_The Doctor__ Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 the writing and reading speeds vary quite a bit depending or cluster size and format of sd cards, and indeed the same cards with such format and sizes being changed will show some decent performance variances as a result. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
candle Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 SD card interface is presented to Atari at SD card command level, so there is no dependency on logical format or file system used, there are no containters there, nor emulation layers, meaning that SD card preformance only varies with card's embedded memory controller used - some are slower to sending so-called data tokens than others 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 (edited) @candle, Pleased to hear from you and hope everyone is healthy and in good spirits! 22 minutes ago, candle said: SD card interface is presented to Atari at SD card command level, so there is no dependency on logical format or file system used, there are no containers there, nor emulation layers, meaning that SD card performance only varies with card's embedded memory controller used - some are slower to sending so-called data tokens than others Good information, thanks for such a quick reply! ... wonder what the advantages/disadvantages w/ different levels of intervention by devices of this kind would have on the Atari's handling of the different file systems/containers and speed. Just an abstract thought of such implementations noy being either/or choice exclusively, but possibly being select-able within such devices. Edited June 24, 2020 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
candle Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 if 6502 is up to the task handling given file system efficiently, it's not an issue 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pajero_pn Posted June 24, 2020 Share Posted June 24, 2020 (edited) . Edited June 24, 2020 by pajero_pn 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jedimatt42 Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 All the bullet lists indicate there is a realtime clock... I'm an Atari 8bit newb... is there a standard for the clock that the side3 follows? The built in Spartdos X DATE and TIME commands don't seem to do anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+jedimatt42 Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 2 minutes ago, jedimatt42 said: All the bullet lists indicate there is a realtime clock... I'm an Atari 8bit nube... is there a standard for the clock that the side3 follows? The built in Spartdos X DATE and TIME commands don't seem to do anything. Usually after I ask a question, I think of better search terms... answered here: 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sinjinhawke Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 My newb SIDE3 question. Can the SIDE3 work with another device like ALSP's SDrive² ? Hoping to get a Ultimate 1mb for myself as a Xmas gift but curious if there is a way to make the SIDE3 and SDrive play nice together until then. Right now I use SDrive for ATR files and SIDE3 for XEX and CAR files but I have to remove one device for the other at boot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 6 minutes ago, Sinjinhawke said: Can the SIDE3 work with another device like ALSP's SDrive² ? Absolutely no problem at all, although you may need to temporarily boot with SDX disabled in order to run the SDrive boot menu. Once you have U1MB, this is a non-issue and your FAT-hosted disk images and partitions can work with any DOS you like and will coexist happily with any SDrive volumes providing drive numbers do not clash. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elkino Posted March 19, 2021 Share Posted March 19, 2021 I bought the SIDE3. I just have an stock 65XE. To prepare and create the APT partitions in a SD card with FDISK, I use Altirra and SIDE2 emulation, then write the resulting image to an SD, works great. Now I transferred all my games, sources, disks all to the cartridge and works at light-speed. Great product. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazzspeed Posted March 19, 2021 Share Posted March 19, 2021 3 hours ago, Elkino said: I bought the SIDE3. I just have an stock 65XE. To prepare and create the APT partitions in a SD card with FDISK, I use Altirra and SIDE2 emulation, then write the resulting image to an SD, works great. Now I transferred all my games, sources, disks all to the cartridge and works at light-speed. Great product. This is useful information. Can I ask, how do you write your image to an SD card under Altirra? