bug fixes Ultimate 1MB, Incognito, 1088XEL/XLD and SIDE/SIDE2 Firmware Version 3.02 Released

[flashjazzcat]

I'm pleased to announce the release of firmware version 3.02 for the Ultimate 1MB, Incognito, 1088XEL/XLD and SIDE/SIDE2.

 

Since the update's primary purpose is to correct issues present in the version 3.00 and earlier released, it is highly recommended for all users.

 

Please head over to the firmware page of my website to download the updates:

 

https://atari8.co.uk/firmware/

 

New Features (over version 2.01) Include:

• Number of BIOS configuration profiles increased from three to four
• Massively faster and more powerful loader search facility
• Loader’s built-in FAT DOS now supports subdirectories
• Loader now remembers the last accessed FAT folder
• Loader scripts may include paths
• Loader can now open the location of any already mounted image
• Usability improvements to the loader and BIOS setup menu
• Optional synthetic ‘IO sound’ with ATRs and hard disk partitions
• Improved loader compatibility
• Auto-booting banked cartridge conversions on SIDE/SIDE2

 

Bug Fixes

 

For users who previously updated to version 3.00 in July, the following fixes/changes have been implemented:

 

Loader

• Fixed: Unnamed FAT entries missing from partition list
• Fixed: Selected entry not consistently tracked during search
• Fixed: SIDE2 displayed as 'SIDE1' in stand-alone loader's device menu
• Fixed: Logged directory cluster number corrupted after MAP file processing
• Changed: Boot drive override (to D1:) now issued on restart if a disk image exists on drive 1 (instead of immediately after mount operation)
• Changed: No boot drive override issued when 'Boot SpartaDOS X' is selected (allows easy booting from CONFIG.SYS drive after mounting ATRs)

 

BIOS

• Changed: message and menu item wording
• Changed: progress bar code rewritten for brevity
• Added: L+RESET starts loader if SELECT+RESET coldstart hotkey is enabled

 

PBI BIOS

• Fixed: SIO status command now reliably returns enhanced density bit in first byte (DVSTAT) for 130K ATRs
• Fixed: Dummy format command now returns error if enhanced density format attempted on single density (90K) ATR
• Changed: Boot drive override clears after first use
• Changed: SIO status command for device $20 now returns complement of controller error register in second byte (as per device $3x)

 

Feedback

 

If anyone notices any screw-ups, please let me know directly or via this thread. I sat on this update for several days purely because changing just one byte of code in the firmware necessitates the complete re-assembly of a many ROMs and ATR images, which is repetitive and even excruciating process, especially when one notices a bug while demoing the software on video.  As usual: please use this thread to report your experiences, both positive and otherwise.

 

Videos

 

As mentioned above, I've made a couple of videos which attempt to demonstrate some of the more useful features of the SIDE Loader, both stand-alone and when used in conjunction with Ultimate 1MB. The same methodologies apply by and large to Incognito and the 1088XEL/XLD. I'll be making more of these videos, since there's still more to cover regarding advanced usage.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 6, 2019 by flashjazzcat

[Faicuai]

NICE!!!

 

Correct, v3.02 is a must have for anyone with Ultimate1MB and Incognito !!!

 

Enjoy!

[+DrVenkman]

I’ve watched your videos in the last couple days on YouTube. I really like your new production touches.  

 

[tuf]

This is so baller!

[vazquezrick]

How do I use the Rapidus plugin?

[flashjazzcat]

3 hours ago, vazquezrick said:

How do I use the Rapidus plugin?

• Mount FIRMWARE.ATR
• Run UFLASH.XEX
• Navigate to 'BIOS Plugin' slot and press RETURN
• Navigate to PLUGIN folder
• Navigate to RAPIDUS.ROM
• Press RETURN and follow the prompts
• Power cycle the machine when complete

You may wish to connect the GND wire (from the Rapidus 3-pin header) to the U1MB 'S0' signal. This enables toggling of the Rapidus core in software.

 

Edited August 8, 2019 by flashjazzcat

[Frankie]

Since I upgraded my Incognito to 3.02 (from 3.0) I can no longer get SDX to boot to D3. It always boots to D1 even though there is no drive mounted on D1. The correct selection in the bios is set to boot to D3 but that doesn't seem to do anything. If I press D during boot I can select D3 but I don't want to have to do that every time.

 

Frank

========================

I changed the Bios setting for CONFIG.SYS to also be D3 and that fix it. Boots to D3 now. No more problems.

