Discovery Cartridge

[Merrick Bill]

Does anyone have any information about using the Discovery Cart to back up Atari 8 bit disks? Also, is there any new homebrew software that enhances the use of the Discovery Cartridge?

 

Bill

[walter_J64bit]

Does anyone have any information about using the Discovery Cart to back up Atari 8 bit disks? Also, is there any new homebrew software that enhances the use of the Discovery Cartridge?

 

Bill

I have a Discovery Cartridge what software Ver. do you have? I have 2.6

[walter_J64bit]

I know this is old but anyway!

Edited January 6, 2009 by walter_J64bit

[ijor]

Does anyone have any information about using the Discovery Cart to back up Atari 8 bit disks?

 

Sorry for taking, oops, almost a year to reply (which is the embarassed smiley here?)

 

I wrote such a program back at the day. Unfortunately I lost the executable many years ago. The software was published by Happy Computers in their BBS as Shareware (AFAIK they never included it in their distribution disk). So somebody might still have it.

 

It required, of course, a 5.25 drive attached to the Discovery Cartridge. And it could read only the front side (no support for the flippy side). It could copy many protections that the 8-bit Happy could not, but it couldn't copy all of them. I know I never implemented support for weak bits, but I don't remember if there was missing support for some other protection or not. It was fully automatic (no PDB of any kind was required).

 

The same software could transfer files from/to the ST to/from a DOS formatted 8-bit disk. I recall I used this feature a lot. It was my main method then for ST <=> 8-bit transfer.

 

Myself I still might have the software somewhere and someday I might find it, or someday I might rewrite it from scratch. But I am too busy lately, and have quite some other Atari stuff (including some other Discovery Cartridge software) in my TODO list. So don't expect this to happen nearly anytime soon.

 

Again, it was available at the Happy BBS, so somebody must have it somewhere. The only thing I can do for you at the moment, in case you find it, is to waive you the Shareware fee Bad joke, I know.

Edited January 6, 2009 by ijor

[walter_J64bit]

I can post the copy of version 2.6 that I have. If anyone has other versions old or new should post here. I like to see some of the other versions of the software.

 

@ ijor I would love to see this, I've about read this in the manual it but I never seen it done!

[walter_J64bit]

2.6 uploaded

Discovery_software_2_6.zip

[FULS]

2.6 uploaded

Thank You!!

[techie_alison]

Be aware that there's a few HCDC zips floating about on t'Internet which are corrupted. When I first got mine I downloaded one of these, and it was Ijor which pointed out that my filesizes were wrong.

 

[tuf]

Anyone have any info on taking a Discover Cart from say option 0 to option 1 or 2? I'd be curious to see tech details on the various upgrades (not just what they did).

[techie_alison]

How about a nice circuit diagram?

 

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/old_computers...139135/sizes/o/

[tuf]

How about a nice circuit diagram?

 

Awesome! Most of the mods look easily installed. I'm not really sure if any of them are useful aside from perhaps the battery. I've already got the Apple ROMS in mine, as well as the 3/4 drive connector (but no apparent switch/circuitry), and the memory banking switch.

 

Mine says "Option 0" on the bottom, but its apparently been upgraded by somebody. I suppose im only missing the battery, cart passthru, and the 3/4 drive stuff.

 

BTW, is a clock driver included with the software? I've never noticed...

 

Tuf

[walter_J64bit]

I hate to bump up a old post but if I get a battery installed to my Discover Cart I should have a working clock for my St?

Thanks to the late techie_aliso for the diagram.

Edited August 9, 2013 by walter_J64bit

[carmel_andrews]

I did have one but sold mine, i think mine had the mac/amiga option as well

 

never got around to using it as i wasn't much into he ST

Edited August 9, 2013 by carmel_andrews