easily by installing the chips?

  18. Posted

    I recently picked up an Ethernet thing cheaply from Ebay, do you

    think it might be possible for this to work through the USB cart?

     

    http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...item=5143333543

     

    If so then I may work on that if it doesn't conflict with any other

    developments, but I probably wouldn't get to start on it until February

    as the day job has gone mental as of late :(

     

    (Oh yeah, I'd need to order a cart from Steve first too!)

     

    Regards,

    Mark

     

    PS. I theory, could a Flash and USB cart work in tandem or does the IO

    addess area conflict (i.e. $D5xx). What I'm thinking of is something

    like Contiki built using a bank-switching cart, but using the USB cart to

    provide the TCP/IP using a device such as above. For that you'd need

    to have a Flash-thru-cart ;)

  19. Posted

    I recall David Lloyd developing a SID (or maybe multi-SID) board during the early days of us trying to get the revised CC65 suite working for the Ataris at the beginning of 2000.

     

    Maybe someone could contact him for details.

  23. Posted

    I have SIO2IDE and it works nice. I have 2.5 hard drive inside my XE and can't get rid of vibration. So now I am trying to use CF card instead disk.

     

    I'm going for the inside mounted approach, with the HD sitting above the RAM. However, currently when the HD is plugged in, the machine just hangs upon powerup... this maybe my board of course! :D

     

    However, what I wanted to know was, I have an 800XL and with the larger power supply, Mr-Atari said the newer XE supplies weren't up to powering the HD as well as the Atari. The HD is rated at 5V & 0.7A and I'm connected to the motherboard as follows. +ve is on the capacitor to the top right of the RAM (the mains smoother I guess) and the -ve goes at an earth point somewhere between bottom left two large black chips. Is there a recommended place to put these or would I need a separate power supply?

     

    Thanks,

    Mark

     

    (I'll try and get a photo of the board to makes things clearer if necessary)

  24. Posted

    After having had to work through this weekend, I thought I'd relax a little... grabbed a scene from a cartoon and G2F'd it. I'm not very happy with the outlines, plus the colours look very different when I load it into A800WinPlus4, adie from that its OK(ish). Therefore the original bitmap is supplied too if someone better at art than me (not too hard) can finish it off.

     

    Regards,

    Mark

    krtek.zip

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