 

[flashjazzcat]

19 minutes ago, Frankie said:

The correct selection in the bios is set to boot to D3 but that doesn't seem to do anything

By 'correct selection', do you mean that 'CONFIG.SYS' is set to 'D3:'? Here's a picture of my settings:

 

 

I load PCLINK.SYS via a CONFIG.SYS on D3: [HDD partition] and everything works fine. The 'Boot drive' setting is (or should be) completely ignored by SDX, since the boot flag is cleared before CONFIG.SYS is read from disk. 'Boot drive' comes into play when sectors are read from disk while the OS boot flag is set (i.e. when a disk boot takes place, which does not happen when SDX is active). I usually leave 'Boot drive' set to default; I simply played with some other values here to see if it messed with anything (it didn't).

 

Be certain you updated all firmware components to 3.02; unlike the U1MB (where BIOS, Loader and PBI BIOS are contiguous in ROM), Incognito has firmware components scattered around the place and I haven't yet implemented in UFLASH the ability to flash a single firmware binary blob (backwards compatibility with the original firmware makes that tool absurdly complicated; perhaps it's time to drop backwards compatibility... it's not as if new Incognitos are currently shipping with the original firmware on them).

 

The only other thing I can suggest is to ensure you're not using some ancient build of SDX.

 

If none of the above applies, we'll dig in further and get to the bottom of it.

 

Edited August 8, 2019 by flashjazzcat
typos

[marauder666]

L+Reset on the U1MB makes it so much more convenient to use an AVG cart as an emulated side2 cart.

 

 

 

[flashjazzcat]

8 minutes ago, marauder666 said:

L+Reset on the U1MB makes it so much more convenient to use an AVG cart as an emulated side2 cart.

It's just a shame there isn't a mode switch on the AVG Cart. Fortunately, one need just disable the 'ATR Swap button' to allow the AVG menu to appear on power-up, and once CTRL+S is pressed, there's no need to change any settings in the BIOS. I did have to jump back into the BIOS to bring SDX back up after the AVG menu rebooted the system, and since the BIOS doesn't voluntarily read the partition table off the card on anything but cold power-up, I needed to issue a SHIFT+RESET to get the APT partitions to show up (after enabling the 'HDD Refresh' setting in the BIOS). If AVG were able to cold-boot in SIDE mode, none of that would be necessary, but SIDE emulation is still a fantastic plus and works great.

 

@tmp: One thing I did notice is that the AVG menu appears to hang if there's no valid, formatted FAT partition on the card. This prevented me from getting into SIDE emulation mode regardless of whether I wanted a FAT on the card at all (even the protective MBR is optional).

 

I also encountered some problems creating a FAT larger than 8GB in FDISK's 'Initialise Disk' dialog, which I need to look into. Who knew the A8 would one day be running 32 or 64GB physical hard disks.

[_The Doctor__]

I'm thinking every SD car I've put it the AVG either had fat format on it out of the package or I set it up with both fat systems when setting up the cards. My difficulty was having both on the card initially. I can't remember but I think I had to put them in a certain order to get both fats and apt all on the SD using FDISK. I was however using the AVG as a stand alone on MIO, BB, or non U1M systems and didn't notice. I do remember seeing a message 'mounting sd card' for  a while when I had a failed SD card. When putting another SD card in it's place it replied with something along the lines of Reading Directory Done and then gave the menu. Interesting.

[Frankie]

3 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

By 'correct selection', do you mean that 'CONFIG.SYS' is set to 'D3:'? Here's a picture of my settings:

 

 

I load PCLINK.SYS via a CONFIG.SYS on D3: [HDD partition] and everything works fine. The 'Boot drive' setting is (or should be) completely ignored by SDX, since the boot flag is cleared before CONFIG.SYS is read from disk. 'Boot drive' comes into play when sectors are read from disk while the OS boot flag is set (i.e. when a disk boot takes place, which does not happen when SDX is active). I usually leave 'Boot drive' set to default; I simply played with some other values here to see if it messed with anything (it didn't).

 

Be certain you updated all firmware components to 3.02; unlike the U1MB (where BIOS, Loader and PBI BIOS are contiguous in ROM), Incognito has firmware components scattered around the place and I haven't yet implemented in UFLASH the ability to flash a single firmware binary blob (backwards compatibility with the original firmware makes that tool absurdly complicated; perhaps it's time to drop backwards compatibility... it's not as if new Incognitos are currently shipping with the original firmware on them).

 

The only other thing I can suggest is to ensure you're not using some ancient build of SDX.

 

If none of the above applies, we'll dig in further and get to the bottom of it.

 

I had only set the Boot Drive. I thought I had to change that. After I set the CONFIG.SYS to be D3 it worked as I wanted.

