Larry

Addendum for the previous post on the ST118273LC: One difference that I've noticed is a longer power-up time with the newer drive. It seems to go through a number of gyrations before the "busy" LED goes off after powering the drive. I suspect it is waiting for some signal from the interface or doing calibrations and self-diagnostics, but it does take close to 30-seconds to complete from a cold start. If you don't wait, the MIO will not recognize the drive, and if you try to boot the Atari, you will end up at the self-test screen. With this drive, you must power the drive first and wait for the busy light to go out. Then power the MIO (busy light will flash on for a couple of seconds). Then power the computer. Following this routine, it boots properly every time. -Larry

OK, this AM I got a "new drive" working with the MIO & 1.4B3. It is an ST118273LC -- same model as one of Warerat's drives. My setup is a little different, so I'll post the method. First, the jumpers: Parity Disable and Force Single Ended are jumpered; no others. I'm using an 80 to 68/50 pin adapter of the type previously mentioned by bob1200xl. The seller of this stated that this does provide high-byte termination in Narrow mode. Since the MIO is 50-pin and all my cables are 50-pin ribbon, I'm using the 50-pin portion of the adapter with an (apx) 3-foot cable to the MIO. (Currently no other terminators on the line). I had trouble initially getting this setup to work reliably, but then I noticed that the back side of the 50-pin portion of the adapter was perilously close to the drive -- probably touching it part of the time. So I put a strip of electrical tape on those contacts and tried again. This time, it was successful and stable. My throughput is a little lower than I expected, but still very acceptable. (This is a 7200 rpm, 512 byte/sector Barracuda drive.) Writing: 11384 Reading: 13237 Average: 12311 That is using MyDos (which is a bit slower than Sparta). This is almost identical to the throughput using my old MFM drive with 256 bytes/sector. Another indicator is the time it takes to sector copy my HD image to the new partition using my Action! sector copy backup program. This took 23 minutes and 9 seconds versus just a bit under 23 minutes with the original setup. But the bonus is the this drive is much quieter than the old ST125 which has a distinct high-pitched "whine" that I find particularly annoying. I will more than likely add some type of termination to the drive just because it is good practice, but at least for now, things are looking good! Hooray!!! -Larry

What is the verdict on external terminators? I don't want to modify my existing MIO to provide termination power, so (in general) do add-on terminators provide a workable solution for drives without termination jumpers? Thanks, Larry

Hi Bob- How many new issues arose from moving from XL7 to XL14? Is this a case of diminishing marginal returns? -Larry

Hey, Black Box owners -- what kind of SCSI drives are you using with your Black Box? I've used the same Connor CP30200 (213 MB) Fast SCSI-2 drive since I got the BB quite a few years ago. It is a solid performer, although not real fast. I've also tested my old ST hard drive the ST157N which also worked quite well. However, it is neither as fast nor as quiet as the Conner. BTW, I prefer the Black Box with its I/O sound toggled "on," and interestingly, there is virtually no difference in the throughput of the BB with or without the I/O sound active (as measured by drao030's RWTEST.COM. With my setup, the BB is about 2000 B/sec faster writing using a compact flash card (and IDE-SCSI adapter) than my Conner drives. -Larry

Hi Marius- What kind of drive(s) have you used with your 7720U (50-pin SCSI)? Mine is fine with compact flash cards, but picky about IDE drives -- have you been able to get an actual laptop drive to work properly? I suspect the 7720UW (68-pin version) would work using a 68 to 50-pin adapter, but I have not tried it. -Larry

I've never kept a diary, but I took a look at this as a specialized data base program -- pretty neat! -Larry

Hi Mathy- Thanks for the info. I also was looking at the other 4.5X versions of MyDos at your site and in my stuff, and found that 4.53/4 and noticed that it contains only Dos and Dup. Do you know/have you tried the regular or modified ramdisks with it? Gotta have my ramdisk. -Larry

Hi Mathy & Hias- I normally use 4.50, but 4.5X should be fine. I'll give those a try! Mathy, where is 4.55 -- your site? Thanks, Larry

Hello Hias- I am using your release (1.20) patch HISIO.COM with MyDos 4.50. If I launch HISIO.COM from the MyDos menu, all is well, but it will not execute properly when loaded as part of the usual AUTORUN.SYS file (i.e. ramdisk setup). I tried appending it to the MyDos AUTORUN.SYS file and vice-versa. Do you know why it behaves as such? Edit: I should add that I am using the XL/XE OS on a "stock" 130XE with the KMK-JZ interface. Thanks, Larry

Was this a common, early 800 design -- I would swear that my original 800 (1982) had an RF jack and plug-in cable. (?) -Larry

Hi Candle- I'd like one VBXE -- NTSC type for the 130XE. -Larry

Thanks and every time I think I have bought the ultimate accessory something else comes along. Were the Corvus true "Winchester" drives, or something else more like Syquest or Iomega (not necessarily removable, but it's a different technology, IIRC). Interesting -- what is the transfer rate through the joystick ports? Have you run drac030's RWTEST.COM on it? -Larry

