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

[flashjazzcat]

21 minutes ago, Senior Tech said:

For the PROM burner update I only need the Ultimate.rom file, 512Kbytes

Correct.

[TGB1718]

Just upgraded to 3.02, now when I boot I get this error: "config error (158): DEVICE FATFS"

 

I checked and the FATFS.SYS file is still there, any ideas whats causing this ??

 

This is my config.sys  (unchanged)

DEVICE SPARTA BANKED
DEVICE SIO
DEVICE ATARIDOS
DEVICE INDUS 4
DEVICE ULTIME
DEVICE JIFFY
DEVICE RAMDISK K,32
DEVICE FATFS
SET PATH=CAR:;D9:BIN>
SET MANPATH=D9:MAN>

[flashjazzcat]

47 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

any ideas whats causing this

Well: I just looked up error code 158 in the SpartaDOS X User Manual, and on page 236 it says this is the 'Out of memory' error code. FATFS.SYS requires a whole bank of extended RAM, IIRC, so perhaps you've disabled extended memory or it's entirely consumed by the RAMdisk.

[_The Doctor__]

put fatfs before ramdisk

if the ramdisk needs more memory afterward select a larger memory mode or tuck stuff in other places within your config. If it doesn't need the memory let the ramdisk have less.

 

Edited August 9, 2019 by _The Doctor__
fjc beat us to the particulars :)

[TGB1718]

Thanks for the replies,

Flashjazzcat:

I checked and for some reason it had changed the setting to 576k CompyShop 

not seen this sort of change in previous upgrades. I reset to 1088k and it now works fine.

 

_The_Doctor_ :

You beat me to it, that thought just crossed my mind, although my problem is now solved, I will still change the CONFIG.SYS as you suggest

 

[flashjazzcat]

Great: a logical outcome. Error codes are useful!

 

[vazquezrick]

On 8/8/2019 at 2:59 AM, flashjazzcat said:

• 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.

 

Hello, connected the two leads as directed and no difference. 

[flashjazzcat]

Two leads? And I'll need more detail than 'no difference'.

 

[+DrVenkman]

Hi Jon - I flashed my SIDE2 cartridge this afternoon with the OSS cart ROMs and tried them out. Which is to say, I used the configuration utility to set the cart to the various ROMs and they all see to load up. Very cool. Thanks for this great new feature.  

 

[flashjazzcat]

13 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

Thanks for this great new feature

Thanks for the feedback Herb... I know Eric will be pleased to hear this too. I'm going to make more videos along the lines of the 'SIDE Loader' videos from the other week, this time covering the OSS ROMs, APT tools, etc, when I get time... once I climb out of the quicksand that is Lastic's 130XE.

 

Eric continues to be a big help: today he reported some small issues with the 'APT' boot drive setting which I'm fixing up. I guess it's a little used feature (retrieving the non-SDX boot drive number from the boot flag in the partition table on disk), but the fix - along with the fix for the 'Boot diagnostic cart' feature - will appear in another update soon. Huzzah! [reaches for tranquillisers]

[+DrVenkman]

26 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

Thanks for the feedback Herb... I know Eric will be pleased to hear this too. I'm going to make more videos along the lines of the 'SIDE Loader' videos from the other week, this time covering the OSS ROMs, APT tools, etc, when I get time... once I climb out of the quicksand that is Lastic's 130XE.

 

Eric continues to be a big help: today he reported some small issues with the 'APT' boot drive setting which I'm fixing up. I guess it's a little used feature (retrieving the non-SDX boot drive number from the boot flag in the partition table on disk), but the fix - along with the fix for the 'Boot diagnostic cart' feature - will appear in another update soon. Huzzah! [reaches for tranquillisers]

Sorry to hear you need tranquilizers but I can only imagine the level of effort you’ve gone through with all the code you’ve written and rewritten these last months. 

 

I still have to flash the U1MB in my 1200XL, which is where I normally keep my SIDE2 cartridge. I expect I’ll do that this afternoon/evening after the rest of the weekly household chores are done. 

[Colleton]

So, I just received my SIDE2  cart today and have a few questions. 

