Jump to content
IGNORED

SIO2IDE Questions


Recommended Posts

I'm pleased to end this long-running saga. I received this from Irek at Atari Fan Store last week:

 

post-21964-128190148183_thumb.jpg

 

Although virtually unreadable, this diagram lacks most of the textual omissions of the one I had seen previously. I say "most": the pin number on U8 (65C02) is hard to read, although it was didn't take much investigation to establish that pin 40 (reset) was the connection of interest.

 

The other apparent error in this schematic is the labelling of NE555N as "U17". On the XE motherboards I've inspected, it's U19.

 

Anyway, wiring this up as per the diagram resulted in a non-booting machine. According to the 130XE schematic, all four AND gates on 74LS08 are in use, so I was hardly suprised the computer was hanging.

 

Let's remind ourselves what I was trying to achieve here: to automatically postpone the computer's boot-up process after power on until the RESET_OUT signal from the SIO2IDE goes high. the 6502's Reset pin is active low (I have learned), but the diagram's suggestion that a jumper wire is run from U18 to the Reset pin seems unlikely to work. How, after all, is this jumper to bypass the trace on the mainboard?

 

Pin 3 of NE555N handles the Reset Key, so lifting the pin was obviously going to knock out the Reset button. The schematic (I have deduced) aims to AND the reset button's state with that of the SIO2IDE's RESET_OUT line. If either is low, the CPU will reset.

 

Assembly of the working, alternative modification I eventually came up with is as follows:

 

  1. Lift pin 3 of NE555.
  2. Find a spare 74LS08 and trim off all legs apart from 1, 2, 3, 7, and 14.
  3. Lift legs 1, 2, and 3 and cut them down to about 2mm long.
  4. Piggy-back 74LS08 onto U18, soldering the two untrimmed legs (7 and 14) to the same legs of U18.
  5. Run a jumper wire from the raised pin 3 of NE555 to the shortened pin 1 of the piggy-backed 74LS08.
  6. Run a wire from the SIO2IDE's Reset_Out pin to the raised pin 2 of the 74LS08.
  7. Run a wire from 74LS08 pin 3 (output 1), to the hole vacated by NE555 pin 3.

And thankfully, after two or three hours messing around with this, a power-up cold start now causes the computer to wait until SIO2IDE has initialized before it tries to boot off drive 1. I chose to socket NE555 so that I can swap an "unjumpered" chip when SIO2IDE isn't fitted, but you can also make the computer boot by jumpering pins 1 and 2 of 74LS08 when there's no RESET_OUT signal.

 

I hope this is of use to someone out there, somewhere. icon_smile.gif It only took six months to figure out...

Edited by flashjazzcat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 years later...
Hello friends!


Today sunny and calm weather here in Moscow.

Particularly it means that I understood finally THE ZEN of SIO2IDE.


It's complicated enough device to be overhelming, but ...

There are some circumstances when you can not use cart/eci devices by your will.


Frequently it concearns Games and Utililities which have it's own schema of using memory.

This fact is normal for Atari but it's almost hell for user.


At first, I must thank very much 'Atari Fan Store' and it's staff!

The postage came in time and safely!


Two weeks ago I tried to run this device and I came to famous 'Yellow blinking hell'.


Now I see that we lay all work on Atari even thinking! (It's about me of course)


After all I got it working as a charm.


The rules of thumb are:

1. You are The BOSS! (Be very carefull with configurations!)

2. Anytime have your home with you as cochlea (FE I use SDX Maxflash cartridge (and it's ED) as lifebuoy for editing some configs when failure occurred.)

3. Don't beleive M$! (Specifically, when I edited lisp.cfg file, good old Billy's 'Notepad' appended *.txt extension to my text and then I got lisp.cfg.txt and unworking piece of HW.)

4. Be aware of power supply. (FE I use DiskOnModule flash devices. They have ~500mw power consumption. It works from 130XE 1.5W PSI with IDEPlus 2.0 plugged in and without any external Power Supply!)

5. Be on ATARI way! Use BIG letters and 8.3 naming! (Simply I need not long names...)


My Thanks to AFS for their efforts!!!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have been a very happy user of Sio2IDE 3.3a for years. I built one in a Cigar Box and it's still working and it never failed to me.

 

The only downside I found was that it needed the CF card to be defragmented to be compatible. I did not like the successor of it. It did not let me swap disks very easily (only swapping with the configuration disk). So from the Sio2IDE versions, 3.3a is the best one can get. It's important to know that you should have the latest firmware, otherwise CF cards are not supported.

 

Oh and one more thing: Does exist a 3.3 firmware that is compatible with the newer Sio2IDE hardware? I understand I can't use all the features of the newer Sio2IDE, but as said: I find the 3.3 firmware much better....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In 2009 I wrote a nice tool for Sio2IDE 3.3a ... I'm not sure it works also with higher firmware versions of Sio2IDE.

 

It works a lot easier than the FD33A (Fdisk for Sio2IDE) and it is almost bug free. There were some slight issues with my tool, but I don't remember what they were.

 

If I'm home I'll dig it up and post it here.

 

I also created another tool that let you create tiny configuration binaries. So I had one partition full of XEX games in MyPICO dos, but... when you wanted to play a disk based game you also had to run Fdisk or my S2Itool... so that was something I absolutely did not like. So I created a new tool: you can select the desired disks you want on D1:, D2: etc. and then the tool saved a small .XEX file. Everytime you run that small .XEX file the Sio2IDE automatically mounted the right ATR's to the right Dx: and Dy:

 

It's hard to explain but let me give a few examples.

