Dr Memory

LBACE - Long Beach Atari Computer Enthusiasts Long Beach, CA - I was a member (and the president) for the last few years before the ST came out and for a few years past that. Pretty sure it died off when Atari stopped being carried in stores. We weren't affiliated with a store or anything, just people who loved our Atari computers.

No problem, glad it helped somebody!

Let me echo this suggestion - try that. Post 11 in this thread. I made that image for just this sort of situation, where one wants to get started with nothing but a stock machine + SIDE 3 + a 2 GB card. I think it will work as is with a 64k machine. If not, I'm having a senior moment. That should let you get up and running with SpartaDOS and a basic APT setup. The other easy thing you could try is to format your card FAT on your PC (or Mac) and fill it with files from one of the popular archives, such as Homesoft. You can locate the Homesoft Collection using google or whatever search engine you prefer. You want only XEX, CAR, and ROM files to start with. Then put the card into SIDE 3 and boot, and you should be able to run those files from the nice SIDE 3 menu. I believe either FAT or FAT32 will work for this, but not exFAT or NTFS. So that's EZ mode. As you have correctly detected, there is a lot to learn for more advanced usage. On the bright side, all the info is out there, and the vast majority of it is freely and legally downloadable.

Ok, I was curious about the source for Turbo Basic XL, so I went looking for the correct issue of Happy Computer. I found a copy on pigwa. Yay! Indeed, the code is there in type-in form. Unfortunately, it isn't source code - more of an ASCII version of a binary dump. So that didn't really work out too well for me. However, a little more searching revealed this: Someone already did the heavy lifting and obtained and released the source, on this very web site. Awesome! So there's your starting point - if you want to use Turbo Basic XL with your ATR8000, it should be very possible to modify the source (or possibly just some constants?) to generate a version that would work with the correct version of MyDos. That sounds easier to me than developing new serial and disk drivers! Still some work, but doable methinks. Hope this helped, and many thanks to those that helped find and release the source. Next time I have free time I'll check it out.

I did a little investigation, to satisfy my own curiosity. Here is what I learned: MyDos 3.18 is indeed the ATR8000 RS232 version. Or at least, one of the three flavors of 3.18 is. BM301318 lets you generate any of those three flavors: STANDARD MYDOS ATR8000 RS232 VERSION KERNEL AND STANDARD MYDOS The ATR8000/RS232 VERSION requires only the correct version of DOS.SYS and DUP.SYS to boot. There is no AUTORUN.SYS type file produced, and the bootable 3.18 version of this flavor contains only DOS and DUP. If you play with it, you can see that it includes the needed code to format 8" drives and such. I've pretty much convinced myself that all the ATR8000 stuff, including the RS232 stuff, is baked in to that version of DUP.SYS. On the BM disk you can see the three versions of DUP, called NEWDUP.A, NEWDUP.B, and NEWDUP.C. If you disassemble them, and search for "232" in each, you will find it is present in NEWDUP.B and is not present in the others. More evidence for the RS232 support being baked into that version. I wasn't curious enough to fully disassemble it, but at least I've confirmed where the ATR8000 and RS232 code lives. The "O" option in the MyDos menu allows you to configure the ATR8000 RS232 port. It doesn't actually DO that in Altirra, of course, but you can see what it's trying to do at least. So if you really wanted to pull that code and try and use it with some other DOS, that's a starting point - disassemble NEWDUP.B, isolate the needed code, and make an AUTORUN out of it (or set it up to be loadable some other way, of course). Note that you'd also have to deal with the needed config stuff if you did that - real RS232 has more moving parts than SIO and I imagine you'd want to be able to configure flow control and such. My BBS actually ran under Basic XL and later Basic XE, using that version of MyDos. I never used Turbo Basic XL but have to think this is probably a conflict with that and MyDos. The usual failure mode for that sort of thing is memory conflicts between the DOS and the program. This version of MyDos worked fine with the Basic XL and Basic XE carts, BTW. So if you just want a better Basic and aren't able to fix the Turbo Basic XL conflict, you might be able to use one of those? No idea if it would work with the cracked file versions though, I had real carts and don't have an ATR8000 to test on at present. The wikipedia page for Turbo Basic XL says that source was released - it was published as a type-in program in Happy Computer magazine (auf Deutsch). Apparently there exist versions that people have modified to be compatible with various DOSes. If it were me, I'd start down that path and see if I could either find a version already made to work with MyDos 3.18 or the source code and go from there. Hope this helped.

I finally got a 1200XL to replace the one I've always regretted selling. It's in great condition, and came with the video and memory already upgraded. No complaints. It's kind of a relief - I can finally stop studying all the Atari auctions every day! Yay! Pricey but what I wanted.

