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On 8/26/2019 at 9:46 PM, NuY said:

FDISK: Ultimately I guess you will want to squash the bug we discussed, but as a temporary measure, how about disabling the sanity checking during parsing of the size fields, and checking the total of both fields doesn't exceed the device capacity at the point of pressing Return? Not sure if the maths for this would still be the same as you're using currently ;) In addition, a minor suggestion: If one selects FAT16 as the type, there shouldn't be any need to have this larger than 4095MB in the sizing options, as FAT16 can't be any higher than 4GB anyway.

 

If you need any FDISK testing, let me know - I'll probably be fiddling with this SD card for a couple of weeks yet anyway :)

OK: I finally had half an hour to look into the bug and after single stepping the dialog box I discovered I'd used the MADS 'CPL' macro instead of the 'CPD' macro to compare 32-bit numbers when range checking the sizes of the FAT and APT against the device capacity. Well... derp. It didn't help that all the macros I wrote for 32-bit arithmetic have 'L' instead of 'D' at the end, implying 24-bit precision instead of 32-bit. That's likely what caused the additional typos.

 

There are still some annoying off-by-one errors, but I should be able to weed those out tonight and then we'll at least have a version of FDISK which doesn't fall over if bits 24-31 of the partition geometry are non-zero. My prior speculation on the source of the bugs was off; I see now that it's only the fractional component (i.e. less than 1MB) which is computed using multiplication and division, and there's no chance of overflowing 32-bits there since the highest value will be 2,048 * 10,000, which easily fits into 32-bits. So the fractional representation might actually be OK, but should be able to support different units of measurement (i.e. GB) depending on the magnitude.

 

The other thing on the to-do list is to allow gaps between APT partitions again (this allows resizing of partitions without destroying everything higher up the sector order) and possibly even implementing an MBR partition editor right inside the program in order to ease the creation of multiple FATs.

 

But I may shoot you a copy of the bug-fixed version in the meantime if you're still interested in testing. :)

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On 8/26/2019 at 6:26 PM, NuY said:

Aye, using diskpart on Windows reports it as being 59gb, but that's rounding off of course, not to mention that these days 1gb is 1000mb rather than 1024mb (don't get me started :))

I'd misread your initial observation as meaning that FDISK was reporting the capacity of the 64GB card incorrectly (you wrote 'correctly'), but in any case I think 60992MB will be spot on for the exact reason you point out (that 1GB is considered 1,000MB when convenient from a marketing perspective). Certainly VHDs (for use with Altirra) that I've created of exactly 32MB or 64MB in size are reported as exactly 32,768MB or 65,536MB by FDISK.

 

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anytime the marketing department gets involved it creates a mess...

they really need to go back to marketing what is created, rather than sticking their fingers into the sausage after it's already been made and adding what they consider an acceptable amount of human meat by products to the recipe...

Edited by _The Doctor__
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  • 3 weeks later...

actually there is possibly another issue with AVG and OSS carts like BASIC XL etc... I can use BASIC XL images with Ultimate Cart and MIO but not AVG and MIO...

I'll have to check the image size to make sure they have CAR headers first (edit just checked 17k so header is there)... but it looks like something isn't quite perfect yet. @tmp can you dig up a bunch of OSS cart images and give it a try?

NTSC 130XE, 1 Meg MIO, and I will give a Black Box a try as well....

Plot thickens.. Basic XL 1.03 on AVG works with the Black Box and Sparta 3.3....

There must be some kind of conflict with a line the MIO and the AVG are both using (but shouldn't be) in this specific cart mode...

 

OSSBasicXL103.car

 

once this issue is sorted maybe there is a chance for the other things they are talking about to start working or made to work

Edited by _The Doctor__
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Quote

The MIO occupies the $D100-D1FF and $D600-D6FF regions of PBI address space:

 

there seems to be no direct conflict there and i also don't see anything special about type 15 that should make it more prone to any kind of issues

 

what machine is this and have you tried other cart types with mio?

 

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The machine is as noted in the post, a 130XE NTSC stock,

the ultimate cart is running the images without issue with the MIO online and working as it pulls DOS and then goes to the ready prompt,  DIR from within BASIC XL pulls the directory from the MIO ramdisk and also show subdirectory as it should and all works just fine...

 

I've pretty much used the AVG cart with the MIO since day one, most other cart types appear to be okay. I tried with two different AVG carts and two different MIO's... I could try swapping computers next...

 

The other though would be the MIO might put a slightly heavier load on the pbi/bus... and perhaps the Ultimate cart is providing slightly more drive and that's enough to get to work. Just looking for the reason, can't say why it black screens but it does.

 

Same result on both AVG carts...

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2 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

The other though would be the MIO might put a slightly heavier load on the pbi/bus... and perhaps the Ultimate cart is providing slightly more drive and that's enough to get to work. Just looking for the reason, can't say why it black screens but it does.

that doesn't explain why it would be happening only for OSS carts

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none of those images ran with AVG0017 and MIO, but I do have a BXE 4.2 that ran under 0015 of the AVG...

 

we have another issue now...

when I type CAR it takes me to side loader.... using 0017... not to my cartidge in the stack or second slot of the pbi board...

this breaks the abililty to use real ICD/OSS/Orion microsystems carts (Express!, GUI, etc) in the dual cart configurations... doesn't matter if they're stacked or in parallel.. 0017... has the timing been slightly tweaked on this update as well? I am using all NTSC machines and it does not seem as solid anymore.

