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flashjazzcat

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Posts posted by flashjazzcat

  1. Posted · Edited by flashjazzcat
    typo

    12 minutes ago, Nezgar said:

    Just thinking... Maybe some ROM space from the SIDE2 or SIDE3 cartridge itself could be used to provide the PBI BIOS specific to the cart in use? If may free some ROM space in the U1MB, but would also require a flash update to any SIDE2/3 cartridges... That would also mean no PBI BIOS with no SIDE cart inserted - which may be perfectly fine?

    I was mulling something like that over last night, but it's a little complicated by the fact that accessing the cartridge ROM during normal operation would mess up the display when no ROM is present at $A000, and would interfere with emulated cartridges on the SIDE3 (emulation would have to be temporarily disabled so that the desired bank of HDD code could be momentarily banked in). The display interference wouldn't necessarily be an issue with stuff that happens in the PBI's INIT code (called on system reset and generally executed before the screen is initialised anyway), and this includes initialising the media and reading the partition table. So: very useful savings. If only the SIDE3 stuff was farmed out to the cartridge, everything else (HSIO, etc) would still work as before even with no cart present.

     

    Aside from the extra complexity, though, I can see this approach causing more confusion among users who are less technically minded. The SIDE3 cart's ROM would need to be updated to sync with the U1MB PBI update, and unless both devices were sold with exactly the right firmware on them, nothing would work out of the box.

     

    It's a perfectly good suggestion, though.

  2. Posted · Edited by flashjazzcat

    29 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

    bottom line, you can no longer just swap side cartridges anymore.

    29 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

    side3 departs from side 1/2 in some way it would seem.

    Indeed. The SIDE3 uses SD cards and SIDE/SIDE2 use Compact Flash cards. You can still swap between CF cartridges (SIDE and SIDE2) using the SIDE PBI BIOS and plugin, so nothing changed there. But the SIDE3 PBI BIOS reports itself as the 'SIDE3 PBI BIOS' because it is designed for the SIDE3 cartridge, not a generic family comprising all 'SIDE' cartridges. Hopefully that's clear enough.

     

    Nice as it would be to support all devices in the same PBI BIOS, space is at a premium and I had to dispense with the 'Z:' driver just in order to fit the SIDE3 driver into 8K of ROM space. Fortunately the HSIO driver still fits. It might be possible to cram support for SIDE/SIDE2 and SIDE3 into the same firmware, but one would have to do away with all unrolled loops at the very least, which would mean users who do not want to flip between SIDE2 and SIDE3 (for whatever purpose) on the same machine would suffer an arbitrary performance hit for no good reason.

    29 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

    Time to see if there is a write up of what's changed between them.

    Hopefully the headline features are fairly obvious (SIDE3 uses SD cards and is able to emulate cartridges, SIDE/SIDE2 use CF cards and do not emulate cartridges), but I have spent much of the past week working on updates to the user manuals, having spent several weeks prior to that preparing and testing a complete update of all hardware targets (Incognito, U1MB, SIDE/SIDE2, SIDE3, XEL-CF, etc). This will all be published very soon, but you can rest assured that the API and the general workflow regarding hard disk operation has not changed one bit. You still turn on the PBI HDD, and the hard disk then works... as long as the correct firmware is used.

    • Like 3

  4. Posted

    6 hours ago, Doug_in_NC said:

    I just remembered - I have a Side3 that is awaiting the new flash upgrade, so I have the version of U1MB firmware for the Side3 installed. Could that be the issue?

    Yes: this is the issue. Please don't install the SIDE3 firmware on the U1MB and expect SIDE2 to still work. I believe this is being widely misunderstood judging by the number of users with puzzling SIDE2 issues all of a sudden. With the correct firmware, getting the HDD to work really is as simple as enabling the PBI HDD. It certainly should not present a list of dramas.

  7. Posted · Edited by flashjazzcat

    29 minutes ago, Sinjinhawke said:

    New behaviour I am seeing is the button on the top of the cart is not interrupting the running program so to exit I am hitting RESET while holding HELP to get back to U1MB then hitting L to relaunch SIDE3 Loader (maybe this is a setting). 

    This means the ATR swap button is enabled (the cart's reset button is then used to rotate disk image sets across drive nunbers, facilitating 'disk swaps').