One VBXE-2 and one AOSD for me. -Larry

As I recall, the entire XL/XE series are protected from damage (potentially) caused by "hot-swapping" carts with the computer powered up. But does the same apply to carts plugged into a PBI/ECI externder/adapter such as on the MIO (old or new), Black Box, or KMK-JZ? In other words can they be damaged by hot-swapping? I'm pretty sure that I talked to Bob Puff about the BB years ago, but I didn't make any note of it, and I just don't recall his answer anymore. Since there are several versions of the KMK-JZ, there may be more than one answer? I've always been cautious about this, powering down and swapping carts before powering back up. But maybe not necessary? -Larry

While I am waiting for more drives & adapters to test with the MIO, I hooked up my trusty old MFM drives with the Adaptec bridge-board. These are low-level formatted to 256-bytes/sector. I have both the ST251 and ST125 and used with the original 1.1 firmware. The 251's are actually quieter than the 125's -- wouldn't have thought that, but both my 125's have a distinct "whine" to them. Anyway, I ran drac030's RWTEST on both and got very similar numbers -- not sterling, but definitely better than my old ST157N. Writing 11152 Reading 11228 Average 11190 Hey, MEetalguy66 -- sometime could you run RWTEST on your setup using the older embedded SCSI drives that are formatted to 256 bytes/sector. Just curious if you see a speed penalty having them "half-sector formatted." With the ST157N and the 1.4Bx firmware, there is a significant penalty, only doing RWTEST of around 6000 bytes/sec. on both Reading and Writing. -Larry

There was a guy that was going to try to get Ultra-Speed out of the Rana, but haven't heard anything from him in a while. It is a tough nut to crack, since 99% of all Rana's have 8040/8050 MCU's. More than one person has tried this. He did create a patch to add UltraSpeed to the Indus in place of the Synchromesh, which in itself was a great achievement. -Larry

I'm normally not an emulator user (Atari800winplus 4.7 Beta) , but using either PAL or NTSC (100% speed) settings, with XL/XE OS, and 128K memory, M18 doesn't seem to function correctly. Perhaps something I'm doing incorrectly, but the game either goes to the "enter initiials" and locks up, or goes all the way the first (demo?) hole. I tried it keyboard only and also with a Logitech joypad. Any suggestions? Thanks, Larry

Thanks, Warerat- After looking at a bunch of 68- to 50-pin adapters, I found a couple last night that looked like the passive adapters, but did contain the resistor network (like yours). I also got a nice reply from a seller on eBay who clearly understood SCSI connections, although he unfortunately didn't sell what I needed. I'll study the docs in the link you provided. I do understand the need for HBT, and have found several other good docs about connecting Wide and Narrow devices. Slowly, but surely, I'm getting a handle on this newer SCSI stuff. I've got some parts on order -- we'll see how much I've learned! -Larry

High-byte termination? I understand the need for high-byte termination since our MIO's are 8-bit (Narrow) devices, but it seems logical that any 68- to 50-pin adapter does not carry the added (Wide) byte and it's parity bit. Under this situation, do we even need to be concerned about the high-byte termination since it is effectively truncated? Or are there other considerations? Edit: found a source that says these are simply adapters and do not provide high-byte termination -- the high byte simply floats. http://www.mrichter.com/cdr/files/68_50_n.htm This seems like an important point, since as far as I can tell, 68-pin drives are widely available, but when I check with suppliers of 68- to 50-pin adapters, they simply say (to the effect) "this is an adapter not a terminator." This also relates to the question to Warerat in the "New MIO production run" thread, since studying his pictures, I couldn't see any high-byte termination method other than the passive 68- to 50-pin adapter. Perhaps I'm missing something in the pics or perhaps the SUN enclosure provides the termination, powered from the bus from the MIO? Or perhaps it is provided in the cable? Edit 2: After looking at many search results, I found this adapter with termination, and it looks like what we need. For example, this would plug into the back of the SUN enclosure's 68-pin female connectors and provide the 50-pin IDC ribbon cable path to the MIO. http://www.ramelectronics.net/computer-par.../prodSM058.html -Larry

Well, the music in Fortress is taken from Kemal Ezcan`s "Super Synthesizer" sound demo which can be found e.g. here: http://www.atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5260 greetings, Andreas Koch. Thanks, Andreas! I'll check out the rest of the tunes. -Larry

Hi Warerat- Is this still the best version (or do you have a newer mod)? This mod provides the necessary high-byte termination when using a W type drive? I think I've learned enough now to get an 80-pin drive (I hope). -Larry

Bf2k+ kindly provided this RWTEST info: SDX 4.42 - ST32430N RWTEST.COM 256b w: 11415.4566 r: 22312.029 a: 16863.7428 512b w: 22964.4275 r: 40905.3866 a: 31934.907 Note -- slightly faster than the original MIO with MFM (256-byte) and 1.1 firmware; slower than the ST15150N and ST31055N and Warerat's 80-pin drives. -Larry

I should have added to the previous post (but can't edit now)... It's not that I don't want to use newer drives, but lack of knowledge about them has been quite a hindrance. If this style of adapter works, I can foresee using my SUN 68-pin case with the 80-pin drive and still connecting to the 50-pin MIO. BTW, I do use SATA, so I'm at least up-to-date there! -Larry

Hope to find some nice new Tetris versions from this thread. Fortress has always been my favorite -- love that catchy background music. I haven't played the game for years, but I can still here the tune "playing in my head." -Larry