moonlight_mile

There is definitely something wrong in the ram department. It didn’t show its face until I started working with the side2 cart. I may eventually work on it but I think it is probably a better idea to get another Atari just so I have a backup. Hell, I only paid around $50 for the xe a few years ago.

I see 8bit fix has a fully socketed 800xl. I am leaning that route since I am pretty confident it has been fully tested and being everything is socketed it should make a upgrade fairly easy. I would like a 130 but it doesn’t appear any are out there for a sane price at the moment.

I have just discovered my 130 xe may have some memory issues. They just turned up while trying to get an side2 cart to work. I know in the CP/M mode, the Atari is simply a terminal but could this memory issue cause my issue with the CP/M disk not booting?

I was afraid of this. Oh well. I will probably just look into getting a new Atari. Which would be the best to get for use with the side2 an 800xl or 130xe?

Well I tried it. Same result. Will not boot into Sparta dos. I reads the drive for 2 seconds or so then just a blank screen. I re-flashed the rom with just the Sdx rom, the side.rom and went back to the side2.rom. Side loader works and is updated it just won’t bring up sdx. I did forget to back up the original code from the rom so I don’t have that to go back to. Does anyone have the version 1 side2 rom dump? I didn’t fool around with the resistors yet. I may try this over the weekend if you think that could be the problem. Just find it odd that v1 of the rom would boot (sort of) and the updated roms won’t burn at all.

Just to be clear all that needs to be on the floppy disk is config.sys, correct?

Yes Sparta 3.2d works fine. Also Spartados x works from the ultimate Cart. Looks like I have a lot ahead of me. I will give your advice a try over the next few days. Ill keep you informed on how things go. Thanks!

Ok here are my results. I flashed the side2.rom onto the chip. it doesn’t boot into Spartados at all. It does boot into the Side loader so I think it is safe to say it flashed fine. I did try flashing it a few times all the same result. I ram that extended ram check and it did find an issue, however I am not 100% sure what I am looking at. Clearly there is an issue but would I be able to figure out what chip is bad and replace it? Attached is a pic of xram test. again thanks for the help.

Perfect! Yeah I thought mine was supposed to come with mine but didn’t. I will look and order one. Thanks for all your help!!

That I can do. I have one of those. Just not the adapter. By chance do you know what that adapter is called and is the binary file included in your zip file?

Is there a way I can flash the latest rom on the cart using the connector inside the cart?

Yes that does load and it does access the cf card when inserted. (I have an sd to cf card adapter, I know this is problematic but I was really just using it to test things. )

Here is the latest. I tried booting with the shift key down. Same result. Just errors out after spartados boots and it is looking for the drives. The one time I did kind of get it to work I was jostling the cart, which led me to believe maybe there was a broken solder joint on the cart connector. I reflowed those joints and toned out the cart while it was inserted and everything had continuity. Alas, same result. I suppose it could be my 130xe but I have not had any issues whatsoever with it, with the exception of my ATR-8000 won’t boot into cp/m. But I kind of think that is still an atr-8000 issue. I tried it with my xf551 and my Percom rfd44. All the same result. Now, in the same package from lotherek I got an sio splitter. After it finishes booting and starts looking for the drive there is activity on the sio lines as the splitter has lights that show activity. And yes, I have tried all the above with the drives connected directly to the 130xe. Again, thanks for all your continued help on this. Craig.

Well, I am trying to use it without the cf card and upgrade the firmware and it doesn’t want to access the drives after it boots. I did check the ram-all good. I have a newer model power supply. I think I got it from best. It is an Atari branded supply. As far as the ram test I just used the Atari default test screen. So both ram and rom showing as good.

