SIDE 3/SDX/SD Card/APT Partitioning for Dummies

[SIDE 3/SDX/SD Card/APT Partitioning for Dummies]

To be clear, I'm not trying to disrespect or criticize any of the work that has been done.  I own and quite like SIDE 3 and I'm enjoying playing with SDX and APT.  I just wanted to collect everything together in one spot on how to do the specific thing I wanted to do rather than dropping clues in individual threads and messages.  I found a lot of those while debugging this and was frustrated, so I'm trying to help others a bit.  This is why I wrote this up in long form rather than just dropping hints like many do. 

 

The only gotcha I had with CHKFAT was the parameter thing.  I spent quite some time fighting with Windows and Ubuntu, trying to format a partition it would like, before I tossed it in DIS6502 and figured out the parameter thing.  Page 197 of The SpartaDOS X User Guide does indeed show what you said there, and I believe that's where I found the vital clue about the 32 MB boundary.  It also shows "d:" as an optional parameter, which isn't entirely the case - you really need to use the letter of the correct drive if you want good results.  Which it says actually, now that I know how to interpret it - "Executing CHKFAT on a non-FAT disk will return meaningless results.".  So true!

 

I also agree with what FJC wrote above about not expecting product A to describe things about product B, and that FAT16 partitions can in fact be much larger.  True!  Which is why I took it on myself to describe how to use SIDE 3/FAT 16/SDX/APT together to produce an SD card that has a legal FAT16 partition usable by SIDE 3, DOS, and SDX and accessible when booting SDX from an APT HD partition.  I'm not claiming it was anyone's job to do this or that anyone was responsible for documenting quirks of products other than their own in their own documentation.  It took me a while to figure this out, and I ended up with a reproducible procedure that yields a SD card with a FAT16 partition that SIDE 3 can use from its GUI and DOS can read and write to and SDX can read from while booted from SIDE 3.  You can even see the disk label on the GUI!  The walkthrough described has a different purpose and doesn't yield a setup usable in the set of circumstances I'm trying to address.  Nor would I expect it to.

 

I know people are tense about criticism and demanding users and such, but that's not what this is.  It's just a description of how to do something that pulls together info on how to use several products to yield a specific useful result, which I describe in my first paragraph.  That's all.  Not a criticism of the authors or creators of any of the products involved at all.  No bug reports or feature requests are included - just a procedure that does one specific multi-step thing and does it well.

 

I write a lot in my actual job, usually documenting stuff I created myself or led a team that created, so it made sense in my head to do this.  Given the reaction of people I specifically thought would appreciate this, I almost certainly won't do it again.

[SIDE 3/SDX/SD Card/APT Partitioning for Dummies]

The APT manual does not mention the 32 MB limit on FAT partitions that are meant to be accessible from SDX.  Your video, while awesome, shows you creating a 1024 MB FAT32 partition, and does not mention that SDX won't be able to access it under SIDE 3.  Most of what I wrote up can be found in one of those two places but the key to getting a working FAT partition accessible from an APT HD under SDX wasn't there.  It took me a lot of research and trial and error to figure out that important detail!

 

Also, I was unable to find a step by step procedure for setting up a working SD card the way I wanted it, with a usable FAT16 partition that supports moving files between PC and APT, a bootable APT HD and such, so I wrote one.

 

Among the things I didn't include, because I had a specific goal in mind, is the fact that you can indeed have FAT32 on the same SD card, and SIDE 3 will let you access it, but SDX won't.  The stuff about needing FATFS.SYS was indeed mentioned, but it took me a bit of time to figure out how to get it where it would be useful.

 

Your code and your documentation are awesome, man, but I still feel like there is a need for what I wrote.  I base this on the fact that I was unable to find a clear explanation of how to make a FAT16 partition on an APT SD card that would be accessible from SDX.  Even the APT documentation linked shows the example FAT partition as being 10240 MB, which WILL NOT WORK for my use case.

 

I tried to cover other disturbing things that happened when I was figuring this out as well and mention them so the user wouldn't be alarmed.  Things like the APT partitions moving when you set up the external partition, and the fact that CHKFAT.COM requires a command line parameter for proper operation but doesn't mention it, so if you just run it it complains about your APT partition instead of either showing a usage message or searching for and checking the actual FAT partition.

 

This is meant to help people not have to re-figure out all of this detail.  I disagree that all of it is covered in the existing documentation.  The clues that would enable you to figure out the rest are there, but I had to do a lot of googling and searching of the atariage forums and actually disassembled chkfat.com to get the rest.    It's not meant to be a replacement for anything that already exists, just a helpful howto that fills in a few minor gaps.

[SIDE 3/SDX/SD Card/APT Partitioning for Dummies]

SIDE 3/SDX/SD Card/APT Partitioning for Dummies

Given a SIDE 3 cartridge and an SD card, how do you format the SD card so you can use it as an Atari hard disk and also be able to use it to load data into said hard disk?  I had a lot of challenges figuring this out properly, involving many web searches and a lot of viewing of threads on the AtariAge forums.  All of the info here is documented… somewhere, but I found nowhere that had it all laid out neatly.  So I thought I’d give it a try.  Sorry if it is too long.  I should probably start a blog instead of doing this…

 

If I made mistakes or missed things, feedback is welcome.  I’m trying to strike a balance between “not enough info” and “too much info” while pointing out common pitfalls.  I am not trying to cover all possible situations, just ones I hit.  So please be gentle!