 

My tool created sumgames.XEX. Running Sumgames.XEX resulted in:

Mounted SUMGAM_A.ATR D1:

Mounted SUMGAM_B.ATR D2:

COLD BOOT

 

So after running SUMGAMES.XEX in myPico dos the Sio2IDE mounted the right disks and then rebooted, so there was Summergames.

 

Other example. My tool created BRUNDLE.XEX. Running BRUNDLE.XEX resulted in

 

Mounted BRUNDL_A.ATR D1:

Mounted BRUNDL_B.ATR D2:

COLD BOOT

 

So after running BRUNDLE.XEX in myPico dos the Sio2IDE mounted the right disks and then rebooted, so there was The Brundles.

 

Worked very well.

Sio2IDE 3.3a has a very nice SWAP d1: <> D2: switch so it worked pretty well. I have to dig up these tools.

 

They are not documented. The first tool was pretty straight forward, the second tool might need docs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi ProWizard.

Glad to here it.

May be your program is a sort of human customizable launcher? ;-)

 

I have one question.

Is it possible with SIO2IDE to boot from D2: with some DOS in it

and have some compiler in D1: in a simple way? /they all love to search D1:-drive for their runtimes and libraries/

...

The absence of SWAP is limitation of course.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Only with Sio2IDE 3.3a you can boot from D2: but that is a swap, so it still boots from D1: but it is the disk that is mounted to D2: (Atari always boots from D1:, unless you use a custom OS like Qmeg, or you have a Sio redirection in another way like a blackbox or other PBI device with a bios that can redirect SIO).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 years later...
On 10/15/2020 at 6:06 PM, Fred Olivas said:

Hello all, I've recently noticed that my Kingston CF cards have started having problems booting on my SIO2IDE device.  I often have to reset my Atari at least 9 times before the card is recognized.  Does anyone know what the issues might be and how to fix them?

Thank you very much.

My experience with sio2ide is that from time to time the Atmega needs to be reprogrammed. The fuse settings had been wrong initially so there is a chance that it does not operate flawlessly anymore.

 

Not sure if that is the case in your situation. I have sio2ide 3.3a in a cigar box. And although it is terribly obsolete these days, I still love it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

42 minutes ago, Fred Olivas said:

Thank you.  I also love my SIO2IDE device.  Reprogrammed?  Do you mean flash again via .HEX file?  Using XLoader?  I've forgotten what Arduino I installed so I need to disassemble my device after so many years.

Not sure. It has been a long time since I did this. But I think that is what you mentioned. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having trouble with reading CF cards that, until two weeks ago, booted up just fine. Need a primer as to preparing a CF card through a Windows 7 PC, formatting in FAT32, moving files into card (which files again?) and finally running the CONFIG program on the Atari. It's been many years since I last did this and just can't remember the steps. 

Thank you all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, FreddieBear said:

Having trouble with reading CF cards that, until two weeks ago, booted up just fine. Need a primer as to preparing a CF card through a Windows 7 PC, formatting in FAT32, moving files into card (which files again?) and finally running the CONFIG program on the Atari. It's been many years since I last did this and just can't remember the steps. 

Thank you all.

 

The most important thing with Sio2IDE (well, the version I use -> 3.3) is that you need to defragment the CF card. If you format it and you copy all the files in one move, if everything works right the cart does not need to be defragmented. 

 

You do not need any files, but there needs to be a ini file (not sure though from memory whether it is called SIO2IDE.INI) ... in every directory there needs to be such a file. I will have to look for the exact filename.

The Config program is called FDISK.

I wrote years ago (2009 or so) a tool called S2ITOOL. It is only tested with the Sio2IDE 3.3 ... it makes it much more convenient to mount atr's and browse through folders. 

There is also the jukebox program.

 

Sio2IDE is pretty obsolete these days, but it is still a cool little device. 

The successor with the USB port was not my favorite version. It had not a nice D1: D2: swap, which I loved on the 3.3 version.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, FreddieBear said:

Thanks for the info. I will defrag an unreadable card and see how it goes. As far as flashing my device goes. I downloaded the v3.3 file but don't know how to proceed. Do I need a special programmer or can I use an Arduino?  How to do. 

Thank you

Fred

When it comes to flashing, I do not know anymore. I remember I flahsed my Atmega's using an external flasher. But there was (IIRC) on my sio2IDE a header.... I made back then a cable using a printer cable (still if I remember correctly). 

 

wasn't it an AVR header?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, FreddieBear said:

Yeah. Too much time and too many developments. Over the past 20 years. Just a shout out if anyone knows the answer to flashing the firmware on the SIO2IDE device. 

Best is to type here what is printed on the biggest chip, or better a detailed pic of that chip so people can read the label.

 

It is quite common part so probably easy to flash.

 

Ps. Please make also pic of sio2ide you have.

Edited by Marius
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Update:. I discovered that many of my CF cards had damaged files. How they were damages is unknown as they've been in storage a few years. I started backing up each card, formatting each card with FAT 32 installed then transferring each disk copy back onto itself but replacing each DOS file with a known working copy. Success!  Only one disk failed to work but fortunately for me I had two extra unformatted CF cards so I managed to save all of my data. I still don't know what firmware resides in my SIO2IDE device but now it doesn't really matter to me anymore. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...