Forgot the video. IMG_2665.MOV

Hey all, I recently got an SIDE2 cart from Lotherek. I could be wrong but I think my flashed image is corrupt. Here is what it is doing: I plug it into my unmodified 130xe. Sometimes it accessed the floppy drive/sio2sd I have attached and other times it doesn’t. After it boots to the hard drive information, I get one of two results: I get a screen full of Missing ___MISC 154 Symbol Not defined. Or it finishes booting and accesses the drives but never sees the drives and I need to hit the reset button to get out of this. I have attached a picture and short video describing these results. I thought maybe the firmware needed updating as I couldn’t get the cart to see my cf card either. I did manage to get the side2_full atr to boot. However all it did was spit out errors that it couldn’t upgrade the cart. I did do a dir of the car: and that is also all garbled. I included a pic of this as well. the side loader loads and does see the card but I didn’t put anything on it as I wanted to use this as a mini hard drive. Now, I am assuming I am going to have to try to flash the firmware back on it with the connector inside the cart. Do you think this is just a bad flash? What tools will I need to flash the firmware onto the cart? I thought I remember reading someone else had a problem with the side2 cart but when I searched I didn’t see anything.

Id like to lurk in and watch.

I am kind of done with my ATR but I keep getting the urge to further diagnose what is going on with the cp/m area. I was looking at the schematics. The rom goes into the z80 (i am assuming) get converted to code that z80 can run, then gets spit out from the z80 into the ram chips. I was going to tone out those traces but, would the disk drives work if the rom was corrupt? I am a rank beginner at this and love the adventure of figuring this out but, to my limited knowledge it seems like the drive routines probably wouldn’t work if the rom was corrupt. I know the atr won’t boot without the z80 installed. Just trying to narrow down where my issue could be. Thanks for any info.

Thanks for all the info. It all is very informative. I guess it would probably be more headache than it’s worth for a multi unit power supply. I rarely use the 850 and hope to get a fujinet next time they are available so I probably won’t need it too much. Great suggestions!

Hey guys and gals, I have a question that I have been pondering the other day. is there a modern day solution that can power multi-Atari peripherals in one electrical socket? I just wondering with all the modern day solutions to power the 800s and xe’s these days. I have. 130,xf,and and 850. With all the other stuff I have on my desk I have run out of electrical sockets. I thought it would be great if I could find a solution that can power the computer, drive and 850 (and maybe another peripheral) Similar the way a modern pc power supply can power a number of components. Maybe there is an Atari power hub. I did a search and didn’t find anything.

I did check out the rom I have. The one that came with the ATR was just slightly off from the 3.02 rom I burned from one of the websites I found. The burned 3.02 rom i made is exactly the same as the rom file included in the CPM Zip file located back in this thread. So I checked that off the list as a possible problem.

I put in the old ram chips. Exactly the same result so I am gonna guess the ram chips are fine. I wouldn’t think it is very likely ram chips from different vendors would result with the same results. I did spend some time writing out a few Atari disks so I know the drives and the drive controller chip is good. Besides the rom,z80,z80 timing chip and the drive controller chip the rest of the chips are either logic or buffer chips. I wouldn’t know where to start with those and I really don’t want to go unsoldering a full board or chips. Any other way to test chips?

I have 4164s. I ordered a “new” set and those are currently installed. The jumpers are set for 64k. Here is a pic. Maybe I will mess with the old ram chips one last time before I close it up. If you order 1797. Make sure you order a few. Of the 5 I ordered. Only 2 were working. 2 were doa and 1 would only format in Sd. There isn’t an easy way to test ram Chips without an extra piece of equipment is there? I know my eprom burner tests certain chips but I don’t think they can test ram chips.

I think the verdict is something is wrong with my Atr. Tried a lot of different things and it just won’t boot into cp/m. Thanks for all the help! It was a fun learning experience. I guess I will have to keep my eye out for when another one pops up for sale. I truly wonder if this started life as a 16k and was upgraded and something is missing. It did come with the CPM supplement but there is clearly a 16 sticker on the back of it.

I only booted mydos once to see if it worked. I am using the hxc2001 firmware as I don’t think I can flash the flash floppy on my unit. I know there is a new (paid) firmware for the hxc but I think that is for the usb version of my type of unit. (Mine is the sd version). I thought of putting the flash floppy firmware but....... it appears to need a USB port and/or the correct jumper block. My model only has the 12 pin jumper block for ds0-3 and drive A or B. When I tried to boot the CPM hfe it did access the disk but just returned the “c”. It is a shame we don’t know what the “c” code indicates.