     

    I'll be releasing the firmware update formally quite soon (and it has progressed somewhat from the pre-release U1MB SIDE3 firmware files offered on the SIDE3 download page), but nevertheless I just flashed the 3.11 BIOS and v.0.03 PBI BIOS for SIDE3 and I'm not seeing the 'error 144' issue as described. Since I cannot reproduce it, it's difficult to know what to suggest other than updating again when I release the update proper and seeing if that makes any difference.

  9. Posted

    1 hour ago, TGB1718 said:

    I have an unmodded 130XE it has my old SIDE2 on it and wanted to try it on that too, I was using PCLINK to copy the files

    to my A8's, but it seems the CONFIG.SYS isn't being read, it looks like the default one in the CAR: device is being used, so

    PCLINK is not being loaded

     

    1 hour ago, TGB1718 said:

    I was I bit confused as to why the SIDE2 wasn't using the CONFIG.SYS so I put the SIDE2 in my U1M booted

    and there are no hard drives showing and FDISK doesn't find the memory card.

    I need to make this passage into a macro. :)

    Quote

    Unless you have U1MB, CONFIG.SYS cannot be read from the HDD because it's CONFIG.SYS on the CAR: device (in ROM) which loads the driver for the HDD. Chicken and egg situation.

    You can:

    • use the SDX Imaging Tool from DLT to edit the CONFIG.SYS on the SDX ROM and re-flash it to the cart
    • load CONFIG.SYS from an SIO device on D1:, making sure it also loads SIDE.SYS (to provide access to the HDD)
    • load PCLINK.SYS from AUTOEXEC.BAT instead
    1 hour ago, TGB1718 said:

    I booted into U1M menu, selected Loader, I can see the memory card, the directories, but no files, if I then select

    re-boot from the loader, I get to DOS and I can see the hard disk partitions and their contents, but again it's loading the

    default CONFIG.SYS from the CAR: device. Re-boot again straight to SDX and no partitions available.

    Without U1MB, SIDE HDD partitions are mounted via the SIDE driver and are thus active only under SDX. When you reboot into the loader, SDX is gone, and with it the driver which gave you access to the APT partitions. Since there is nothing useful the loader can do with the HDD partitions in these circumstances, they are greyed out. Likewise, ATR files in FAT partitions are not displayed since there is nothing the system can do with them.

     

    With U1MB, the OS effectively gains built-in hard disk support. The loader can then dynamically mount HDD partitions, query and display the current drive assignments, etc, and mount FAT hosted disk images.

     

    As to the U1MB 130XE: did you happen to ever flash the SIDE3 firmware to the U1MB at any point?

  10. Posted · Edited by flashjazzcat

    1 hour ago, thorfdbg said:

    Would a Dos 2 compatible Dos with a command line interface, designed for the 1050 work? IOWs, everything a RAM-based DOS could achieve can be done. Frankly, if I want a hard disk....well, there are certainly other systems that take more profit from it. The Atari 8 bit is just a nice legacy game machine.

    I feel we are in danger of straying away from the original point. You asked who could possibly require PBI support in the OS (which you seemed to consider unnecessary): the answer is probably a four-figure number of U1MB/Incognito and HDD host adapter users. Even SDX users without a hard disk of any kind can benefit from U1MB/Incognito PBI-hosted high-speed SIO driver (one must otherwise explicitly instruct SDX to use the OS SIO routines, assuming the OS has divisor 0 capabilities built into it). I've explained that PBI handlers do not consume main memory and that any application designed to use a file system will generally avoid the RAM typically used by DOS, but if you simply consider OS-agnositic high-speed SIO and mass storage devices with hierarchical file systems completely unnecessary on the platform, then certainly no PBI support and a built-in DOS 2 file system will suffice. Many others will see the situation quite differently.

    • Like 2

  11. Posted · Edited by flashjazzcat

    22 minutes ago, thorfdbg said:

    The corresponding DOS does, or whatever was booted through the PBI functions - or the DOS in general.