 

Step 1:  Round up the stuff you’ll need.  That’s a SIDE 3 cart, an A8, and an SD card.  A microSD card is fine with an adaptor.  You’ll also need a copy of the SpartaDOS X Toolkit disk, which can be downloaded from the SpartaDOS X Upgrade Project.  Finally, you’ll ultimately need a way to load that onto your system after you’re done partitioning and formatting.  Any of these should work for that: Sdrive-MAX, actual A8-compatible floppy drive, SIO2USB, etc.  I’m not going to attempt to describe the details of each of these, just warning you that you won’t be able to access a FAT partition from your HD without FATFS.SYS, which comes from the SDX Toolkit.

 

Step 2:  Put the SD card in the SIDE 3 cart.  Put the SIDE 3 cart in the A8.  Boot the machine.  The SD card need not be large – I used a 2 GB card for this, which is plenty if all you want to do is what I described in the first paragraph.  I recommend booting with the SIDE 3 switch in the up position so you can see the nice GUI instead of dropping right into SDX.  If SIDE 3 doesn’t recognize the card, you’ll get “No media” errors.  “No items” is ok, “No media” needs fixed.

 

Step 3:  Use the arrow keys on the keyboard (or a joystick if you prefer) to go to the far right menu item, which looked like a big arrow.  Select “Boot SpartaDOS X”.  Do that.

 

Step 4:  Run fdisk.  It is on the CAR: device but at this point your PATH contains only CAR: so you don’t need to do anything special to find fdisk and format and such.

 

Step 5:  Hit RETURN on the About screen.  This will cause it to enumerate devices.  Your SD card should show as the only device.  If it doesn’t, debug as needed.  Sometimes your cart or your SD card have issues or just don’t like each other.  Good luck with that if it happens.  My best advice if things aren’t good at this point is to reset the cart, reboot, and maybe try a different SD card.

 

Step 6:  Hit RETURN to select your device.  Now you’ll get an empty partition list.  If it isn’t, because you’re using a non-new SD card, I recommend trying a different one or re-initializing this one.  If it’s a new card, it should say “Disk requires initialization. Proceed?”.  Do that.  It then warns you “MBR will be destroyed”.  Allow that also, after double checking that you have the right SD card inserted and are ok with overwriting the current contents.

 

Step 7:  Now you should be on the “Initialize disk” menu.  If you are re-using a card instead of starting with a fresh one, you can get here by re-initializing the card.  I’m going to assume you got here and things are fine, whether you’re using a new card or not.

 

Step 8:  First, use shift-TAB on your A8 to go to the FAT menu.  Use the arrow keys to navigate to FAT16.  Hit RETURN.  Now TAB to the FAT (MB) field and type “32”.  Smaller is ok.  Larger is bad, so very bad.  This is going to be your FAT partition that you can use to transfer data to your HD.  If you make it larger than 32, it won’t be recognized as FAT16, which is bad.  FJC’s awesome videos show him setting it to 1024MB, which is fine for a FAT32 partition that will be used by SIDE 3, but it won’t work for the use case I am describing.  Anyway, set it to 32.  Don’t touch the other fields – MBR, Metadata Sectors, and Auto-fill disk should all be selected by default, and the APT (MB) field will now be 32 MB smaller.  This is good.  Hit RETURN, hit RETURN again to SAVE on the Disk Layout Summary page that appears.  Hit RETURN yet again to say you are sure.  Now you will be on the APT partition page.

 

Step 9:  Now we prime your HD by creating a partition.  Hit RETURN and it will put you in the Size field on the first row.  Type “65535”.  You could use a smaller number (though I’m not sure why you’d want to).  Bigger number = bad.  65535 is the happy number for this field.  Hit RETURN.  Now use the arrow keys to return to that row and hit the V key, then use the arrow keys to select D3: and hit RETURN yet again.  You don’t have to call this D3: but if you do that you’ll be keeping A: and B: free for floppies or Sdrive-MAX or what have you, avoiding conflicts.  While you’re on this row, also hit the B key.  This will make your first HD partition bootable.  Which you want.

 

Step 10:  Now we set up your FAT partition.  Later on you can come back and add additional HD partitions, but for now, trust me and do things in this order.  Hit the X key.  You’ll get a dire-sounding warning stating “Caution: Operation may invalidate data in higher DOS partitions”.  This is fine, and also one of the reasons for doing things in this order.  Hit RETURN.  Now you get an “External Partition” dialog, showing your 32 MB FAT partition.  Hit RETURN to accept this.  Now you have two partitions – one marked Ext and the other marked DOS.  Make sure the Ext partition is selected and type V to set the drive.  I like DN: for this but do what you want.  My reasoning is that the RAMDISK is normally O:, you don’t want to alias anything over top of A: or B:, and it’s good to have your HD partitions have contiguous names.  So select DN: and hit RETURN, or select something more to your taste if you want.

