phoenixdownita

Thanks a bunch. I performed the mod you linked, still no SVideo plug (just ordered) but the composite looks about the same, brighter for sure and a tad more saturated colors. My LCD TV does a really awful job with the XEGS composite out, once my SVideo connector arrives I'll fix it in and see, I really hope it works. The TV does a much, much better job over SVideo, I suspect that the conditioning of the composite is just plain bad, the only console I am proud over composite is actually the PC Engine DuoR, that was really good for some reason.

Thanks for trying, I guess for now I am stuck to the EPROM burner (I literally have no SIO device). No biggie, I doubt there will be that many releases in the near future, maybe another say 10

Work with me here. If I manage to get the flasher ATR (or it's content) on the CF ATP portion visible via SIDE2 SDX, wouldn't I be able to simply launch the flasher at the prompt? My reference to U1MB MATR was only as a mean to "copy" the flasher from a FAT32 file into the APT portion of the CF. Technically I should be able to simply use MATR to mount the flasher ATR, copy the files from the mounted flasher ATR to an APT partition in the CF, shutdown U1MB SDX, and use SIDE2 SDX which should find the required files on said CF APT partition. Am I missing something? [please forgive my vast ignorance on all matters of Atari DOSes]

Forgive my pedantry but if I boot from the SDX on SIDE2 there's no way to mount the flashing ATR unless I have another device (SIO2SD) or found a way to put the flashing ATR ahead of time in one of the partitions in the APT. Am I right? Now, for the second part, copying the flashing ATR into one of the APT partitions (so it is visible once I reboot with SDX on SIDE2), could I use MATR and whatever else is available on the U1MB SDX to perform said copy [sector by sector or file by file whatever is needed)? And if so, how? [this is for future reference, eventually I will get tired of flashing the 512K via EPROM burner]

FYI: I will refrain from attaching the updated 512K flash BIN with soft driver 3.2 for SIDE2. Please donate to fjc, he deserves it and then some, really just cover for a beer [there were 11 DL for the last one, 1 beer each and we get fjc happy, really happy], he can generate one for you in a jiffy .... literally.

I'm going to rip out a few 7800 carts in order to make multicarts. My idea is to rip out a 32KB cart (Food fight) and replace the ROM with a much bigger EPROM (512KB) to contain all 16Kb and 32 KB games (there's 16 of them in total). Also I plan to do the same to a cart [hattrick] to contain all 48KB games (there's 8 of them in total, make 48KB to 64KB and you get again 512KB EPROM [27C040]). Also I am planning to do the same once more to a couple of 128KB game carts (assuming a supercart PCB with support for page 6 at 4000-7fff) and replace the ROM with either a 27c080 or 27c801 [whichever I find] and have 8 128KB games in one. Finally I plan to use one 128KB + 16KB RAM cart [i believe Winter Games matches the spec, I just bought one on eBay, we will see if it all pans out] and replace the ROM with an EPROM [27c040] to host 4 128K + RAM games (there's really not that may [like 5 of them excluding Plutos/Syrius], and some of them are only 64KB [Tower Toppler], I plan to copy the first 64KB in the second half). That is a total of 4 multicarts: 1 to replace all 16/32 KB games (the 16KB games will be "doubled" to occupy 32Kb), 1 to replace all 48 KB games,1 for 8 "ROM only" 128KB games and 1 for "128KN RAM + <=16KB of RAM" games. Any gotchas I should be looking for? Like games that do not work if the aforementioned configuration (double 16K to 32k) or some special 48K games or 128K + 16K RAM that do not really work (like they have only 8KB RAM mapped twice and they write at the upper bank but read at the lower [mean thing to do but works well as a copy protection])? I really want to get rid of many 7800 carts and replace them with a few multi, ideally if "H2 sans Pokey" would come out I would be happy, but in its absence and excluding weird mapping (2 activision games + another I can't remember right now) I can get by with multicarts with physical dip switches to choose the game. It seems quite easy to me to desolder the ROM, replace with a bigger EPROM and rewire the /OE (A16) signal as appropriate. What do you think? Should I butcher a few cheap 7800 carts or design my own PCB (which I have never done before)? [needless to say any Pokey game is excluded]