    I guess, but most productivity software is written with DOS in mind, since DOS has been around since the 400/800 and no non-relocatable application or driver would be assembled to an address lower than $1F00 unless the intention is to severely limit the user base. And as neat as it might be to have DOS built into the OS, there is a limit to what facilities can be achieved using this approach. I don't see any reason why you couldn't implement a PBI-based DOS, with all ROM and RAM (for buffers, etc) wholly contained on the external device. No code size limits and as much functionality as you want with absolutely the bare minimum of system RAM used.

    22 minutes ago, thorfdbg said:

    That would have been much more beneficial to most users than the PBI - for which no equipment existed while Atari was selling the XL line.

    Probably so, but it's now 2021 and we have an increasinlgly large number of peripherals and upgrades which leverage the PBI. Large extended memory upgrades are highly prolific, as are hard disk host adapters. Any OS which doesn't support them is now limiting its audience.

    • Like 4

  12. Posted

    21 minutes ago, Mark2008 said:

    So on my 130XE with Side2 cart, it loads autoexec.bat, but ignores config.sys, which literally does nothing on that machine.  And eventually I figured out, the issue is it is simply not finding or reading config.sys.  Does not matter if I specify a drive, or use default pathing.

    I am not sure if I addressed this query elsewhere already, but to recap: a SIDE2 without U1MB will never read CONFIG.SYS from the hard disk at boot time since it is the ROM-based CONFIG.SYS (on the SDX CAR: device) which installs the SIDE driver which provides access to said hard disk.

     

    The reason this does work with U1MB/SIDE2 is that the HDD is then driven by a PBI BIOS which intercepts SIO transfers from the moment the OS starts the boot process.

    • Like 1

  13. Posted

    There are things I would like to see as well (vias for a DIN13 for VBXE, etc), but for this reason I do not envy santosp here, since everyone will be projecting their requirements onto the design. If you hard-code Gumby Stereo into the motherboard, people will complain that they cannot use their PokeyMAX with quad-POKEY, dual SID, Covox and PSG, etc. :)

     

    • Like 4

  14. Posted · Edited by flashjazzcat

    Having two POKEY chips would imply that the additonal circuitry for stereo POKEY was also present on the motherboard (as per the 1088XEL). Most dual-POKEY boards have the stereo circuitry on the board, and require only one POKEY socket on the motherboard.

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    You can't access the host device or any other CIO device directly from the SpartaDOS X command line, since it uses its own kernel device names (CON: for the screen, etc). You'll need to wait for SIO level host emulation in the emulator.

     

    A better SDX alternative which should work right now is PCLINK, which allows access to (in this case) the host OS filesystem via the PCL: device. See the SDX toolkit for details.

    • Thanks 1

  20. Posted · Edited by flashjazzcat
    typo

    I checked the SIDE3 PBI BIOS and nowhere does the SIO handler return Error 144 for hard disk transactions, so we can at least rule out transmission errors.

     

    What OS is being used here, out of interest? If the SIO mounting commands issued by the loader are not handled by the PBI BIOS for some reason, you'll just get errors returned from the OS SIO driver.

  22. Posted · Edited by flashjazzcat

    5 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

    At the end of the day, life's too short to argue such rubbish, and I am definitely in no way interested in doing so...

    I found the InterWord screenshots interesting and relevant, personally. I wasn't aware of the software before and have learned something. With the number of blatantly off topic threads which are started on this forum primarily because the OPs know the 8-bit section gets a lot of traffic, and the number of well intentioned threads which are descending into the toilet owing to trolling, gainsaying and inane efforts at bumping, I saw little to complain about in this one.

    • Like 3

  23. Posted

    58 minutes ago, ZuluGula said:

    If someone wants to support the creator, they could buy another device instead getting multiple copies of the same thing. 

    Here's an idea: how about the consumer supports the creator in any way they damn well choose? Someone said they'd like to buy two without having their arm twisted and for some reason you and you alone seem to have a problem with that.

    • Like 4

  25. Posted

    39 minutes ago, Sinjinhawke said:

    Don't suppose there are any no drill options?

    Some installers just let the board float on a cushion of folded ribbon cables, or have it anchored on only one screw using an existing motherboard mounting hole or self-tapper through the case and appear happy to publicise the fact. :) Someone made a 3D printed bracket for holding U1MB in an XL, which might be a good option.

     

    • Like 1
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