 

I still have a suspicious feeling that the signal level out needs to be ever so slightly stronger possible that things are faster now and misread may occur during transitions.

 

If the desire is to make side loader an easy to grab thing maybe assign in like the the super carts do and as if you want internal basic, external cart, or sideloader... In SpartaDOS X disable all or typing BASIC should take you to internal BASIC, type CAR should take you to a cartridge in the stack or on the dual pbi slot, and when you are in that cart you called... it can also give you the choice to exit (back to the cart that called it), go to internal basic, run a cart plugged into the cart and finally disable all carts (just like SDX)...

there are programs to turn them back on from disk based sparta as well, inidos, X on, Express! on etc... each of these carts watch for the option key being held as well...

 

Here's hoping all this helpful in some way...

Edited by _The Doctor__
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??? buggy ??? the car command should get you the other cartridge in the slot just like any other SDX cart does... as outlined in my convoluted post...

the sideloader could be set up just like any other cartridge is SDX already does for external cartridges (BASIC, Plugged on top, or in second cartridge slot....

hhmmmm... building on you great idea of folder to control function!

maybe doing folders (like the side on side off folder) could let a person choose the plugged cartridge or even rom choice for start up (sort of like the rom slot in ultimate or side2... heck the folder could be named rom1 rom2 rom3 rom4 or what have you... That would kind of give the best of all worlds... that could be really cool! it would come up just like a side2 or ultimate 1 meg in that sense... the left button could call the normal AVG mode screen up and the right button could do the side thing like has been discussed.

 

this could allow for configuration from within software that can reach the FAT!   now that's some slick idea you started!

 

 

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39 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

??? buggy ??? the car command should get you the other cartridge in the slot just like any other SDX cart does...

and that's what it does in 0017 and since side2 isn't pass through, it has a "virtual" cart included which is the side loader (or whatever is in the upper half of the flash or .car file in avg case)

before 0017 CAR did something unknown, probably just disabled everything so your other physical cartridge on the bus took over but that was just a coincidence

this is avgcart trying to emulate side2 behavior, not avgcart trying to come up with its own ideas of how things should be working

 

of course my understanding of it could be wrong or there could be more bugs so if anyone can prove that real side2 cart behaves differently, i can look into that

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Oh I didn't realize this it going to be Side cart only emulation (I thought the AVG was it's own wonderful device capable of emulating the others)

  ...still the folder used to control functionality as you did to set side on or off has the possibility to make it more side like in the rom slot area..

 

So if I turn SIDE off and select SpartaDOS X it will emulate SDX cart correctly, not launching SideLoader when I type car and I will be able to go to and external cart on the second slot?

 

I should think it will only launch side loader when SIDE mode is on. Or SDX turns it on using the SIDE driver otherwise....

 

Edited by _The Doctor__
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here's a BASIC XE 4.2 that works... using a real SpartaDos X cartridge, the AVG acting as the BASIC XE cartridge, and the MIO...  :)

Basic_XE_4.2.car

other disk based DOS choices working as well

 

 still no BASIC XL (hopefully we'll get this done)

 

enjoy

Edited by _The Doctor__
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22 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Oh I didn't realize this it going to be Side cart only emulation (I thought the AVG was it's own wonderful device capable of emulating the others)

this doesn't make much sense, if you load .car files that have types 162 or 163, it will emulate side2

so yes, if you do that, it will be side2 cart only emulation

 

22 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

So if I turn SIDE off and select SpartaDOS X it will emulate SDX cart correctly, not launching SideLoader when I type car and I will be able to go to and external cart on the second slot?

if you load .car file that has sdx type (11, 43) and type CAR, it should behave as if you did that on the real hardware with no cart inserted into the real sdx cart pass-through connector (this is untested tho)

 

22 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

 

I should think it will only launch side loader when SIDE mode is on. Or SDX turns it on using the SIDE driver... otherwise....

 

i'm not sure what do you mean but keep in mind that SIDE2 cartridge != SpartaDOS X cartridge

 

and as i said before, if the previous behavior worked for you, you can downgrade to 0016, 0017 has only that CAR command in SIDE2 emulation fixed (because there was a complaint about it)

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8 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

here's a BASIC XE 4.2 that works... using a real SpartaDos X cartridge, the AVG acting as the BASIC XE cartridge, and the MIO...  :)

Basic_XE_4.2.car 16.02 kB · 1 download

other disk based DOS choices working as well

 still no BASIC XL though

 

enjoy

2e50a07c0c38e3a58ed9667e2f67d8f2 *Basic_XE_4.2.car
2e50a07c0c38e3a58ed9667e2f67d8f2 *Basic_XE_v4.2_(1986-02-09)(Lawrow,_Stephen_D.)(US)(034M).car

 

it's the same as one of the files in the archive i've posted which i believe you said that they didn't work

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couldn't read the last part of the file as the avg cuts anything past 39 off in it's listing so it's possible it sorted and listed them differently and I selected the same image twice..... which made it appear they all did not work.

I was trying with 0015 and 0017 and moving the sd cards around trying to get a handle on it. could have missed one.

Since I updated to 0017 and tried, it works so that's good.

 

This started as a problem with BASIC XL though, not BASIC XE and hopefully this helps shed some light on why there are the noted images that work with the ultimate + MIO combinations but not the AVG and MIO combinations, I also noted images that work with BB and AVG but not AVG and MIO whereas with the ultimate they always work on both combinations.

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