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New (alt) BIOS for Ultimate 1MB/Incognito


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I am new to the board but already It seems to me that there is a small group of people here who follow every new bit of software/hardware with certain enthusiasm, the rest seem to be more casual. Maybe that's the reason.

 

You are entirely right, but that 'small group' is still much larger than those 9 or 10 likes that were given. The reason I wrote it, was that I know how time consuming it can be to write stuff like this. And since it also provided completely free, I thought FJC could use some more reward.

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You are entirely right, but that 'small group' is still much larger than those 9 or 10 likes that were given. The reason I wrote it, was that I know how time consuming it can be to write stuff like this. And since it also provided completely free, I thought FJC could use some more reward.

 

Well said. If anybody wants and can afford to offer a more tangible reward, I would also remind people that he accepts donations :)

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You are entirely right, but that 'small group' is still much larger than those 9 or 10 likes that were given. The reason I wrote it, was that I know how time consuming it can be to write stuff like this. And since it also provided completely free, I thought FJC could use some more reward.

 

Though I hadn't given a like this particular posting of FJC, I have previously "liked" and posted much praise for his project(s) and him. I still appreciate all he does too. But the thing is, FJC has a really rapid release cycle, which is really awesome and not a complaint at all, but I don't always make sure to throw a like every time there is an increment. The times I don't are usually when I haven't even tried it out yet, and even then I often do. I've gotta tell ya, I'm not sure what it is exactly, but it feels like I should be embarrassed of having fan boy fever or something to just gush all over every release, no matter how minor an update, and no matter if I have even checked it out yet or not. So I don't really need to be shamed because I missed throwing out a like on one of the release posts, do I?

 

So, I'll just say it for the past, the present, and future too... I think FJC's projects are really, really good and I appreciate what he does. So if I ever miss "liking" something like that, you'll all know that I still actually like it.

 

Keep up the great work Flash Jazz Cat!

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This is supposed to be a "final" release, and the first major point release in three months. That's probably what Prowizard is getting at: nothing to do with fanboyism. I couldn't really care less about "likes". What's important is that people use the software and verify that it works. A sombre response is probably a good thing. Either the prior releases were "really, really good" enough, or the new release was consumed without issues.

 

In any case: I'm pleased to call the project finished.

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This is supposed to be a "final" release, and the first major point release in three months. That's probably what Prowizard is getting at: nothing to do with fanboyism. I couldn't really care less about "likes". What's important is that people use the software and verify that it works. A sombre response is probably a good thing. Either the prior releases were "really, really good" enough, or the new release was consumed without issues.

 

In any case: I'm pleased to call the project finished.

 

Well I see. I have not yet checked it out. Typically I keep up with releases pretty much as they come, but lately I have been focusing my maintenance & configuring type activities to a completely different realm. I even stopped upgrading Altirra and am still using 2.80 final. Trust me, that's not like my usual self. :) But I will get around to things Atari more in the future no doubt. When I do, I of course will let you know if I come across any issues, but I bet it will work great.

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It's been mentioned but I'll repeat it anyway: If you really want to show your gratitude I humbly suggest you say it like you mean it - and send a donation. FJC could realistically never (even remotely) be fairly compensated for his astounding work, but try a bit if you can... :)

 

 

What's important is that people use the software and verify that it works.


Updated my three usual suspects and so far so good ;)

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I'm using it now for a few weeks, and seems to be ok.

 

Silly question, I should be able to boot from a hard disk with the PBI driver, right? Any time I format and set BOOT on a drive, e.g. BOOT MSDOS.COM or BOOT SD6502.SYS, It goes straight to BASIC (which is really odd, because it's not enabled)...

 

-Thom

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Clearly you should be able to boot a HDD partition, but ensure the HDD is actually turned on in the settings. The boot flag in the partition table is ignored unless the boot volume is set to "On disk"; otherwise the boot partition is set in the BIOS as per IDE Plus. There is no persistent BASIC enable/disable unless you're referring to some external method.

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The new search feature in the loader is great, but it acts weirdly when I backspace out of a search: removing the last character results in an empty list ("no match"), and an extra backspace is needed to get back to the full list.

