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rcgldr

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Posts posted by rcgldr

  3. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    Attached double density ATR file includes ADVENT.COM, which can be read onto a CP/M disk using ICDS copy function. This is the 350 point version, similar or the same one I saw on Radio Shack TRS-80 CP/M systems. The save feature asks for a tape, then messes up, so don't use it. I don't recall how to get it to save to a file.

     

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure

    advent.atr

    • Like 4

  5. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    ATR8000 MSDOS FORMAT appears to be modified. I used a debugger to find the switch parameters, as there is no help parameter. Looks like "/E" is for 8 inch double density floppy, and "/D" is for double sided. "/V" is for volume label, which will prompt for the volume label after the format is completed (as opposed to having a parameter like "/V:name"). There is a "/Q", but it's not a quick format option. Using "/D" + "/E" results in the same number of bytes as I see on my current MSDOS floppies.

  6. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    I have an atr8000 with copower 88, I'm trying to back up the floppies, which I've done for the CP/M floppies, but I haven't figured out how to format MSDOS floppies with the ATR8000. There's a FORMAT.COM command, but I don't know what the parameters are, I can't find my manuals, and the format program doesn't have any help to explain the options.

     

    I'm trying to format an 8" floppy disk to be the same as the two MSDOS floppies I already have, with about 1.2MB each. I'm not sure of the sector size or number of sectors per track.

  7. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    If the ATR8000 is homing / calibrating the floppy head(s), then the code is running. It seems to do multiple calibrate commands in a row upon power up or reset. Some 8 inch floppy drives (like mine) will not move the heads unless a floppy disk is inserted into the drive.

     

    My ATR8000 has a switch just above the reset button on the back to change between CP/M mode and Atari peripheral mode.

     

    It it's in CP/M mode, then it's expecting a return character on the computer in Atari type connector, either from a terminal or from an emulated terminal, after which it will display ATRMON .. # (I think it uses the return character to determine baud rate of the terminal). At that point you enter "B" to boot CP/M from drive 1. Even if you don't have CP/M, you could try this to see if the ATR8000 attempts to boot from the floppy drive.

     

    If it's in Atari peripheral mode, it should be in standard SIO mode.

     

    As already posted, for the floppy drives, you want a straight through cable, and drive select normal (versus a PC where both drives are configured as drive 2, and a twisted cable is used for drive A).

     

    Note that pin 1 on all the ATR8000 connectors are on the power cord and reset button side of the back of the ATR8000. Looking at the ATR8000 from the back side, all the pin 1's are on the right side of the connectors, with the power cord and reset button on the far right.

  9. Posted

    The standard colour coding - at least in relation to the Commodore 1084S and similar monitors - is:

     

    Red: Chroma

    Yellow: Luma/CVBS

    Black: R/Audio

    White: L/Audio

     

    These may actually be the assignments on your cable. It's a little confusing, though, especially if you want a cable with Y/C and composite connectors, since you'd need an extra connector for CVBS.

    The assignments are as I listed in my first post. It's a working setup, but the colors are unusual. The KV1311CR doesn't have a s-video input, just RF (analog TV), composite video and a single audio input, analog RGB (40 pin? connector that works with Atari ST), and digital RGB (unusual shape 8 small angled slot connector, which I never used).

  10. Posted

    I have an Atari 130XE with a monitor cable with 4 RCA type plugs:

     

    red => composite video output

    yellow => audio output

    black => ?

    white => ?

     

    Is this a non-standard cable that I have? The color choices seem unusual considering yellow is normally used for composite video output.

     

    I'm using a Sony KV1311CR that also has an analog RGB connector that also allows it to be used as a color monitor for the Atari ST using a special monitor cable. Resolution is 640x480.

     

     

     

     

  12. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    There is a field service manual around somewhere that describes how to fix a few things and how to use ťhe diag disk. Nothing at board level tho. Also a schematic is out there as well.

    Ver 1.1 rom wiĺl work with ram charger and syncromesh but not cpm or the recent usd disk. Also 1.1 has an issue with enhanced density. Best to swap it out for 1.2.