 

Is this the correct type of CF card for the cart?

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-CompactFlash-Card-SDCFB-512-A10-Type/dp/B00006B9QF/

 

Is there an upper limit to the size of the CF card that I should stay under?

Looking around, I need something like this to connect the CF card to my PC?

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Reader-Adapter-5Gbps-Simultaneously/dp/B01ARAH6O0/

 

When I boot the cart in the machine (sans cf card) it says

 

"Ultimate clock installed

SIDE driver v1.0 (c)2011, FJC

No HDD"

 

...so I'm guessing that I need to upgrade the firmware.  I'm also guessing that I can't do this until I get one of the correct compact flash cards, right?

 

Just trying to make sure that I have selected the right type of CF card and card reader before ordering, thanks!

[TheNameOfTheGame]

40 minutes ago, Colleton said:

So, I just received my SIDE2  cart today and have a few questions. 

 

Is this the correct type of CF card for the cart?

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-CompactFlash-Card-SDCFB-512-A10-Type/dp/B00006B9QF/

 

Is there an upper limit to the size of the CF card that I should stay under?

Looking around, I need something like this to connect the CF card to my PC?

https://www.amazon.com/UGREEN-Reader-Adapter-5Gbps-Simultaneously/dp/B01ARAH6O0/

 

When I boot the cart in the machine (sans cf card) it says

 

"Ultimate clock installed

SIDE driver v1.0 (c)2011, FJC

No HDD"

 

...so I'm guessing that I need to upgrade the firmware.  I'm also guessing that I can't do this until I get one of the correct compact flash cards, right?

 

Just trying to make sure that I have selected the right type of CF card and card reader before ordering, thanks!

I've been using the Transcend 2GB 133x high speed CF card (TS2GCF133) for years with no problems in my SIDE2.

 

[JR>]

If you want to get the most out of your SIDE2 I suggest getting one of these CF to SATA adapters and then connecting it to your computer with a USB to SATA cable or enclosure:

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0030D3T16/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

This allows windows to have more than one active FAT/FAT32 partition on the card making it easier to support some of the nicer features of the SIDE2.

 

As for CF Cards, you'll probably never need anything bigger than a 4GB - 8GB card, and it's nice to have several cards on hand for different configurations and backup.  I usually go to ebay and buy 'lots' of older, smaller cards.....preferably Industrial cards.  You can usually find some pretty decent deals

Edited August 19, 2019 by JR>

[Colleton]

Thanks guys, CF card and reader ordered.

[flashjazzcat]

10 hours ago, JR> said:

This allows windows to have more than one active FAT/FAT32 partition on the card making it easier to support some of the nicer features of the SIDE2.

If you use Windows 10, multiple active FAT partitions are supported with USB Compact Flash readers as well (which is to say, removable media). This in itself is a powerful argument for abandoning earlier versions of the OS.

 

11 hours ago, Colleton said:

I need something like this to connect the CF card to my PC?

Yes: that should work fine and provide access to multiple FAT partitions if required under Windows 10.

 

11 hours ago, Colleton said:

Is this the correct type of CF card for the cart?

These are the CF cards I use day-in, day-out with SIDE, Incognito, and XEL-CF:

 

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Ultra-CompactFlash-Memory-SDCFH-004G-U46/dp/B0007QU6ZQ/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=sandisk+ultra+4gb&qid=1566295280&s=gateway&sr=8-3

 

I only paid a fiver for them at Walmart some years ago, however.

 

SanDisk is recommended, although other brands may work equally well.

 

11 hours ago, Colleton said:

Is there an upper limit to the size of the CF card that I should stay under?

No: the firmware should handle anything up to 128GB, although I'm working on some bugs in FDISK which sometimes make it difficult to create extremely large FAT/APT geometries. The very large cards tend to be more modern, however, and reliability with the Atari peripherals may therefore be 'unknown' until someone tries (for instance) a particular 64GB card.

