Jeffrey Worley

OMG no. My first drive was a 1050 from Sears. IIRC it was $399. My second drive was an Indus from Computer Image, and it wasn't nearly that much and had a host of features besides. When I got the INdus I also got a US Doubler for the crippled 1050, which made it a really nice drive after all. The Doubler kept the 1050 as drive A for many years, as Syncromesh never really took off and Spartados didn't support it until SDX came out, and that was several years later. Jeff

ASCII Art is the truest kind.

You are in the US? Let's talk this evening. I will help you get going, even send you a boot disk in the mail if we can't fix you by phone. best, jeff

Oops. Going off of memory apparently got me there. TY.

The whole CPMBOOT drill is just to get a system for the ATR8000 to boot from when you have nothing else. Once you have this, you have no need for the CPMBOOT utility, the ATR8000 can format and systemise it's own disks now. So, boot your ATR8000 from the disk you made. Run the CONFIG utility and answer the questions it asks about the disk drives you have connected to your ATR8000. Then allow the utility to write the system tracks to your disk. Reboot the ATR8000. It is now configured with your particular disk drive setup. Proceed to run DDINIT and format some double-sided disks. Then run DDSYSGEN and copy the tracks from your boot disk into memory and then write those tracks to your newly formatted double-sided disks. This is just normal cp/m stuff. best, Jeff

Ha! I only recently made my first flippies. The Atari pretty much never needs them, but my Osborne 1 sure does. I just kinda eyeballed where the index hole should be on the other side of the disk and punched holes in the top and bottom of the sleeve (not the disk of course) with a single-hole paper puncher. It works fine. However, the disks I was using have brittle jackets and the jackets will crack! Other disks I've got don't do that. Maybe aged plastic or just cheap plastic. Still, you can make a flippy with a single-hole punch if you are careful when inserting the jaw under the disk jacket, avoid snagging on the felt inside and avoid sticking the jaws in so far they can scratch part of the media used by the drive for storing data. best, Jeff

Moonlight_Mile has a slew of 1797 controller chips, three I think, new, so ask him for one. That way you can get your ATR up and running the way it should be. Also, some 1050's come with that controller the 97 chip, with a pin broken off. You can replace the pin and have a chip for your ATR, and swap the 93 into the 1050, which won't know the difference. Best, Jeff

James is right. The ATR uses mixed density formats, the first sector is always 128bytes (single density). the system tracks are 512byte sectors, and the rest of the disk can have 256, 512, or `1024 byte sectors, depending on the option you chose during ddinit. No Atari disk image utility is equipped to deal with that, in fact none of the readily available Pea Sea utilities to image disk are equipped to deal with that either. That latter fact is the reason why the fellow created this way to make system disks from downloadable files, it is at present the only way, short of a very special disk image tool like Cryoflux or Greaseweasel, which require special hardware to create and generate disks and disk images. So the fellow has done us a huge favor by making this. He leverages the fact that the Atari by default uses mixed-density media. All double-density Atari disks have three single-density sectors as the first on the disk, whatever the disk format is afterwards, single or double. So an Atari formatted double-density disk is a good starting point for the utility. You could use someone elses' double-density disk, but it would not have a single-density sector at the beginning and so would not be bootable, though CP/M might be able to read the data and run files on the disk, it could not read the boot tracks at IPL. Best, Jeff

It is the better version by far. The formats have changed from the 1982 version, but other things are improved as well. The Diskdef utility is really handy. If you can run any of the files on the disk, like ddsysgen or pip and have it actually WORK, then you are in clover. make some spares. It is really easy to trash a disk with the ATR8000, all you have to do is turn the machine on or off with a disk in the drive with the door closed. Poof. I put a label on my power switch to remind me. Oh, I should mention, this whole formatting the other side of the disk to blank it thing is limited to making the ss/dd boot disk using the CPMBOOT.EXE utility. It is not at all necessary for any other function. It is a special case. Still, now you know how to make a disk, you can make another easily enough. The fellow who came up with this method is a freaking genius and deserves all the laurels we can hang on him. So, to get your system up and running, run CONFIG and answer the questions as they are presented. This will create a system with your system's specific drive configurations. Then write the system to your boot disk. Then reset the ATR8000 and reboot. Next, format some double-sided disks and write the same system tracks to them, using ddsysgen to first read the tracks from your boot disk, then writing them to the new double-sided ones. Now you have bootable double-sided media. You can use PIP to move the files from your single-sided boot to the new double-sided media. Once you are ready, you can boot the double-sided disk. Best, Jeff