I can tell what I did for my XEGS and I managed to keep the shield on. The XEGS has the Pokey and Antic and 6502 and PIA and GTIA all very close to each other like: |---------------------| |----------------------| |----------------------| | Pokey | | Antic | | PIA | |---------------------| |----------------------| |----------------------| |---------------------| |----------------------| | 6502C | {some emptier space} | GTIA | |---------------------| |----------------------| What I did is put double sided tape on the underside of U1MB, on the battery in specific (I don't want metal to touch anything on the motherboard) and in the spots where the U1MB would lie on those chips (Antic, PIA and GTIA). I placed the U1MB so that the battery lies in the emptier space above and let U1MB lie as needed on top the surrounding chips on double sided tape. It worked for me (I found the placement after having tried to bend the cables and see what I could do). On the bright side 3 strips of double sided tape (the thick spongy one) offer plenty of isolation and plenty of adhesive, on the less bright side when I remove U1MB I have to replace the tape and almost always the battery stays on the strip of tape on the XEGS motherboard, which kind of help in putting it back in the same spot but you know ... not ideal. I have a U1MB 2013 version so I had to remove the plastic retainers on top of the cable connectors in order to be able to keep the shield, and I had to bend the cable to stay within the height margins because I really wanted the shield back. When I finally put the shield back on it was a tight fit and I can tell that U1MB (in specific the plastic connectors locations) push a little on the shield, but it is minor (something like maybe 1mm) and actually helps sandwich everything together pretty snug. I hope it gives you ideas on how to proceed. Unfortunately I do not remember the layout of an 800XL.

My XEGS looks so so on my LCD TV. I've looked around and found this: http://www94.pair.com/jsoper/xegs_svid.html Is this the only way to go about it? In specific it appears the Q3 emitter is luma and Q5 emitter is chroma. I'm really trying not to cut or remove components if I don't have to. Anyone has suggestions? Can I simply use Q3e and Q5e as they are? Or maybe rebuffered thru a voltage follower? Alternatively I have a few FMS6400 available, so if I really have to I could get the signal straight from the Q3/Q5 bases and let the FMS6400 do the amplification, but I am not sure the signal there is good enough. Any help greatly appreciated.

Something to report (on NTSC XEGS). XEGS OS, U1MB SDX on with Side device w button ON.Side2 set to loader, CF with FAT32 partition containing Side2 flasher ATR, and APT with 1 partition (seen as D3:) empty. Boot SDX from U1MB, run MATR to mount the flasher ATR as D1:, use MATR "reboot" feature -> "no DOS" message Press reset on XEGS, lsomehow SDX remembers D1: mounted and the flasher now comes up. Not sure it is a bug (I mean the first time pre-reset "no DOS"), a feature, my misunderstanding of how it is supposed to work. Just reporting.

I attach the updated 512K to flash with SIDE2 SDX soft driver 3.1 as released by fjc. side2-512K-onboard-flash-updated31.BIN

All right then, I hope a couple of beers worth is not going to make you feel belittled, hopefully more users would come forward and support the effort.

I knew that, my question was a little more on the side of "how much is too little". I guess I'm trying to figure out a reasonable donation amount (reasonable for both me and fjc), without belittling fjc efforts. I'm not exactly a generous person when it comes to pay for someone else's work, by God I'd squander hundreds for myself but only donate pennies to others.

How does one reward you without being "offensive"? I mean , the whole U1MB was like 45€, not sure what bounty to put on a well done PBI BIOS + SDX goodies. I wish you had a deal with the "manufacturer" so you'd get some for your hard work, so if you don't get mad at just a beer worth of a reward, then that's on me. Let me know, thanks, I'd really hate to piss you off for no good reason and too low of a reward could be worse than kind words.

Hi fjc, I just noticed that within the latest U1MB SDX if I use MATR I gain the capability to mount ATR residing in the FAT32 partition of the SIDE2 CF. As a nice side effect I can now use U1MB CAR embedded uflash to read ROMs from the mounted ATRs, not the most straightforward way but until SideLoader gets the fix I still can create full flashing ATRs (TRG or URomBld) and whether they boot or not now I can simply "SDX+MATR" them and uflash their rom payload. My question for you then is: if SDX MATR is perfectly capable to "see" FAT32 ATRs and mount them, why would uflash not be able to do the same? OK bad choice of words. How about an SDX only version of uflash that, as MATR does, can "mount" ATRs from within the FAT32? Just kidding, it works with the 2 steps so no point in making you do the work I simply wanted to report this positive effect of having MATR + uflash on CAR:, nice call indeed.

Give one of these a shot. But they are not the latest SDX with all the goodies. I don't remember which one works. SDX446_myideii_256_org+SYS.ROM SDX446_myideii+SYS.rom

I attached the full content of what I flashed to my previous post. Thanks for the support.