 

JR is correct, though: 4GB appears to be more than enough for any situation. One possible exception is video playback. It may be possible fairly soon to fill a FAT partition with multiple 50/60FPS videos and play them back directly from the SIDE loader. At a ~500KB/s data rate, this could start to fill up larger partitions, and it'll be necessary to avoid deleting videos to make space for new ones (unless one wishes to defrag the CF card, which I wouldn't particularly want to advocate).

 

 

[Colleton]

Awesome, thank you for the detailed reply.  I can't wait to get the SIDE2 up and running.

[flashjazzcat]

12 hours ago, Colleton said:

When I boot the cart in the machine (sans cf card) it says

 

"Ultimate clock installed

SIDE driver v1.0 (c)2011, FJC

No HDD"

 

...so I'm guessing that I need to upgrade the firmware.  I'm also guessing that I can't do this until I get one of the correct compact flash cards, right?

Forgot to mention that you can update the firmware via SIO2PC or similar, but it's probably academic until you have a flash card to use with the driver anyway.

 

I need to ask Lotharek if the SDX and driver version on the stock (non-FJC firmware) carts as sold can be updated, too. Even if the device is sold with the original SIDE Loader, there's no reason for the buggy v.1.0 SIDE driver to be supplied on the device. There are no licensing restrictions for commercial sellers on the SIDE.SYS driver or any of the APT tools (FDISK, etc), and therefore no reason not to supply the very latest driver.

[flashjazzcat]

Jeez... Am fast becoming number one for bug reports regarding my own software. Was updating Lastic's 130XE this evening (on video) and noticed his XF551 slowed to x1 SIO speed after the update with the high speed SIO driver enabled. Turns out XF551 high speed detection has been completely broken for four years owing to a transcription error when copying Hias' source code. Managed to track down and fix the problem in twenty minutes. [Reaches for tranquillisers]

[+DrVenkman]

32 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

 [Reaches for tranquillisers]

 

 

[Faicuai]

31 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

Jeez... Am fast becoming number one for bug reports regarding my own software. Was updating Lastic's 130XE this evening (on video) and noticed his XF551 slowed to x1 SIO speed after the update with the high speed SIO driver enabled. Turns out XF551 high speed detection has been completely broken for four years owing to a transcription error when copying Hias' source code. Managed to track down and fix the problem in twenty minutes. [Reaches for tranquillisers]

Just take it easy... one bug at a time...

 

The depth and sheer complexity of the BIOS (which makes look everything simple and easy, to the end user) is no easy task for anyone. It is almost THREE times as big as the OS-footprint, already!

 

???

 

[flashjazzcat]

Well, I've figured out the magic formula for revealing all bugs, at least. Demo the firmware in a video. The bugs immediately reveal themselves.

[Faicuai]

9 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

Well, I've figured out the magic formula for revealing all bugs, at least. Demo the firmware in a video. The bugs immediately reveal themselves.

But the best (and funniest part)...

 

The bug-fixing "INTERMISSION"... You really got me chuckling, there... :-))

 

[flashjazzcat]

Might as well save it as a template.

[Colleton]

Okay, I give up.

 

Received the SanDisk Ultra 16GB CF card today, connected it to my windows PC, ensured that it was formatted with FAT32 and then loaded some .car files on it.  Put it in the Side2 cart and fired it up.  With the cart switch in the up position I get "FAT partition not found.  Help to retry."  With the switch in the down position I get an "incompatible media 154 symbol not defined missing ____misc"

 

Put the CF card back in the PC, deleted and re-created the partition.  No joy.  Made multiple smaller partitions. No joy.  FWIW, I can see, read from and write to the CF card on the PC.  I don't think it's a bad CF card.

 

So I think maybe I should update the firmware 1st.  So I download what I think is the correct file: Ultimate 1MB BIOS, PBI BIOS and SIDE Loader

 

I can put everything on that file out on my SIO2SD, and load one of the .atr images into D1:  I used SDX448_ultimate_320K.atr.  When I boot the machine I can type DIR at the sparta dos D1: prompt and see all of the files in the disk image.  So I try and run uflash.xex and get a "179 memory conflict" message. 

 

I am lost and so frustrated right now.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Colleton