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SpartaDOS X 4.48


drac030

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Thank you drac030 for the valuable update.

 

I noticed that the SDX binary image / update ATR for "MyIDE II" is corrupted. This makes any attempt to download other SDX images combination along with "MyIDE II" to become corrupted. It may need to be reuploaded.

 

madi

Edited by Madi
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I was not able to get 4.47 to read my fat16 partition that I created on my Incognito.. anything in this to address that?

Are you able to create a zipped image of the CF card and send it to me? I suspect your problems may not be addressable by a new version of SDX, since the drivers in the prior version work perfectly well. Anyway: I'd be happy to take a look.

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Is there no ATR flasher for the original MyIDE+Flash cart?

Only a part of the builds are accompanied with flashing ATRs: IDE+, intSDX128, SIC! Cart, SIDE, SIDE2, Supercart and Ultimate.

 

For the rest please use the dedicated software to create flashing ATRs.

 

@Bikerbob: it is difficult to say, as I do not remember if your problem with that was diagnosed. The most common causes of such a problem might be:

 

1) outdated U1MB BIOS

 

2) outdated FATFS driver (there is some "v.0.7" circulating, which should not be used)

 

3) improper number of root directory entries (better keep it not bigger than 512 or 1024)

 

4) FAT32 advertised by the formatting software as FAT16.

 

There is a program in the Toolkit - CHKFAT - which checks some parameters and circumstances, then lists the errors. It could be probably of some help in such a case.

 

@Stephen: thanks! It will help to keep the website running.

Edited by drac030
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I noticed that after installing SDX448 in both Emulator and real hardware with Ultimate installed and using UFLASH.XEX v128 I needed to Power Cycle the as CNTL+R only brought back the selector dialogue. or Screen corruption ...

That means Ctrl+R is broken in UFLASH (which it is - thanks!). Nothing to do with SDX 4.48.

 

EDIT: for some reason I use XCOMLI in UFLASH, and the vector is almost certainly already wiped out by the RAM-based OS.

Edited by flashjazzcat
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No, for Dropcheck's boards the "supercart" build should be used.

 

The supercart build and Antonia upgrade: Now I just get a scrambled video and nothing boots.

Also Side ! (use to work) with Antonia Upgrade now reacts the same as the Supercart no boot and scrambled video.

Side 2 never booted with Antonia CPU with SDX447 and still doesn't with SDX448.

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Antonia and Supercart is a combination of hardware I do not own. So I personally have never checked if the Supercart build works, I rely on the reports of the testers. Also here Sanny (post 17) says that it works for him.

 

The Supercart and the SIDE2 builds are virtually identical, except that the former has the code that controls the external cartridge (inserted into the pass-through port) compiled in.

 

The SIDE1 and SIDE2 builds differ only by the controlling register address: in SIDE1 it is $D5E0, in SIDE2 - $D5E1. So if one works and the other does not, then I would suspect a hardware problem.

 

Also, the Supercart after having been flashed with its build, is half empty (512k, only 256k used for now). I hope that the board zeroes the cartridge banking register on power up, because if not, and if the bank number is set to a random value on power up, then indeed it would hang half of the time (statistically).

Edited by drac030
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Antonia and Supercart is a combination of hardware I do not own. So I personally have never checked if the Supercart build works, I rely on the reports of the testers. Also here Sanny (post 17) says that it works for him.

 

It works on my plain 800XL. But it doesn't work on the Antonia-800XL. It enters the self test, iirc. But that was the same with 4.47.

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The supercart build and Antonia upgrade: Now I just get a scrambled video and nothing boots.

Also Side ! (use to work) with Antonia Upgrade now reacts the same as the Supercart no boot and scrambled video.

Side 2 never booted with Antonia CPU with SDX447 and still doesn't with SDX448.

 

I don't know if the Antonia upgrade is compatible, but here's what I noticed when I looked at the differences between the original customized 4.47 and the 4.48 build for the SuperCart

 

I used the SDXImager to check the contents of the config.sys and build image for the customized SDX 4.47 for the SuperCart. You can also edit the config.sys and build contents.

 

Here's what I found:

 

;SDX 4.47 SuperCart Original Image

;This is the config.sys contents

 

USE BANKED

DEVICE SPARTA

DEVICE SIO

DEVICE ATARIDOS

DEVICE ULTIME

 

;Included Driver File

;SIDE1 driver is packaged in the build but never called

SIDE1.SYS

 

For the SDX4.48 build for the SuperCart

 

;SDX 4.48 SuperCart build

;This is the config.sys file contents

 

DEVICE SPARTA OSRAM

DEVICE SIO

DEVICE ATARIDOS

DEVICE INDUS 4

DEVICE ULTIME

DEVICE JIFFY

DEVICE RAMDISK

 

;Included Driver File

No drivers packaged and of course not called

 

What I would suggest is editing the config.sys file contents to reflect the original then add the call for your device driver

 

ie

 

;MYIDE2 device driver

 

DEVICE MYIDE2.SYS

 

Then add the device driver file to the build

 

Save and then flash the SuperCart

 

If it was working with 4.47, you shouldn't need to do anything else. If it never worked, then you may need to also edit your device's config.sys to avoid duplicate calls to the driver.

 

Let me know how it goes

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If it does not boot, then the CONFIG.SYS contents does not matter: the system must be up to such extent that it opens the GR.0 display and attempts to load a CONFIG.SYS from the boot disk. Just when nothing is found on the disk, then the CAR:CONFIG.SYS is loaded.

 

Of course, nothing prevents anyone from customizing the default CONFIG file, and the SDX Imager is distributed just for that purpose, but I would like to point out that the config file for the original 4.47 Supercart image has some (minor) flaws.

 

1) it explicitly says USE BANKED at the beginning. This causes the system to load SPARTA.SYS to the ext RAM on 130XE. If one wants to have these banks free for a reason, they will be occupied.

 

2) it omits the "OSRAM" option after DEVICE SPARTA. On 64k machines this will cause the MEMLO to get enormously high, because the DOS buffers will get allocated from the main RAM, and not located under the ROM.

 

3) it omits DEVICE JIFFY - it is added to all the configs by default, just in case the battery in the clock goes off, the "JIFFY" clock driver is loaded then.

 

4) it omits DEVICE RAMDISK - this will cause the ramdisk to be not automatically established on machines having more than 128k RAM.

 

The presence of the SIDE/MYIDE drivers of course does not matter as to the booting the system itself. It would only prevent the respective storage from being accessed.

Edited by drac030
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  6) when no files match the given mask, TAR will now display a suitable  message and do nothing instead of creating an empty archive containing  nothing but the EOF mark (eventhough the latter thing is what the BSD TAR  does in this situation).

 

Hey, that makes SDX TAR better than the BSD one!

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