Let's say I could dump the SIDE2 ROM content, which portion of the 256K should I overwrite with the one in your ZIP file? The first 256k or the second 256K. I'm proposing that I update the ROM file overwriting the first (second) 256K with your zip file SDX ROM content and then flash back the whole 512K to SIDE2. Would that work? EDIT: I managed, I just overwrote the first 256K of the SIDE2 dumper EPROM with your ROM inside SIDE2 zip, awesome. Thanks for the awesome work. PS (not that important, just a data point): Once more the SIDE2 soft driver (ver 3.0) is perfectly able to detect the "bad" CF while U1MB PBI hits the already reported snag. I was secretly hoping that with the new drivers from the unified code base I would have gotten a uniform behavior (the "bad" CD should just never work, soft SIDE2 driver or PBI), but it's not the case. It's a very minor point, I report it only as a curiosity, no point in beating this dead horse anymore. EDIT2: Attached the BIN file that I used to flash my SIDE2 flash chip (in my case an AM29F040B). It has the latest SideLoader (the loader than can "run" rom files) as well as SDX 4.46d (straight from fjc http://www.atari8.co.uk/apt/downloads/SDX446SIDE2.zip.) side2-512K-onboard-flash-updated.BIN

That would likely not work for me. If I use SDX on SIDE2 then I cannot boot ATRs and within the onboard SIDE2 SDX I don't think it is yet possible to mount ATRs from the FAT32 partition of the CF. I guess if I had another SIO device it would be a no brainer. Any chance for a self flashing XEX? SideLoader updates had been distributed that way at least once in the past, but I understand being an easier task due to the smaller size of it all. I wonder if uflash can be "updated" and support SIDE2 flashing as well [only 2 banks [sDX, SideLoader] for now but the same 512K of flash available], kidding, I hope Candle/Lotharek would release an updated ROM for SIDE2 so I can use the EPROM burner.

Managed to easily update U1MB with PBI and new SDX, awesome. Question, how do I do the update for the SIDE2 SDX? If I mount the ATR and try to boot it I just get a "no DOS". Related question, did Candle release the fixed SIDEloader for U1MB or not yet?

I appreciate the concerted effort and I believe it would be great for MyIDE2 owners if this would be supported, but as far as I am concerned I found my nirvana first in a EPROM burner (and eventually got tired to push/pull the flash chip), then Side2 and the test PBI 0.6 that allow me to flash to my heart's content the whole 512K as generated by TRG and/or U1MRomBld. I'm looking forward to the fixes for SideLoader to allow uflash.xex to perform its magic via FAT32, I believe uflash.xex should have a place in the U1MB flash itself within/on the side of SideLoader {dunno, press "F"} so it is always available but that is just my preference. That would be it for me as then I would have even single slot U1MB flashing capability all within FAT32 ..... and yes one of the usages for me would be to flash new MyBIOSes as sijmen makes them available. Regarding this topic let's help Stefan first and maybe have another topic wrt stock U1MB flashing via MyIDE2 only, if that is even a goal with enough support from involved parties.

I hear you loud and clear. It just happened I bought MyIDE2 first then wanted to try those bigger than 64K "games" hence U1MB + Side2 package (Side2 on a hunch that it would work better with U1MB). With "the widowm of tomorrow" now in my possession I probably would not have done it that way but I was a beginner and ended up buying more than strictly needed. And many apologies to Stefan for hijacking his thread, good luck in sorting out your issues and by any mean document how it worked out so another user will benefit.

Simple, stock U1MB, put U1MB flasher ATR on MyIDE2 partition space, start U1MB flasher ATR from MyIDE2 partition space, flasher can't' find SDX board [i believe I tried to use FAT32Loader to start U1MB flasher ATR from FAT32 but it complains as the "disk" is too big at 720KB, so can't use FAT32Loader for that ATR] Go to U1MB activate SDX, reboot, MyIDE2 is bypassed so cannot get to partition space to start the flasher ATR as U1MB starts SDX. Solution would have been that MyIDE2 can be supported thru PBI via U1MB SideLoader so we can start the flasher ATR with SDX on, but that does not work either and I believe fjc hinted at a MyIDE2 design decision as to the culprit. BTW I do like the extra functionality that MyIDE2 has over Side2 [like the available flash for whatever I may need there and the extra SRAM for R16 support] it is just I can't really use it to take care of my U1MB flashing needs. If I limit U1MB usage to RAM expansion then there's no issue whatsoever. As soon as I have a Side2 though to take care of the flashing needs then the need for MyIDE2 subsides a lot, as SideLoader supports ATR [via U1MB] and XEX, a few 8KB ROMs can be shoved into BASIC or XEGS slots [and MyIDE2 has no support for any other mapper so it's a wash], so we're really left with the 512Kb of SRAM and support for R16. Yes MyBIOS is actually quite great for what it does, but in the end what it does is mainly targeted at supporting MyIDE2 via SIO redirection and what not. Soft reset, cold reboot etc... are supported by U1MB as well so again duplicate functionality. If you do have a real SIO device that can take care of the flashing needs of U1MB then MyIDE2 can be your only CF cart. I am not sure if uflash can change this fact so that MyIDE2 can be used to flash U1MB at will without the need of a SIO device, if it does then at that point Side2 may be the redundant choice.