 

Step 11:  Use ctrl-W followed by RETURN to save this partitioning info to SD card.  RETURN again to say you are sure.  APT is now updated successfully.  Use ctrl-X and RETURN to exit fdisk.

 

Step 12:  Now you need to format your APT HD partition and your FAT partition.  I don’t think it matters which order this is done in.  I’m going to talk about APT first for no special reason.  So now you’re at the D1: prompt.  Run format.  Like fdisk, it is on CAR: and thus requires no special handling.  You want to type 3 for Unit 3, which is D3:, which will soon become C:.  I like to name it C.  Do that by hitting the V key and typing C, then RETURN.  Name it something else if you prefer, it doesn’t matter, but I’m going to keep to my naming convention here.  Now hit B for Build Directory.  It warns you, asks if you are sure (type Y), warns you again, again you are sure (type Y).  Format is now complete.  Use ESC to exit format.  You now have a drive C:.  Type “DIR C:” and you’ll see it contains no files and 65516 FREE SECTORS.  Cool.  Now, we need to format the FAT partition.  Again, you could have done this before formatting C:, the order doesn’t matter AFAIK.  Pop the SD card from SIDE 3, put it in a PC or Mac or whatever you have, and format it FAT.  I like to call mine FATTY for no special reason.  I’d copy some files onto FATTY while you have it on your PC or whatever, just so you have something to look at from the SIDE menu.   Note that FATTY is only 32 MB!  Therefore, this is the max you can move to your HD at once using this specific method.  Obviously you can insert some other device to move things around, but you won’t be able to access FAT32 partitions from SpartaDOS X under SIDE 3.  I’d copy at least one 8.3 file to the root directory and at least one folder of stuff.  This isn’t really part of the setup procedure but it will help.

 

Step 13:  Put the SD card back in SIDE 3.  Hard reboot by clicking the button on the top of SIDE 3, then RESET on your A8.  You should now be able to see the FAT16 partition, along with an Untitled APT partition.  You can also see the stuff you copied onto FATTY – maybe.  SIDE 3 will only show you files with extensions it likes and such.  So for myself, I copied on a .TXT file and I can’t see that, but also copied on a folder full of XEX files and can see those.  I can also run those from SIDE 3 if I want.  Now, go back into SpartaDOS.  You will boot into C:, and SDX will tell you that Partitions C,N are available but it can’t actually see N: yet.  We’ll fix that soon.

 

Step 14: This is where you need the SDX Toolkit.  Attach your floppy drive or Sdrive-MAX or SIO2whatever and set it up so you can see the contents of toolkit.atr, which you downloaded earlier.  I used an SDRIVE-MAX for this.  I did exactly these steps, but you don’t have to do it this way – the goal is to get FATFS.SYS onto your hard disk somehow.  I copied toolkit.atr to my Sdrive-MAX and plugged that into my A8.  I then created a directory on C and changed to it (MKDIR TOOLKIT, followed by CD TOOLKIT).  I then copied the entire contents of toolkit.atr into TOOLKIT (COPY /R A:).  I did this because I knew I’d want more stuff from toolkit.atr eventually and had plenty of space on C:.  Then, I changed directories back to DC: (CD \) and un-ARCed the FAT driver (ARC X TOOLKIT\DRIVERS\FATFS.ARC).  You should now have all the FAT stuff on DC: in the root directory.  When you’re done, you can delete all but FATFS.SYS, if you want.  For that matter you could hide FATFS.SYS in a dir if you want.  Anyway.

 

Step 15: Make sure FATTY is happy.  Type “CHKFAT N:”.  If you diverged from the steps above, you’ll need to use the correct drive letter.  You should get nice output with all OKs.  This means your FAT partition is good.  You can’t quite use it yet but we’re very close.  Note – running CHKFAT with no parameters isn’t good – make sure to run it with the name you gave your FAT partition!

 

Step 16: Now we make it so N: (FATTY) will work with SDX.  ED AUTOEXEC.BAT, and add a line “FATFS.SYS”.  Save it and hard reboot.  You have to use AUTOEXEC.BAT for this rather than CONFIG.SYS because you can’t edit the CONFIG.SYS on CAR: and SDX won’t use a CONFIG.SYS from DC: because there is one on CAR:.   After the reboot, you should be able to access N: and see the test files you copied onto FATTY earlier.  DIR N: is a bit slow for SIDE 3/FAT/APT/SDX reasons I don’t fully understand, but it works great.

 

Step 17: Sanity check: Type DF at the SDX command line.  You should now see DC: and DN:.

 

Step 18: Congratulations!  Now you can go back and add additional HD partitions, or additional FAT16 or FAT32 partitions, or you can add more things to AUTOEXEC.BAT, or you can just use your system and start moving piles of stuff onto your new HD.  Beware FAT partitions - SDX will ignore FAT32, and if you EXT mount FAT16 it moves things around on the partition list.  You can use FAT32 to make things available to SIDE 3 but not to SDX.

 

Hopefully this was helpful to someone!

 

Dr. Memory