+OLD CS1 Posted March 7, 2011 Share Posted March 7, 2011 (edited) I have finally got my hands on an IDE card and have discovered for myself yet another, easy and fast way to transfer to a TI (provided you have the IDE card...) Fred Kahl has written a program called FATCOPY that enables the TI to read and copy PC formatted CF cards. My current project is Transferring about 500 disks of music files onto a scuzzy drive on my TI. With the IDE card and FATCOPY I can simply plug the CF card into my PC and load it with disk images then unplug it and move it to the IDE card in the TI. At this point COPYFAT takes over and in TI99-PC fashion writes a selected disk to a RAM disk. I can do 9 at a time until I have to switch to DM2K, copy the RAM disk contents to the scuzzy directory. Then it's back to COPYFAT for another 9 disks. It's really the same process as using TI99-PC only about 10 times faster as the floppy disk copy time is removed. Kind of roundabout and requires some hardware but yet another way. I could do this with my current collection of Zip drives (Amiga SCSI, PC USB, TI SCSI.) Where can one find this excellent-sounding program?? EDIT: My TI does not have IDE, it has SCSI. Edited March 7, 2011 by OLD CS1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted March 7, 2011 Author Share Posted March 7, 2011 I have finally got my hands on an IDE card and have discovered for myself yet another, easy and fast way to transfer to a TI (provided you have the IDE card...) Fred Kahl has written a program called FATCOPY that enables the TI to read and copy PC formatted CF cards. My current project is Transferring about 500 disks of music files onto a scuzzy drive on my TI. With the IDE card and FATCOPY I can simply plug the CF card into my PC and load it with disk images then unplug it and move it to the IDE card in the TI. At this point COPYFAT takes over and in TI99-PC fashion writes a selected disk to a RAM disk. I can do 9 at a time until I have to switch to DM2K, copy the RAM disk contents to the scuzzy directory. Then it's back to COPYFAT for another 9 disks. It's really the same process as using TI99-PC only about 10 times faster as the floppy disk copy time is removed. Kind of roundabout and requires some hardware but yet another way. I could do this with my current collection of Zip drives (Amiga SCSI, PC USB, TI SCSI.) Where can one find this excellent-sounding program?? EDIT: My TI does not have IDE, it has SCSI. It's written for the IDE card specifically but here is the location.......http://members.ziggo.nl/fgkaal/Software/sw_idedsr.html#idedsr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 It's written for the IDE card specifically but here is the location.......http://members.ziggo.nl/fgkaal/Software/sw_idedsr.html#idedsr Thanks. That is a little disappointing that it only works with the SIDE device. Is it because the program has to access the drive at a level which does not lend itself to working with other DSRs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted March 8, 2011 Author Share Posted March 8, 2011 It's written for the IDE card specifically but here is the location.......http://members.ziggo.nl/fgkaal/Software/sw_idedsr.html#idedsr Thanks. That is a little disappointing that it only works with the SIDE device. Is it because the program has to access the drive at a level which does not lend itself to working with other DSRs? I would assume so since it is reading a PC formatted SIDE and files in DOS format not TI stuff until you copy it to a disk. The TI DSR's wouldn't know what to do... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 I would assume so since it is reading a PC formatted SIDE and files in DOS format not TI stuff until you copy it to a disk. The TI DSR's wouldn't know what to do... And more disappointing for my intended purposes... By Fred Kaal, RE: "IDE Card" After some more investigating and browsing the internet I found out that some devices like the earlier mentioned ZIP-drive are actually devices which have the so called PACKET command feature set implemented and a device like this tells you so by returning a signature >01 >01 >14 >EB in the Sector count, Sector number, Cylinder Low and Cylinder High registers when for example sending the identify device command. From this point I don't understand (yet) how to read or write sectors from a device like this. Meh. Guess I should have bought that nanoPEB when it was on eBay rather than chasing the SCSI card which I can barely use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 Thanks. That is a little disappointing that it only works with the SIDE device. Is it because the program has to access the drive at a level which does not lend itself to working with other DSRs? I would assume so since it is reading a PC formatted SIDE and files in DOS format not TI stuff until you copy it to a disk. The TI DSR's wouldn't know what to do... Yeah, but the TI DSRs aren't running in that case, only the IDE DSRs (and probably not even those, Fred's program is probably talking to the hardware directly). There is absolutely nothing preventing the TI from reading a FAT file system except someone writing the software, as Fred's tool proves. The only difference is his program loads as a program instead of being written as a DSR. Remember, all the TI itself knows is that it filled in a structure asking for a file, and passed it to a ROM routine that claims to understand how to talk to the file system device. What format things are stored on that device in is completely unimportant. That was one of the things I wanted to do with my IDE card, but I lost patience and sold the card after losing my source twice. :/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RXB Posted March 9, 2011 Share Posted March 9, 2011 Buy the way had a heck of a time getting the cables for hooking up the TI99/4A to the PC. Had to buy a old IBM 300PL and run Windows 98SE as none of my compters have a serial port. For what it's worth, the USB serial adapters work quite well for every application I've put them up to so far, and they are cheap and common, so the loss of legacy serial ports is not as bad as the loss of legacy parallel ports was. LOL well as it stands my main compter is a MacPro Quad Xeon and it can not run any of the Emulators in 64 bit mode, but I have a XP drive and run it oddly enough it is 64bit Windows XP. Where do you get the adapters for USB to serial Please? RXB, I may have an extra one I can send you.. It's USB to db9, so you may need to find a db9-db25 adapter... The listings on eBay mostly come with this adapter... However if you've got the nano-PEB, the db9 is the correct connector. The CF7 and nano-PEB are pretty much what I use exclusively these days for transferring... of course, this works much better transferring FROM PC TO TI. The issue is, you cannot have a standard disk drive hooked up with the CF7, so if you're going FROM TI disk TO the PC, you will probably need the serial cable... Let me know if you would like the adapter I have. I would happily donate it. BTW, the one I have came from http://www.sewelldev.com, and it's a far superior cable to the Chinese ones. Thank but just today I ran into a store that has them will pick it up tomarrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
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.