Need help updating an Incognito board

[unixdude]

Hi, all.

 

I bought an Incognito board, and silly me I didn't buy one with the FJC firmware -- I planned to update it myself.  Well, now I'm trying to figure out how to do that.

 

I can get into the loader by pressing "L" from the BIOS menu.  This gives me a directory listing of the files in the FAT32-formatted CF card, and I choose UFLASH.XEX.  This launches UFlash.  I have the ROM files on the CF card (in the FAT32 partition), but it seems that UFlash doesn't read a FAT32 filesystem, because it's not seeing any files no matter what "D#:" drive option I choose from the menu.  I have tried filtering for "*.*" and "*" but neither of those shows any files (not even the UFLASH.XEX).

 

I'm not sure if the old version of the loader supports this, but I have tried mounting an ATR file by selecting an ATR file (e.g., FJC's "toolkit.atr" and "Incognito_Full.atr"), but when I press RETURN with one of those selected in the loader, my system boots to the self test.

 

If it matters, my Incognito is configured as follows: XL/XE, boot to High-Speed OS, Joystick emulation enabled, SIDE enabled at ID 5, SpartaDOS enabled.

I do not yet have any SIO drive, so I can't use that to bootstrap this process.  Maybe it's time to buy an SDrive-MAX, but before I did that I wanted to see if there was any other way of bootstrapping this update.

 

UFlash will work great once I get it to see that ROM -- that's the whole trick here.  Any thoughts on what I can do to get past this?

Thanks.

[TGB1718]

I may be wrong, but I don't think you can update that way, as your effectively flashing the system while trying to access it (I'm sure I'll be corrected if wrong).

 

I think it can only be flashed using as you say SDrive-MAX or one of the other SIO devices.

 

Thats what I do with my U1M in my 130XE

[andymanone]

All steps you need to do,  you´ll find in FJC´s great manual here:

 

Incognito-and-1088XEL-U1MB-Firmware-Manual  (Page 9)

 

I prefered the SIO2PC method, (mount firmware.atr as D1:) 

 

It´s very easy and works well for me...

 

Gtx.,

andY

 

 

Edited November 4, 2019 by andymanone

[unixdude]

21 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

I may be wrong, but I don't think you can update that way, as your effectively flashing the system while trying to access it (I'm sure I'll be corrected if wrong).

 

I think it can only be flashed using as you say SDrive-MAX or one of the other SIO devices.

Yeah, I didn’t think about that (flashing while using). Makes sense.
 

I was hoping for a different answer, but you’re right — I guess it’s time to buy an SDrive-MAX. Thanks. 

[unixdude]

21 minutes ago, andymanone said:

All steps you need to do,  you´ll find in FJC´s great manual here:

 

Incognito-and-1088XEL-U1MB-Firmware-Manual  (Page 9)

 

I prefered the SIO2PC method, (mount firmware.atr as D1:) 

 

It´s very easy and works well for me...

 

Gtx.,

andY

 

 

Thanks for that link. I’ve read various docs and probably read them too quickly. 
 

I’ll budget for and buy an SDrive-MAX and then be off to the races. 

[flashjazzcat]

11 hours ago, unixdude said:

I can get into the loader by pressing "L" from the BIOS menu.  This gives me a directory listing of the files in the FAT32-formatted CF card, and I choose UFLASH.XEX.  This launches UFlash.  I have the ROM files on the CF card (in the FAT32 partition), but it seems that UFlash doesn't read a FAT32 filesystem, because it's not seeing any files no matter what "D#:" drive option I choose from the menu.  I have tried filtering for "*.*" and "*" but neither of those shows any files (not even the UFLASH.XEX).

This is unfortunate, since it suggests that the loader provided as part of the original firmware lacks the CIO FAT driver Candle added to later versions. UFLASH doesn't need to support any file system: it simply goes through the CIO as does any standard application, and when the FAT DOS is present (as it always is in the new loader), everything works. The new loader even allows navigation of the FAT directory tree. But it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation if the old loader won't allow this.

11 hours ago, unixdude said:

I'm not sure if the old version of the loader supports this, but I have tried mounting an ATR file by selecting an ATR file (e.g., FJC's "toolkit.atr" and "Incognito_Full.atr"), but when I press RETURN with one of those selected in the loader, my system boots to the self test.

Unless the original firmware is a real hot mess, this should work, but since the toolkit ATR requires SDX (as indeed does a firmware update), you should mount the ATR but not reboot from the loader (I think you can just tag the ATR using the space bar in the old loader; CTRL+SPACE does the same in the new loader). Then go back into the BIOS setup menu and reboot from there into SDX, and you should be able to reach the toolkit ATR's contents on D1:.

28 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

I may be wrong, but I don't think you can update that way, as your effectively flashing the system while trying to access it (I'm sure I'll be corrected if wrong).

8 minutes ago, unixdude said:

Yeah, I didn’t think about that (flashing while using). Makes sense.

It's perfectly OK to update the system in this manner, especially by running UFLASH directly from a FAT partition, since the CIO FAT driver is all in low RAM and doesn't rely on any ROM content. The point you make about updating ROM content while it's in use is valid for the PBI BIOS when you're updating from a HDD partition or FAT-hosted ATR, though, which is why you should always update the PBI BIOS last in that scenario, and then reboot the system. This gets around the possibility of trying to use a PBI BIOS with invalid equates following a firmware update.

 

[unixdude]

Thanks, FJC.  I saw that pressing the space bar in the loader allowed me to assign a drive letter, but I couldn't figure out how to get back to the Incognito BIOS screen to boot.  I decided to make this super easy on myself: I convinced my wife to buy me an SDrive-MAX for my birthday/Christmas, and to let me have it when it arrives.   Gavin tells me it will ship tomorrow, so maybe I'll be playing by this weekend!

I assume that once I figure out how to use an SDrive-MAX (fortunately there are good manuals on this), upgrading the Incognito BIOS will be easy (I've seen your videos, FJC, and it's pretty simple) and then I'll be heading for quick success.

 

Maybe I should contact Lotharek and ask if he can supply some sort of manual for the old BIOS... but since most people will probably just flash to FJC firmware, using an SIO device they already have, maybe it doesn't really matter that much.

 

I'm getting there, slowly but surely.  The SDrive-MAX was on my list, I just didn't expect to buy it today...

[flashjazzcat]

10 minutes ago, unixdude said:

Maybe I should contact Lotharek and ask if he can supply some sort of manual for the old BIOS

I wish you the very best of luck with that endeavour.

 

In any case: the ATR method should be guaranteed to work regardless of the firmware version if you follow my directions, and once the firmware is updated, I no longer have to make best guesses about what facilities (such as the D1: FAT handler) are present and working when offering guidance. Subsequent firmware updates are a breeze since you can - if you wish - dump everything into a FAT partition, turn on the 'FAT FMS' in the loader, and guarantee that UFLASH will be able to find it, even if the ROM images are stored in a folder.

 

[unixdude]

To follow up, I bought an SDrive-MAX and was able to use that to boot the computer with FJC's firmware upgrade ATR.  Then I just ran UFlash and got it up and running.

[shoestring]

There's also this great hands on video.

 

 

[unixdude]

Yes, that is indeed an excellent video.