[tmp]

2 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

@tmp: One thing I did notice is that the AVG menu appears to hang if there's no valid, formatted FAT partition on the card. This prevented me from getting into SIDE emulation mode regardless of whether I wanted a FAT on the card at all (even the protective MBR is optional).

yes, when the card has no fat partition, it will just infinitely loop trying to find one, i can try to make it respond to shift-s at that stage

[_The Doctor__]

maybe if possible, have it say 'no FAT, SIDE active' and have it switch as if shift s had been pressed?

or 'No FAT, shift-s for SIDE'

[flashjazzcat]

6 minutes ago, Frankie said:

I had only set the Boot Drive. I thought I had to change that. After I set the CONFIG.SYS to be D3 it worked as I wanted

This is great news: thanks for confirming.

4 minutes ago, tmp said:

i can try to make it respond to shift-s at that stage

That sounds ideal.

 

I notice also that the cart identifies itself as a SIDE2 but does not appear to implement the 'ATR swap button' in SIDE mode (the SIDE1 lacked this feature). That would be a pretty cool thing to implement.  Unfortunately - since the 'ATR swap button' feature suppresses the 8K left cart window, one would need to disable the button, power-cycle, press CTRL+S, go back into the BIOS, and re-enable the button feature.

 

Also: how about power-on with both buttons held down = instant SIDE mode.

 

Regarding the FDISK oddness: it turns out my fixed point code is quite buggy, so FDISK is going to need some attention next.

[Senior Tech]

Okay, I'm new to this.  I have two Ultimate1M and one Super Cart.  All I can do is write new FlashRAMs and install them in the units.  Which .ROM file for the cart?  I think I've found the one for the Ultimate1M.  I know nothing about .ATR files and have no way of moving files from my PC to 8bit.  I've been away from the Atari scene for 14 years or so.  Just trying to get my retirement shop up and running.

[tmp]

14 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

I notice also that the cart identifies itself as a SIDE2 but does not appear to implement the 'ATR swap button' in SIDE mode (the SIDE1 lacked this feature). That would be a pretty cool thing to implement.  Unfortunately - since the 'ATR swap button' feature suppresses the 8K left cart window, one would need to disable the button, power-cycle, press CTRL+S, go back into the BIOS, and re-enable the button feature.

how do you read the button state? altirra hw pdf says it zeroes the sdx banking register and that's probably the only button mention there

 

 

[flashjazzcat]

53 minutes ago, tmp said:

how do you read the button state? altirra hw pdf says it zeroes the sdx banking register and that's probably the only button mention there

My apologies: I mistakenly thought I had gone over this previously.

 

Look on page 228 of the current revision Altirra Hardware Reference manual for a more detailed explanation of the PBI button function. The button is sensed and reset as follows in the PBI BIOS:

	bit PBIButton		; check SIDE button ($D384)
	bpl NoButton		; bit 7 = 0 means button sensing off
	bvc NoButton		; bit 6 = 1 means button pressed
	mva #$80 $D5E4
	sta $D5E1
	ljsr :RotateATRs
NoButton

The write to $D5E4 disables the 'external' SIDE cart ROM, while the extra write to $D5E1 disables the SIDE2 SDX ROM (enabling use of that cart in PBI mode without moving the mode switch to the loader position).

10 hours ago, Senior Tech said:

Okay, I'm new to this.  I have two Ultimate1M and one Super Cart.  All I can do is write new FlashRAMs and install them in the units.  Which .ROM file for the cart?  I think I've found the one for the Ultimate1M.  I know nothing about .ATR files and have no way of moving files from my PC to 8bit.  I've been away from the Atari scene for 14 years or so.  Just trying to get my retirement shop up and running.

Have a look at the README file in the ZIP file. There are some discrepancies regarding file naming conventions for 1088XEL machines, etc, but the firmware ROM for the U1MB is called 'FIRMWARE.ROM', as written. You may also reflash the entire ROM chip (using ULTIMATE.ROM or ULTNOGOS.ROM) so that you get updated SDX, firmware, OS ROM and BASIC slots all in one go. You can customise these after the fact to suit yourself.

 

I do not explicitly provide ROM images for the SDX supercart, since none of my projects are directly concerned with that hardware.

 

As for your other queries: please take a moment to browse the extensive documentation on my website, or watch the recently uploaded videos which cover SIDE Loader usage (including ATR mounting). Links to everything are always in my signature.