I do not know the answer to your question. The reason I posted is because I'm curious as to why you'd want to use DOS 2.5 with your ATR8000 serial port. Rather than one of the versions of MyDos that directly support it. You don't have to say, but if we knew that maybe we could suggest something? I used MyDos 3.18 with mine in the old days, and it let me use 1.2MB 5.25" drives, a USR modem, and an Epson printer, all through the ATR8000. I also set up my own 80 column driver and some other things for use when I felt like messing with CP/M. I suspect Atari DOS 2.5 is missing a few pieces to allow all that to work, but perhaps you only really need the serial part? I think I vaguely recall getting SmartDOS and one of the other wierd DOSes sort of working way back when, but they each had a little set of limitations. Details of that are lost to time.

It may be that another version that says "ATR8000 RS232 Version" would work, don't know, sorry. If it doesn't, I recommend tracking down the one I suggested as I know that for sure worked on an ATR8000 with 1.2MB drives. Mathy's MyDos page has it: https://www.mathyvannisselroy.nl/mydos.htm https://www.mathyvannisselroy.nl/mydos318.arc Some other versions on that page that might be helpful as well, like the builders. For example, this one claims to be able to build the 3.18 ATR8000 version: https://www.mathyvannisselroy.nl/bm301318.arc I never used that - don't think I had it back in the old days, but it's a different era now.

Are you using the specific version of MyDos I described in an earlier post? That was the only one I was ever able to get working properly on my ATR8000, back when I had it. That would be "MYDOS 3.18, ATR8000 RS232 Version".

Looks like I was using MYDOS 3.18, ATR8000 RS232 Version. So it was a special version. Worked fine. The ATR8000 allowed me to use the four 8-inch emulators, an Epson printer (old school dot matrix) and a US Robotics modem. The modem was freaking expensive for the time but supposedly had a lifetime guarantee, where they would keep upgrading me to new versions. Naturally, they totally abandoned that and vanished when the BBS scene died. Anyway, just wanted to provide the details on the MYDOS version needed.

You can indeed use 1.2 MB 5.25" floppies on an ATR8000. We used to call them 8" emulators for reasons lost to time. I used to use 4 of them on my 8 bit BBS. Alas, the only detail I remember about getting them to work was that I had to use mydos. I think it may have been a special version of mydos - like one that came with the ATR8000 - but I'm sure you can just Google for it and download it nowadays.

Well... I wouldn't do it that way, I'd probably set it up on a Fujinet so it could be accessed on the Internet. The problem is that I had so much weird hardware and customization that it wouldn't be easy to adapt. Agree with your overall conclusion though - I suspect it would be cool for a few minutes and then fade into obscurity. Oh well. Alternatively, I could emulate it entirely, using Altirra or Atari800Win, but then it would lose a lot of the coolness, such as it is. Oh I looked through what I could find of my archives and did not find DMAIDE. Sorry, no joy.

Compulsive Collector BBS, for over a decade. Something like 1982, well into the 90s? The last snapshot I have from the 800/ATR8000 version is from 1985 but I switched to an ST and kept going for many years after that. I don't find the ST as interesting from a nostalgia point of view and thus haven't even tried to find the later ST versions. It was pretty highly customized. Towards the end I was running 4 8" emulators (well that's what we called them back then) and had my user file, message board indexes and download file system indexes all running in bank switched memory using my own little assembly routines. Manually implemented write-back cache and such. So it was large and fast for the time. Every now and then I think about trying to bring it back up but it would be a fair amount of work, as I no longer have the ATR8000 and accompanying hardware and bank switched memory is handled a lot differently these days. Plus, all the files you could possibly want are available elsewhere, as are f2p games far better than the doors I ran. So probably not.

For the reset switch, I just used the one on the Arduino. There is a spot on the protoboard I used where I could have extended it, but I just stick my finger in between the board and the shield and hit the switch and it works fine. If the chip was not found to be bad, the green light should be steady. That's how you know the test is done - it blinks during the test but ends up solid red or solid green. Make sure you've got the right chip selected - the test for the 4164 executes way faster than the test for the 41256 because it is only checking the first 64 kbits of memory. You could probably make a version that auto-detected the chip size but the original creator didn't do that and neither did I. I have a little list of possible enhancements for this thing that I haven't gotten around to - add some extra tests, make sure it supports 4464 and 44256 and fix it if not, that sort of thing, but I have too many projects and too little time.

Well I don't know that you'd need to mirror all of it. I guess someone might have, but more likely the file sections got snagged and saved. I have vague memories of this sort of thing happening but the details have gone, sorry.