flashjazzcat

There is no reason on earth that a word processor cannot be considered a 'killer app', regardless of whether you think TLW represents such a thing. A lot of users would consider productivity software unexciting by definition, but you asked for applications which make the extra memory worth having. WordStar was a killer app in the day. People are getting excited now about running it under CP/M on their Ataris via FujiNet. You seem intent on just moving the goalposts a bit further apart every time something is suggested which might conceivably fit the bill.

Is the 600XL PAL or NTSC, and have you matched the TV standard in the emulator to the actual machine? The PAL and NTSC palettes have marked differences.

Agree. When you are lucky enough to have the complete circuit pre-installed (i.e. PAL), removing one cap (as well as wiring up chroma/luma) is usually all that's required to obtain excellent Y/C video. I worked on two ostensibly identical 600XLs last week and one required a 1nf filter cap on the chroma line to get rid of some colour bleed, but it's now comparable to the other machine which didn't need any filtering at all.

Yeah. A few forum members - the complainant being a prime example - seem intent on airing some kind of opinion or gripe regardless whether it's based on fact or fantasy. Even if comprehensively rebutted, cognitive dissonance kicks in, the violins come out, the virtue signalling starts. Unbelievably disingenuous, smarmy and two-faced. He knows exactly what he's doing.

Well, if the actual problem is that you cannot see or comprehend the document, you have my sympathies, but I cannot do much about it.

Please read my post carefully to ascertain where changing the wording of the software comes into it. Nowhere did I imply that you directly suggested any such thing. So: we can at least agree that careful reading is an uncommon occurence. Now that I look again, 'FAT16 and FAT32' is explicitly stated at three highly conspicuous points in the loader documentation: in the introduction, and in the sections covering the partition and file browsers. Not to throw shade on anyone who didn't read it, but I think replacing every other 'FAT' shorthand reference is total overkill whether search and replace is available or not.

Reading the manual is an absolute last resort as far as I can tell, so I would probably have to burden the software with prompts telling the user that the exFAT partition it found cannot be opened, etc, and there isn't room for that. Nevertheless, the description of the launcher menu on page 39 explicitly states that it displays the contents of FAT16 and FAT32 partitions, and nothing else. I think the shorthand 'FAT partition' is reasonably illustrative after that.

This already exists and is described in the manual: I have a feeling the feature is little-used, but let me know if there is any problem with it.

Great!

Yes: format and dump XEX files on it.

FAT32 or FAT16 will do for the loader. No other requirements.

XL/XE mode, any RAM size (64K and 1088K both work), stock XL/XE OS, BASIC off in the loader. Anything else = don't care. You could try RWCRC from Drac030's website. Place this executable inside of an SDFS formatted APT partition, and it will write out and verify some 1MB or so of CRC data to the hard disk. I am supposing there are some transmission errors on the CF card here, but I'm really just speculating.

Just tested the XEX from post 19 here and it runs no problem, so there another issue at your end.

Something to look forward to, then (TF menu called from Incognito setup menu):

Run loader, move to 'Options' menu (cogged wheel), check 'Basic:' option is set to 'Disabled'. It can't share a setting with the main setup menu since the loader can work independently of the firmware setting. CTRL+B in the loader also works.

Yes: confirmed with the release firmware. It's not because of the lack of an OS character set or page 2 vectors, though. Oh well.

Interesting. The character set is certainly present (at $E000), so perhaps there is something else at play here. Latest (unreleased) version omits OS character set but places readable custom firmware set at $E000 (descender mode is no longer used), and still works.

This is intersting to hear, since the firmware was designed expressly to be compatible with Turbo Freezer and I used TF - called from within the firmware menu with the configuration unlocked - only the other week to perform debugging on the new plugin functionality. The 'OS footprint facilities' provided include a system font at $E000 and all page 2 vectors required by the TF firmware.

The OS DCB (disk controller block, IIRC) can deal with only a 16-bit sector value. Provision is made for 24-bit block addresses via the 'DUNUSE' byte. However, the APT drivers and even some SIO devices also support an extended DCB, called the XDCB. It's described here: https://atari8.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/APT-API-Programmers-Reference-Manual.pdf The XDCB provides 32-bit block addressing as well as a physical disk device (which is to say, bypassing all partitions and addressing the raw block storage device). SDX supports the XDCB but the native file system (SDFS) is still limited to 16-bit cluster addresses. The FATFS.SYS driver, however, can address FAT16 partitions larger than 32MB; obviously the FAT width is still 16 bits here, but since clusters are typically 4 or 8KB (or more) in size, the driver needs more than 16-bits to fully address the volume. Perhaps an SDFS revision will one day allow >32MB SDFS partitions; certainly all the low-level dependencies are already in place on the device driver side. Same here. Usually my wife finds my throw-away stuff hilarious but remains totally unmoved by my carefully crafted jokes.

There's an early attempt at this here: It seems I linked that video here as well at some point: https://atari8.co.uk/apt/toolkit/ Haha. I can't even remember which video that was, unfortunately.

When I say 'Initialise disk', I'm referring to this: Be sure to peruse the manual if you haven't already done so. I'm sure I could improve the wording in a few places, but it explains everything in a reasonably concise fashion: https://atari8.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/APT-Software-Manual-8th-Edition.pdf

As well as the foregoing (you can dynamically mount partitions using the loader, for example): 1. You could have a 3GB FAT partition on a 4GB card, filled with thousands of XEXs and ATRs. 2. You can use one (or more) of your fifteen SDX drives as an 'external' FAT16 partition (which - IIRC - may be up to 4GB in size).

Thanks. The capacity is decided when you initialise the disk. You have the chance to specify the APT and (optionally) FAT volume sizes. Presumably you somehow specified 1MB as the APT size here.

If you have the bits, you can superglue them back in and perhaps fit brass collars around the screw pylons (otherwise they will simply split again when you put a screw in).

Sorry - no. When you have the APT open (where you create Atari partitions), go to the APT menu and select 'Properties'.