     

    James

    In my last post I noted that I have version 1.2 rom. As for the Indus GT having heat issues, I took off the cover and placed a 80 mm (4 watt 23 CFM) fan to the left of the drive, so that it blows air across the drive and through the narrow slot at the base of the drive. Seems like that solved the problem. I've done 15 to 20 minute sessions of formatting and write / read tests, and when I remove the floppy disks, they are cool to the touch (so is the drive itself).

  13. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    The main issue I recall was the emergence and dominance of the PC clones, at first 386's using ISA bus in 1987, then EISA bus in 1988. The 386 clones kept getting faster and cheaper, followed by 486 based clones staring in late 1989, continuing to get faster and cheaper. Apple decides to raise prices across the board for it's Macintosh line in late 1989. Windows 3.0 is released mid 1990, and PC clones keep getting faster and cheaper. Windows 3.1 is released in 1991, and supports a 32 bit flat address space via win32s or winmen32 (only Watcom 10.0 C/C++ compiler fully supported winmem32 as a memory model). During the early 1990's, Apple's market share drops to below 5%, but at this point, the top 20 PC makers only accounted for about 50% of market share, the rest being mom and pop operations assembling PC clones from common components. The transition to PCI bus occurred in 1992, followed by Pentium based clones in 1993. Windows NT 3.1 was also released in 1993, but NT wasn't popular until NT 4.0 in 1996. Windows 95 was released in 1995. Motorola couldn't keep up with the performance of the X86 series, releasing the 68060 in 1994 (max clock 75Mhz), about half a year or so after the Pentium was released, and by 1994, Pentiums were up to 120Mhz clock rates (200Mhz by 1995). Motorola and Apple switched to PowerPC, but eventually Apple switched to using X86 proccessors for it's Macintosh line.

     

    Getting back to the 68000, I worked for a company that transitioned from custom cpu mini-computers to the Motorola 68000 family, around 1985. It was a multi-threaded operating system, with multiple terminals, used for data entry, data base applications, ... . We wrote everything in assembly code. There was some version of C compiler, just in case we ever decided to buy the source code for some application from an outside vendor, but that never happened, so the compiler never got used. It was a Motorola development site, so we got early versions of the 68020 and 68030. I moved onto another company in 1987, and I didn't keep track of what was going on at the old site. It shut down a few years later. The irony was that the later versions of their systems used networked PC's as terminals, but the networked PC's ended up replacing those old mini-computer systems.

    • Like 3

  14. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    There were all many formatting programs with all sort of options. Fast track skew (initially coined as twisted, IIRC), and even an extra header that speed ups TOS seek with verify command. Most were PC compatible, some have the option to just rewrite the boot sector for PC compatibility.

     

    Regarding single sided disk on Windows. I seem to remember it doesn't work, but I'm not really sure and It might depend on the Bios setting. Not sure that testing with Virtual PC is conclusive. It might be an issue of the disk image handling not detecting the right geometry. And remember virtualization is not emulation, is not supposed to be 100% compatible.

    Current hard drives still use track skewing, but not interleaving.

     

    http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/geom/tracksSkew-c.html

     

    That article is out of date though. Cylinders no longer line up, since the initial track servo layout is done by high precision equipment one surface at a time, and there may be a 3 or more track offset between surfaces. Due to the track offset issue, most current hard drives will step all the way across a surface before changing heads. This results in more variation in transfer rates since the inner tracks are moving at a slower rate (while density remains nearly constant across the entire surface of a disk). Average transfer rates can be improved by only using the outer cylinders of a drive , called "destroking", which trades off capacity for faster average transfer rate.

     

    > Virtual PC 2007

     

    My reason for testing with Virtual PC was to test if it was an issue between MSDOS 6.22 (which I have on the Virtual PC) or Windows XP. I have a newer multi-boot system, Win XP Pro, XP X64 Pro, Win 7 Pro 64 bit, Win 10 Pro 64 bit, but it doesn't have a floppy controller (Intel DP67BG motherboard with 3770K 3.5ghz cpu). As posted above, booting a MSDOS 6.22 floppy on the older D975XBX works with single sided drives (I use a ramdisk with the floppy boot to avoid flipping floppies).

  15. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    I took the cover off and located a small (80 mm) cooling fan to the left of the drive so that it blows air left to right across the drive, including through the lower narrow slow. It seems to be helping, even the floppy disks that I remove after 15 minutes of doing formats and read / write tests feel cool when I take them out of the drive, but I'll need more testing.

