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ANTONIA configuration tool incompatibility question


SS

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(Apologies if you have seen this before.  I tried asking on Facebook but got no responses.)

 

Has anyone else ever had any trouble running the ANTONIA configuration tool with a particular Atari OS?  I used v1.4 the other day to switch my operating system temporarily to OSb.  However, when I went to change it back, I could no longer get v1.4 to load.  It would start loading up and then abruptly stop, leaving me with a black screen.  I was momentarily panicked to say the least because I thought that maybe I had just permanently set my 600XL to be stuck in OSb.  After a few more unsuccessful tries, I remembered that I had the older v1.1 of the configuration tool filed away on my PC.  I loaded that onto my SIO2SD and was able to get it to run in OSb.  Has anyone else ever had this problem with ANTONIA?  Is v1.4 of the ANT configuration too incompatible with OSb for some reason?  Thanks for any insights.

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@SS

 

All published versions of the Antonia tool are available for download here:

 

http://drac030.krap.pl/en-acc-pliki.php

 

The v.1.4 should be compatible with all OS-es, but perhaps there is a problem resulting from different PORTB configuration on 400/800 OS and XL/XE OS.

 

I tried to reproduce the issue on my Antonia-equipped Atari, but for some weird reason I cannot get it to boot from any storage (neither IDE+ nor any serial device, so something seems broken). So I must ask you to do some testing.

 

So the first question is:

 

1) does v.1.3 work?

 

Assuming the PORTB-related problem, I have prepared a test version of v.1.5. Could you please check if this makes things better?

 

ant15.arc

Edited by drac030
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@drac030 - Sorry that it took me a few days longer than expected to get back to this.  You'd think that all this sheltering in would give me lots of extra time to get to my projects but, honestly, most of my free time these past few weeks has been eaten up with hanging out with my best pal - my three year old daughter.  :)

 

I was finally able to do some further testing this evening.  Both ANT13 and ANT15 work great for me when the ANTONIA is set to an XL/XE Operating system.  However, when I switch the system to OSb both ANT13 and ANT15 hang partway through the load in the same way that ANT14 did.  I once again had to revert back to ANT11 in order to get the configurator to work on OSb.  

 

BTW, my ANTONIA board is installed in a NTSC 600XL with a SOPHIA alongside it.  Doubtful that the setup would make any difference whatsoever but provided so that you know the whole story.

 

I hope that this information helps.

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Thanks. This information at least eliminates one possible source of the problem. No, NTSC or Sophia make no difference.

 

My Antonia-equipped computer still cannot access any external storage, so there will be additional questions (in meantime, though, I checked that 1.5 loads under OS B on another machine - it then only says "Device not present", but otherwise it fully loads and starts).

 

The questions:

 

1) does 1.2 behave like 1.1 or like 1.3?

 

2) what DOS you use to load the program?

 

3) what does exactly mean "hang partway through the load"? How do you know that the program hangs during loading, and not after it was executed? (ANT is only run after it was fully loaded, there are no init segments or such, which could run and hang during loading - so if it hangs *really* during *loading*, then it is rather the DOS's fault).

 

Thanks in advance.

Edited by drac030
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@drac030 - I have attached a short video of what happens when I try to launch ANT14 when the ANTONIA is set to OSb.  

 

In answer to your newest questions :

 

1) v1.2 produces the same results on OSb as 1.3-1.5 does.  I can still only load v1.1 via an OSb setting.

 

2) I had not been using any version of DOS to load the programs, only the XEX loader on a SIO2SD or SDrive-MAX.  However, I did attempt to use DOS 2.0 to load a few different versions today but it appeared to produce the exact same results.

 

3) By my best reckoning, ANT.EXE does appear to load fully and then crash on OSb.  Every now and again I will see the briefest flash of the configurator screen and then it will crash.  

 

Hope this helps.

 

---

 

@JR> - As far as I know, my OSb rom is not corrupted.  It is an unpadded 10K version of the ROM and passes Altirra's check.  I am hesitant to do any further flashing of ROMs on my ANTONIA board though because of its apparent sensitivity to the configurator version.  Unless I can get this problem sorted out, I am going to stick to what I currently have installed lest I end up getting truly "stuck" with one OS.  I hope that makes sense. 

 

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7 minutes ago, SS said:

@JR> I am hesitant to do any further flashing of ROMs on my ANTONIA board though because of its apparent sensitivity to the configurator version.  Unless I can get this problem sorted out, I am going to stick to what I currently have installed lest I end up getting truly "stuck" with one OS.

You should really never get "truly stuck".  You can always remove the ROM jumper on the Antonia board to get a clean boot off of a protected OS ROM slot, so that yo can flash ROMs even if everything flashable gets corrupted.