Edited August 9, 2019 by flashjazzcat

[tmp]

36 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

Look on page 228 of the current revision Altirra Hardware Reference manual for a more detailed explanation of the PBI button function. The button is sensed and reset as follows in the PBI BIOS:

 

	bit PBIButton		; check SIDE button ($D384)
	bpl NoButton		; bit 7 = 0 means button sensing off
	bvc NoButton		; bit 6 = 1 means button pressed
	mva #$80 $D5E4
	sta $D5E1
	ljsr :RotateATRs
NoButton

The write to $D5E4 disables the 'external' SIDE cart ROM, while the extra write to $D5E1 disables the SIDE2 SDX ROM (enabling use of that cart in PBI mode without moving the mode switch to the loader position).

now i finally understand why atr swap button disables all cartridges, what an unfortunate hw design but anyway, shouldn't it be disabling left bank only if side2 cart is detected? or am i missing something? or is that cpld functionality that can't be overridden?

 

i can try to emulate that button behavior in the next firmware release, i just need to make some room on my desk for atari

Edited August 9, 2019 by tmp

[flashjazzcat]

8 minutes ago, tmp said:

what an unfortunate hw design

I think it was implemented after the fact, to some extent. Indeed the entire PBI functionality of U1MB/SIDE was not originally part of the design, but I guess we're lucky to have it.

8 minutes ago, tmp said:

shouldn't it be disabling left bank only if side2 cart is detected

It does. I repurposed the button bit in the U1MB config register as a 'cartridge on/off' toggle on the 1088XEL/XLD (since that hardware has its own totally separate button sensing mechanism), and in so doing confirmed that only the upper (left) bank of a 16K cart is actually unmapped. The right cart area stays put regardless. So now the feature is called 'Left cart disable'.

 

Note: the salient point here is that it suppresses any cartridge ROM. This was the reason behind most or all 'Why do cartridges not work' questions regarding Ultimate 1MB installations. Users had left the PBI HDD enabled with no SIDE present and some other cartridge attached. If the button was enabled, the cartridge would never show up, but even if the button was off, the BIOS's SIDE signature probe and attempt to initialise the CF card would deactivate some carts with address-bus banking.

 

Owing to the new OSS cart ROMs (thanks again @ebiguy), the new firmware allows the SIDE cart ROM to be selectively disabled regardless of the state of the PBI button. One may have button on/cart off, button off/cart off, or button off/cart on. The last setting is required for the OSS carts, but I found independent control essential when ROMs from other devices are simultaneously on the bus (for example, IDE Plus). If the PBI BIOS is unable to actually deactivate a ROM in the left cartridge address space (perhaps because said ROM is simply not under software control), it will think that the button is perpetually activated, and thus hang.

Edited August 9, 2019 by flashjazzcat

[tmp]

the question was whether it was possible to (dynamically) unmap upper bank only if side2 cart is detected because otherwise there's no need to do that since there's no button anyway (or at least it most likely doesn't behave like the side2 one)

[flashjazzcat]

12 minutes ago, tmp said:

the question was whether it was possible to (dynamically) unmap upper bank only if side2 cart is detected because otherwise there's no need to do that since there's no button anyway (or at least it most likely doesn't behave like the side2 one)

I added extra information which should clarify that.

 

I'd say all your button needs to do is what it does in AVG mode: put ROM back in the left cart window and emulate bit 7 of the SIDE external cart banking register (bit 7 = ROM off).

Edited August 9, 2019 by flashjazzcat

[tmp]

48 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

If the PBI BIOS is unable to actually deactivate a ROM in the left cartridge address space (perhaps because said ROM is simply not under software control), it will think that the button is perpetually activated, and thus hang.

and i'm trying to figure out why doesn't it ignore the whole button thing if it doesn't detect side2 first

if there's no side detected, it should not try to disable its bank, it should not try to unmap upper bank and it should not try to detect button presses (regardless whether atr swap button is enabled in the u1mb options)

 

now there might be technical reasons why it can't be done this way (i have no idea what part of that functionality is software controlled and what part is done in cpld) and that's what i'm asking

[flashjazzcat]

4 minutes ago, tmp said:

and i'm trying to figure out why doesn't it ignore the whole button thing if it doesn't detect side2 first

The firmware ignores 'the whole button thing' if it doesn't detect SIDE2 first. That's why you can enable the button and disable the SIDE ROM in the BIOS settings, but if you turn the HDD off, cartridges behave as normal and no attempt is made to touch IDE registers or SIDE banking registers. The firmware cannot grey out all the HDD options if there's no cartridge, because simply probing for a SIDE2 is enough to disable many flash carts. The firmware only looks for SIDE when the user tells it to (by enabling the HDD).

 

As I say: you need not worry about this. Just assert RD5 when the button is pressed and de-assert it when bit 7 of $D5E4 is set.

[Senior Tech]

Thank you.  I'm  a newbie here, don't know how to do the Quote.  For the PROM burner update I only need the Ultimate.rom file, 512Kbytes.