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AVGCART


tmp

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  • 5 weeks later...

I finally got my Atari set up after my move, and am trying to use AVGCART for the first time. I can't find any documentation. All I get is "Mounting SD card..."

 

I formatted two SD cards (2GB and 8GB) FAT using my Mac. Threw some files in the root of each card (a ROM, a ATR, and a CAR.) When I boot the Atari, I just get "Mounting SD card..."

 

I read something about an _AVGCART directory so I tried moving the images to that folder, but no change.

 

Help? Also what do the two buttons do?

 

Thanks

—K

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not getting past "Mounting SD card" means that the cart is either unable to communicate with the sd card or it cannot find a partition it can use (fat16/32)

 

make sure the card is inserted all the way in (this happened a few times) and if possible, check whether you have a single fat32 partition on the card (i don't know how osx formats sd cards by default but i don't remember anyone complaining about it)

 

 

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Cards formatted FAT on my Mac (which is FAT32 I guess) aren't working. I found an SD card formatted in a previous life as FAT16, and have gotten a couple of games to run off of that. I even updated the firmware to the latest version. 

 

Do I have to so something special for ATR files? The while SIDE2 thing is confusing, and I don't understand if I need an _AVGCART folder because that is _not_ touched upon in the first post instructions.

 

 

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7 minutes ago, Savetz said:

Cards formatted FAT on my Mac (which is FAT32 I guess) aren't working. I found an SD card formatted in a previous life as FAT16, and have gotten a couple of games to run off of that. I even updated the firmware to the latest version. 

 

it should work unless it's formatted as exFAT, i don't know what osx disk utility defaults to

if you're able to send me a compressed image of a card that doesn't work, i could look into that

 

7 minutes ago, Savetz said:

 

Do I have to so something special for ATR files? The while SIDE2 thing is confusing, and I don't understand if I need an _AVGCART folder because that is _not_ touched upon in the first post instructions.

 

 

 

for ATR files you need OSXEX file (included in zip with firmware update) in the root of your sd card (there's also AVFPLAY for AVF video files, should go into root as well if needed)

 

whole _AVGCART directory is just an extra for some advanced functionality and it's not needed for avgcart to function properly

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3 hours ago, tmp said:

 

it should work unless it's formatted as exFAT, i don't know what osx disk utility defaults to

if you're able to send me a compressed image of a card that doesn't work, i could look into that

 

 

for ATR files you need OSXEX file (included in zip with firmware update) in the root of your sd card (there's also AVFPLAY for AVF video files, should go into root as well if needed)

 

whole _AVGCART directory is just an extra for some advanced functionality and it's not needed for avgcart to function properly

The Ultimate/Side2 comes with a chkfat.com file which will interrogate the (FAT16) filesystem for compatibility and advise you if the partition/filesystem is ok for use or not.  For me, the biggest issue with these cards is not the Atari, it is the PC running windows.  Windows insists on flagging your removable drive (card) as Removable, which will prevent you from creating (in Windows) more than one partition on the drive, an absolute prerequisite.  If you run into this sort of thing, you can create the partitions in Linux or BSD and it should work fine.  I run Linux and have had no such fault.  MacOS (X) IS BSD Unix, or I should say, was BSD.  It is now a mix of BSD and proprietary code we can't look at.  I don't know what restrictions that OS might place on a removable memory card.

 

Best,

 

Jeff

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ok, so if you're using OSX, make sure you're not partitioning ("erasing") your card using GPT (GUID_partition_scheme) but use the standard "scheme" (FDisk_partition_scheme)

 

use "diskutil list" to check how's the card partitioned

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4 minutes ago, tmp said:

 

Bingo! OK, the trick on formatting on a Mac was: Disk Utility -> Show All Devices. Choose the SD card device (not just the volume). Erase: FAT, Master Boot Record. 

 

After it erases, copy in OSXEX and AVFPLAY and game files. 

 

There are a million stupid .dotfiles showing in the AVG menu, but that's because MacOS is lame, not AVG.

 

Thanks!

—Kevin

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3 minutes ago, Savetz said:

There are a million stupid .dotfiles showing in the AVG menu, but that's because MacOS is lame, not AVG.

actually that sounds like a bug (unless they're directories), can you make me a photo of the screen showing them?

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Hello guys

 

I'm using BlueHarvest to keep removable media free from Mac-specific files.

 

BTW you can check if all hidden files are really removed by pressing "Shift-Cmd-."  It will show all hidden files if present.  Press the same combination again and all hidden files will be hidden again.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

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15 hours ago, Savetz said:

They hidden files *are* really there, MacOS creates them for some reason. I guess the bug, if you want to call it that, is that AVGcart doesn't hide them.

 

 

 

Run dot_clean before you eject the card from the Mac. 

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  • 1 month later...

[satire on, sarcasm on]

Yeah,

 

I could never stand that 5 second loading time for Atari Blast cart., it wastes 4 seconds of my life, so I am really happy that the new AVG firmware runs it in 1 second. Or the 47 seconds for loading the disk/XRAM version of Atari Blast versus the 38 seconds in the new firmware - another 9 seconds of my life saved!

 

But now I must continue with loading that 48k tape with my 600Baud data recorder...

What, the Atari OS requires more than 1 second to initialize? Oh noes, there goes my life.

[/satire, /sarcasm]

 

I will download the new firmware anyways.

 

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