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elkino Posted March 26, 2021 Share Posted March 26, 2021 (edited) On 3/19/2021 at 7:03 PM, Mazzspeed said: This is useful information. Can I ask, how do you write your image to an SD card under Altirra? You can add a SIDE2 device in Altirra, then add a HardDisk to SIDE2 (use .VHD image), then you can write the VHD to a SD card using a tool like "HDD Raw Copy Tool". I also do it in linux using qemu-img to convert the vhd to img and then writting the img file to the SD card with dd if=atari.img of=/dev/your_device Edited March 26, 2021 by Elkino 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazzspeed Posted March 26, 2021 Share Posted March 26, 2021 (edited) 1 minute ago, Elkino said: You can add a SIDE2 device in Altirra, then add a HardDisk to SIDE2 (use .VHD image), then you can write the VHD to a SD card using a tool like "HDD Raw Copy Tool". I also do it in linux using qemu-img to convert the vhd to img and then writting the img file to the SD card with dd if=atari.img of=/dev/your_device Very useful information. Thank you. Edited March 26, 2021 by Mazzspeed 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGB1718 Posted March 26, 2021 Share Posted March 26, 2021 50 minutes ago, Elkino said: This is useful information. Can I ask, how do you write your image to an SD card under Altirra? I have done the same thing many times, I use EasUS ToDo Backup which has a utility to make and restore images. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seastalker Posted April 1, 2021 Share Posted April 1, 2021 I've been absent in this topic for too long. I have an U1MB and a Side 2. What does a Side 3 offer beyond my setup? I have other Ataris (400, 600xl, 800, XEGS) that might benefit from this, but prefer to put 'my best money forward' and waste the least. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feoh Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 On 3/26/2021 at 5:07 AM, Elkino said: You can add a SIDE2 device in Altirra, then add a HardDisk to SIDE2 (use .VHD image), then you can write the VHD to a SD card using a tool like "HDD Raw Copy Tool". I also do it in linux using qemu-img to convert the vhd to img and then writting the img file to the SD card with dd if=atari.img of=/dev/your_device Hiya I keep reading about this in abstract, but yet to have any success with it. All I keep getting in Altirra when I try to run fdisk to format the partition is error 255. I tried the method of creating the VHD in Windows, but when I then try to open the VHD in Altirra it says the VHD is in use by another application. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 On 4/2/2021 at 12:52 AM, seastalker said: I've been absent in this topic for too long. I have an U1MB and a Side 2. What does a Side 3 offer beyond my setup? I have other Ataris (400, 600xl, 800, XEGS) that might benefit from this, but prefer to put 'my best money forward' and waste the least. SIDE3 features not present on SIDE2: Cartridge emulation (up to 1MB images, most known banking schemes supported) SD card usage (instead of CF cards) 8MB ROM for firmware (instead of 512KB) 2MB SRAM (SIDE2 has no RAM) Limited stand-alone (i.e. without U1MB) ATR support (SIDE2 provides no stand-alone support for disk images) 1,024 filenames per FAT directory in the SIDE3 loader (SIDE loader limited to 250 per 'paged chunk' of directory) DMA engine (used to load cartridge images; transfers 1.7MB/s of data off the SD card. Usable by future software) Loader has built-in 'PDM' (FujiConvert) player, supporting mono 44KHz, stereo 22KHz and Covox playback. Mounted cartridges are usable alongside ATRs, XEXs, APT partitions (with U1MB), and all media types are managed from the same loader To be added (to SIDE3 loader): Read/write FAT access (currently read-only) Support for more media formats (including video) Auto-mounting media (carts, disk images, etc. 4 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazzspeed Posted June 9, 2021 Share Posted June 9, 2021 Ohh, video support. I'm looking forward to that one. Great work as always FJC. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockLobster Posted January 9, 2023 Share Posted January 9, 2023 On 3/19/2021 at 1:56 PM, Elkino said: I bought the SIDE3. I just have an stock 65XE. To prepare and create the APT partitions in a SD card with FDISK, I use Altirra and SIDE2 emulation, then write the resulting image to an SD, works great. Now I transferred all my games, sources, disks all to the cartridge and works at light-speed. Great product. Question from 2 years later... So I attempted to use SIDE2 (4.0_070721) under Altirra (4.10) with a virtual atari with320K Rambo to create an 8mb VHD which I will then write to a real CF card. However, attempting to partition with FDISK results in an error "IO Error 255" as shown the 5th attached screenshot. Have I missed a step? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted January 10, 2023 Share Posted January 10, 2023 Is the VHD write enabled? 8MB is a bit small, BTW. The minimum FAT16 volume size is 4MB, and FAT32 significantly more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockLobster Posted January 10, 2023 Share Posted January 10, 2023 2 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said: Is the VHD write enabled? 8MB is a bit small, BTW. The minimum FAT16 volume size is 4MB, and FAT32 significantly more. OOF! Embarrassingly, that was it. I accepted defaults in creating the VHD and didn't expect the default to have been read-only. Thank you! Ok now until converting my CF card to a VHD to manipulate in Altirra... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockLobster Posted January 10, 2023 Share Posted January 10, 2023 Is there a way to tell if a partition is unformatted via either FDISK or FORMAT? or is trying to get there and attempting a DIR the only way? or Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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