Ok, This disk is for sure formatted single-sided and the other side is either blank from the factory or has been blanked by being formatted single-sided as well? Double-density (256byte sectors), 40 tracks, Single-sided. Your movies work great. Jeff

You are right. It should be booting. I'm guessing that C you are seeing is part of the first string that is printed on CP/M boot. CP/M v2.2 ........... Jeff

Hit B and Return, that is the ATRMON command to BOOT. With the disk in the drive, it oughtta boot cp/m Jeff

It doesn't matter where you run the CPMBOOT.EXE utility from, but the CPUfiles disk has to be in drive 1 and that has to be on the ATR8000. For example, my hard disk is drive C (D3:) I ran the cpmboot utility from there with my prepared CPMfiles disk in the ATR8000's D1: And boomshakala. Best jeff

Wow. Is that a videodisk player?

If you are running HSIO drivers in your U1MB bios, then disable it for the drive numbers your Atr is set to answer to. I used SCOPY to make the CP/M disk, then ran the utility to write the system tracks. Remember to format the disk single-sided, and remember to format the other side of the disk as single-sided. This will prevent the ATR from barfing in CP/M, from thinking it is reading a double-sided disk when it shouldn't. You can't format a flippy on the ATR, so use a 1050 or whatever to do it. Or, use a powerful magnet to scramble side2 of the disk before you start the process. With a truly clean disk, the process of making the cp/m disks is a breeze. Any sector copier that can do double-density will make the disk. One sure way to make the disk is to format it single-sided double density, then run HDSC from the Spartados X command line and use it to write the disk out. It only copies sectors, does not format, so there's on 'if' out of the way. Best, Jeff

I see you have a Hayes 300 with the original setup. Did you upgrade to faster Hayes with the XE? I had a Hayes 1200 in 1986 or so and what a difference it was! Upgraded from an MPP1000C. best, Jeff

Hooooray!!!!!!

I doubt it. There might be some chips that are tolerant to such a thing, but I think you are perhaps avoiding desoldering because it is difficult with the tools you have. I don't use one of the fancy electrical desoldering tools, rather I do well with a desoldering iron costing about $20.00. Here's a linik to the one I've been using for a couple of years now. I just replace the tip every few months. It is super important to have a fresh tip for delicate work. Some boards have large vias that a worn tip will still work on, but small vias, new PCB's are famous four them, need a focused suction that a worn tip can't provide. At any rate, here's the tool for you: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00068IJSG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Another way to desolder is to clip the legs from the top of the chip, leaving them standing without the chip anylonger there. Then you just use a soldering iron from the top to heat the legs and pluck them out with a pair of tweeters. Then you clear the vias of solder and insert your new socket. It is destructive of the original chip of course, but these are 74 series parts and not terribly important to preserve. best, Jeff

Don't use 4116. Use 4164 or 41256 and move the jumpers to configure the machine for 64k. Why wouldn't you? Best, Jeff

The format utility for versions 3.2 is called "XINIT.COM". You can make a formatted disk bootable using the Xinit.com utility or, if you want to do it to a formatted disk later you can use the "BOOT" command from the command line. Copy the .DOS file you want to be the boot version to the disk and then enter the command "BOOT D1:X32D.DOS", where D1: can be any valid drive number with the disk in it, and where X32D.DOS can be any valid spartados DOS version file. Best, Jeff

What about RAM? If this were a doubler 1050 or some other drive conroller, I'd suspect the sram. The ATR8000 uses DRAM, but say that one of your drams has a stuck bit smack dab in the area reserved for the disk controller? You might try swapping for a known-good set of 4164's, or 41256 even. Those latter are interchangeable. I've done this in the ATR8000 on a couple of occasions when I needed to test with KNOWN-GOOD ram and all I had were 256kbit chips to be certain of. Best, jeff

They're all a bit oxidized, but it doesn't look bad at all for a 40 year old machine.

Mamma went to a Catholic girl's finishing school in LA. The family was working-class, but those were the days one hoped to marry a doctor or whatever. She could fold napkins like 40 different ways, knew how to instruct the servants, how to eat an orange with a knife and fork.... Oh the school was "Marywood". Always in finger quotes whenever she mentioned it. Kindof a family joke. Jeff

It for sure isn't the mechs. If they format in SD they will format in DD. Alignment can sometimes be a fault, but it is RARE and certainly would not present with multiple drives. You have some kind of logic fault or, perhaps, as you said, a corrupt eprom. That was a pretty good guess and easy enough to validate. Best, Jeff

Mamma called the an Etagere no sideboards allowed. lol.