 

Everything happens for a reason. :) Originally, erasing the last (i.e. initial) character immediately brought it out of search mode and re-logged the folder which was displayed prior to the search being triggered. But that quickly became cumbersome. After all, you could backspace over any character of the search string without being interrupted by a blocking IO operation - but not the first character. So I changed it so that you have to press backspace again on the empty string before it actually comes out of search mode, and obviously when the search string is empty, it matches no files. You can also get out of search mode via Escape at any time.

 

Of course I'm open to suggestions about how things should work, the recursive search being a completely new feature. ;)

Edited by flashjazzcat
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Everything happens for a reason. :) Originally, erasing the last (i.e. initial) character immediately brought it out of search mode and re-logged the folder which was displayed prior to the search being triggered. But that quickly became cumbersome. After all, you could backspace over any character of the search string without being interrupted by a blocking IO operation - but not the first character. So I changed it so that you have to press backspace again on the empty string before it actually comes out of search mode, and obviously when the search string is empty, it matches no files. You can also get out of search mode via Escape at any time.

 

Of course I'm open to suggestions about how things should work, the recursive search being a completely new feature. ;)

 

Ah, that makes sense. It's a bit unexpected that it needs to do I/O at that point, though; doesn't it have the entire list of files in RAM for the search?

 

I'm sure I'll get used to it :)

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Ah, that makes sense. It's a bit unexpected that it needs to do I/O at that point, though; doesn't it have the entire list of files in RAM for the search?

The search results are kind of a "virtual" folder, and that list replaces the list which holds all the files in the currently logged folder, so the latter needs rebuilding when you come back out of the search. As well as the search results themselves, the recursive search builds a list of the absolute paths to all the matching filenames (for the purpose of jumping into the "containing folder" of a search result with Ctrl-F), and that has to live somewhere too (at the other end of the buffer, in fact). The buffer is around 16KB long, and while a complete catalogue of every file on the disk would be nice to have to hand, it would be enormous and could take quite a while to build. Caching the currently logged folder would be a nice idea, but the loader has to work on a 64KB machine and I don't feel that a couple of seconds to re-read the logged folder once you explicitly come out of the search warrants a banked RAM caching solution. Even the list of matches can quickly fill all available memory if the search is broad enough (for example, all filenames beginning with "A" on a densely populated volume).

Edited by flashjazzcat
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Hello. :)

One question please.

I have an Atari 1200XL fully converted to PAL XL computer, upgraded with Lotharek's latest Ultimate 1MB, plus VBXE directly from Candle.

I did the latest update on Ultimate as described on Johnathan site, but the VBXE option is ever disabled and grey, although it work perfect.

 

Is this normal?? :?

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I have an Atari 1200XL fully converted to PAL XL computer, upgraded with Lotharek's latest Ultimate 1MB, plus VBXE directly from Candle.

I did the latest update on Ultimate as described on Johnathan site, but the VBXE option is ever disabled and grey, although it work perfect.

This suggests that the VBXE's 0xD6xx/D7xx input isn't wired up to the U1MB's WP pin. When it is, the BIOS is able to control on which of the two pages VBXE is decoded. Without the wire (if the signal is taken directly from 0xD6xx/D7xx on the motherboard instead), VBXE will work but the decoding page option will be dimmed.

Edited by flashjazzcat
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I'm using it now for a few weeks, and seems to be ok.

 

Silly question, I should be able to boot from a hard disk with the PBI driver, right? Any time I format and set BOOT on a drive, e.g. BOOT MSDOS.COM or BOOT SD6502.SYS, It goes straight to BASIC (which is really odd, because it's not enabled)...

 

-Thom

 

Figured it out, in Altirra, I have to check "Disk Drive" under System... very weird.

 

-Thom

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

I've been busy as hell at work since this past summer (good thing) but as a result my free time to devote to my hobbies has suffered. I got Altirra up and running on a new computer lately and I'd like to get a simulated U1MB setup going, as well as update the real hardware I have installed in my daily-driver 800XL. I note there have been more recent test builds of various bits, but Jon's site still has a combined package from July 2016. Has there been a comprehensive update since then, or should I download the July release, then update pieces with the latest releases in this thread?

 

Thanks.

 

EDIT: Okay, I'm an idiot. I actually looked inside the zip file from Jon's site and despite the name, it HAS been updated to the latest versions from December. Thanks, Jon. Brilliant work as usual. Looking forward to updating my real hardware this weekend. :)

Edited by DrVenkman
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