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29 minutes ago, JR> said:

You can always remove the ROM jumper on the Antonia board to get a clean boot off of a protected OS ROM slot

Yeah but it is TIGHT inside that 600XL case!  If I never have to open that thing up again, I will be happy. 

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I think that I am going to try putting some version of Omnimon or Supermon into one of my slots to see if that will give me decent enough OSb compatibility and also be able to load the configurator program better too.  

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Well, Omnimon XE worked quite well and loads ANT14 just fine.  Supermon, on the other hand, crashed my XL completely; I got nothing but a screen full of noise when I tried to boot the system back up.  Nothing that I tried would help so I did end up having to open up the machine after all.  Thankfully @JR> had alerted me to the trick of pulling the jumper on the ANTONIA board in order to get back into the protected ROM slot.  That worked great (THANK YOU!!!), so I was able to remove the Supermon ROM and replace it with the "Oldrunner" operating system.  Oldrunner seems to run fine but it gives me the same problem as OSb in that it will not load any version of the ANT configurator program newer than v1.1.  So I am largely back to where I started, albeit with a bit more knowledge under my belt. 

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It is actually convenient to have a switch connected to the jumper (like it has been done in my computer), it makes it much easier to recover in bad flash situations and such ones.

 

Since my Antonia-computer is still not operational, I will have to prepare a test version of the ANT program which would run without the board to debug what can possibly be wrong there. This issue puzzles me, because IIRC there were no changes between 1.1 and 1.2 which could break compatibility with an OS. So I am very curious, what it could be. This however may take some time, because I am currently quite busy.

Edited by drac030
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@drac030 - Thanks.  I seem to have found workarounds for my own situation, so no rush needed on my end.  Hopefully you will be able to get your own ANTONIA machine operational to see if you can replicate the problem on your side.  I guess that the problem could be limited to my own system but I'm not sure how.  Hopefully someone else can pop in at some point and do some testing on their own ANTONIA equipped system to see if the problem exists for them.  Like I said, I do have my own workaround but I can see how you'd like to figure out an answer for the software. 

 

Thanks again,

Shawn

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@SS I just wanted to say that I cannot reproduce the issue on an emulator (ANT 1.5 fooled to think that the Antonia board is there - started normally up to the main menu and did not crash), and I do not have any working real machine with the board for now to make further experiments.

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@drac030 - Thanks for your help.  This makes me again wonder if the problem could be with my specific hardware rather than with your software.  I don't know how I would test it any further though and maybe I should just leave well enough alone.

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I recall having similar issues with Antonia/ant. 

 

I had an issue with ant1.4 and omnimon (crashed and left me with a green screen) the jumper trick allowed me to select a working os and as I said, I moved on to a different rom set. 

 

If I can do some testing, let me know, I have the antonia 600XL nearby at the moment :)

 

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@drac030 - This new version fully loaded under every OS that I tried it with : OSa, OSb, Oldrunner, Omniview, XL/XE rev.3, MyBios, Altirra, and Reverse BASIC XL.  

 

However, I got a garbled screen after I hit the "F" button on the ROM Flasher screen.  I was able to load the new OS ROM into the desired slot; it was only the Flasher screen that caused the effect.  I have attached a screenshot below.

20200426_202147.jpg

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I tried to flash the os I had issues with before.

 - boot the machine with 'superhtt.rom' CRC 5A47, SIDE2 cart with the xex loader by FJC. (The OMNIMBE.ROM is in the same directory as the anttest binary).

 - Load the anttest binary and press F, L, X. Select the rom and press RETURN. The load is successful followed by a press of the any key. After which CRCs are recalculated and the slot shows D:OMNIMBE.ROM

 - Pressing F to flash the slots results in the following screen (sits there until I power cycle the machine, the slots are not updated I forgot that I need to press Y to flash the slots, so tried again: ), pressing Y successfully flashes the slots and reboots the system.

IMG_20200427_160747.thumb.jpg.f1cee811b0beebde407ef3beb688dc7f.jpg

A similar screen is shown when flashing a rom while running OMNIMBE.ROM:

15879988246358662668147895558985.thumb.jpg.0243d796ff0746e766825b36f2c6479e.jpg

 

The anttest version succesfully loads from the omnimbe.rom OS, something previous versions don't do (I tried 1.2 to 1.4):

 1.2: Loads and sits at 'Scanning ROMs'

 1.3: Crashes (black screen) after showing 'Scanning ROMs' (no progress shown before it 'blacks out')

 1.4: Does not seem to load at all.

 

 Sorry I can't be of more help. Hope that helps tackling the issue.

 

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