U1M & Side 2 under Altirra

[TGB1718]

I have enabled U1M and Side 2 under Altirra, when I boot it asks me to flash the U1M which I did and it seemed to work fine.

 

I have 2 problems, 

1. how do you save the now 'flashed' U1M, as the next time I ran Altirra it wanted the ROM flashing again.

2. how to you emulate a CF card in the Side 2, I tried adding new hardware, but all it offered was a hard drive,

I did this, but it still said it needed a CF card.

 

I looked through the Altirra manual and while there are very good technical descriptions on how they work, I couldn't

find answers to these to questions

 

Help please 

[flashjazzcat]

3 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

1. how do you save the now 'flashed' U1M, as the next time I ran Altirra it wanted the ROM flashing again.

File->Save Firmware->Save Ultimate 1MB Flash. However, you also need to point the firmware manager at this image and assign it to U1MB. Honestly, it's a lot easier to just download the U1MB ROM and set it up System->Configure System->Firmware->Firmware Manager.

5 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

2. how to you emulate a CF card in the Side 2, I tried adding new hardware, but all it offered was a hard drive,

I did this, but it still said it needed a CF card.

Make yourself a VHD (you can also use Windows Disk Management console for this, but you'll subsequently need to detach the VHD before mounting it in the emulator) and add it to the Compact Flash Bus in Altirra's device manager. You can then partition it as you wish. Just detach the image in Altirra and mount it in Windows again if you need to format FAT partitions, add files using Windows Explorer, etc.

[TGB1718]

thanks, will give it a go

[dimfil]

I used Altirra itself to create a cf image and add it to Side2. I still have to find some spare time and experiment with Physical Disk option...

 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2020 by dimfil

[TGB1718]

I downloaded the ROM from Lotherek site, but it's the older version with the coloured letttering, so I tried the flash

which now shows the newer U1M (the older one didn't have FDISK).

 

Created a VHD, created a 100M APT partition, then used FDISK to make 3 x32Mb partitions and labeled them as D3,D4 & D5

Disabled those SIO drives so as not to conflict with the HD partitions.

Ran FORMAT, but it said no device for drives c and d.

The SIDE Loader saw the 3 32M partitions

I decided a full restart, on doing this I was back to the old U1M even though I saved it before closing.

I noticed that the OS was defaulting to High Speed OS, I changed this to Stock OS and now

nothing works, it just goes to the self test screen, can't get back into the U1M bios, so it looks

like I'll have to remove all the devices and try find a newer U1M ROM somewhere and start all over again ?

 

 

EDIT: removed the U1M ROM and used the Flashed configuration, and it booted fine, ranf FDISK and noticed the drive names

were missing, I must have forgotten to save it after naming them.

 

Renamed, saved, exit FDISk, ran FORMAT and hey presto , all find, I can now see the drives

 

The only thing I can't seem to do is get into the U1M BIOS nor the Side 2 Bios

Edited January 27, 2020 by TGB1718
Fixed it :))

[flashjazzcat]

You can mount 'ULTIMATE.ROM' in the 'ROM' folder of the firmware download directly in Altirra (by attaching it via the firmware manager):

 

https://atari8.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Ultimate1MB_Firmware_v.3.02_010819.zip

 

[TGB1718]

I think the problem was there was an older version of the ROM in the list, all I did was remove that one and insert the latest.

Now it's all working fine.

 

One thing I did notice, when I booted the first time, set what I wanted in the bios, saved and rebooted, at the start of SDX loading

Altirra crashed, it kept doing this at every time until I chose 'L' to go into the Side 2 BIOS, didn't change anything, just exited and

it booted find and it boots perfectly every time now, strange ?

[flashjazzcat]

1 hour ago, TGB1718 said:

I think the problem was there was an older version of the ROM in the list, all I did was remove that one and insert the latest.

Now it's all working fine.

Altirra requires mindful application of the 'Set as default' button next to the ROM you actually want to be active.

1 hour ago, TGB1718 said:

Altirra crashed, it kept doing this at every time until I chose 'L' to go into the Side 2 BIOS

You mean 'L' to enter the SIDE Loader, and this would actually be the SIDE Loader built into the U1MB ROM. If the emulated machine crashed, I would check that System->Console Switches->Enable Cart SDX is unchecked. Leaving it enabled causes SDX on the U1MB to try and boot SDX on the SIDE cart as an external cartridge, with undesirable results (usually a crash).

 

Also check that 'ATR swap button' is enabled in the U1MB BIOS (PBI HDD settings). This completely deactivates the external SIDE cartridge ROM.