Likely because like me he first bought a MyIDE2 (which as your only CF cart is better than SIDE2) then got more appetite and chose to buy U1MB hoping they would work smooth together, which they almost do but not quite. I bought U1MB + SIDE2 at once after MyIDE2 second guessing that that would be the best configuration as I have no SIO devices, also SIDE2 works his best with U1MB. Without U1MB buying SIDE2 is not that great compared to MyIDE2, and if you buy U1MB after the fact you really don't want a second CF cart ... or do you?

Ouch .... here we go !!!!! Do as I do, take the unrecognized ones and throw them away ....... in a closet .... and try them again in say 6 years, maybe by then the kinks have been ironed out. I have one of those, and because it was my first I am emotionally attached to it so I won't let those 6 US$ go ..... well I use it only for my MyIDE2 and so be it

MyIDE2 allows mounting single ATRs on the fly in FAT32Loader but it's finicky on the ATR content: no K-boot, sizes must align perfectly to one of the known ATR disk format (I believe up to 140K), it's ReadOnly so the code better not write back and compatibility is relatively lower than MyBIOS. FAT32Loader support for mounting ATR is dijoint from MyBIOS, it works without MyBIOS, but you can have both by loading MyBIOS first then back to MyIDE menu and load FAT32Loader. MyBIOS Image space is where you can put "floppy" ATRs and it supports multi disk serial mount (basically you swap to the next disk by CTRL+N where N is how many slot, if you put them in order it's CTRL-2, CTRL-3 etc...). MyBIOS Partition space is where you can put bootable "harddisks", I've got the 4 16MB PicoDOS in there as well as the U1MB flasher ATR (when I thought I could flash U1MB from it), the tool to copy file in this section allows you to ignore size mismatch and performs automatic padding. I think what MyIDE2 really has that shines is the 512K of SRAM and 512K of easily configurable flash [although the tool is non standard it works pretty well and FAT32Loader support flashing via CTRL-F), FAT32Loader supports R16 via the SRAM. The flash is available to add fast accessible ROMs that one may want to have accessible right there on top of hosting MyBIOS (F2), FAT32Loader and some other utils [MyDOS], I believe Side2 could achieve the same in this department as it has 512K of underutilized flash (SDX + SideLoader are probably around half that size). The thing is that MyIDE2 can work without MyBIOS (FAT32Loader being a case in point). Regarding the menu [including disk management] of MyBIOS it depends: if F2 then a part of the OS is copied in RAM, not sure if the menu is fetched from flash on demand (likely), if R2 instead the main OS is in ROM and it fetches on demand the menu (in fact you need to have the exact matching menu "rom" in flash to have the menu working). If ATR compatibility was better on FAT32Loader it wouldn't be half as annoying, also MyBIOS is better in ROM version due to not needing the app to play nice with SoftOS, at which point it is no longer an external only solution. Once I desoldered the OS ROM also taking out the MMU to put a U1MB was not such an effort, as U1MB has flash for OS I decide to put MyBIOS R2 on it and flashing was what cause me grief as I have no SIO device, for that I needed a Side2 [due to PBI support]. In the end because my CF was misbehaving I ended up flashing U1MB via EPROM burner anyway but I now know that had the CF worked I would have been able to flash U1Mb via Side2 mounted flashing ATR, that was simply not possible via MyIDE2 [technically I managed to do it via pressing Reset at the right moment but it's a fluke more than support for flashing U1MB via MyIDE2 due to the register clash I mentioned, U1MB requires SDX on to be flashed, at that point it maps to the same areas a MyIDE2 and it's a crap shot].