  16. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    My Indus GT seems to be having heat related issues. When first powered on it seems to run OK, but after 15 to 20 minutes I start getting errors (G4, G5, F9 during format). These start at the higher tracks, such as 35 and above, then progressively gets worse with errors occurring at track 20 and above, then about any track. I removed the cover, but that didn't seem to help much. I cover the drive when it's powered off and not in use to prevent dust.

     

    I bought two boxes of new 5.25 inch double density floppy disks, but these may have been sitting on a shelf somewhere for years.

     

    There doesn't seem to be any place to repair these drives, and although I see some Indus GT drives for sale online, I don't know what version they are and if I could use my ramcharger with them.

  17. Posted

    My Indus GT is a bit flaky, probably heat related, since it runs OK when first powered on, then starts to get errors after 15 to 20 minutes. I did press option to disable Basic on the 130 XE during powerup, but the autoboot wasn't loading it's version of Basic. The problem went away when I turned off the Indus GT for a while and tried it again later. At least I've now confirmed I have version 1.20 firmware.

  18. Posted

    I always used the DoubleClick formatter for all my density/PC compat needs. Worked perfectly back in the day.

    The point of FMT.EXE, FMT,TOS, and FMTI.TOS was to speed up sequential read / write times with track skewing. I'm not familiar with the DoubleClick formatter, so I don't know if it included track skewing.

  19. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    I can reproduce the single sided floppy issue on a system with an Intel D975XBX motherboard, running Windows XP. From Windows XP, it reports "drive not formatted". From Virtual PC 2007 with MSDOS 6.22 installed, it gets "general failure reading drive A:". If I boot from a MSDOS 6.22 floppy, the single sided floppy works. The Intel D975XBX motherboard doesn't support dual floppy drives either, only drive A can be accessed, even with real mode low level direct access of the floppy controller, which is what FMT.EXE does. (Side note, the way that PC setup the control signals requires floppy drives be configured as drive 2, using a twisted subset of the cable in order to access drive A, and the non twisted cable in order to access drive B).

  20. Posted · Edited by rcgldr

    In addition to the attached file, here is a link to zip of format programs

     

    http://rcgldr.net/atarist/astfmt.zip

     

    From FMTRDME.TXT;

     

    PC and Atari ST format programs

     

    All of these format programs use track skewing to speed up sequential

    reads or writes, from 2 revolutions per track to about 1 1/3 revolutions

    per track. Track skewing rotates the sector positions on each track so

    that after a track step, sector 1 will be in position for the next

    read or write operation.

     

    FMT.EXE - MSDOS format program.

    - Runs from real MSDOS only, not from a Virtual PC.

    - Floppy drive A means drive 1.

    - Floppy drive B means drive 2.

    - FMT will prompt user to switch floppy before formatting.

    - Floppy type 4 for single sided Atari ST floppy 360K

    - type 4 is a "hidden" option, but it works

    - Floppy type 7 for double sided Atari ST floppy 720K

    - Floppy type 8 is actually 2.88 MB, but untested.

     

    FMT.TOS - Atari ST format program - not PC compatible

    - allows both 9 and 10 sector per track formatting

     

    FMTI.TOS - Atari ST format program - PC compatible

     

    Single sided 3.5 inch 360K floppies will only work with real MSDOS

    or Atari ST.

     

    Double sided 3.5 inch 720K floppies will work with real MSDOS,

    Virtual PC MSDOS, Windows, or Atari ST.

     

    Most PC default write sector commands write too many gap bytes after

    writing a sector for the 10 sector per track format to work. It's

    also possible that PC operating systems don't handle that format.

    This is why the format programs don't include a PC compatible

    10 sector per track format.

    astfmt.zip

  23. Posted

    My 600XL stayed on for a week once when I reached the second part of Pitfall II as a kid :)

     

    Difficulty was exponentially harder for that part of the game! And could never get far.

    The "no touch" mod gets rid of the timing aspect, the jumps are still tricky, and it wasn't clear than the character jumps farther if you keep pressing left or right during a jump, and there are a few tricky jump sections.

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