[TGB1718]

1 hour ago, flashjazzcat said:

I would check that System->Console Switches->Enable Cart SDX is unchecked. Leaving it enabled causes SDX on the U1MB to try and boot SDX on the SIDE cart as an external cartridge, with undesirable results (usually a crash).

Thanks, that solved a problem I was having with a RAM Disk, one last issue, I can't get it to run my config.sys

I have set the boot drive to D3: and the config.sys setting also to D3: but it is still loading the default config.sys.

 

I know the boot is working to D3: as I have an autoexec.bat which executes

 

Appart from the drive (D3:) the setup is the same as my 130XE with a U1M and Side2 (that uses D9: as its boot drive), that works as expected.

[flashjazzcat]

23 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

I know the boot is working to D3: as I have an autoexec.bat which executes

This tells us that DUNIT is properly set to 3 when DOS starts up, so SDX will therefore look for CONFIG.SYS on that drive. If you can't get to the bottom of the situation, please send me a copy of CONFIG.SYS or better yet a raw dump of the D3: partition.

 

[TGB1718]

this is the config.sys:-

 

DEVICE SPARTA BANKED
DEVICE SIO
DEVICE ATARIDOS
DEVICE INDUS 4
DEVICE ULTIME
DEVICE JIFFY
DEVICE RAMDISK K,32
DEVICE FATFS
SET PATH=CAR:;D4:BIN>
MANPATH=D4:MAN>

 

On booting, these are the settings

D3:SET
BOOT=C:>
PATH=CAR:
PROMPT=D$N
SYSERR=CAR:SYSERR.MSG
MAXDRV=O:
RAMDISK=O:>
BASIC=O:>BASIC.SAV
CAR=O:>CAR.SAV
TEMP=O:>
_01=AUTOEXEC

 

and the ramdisk is O: the default

 

Not sure how to dump the partition, its 32MB

 

FDISK output:-

APT  Partition  View  Help

Num Ptn    Start     Size Drv BPS Attr
|  1 DOS  1843202    66000 D3: 512 A--M|
|  2 DOS  1909203    66000 D4: 512 A--M|
|  3 DOS  1975204    66000 D5: 512 A--M|
|  4 --- -------- -------- --- --- ----|
|  5 --- -------- -------- --- --- ----|

 

D3:LSDSK

D3:HDD 1.0.1.1       32MB 512bps
D3
D4:HDD 1.0.1.2       32MB 512bps
D4
D5:HDD 1.0.1.3       32MB 512bps
D5:

 

if I enable AUTOEXEC.BAT

 

SET PATH=CAR:;D4:BIN>
SET MANPATH=D4:MAN>

 

I then have 

BOOT=C:>
PROMPT=D$N
SYSERR=CAR:SYSERR.MSG
MAXDRV=O:
RAMDISK=O:>
BASIC=O:>BASIC.SAV
CAR=O:>CAR.SAV
TEMP=O:>
PATH=CAR:;D4:BIN>
MANPATH=D4:MAN>

 

so autoexec is running, not config.sys

 

 

[+Stephen]

2 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

Thanks, that solved a problem I was having with a RAM Disk, one last issue, I can't get it to run my config.sys

I have set the boot drive to D3: and the config.sys setting also to D3: but it is still loading the default config.sys.

 

I know the boot is working to D3: as I have an autoexec.bat which executes

 

Appart from the drive (D3:) the setup is the same as my 130XE with a U1M and Side2 (that uses D9: as its boot drive), that works as expected.

I have also experienced this issue with my config.sys not loading - curious to see what you guys find.

[flashjazzcat]

2 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

MANPATH=D4:MAN>

This should be:

 

SET MANPATH=D4:MAN>

 

Other than that, CONFIG.SYS looks fine. I've copied it to my C drive here and it causes no issues.

2 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

Not sure how to dump the partition, its 32MB

Ideally a copy of the entire raw disk image would be most useful. You can do this with HxD or a similar tool (open the raw disk, save to a file, then ZIP it).

2 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

1 DOS  1843202    66000 D3: 512 A--M

You probably realise this and it does no harm, but only 65,535 sectors of those partitions are usable by the SDFS file system.

 

This could just as easily be some SDX issue, since - as said - DUNIT is set to D3: as far as we can see here, and if SDX fails to read CONFIG.SYS from the default drive, I have no idea why it would have an issue.

Edited January 28, 2020 by flashjazzcat
f***ing emoticons

[feoh]

I'm having a slightly different issue trying to partition/format disks under Altirra.

 

I can boot the U1MB just fine in the emulator, and get all the way to the final "Write to disk?" prompt in FDISK, but no matter what I do I get an "IO Error 255".

 

Has anyone ever encountered this?

[w1k]

same here