+Stephen Posted July 28, 2021 Share Posted July 28, 2021 18 minutes ago, Peter Rabitt said: Supper, I will test this today later on...I have other things to do before I can "play" with my Atari!! Peter Edit: I just looked thru the tools for SDX and only found a CP/M tool for the Indus drive, I only have a 1050 working... DRIVERS>CPMFS.ARC ----------------- A driver to read Indus CP/M disks. Hmm - I cannot say with certainty if the drive has to be double density. My 1050 is modded with US/Doubler. I think a DD drive is required to read CP/M disks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted July 28, 2021 Author Share Posted July 28, 2021 It will work with anything provided that the disk's geometry is the same as in Indus CP/M, that is: 1 side, 40 tracks, 18 sectors per track, 128 or 256 bytes per sector, two first tracks reserved, block size 1k, directory size 1 block in SD and 2 blocks in DD. Also, in DD soft interleave 1:1 is assumed, and 1:5 in SD. It could be configurable, of course, but there was no demand 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Peter Rabitt Posted July 30, 2021 Share Posted July 30, 2021 WOW found a Induus GT drive, not very cheep but I bought it anyway... We will see if it work with CP/M.. The disks maybe DS/DD so I may still need to get the ATR8000 running and add the old 5.25 drives to it... Thanks for the help in the question of CP/M... Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted July 30, 2021 Share Posted July 30, 2021 (edited) 10 minutes ago, Peter Rabitt said: WOW found a Induus GT drive, not very cheep but I bought it anyway... We will see if it work with CP/M.. The disks maybe DS/DD so I may still need to get the ATR8000 running and add the old 5.25 drives to it... Thanks for the help in the question of CP/M... Peter um if it's an indus drive, just add the memory to the drive if it's not already there and you won't need the atr8000... the iNdus will happily run CPM at a good clip. back to our spartados x 4.49 thread. Edited July 30, 2021 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Peter Rabitt Posted August 7, 2021 Share Posted August 7, 2021 OK, back to sdx 4.49 or so.... I now have the cartage you told me about and the case so it does not short out when installed in the 800xl... Now I find more questions... I have formatted 3 different disk with sdx and every thing was said to be OK... But when I took out the sdx cart. and used the sdrive and ran a dos dosxl 2.50 I think it was and tried to view the directories of the disk formatted in SDX, I get 0000 sectors free????? So I tried and formatted the disk with 2.5xl and then tried to read the disks with SDX. In validated format.?? Doesn't all Atari dos's should format the same??? The disk drives are 1 Indus-gt, 2 1050 one with duplicator and the other just a 1050.... Yea I know this may show up SDX but it is a question all doses I guess... Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted August 7, 2021 Share Posted August 7, 2021 (edited) SDX has it's own filesystem and will not be read by OSS DOS XL... You may be confusing initialization of a disk with the Format of a disk as well as it's filesystem... these are not the same beasts at all add to this some interleaving of sectors and you can see where all of this is going... SDX can read a multitude of differing directory structures depending on what you have loaded as a filter/device driver... it is very flexible. You will find trying to get other file systems to do the same very difficult to impossible. You may notice that SDX's formatter will initialize a disk and then you can build the directory and give the disk the structure that you want. You can then use the boot command and lay down a SpartaDos disk based DOS and lay down the boot strap to load whatever flavor of Sparta you wish... You can also use SpartaDOS X to initialize disks as Atari DOS disks and be readable with Atari DOS or DOS XL but you need to use Atari in the SDX formatters mode choice. Just toggle it. MyDOS... Initialize and then Write DOS FILES You might see a trend forming You can write AtariDOS or it's compatibles to the SDX made disk if you boot one of those AtariDOS disks first and swap in the prepared SDX blank... writing the DOS files, that's accomplished from the menu choice that's on the DOS DISK of choice and following it's prompts MILF or medium I'd like to format is a handy tool, look it up here on AA Edited August 7, 2021 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillC Posted August 7, 2021 Share Posted August 7, 2021 (edited) 24 minutes ago, Peter Rabitt said: OK, back to sdx 4.49 or so.... I now have the cartage you told me about and the case so it does not short out when installed in the 800xl... Now I find more questions... I have formatted 3 different disk with sdx and every thing was said to be OK... But when I took out the sdx cart. and used the sdrive and ran a dos dosxl 2.50 I think it was and tried to view the directories of the disk formatted in SDX, I get 0000 sectors free????? So I tried and formatted the disk with 2.5xl and then tried to read the disks with SDX. In validated format.?? Doesn't all Atari dos's should format the same??? The disk drives are 1 Indus-gt, 2 1050 one with duplicator and the other just a 1050.... Yea I know this may show up SDX but it is a question all doses I guess... Peter SpartaDOS X can format disks as either Sparta or Atari mode, to be readable with Atari DOS or DOS XL you need to use Atari format. The image below shows the SDX formatter menu, use M to toggle between Atari and Sparta formats. Edited August 7, 2021 by BillC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mazzspeed Posted August 7, 2021 Share Posted August 7, 2021 On 7/31/2021 at 3:33 AM, Peter Rabitt said: WOW found a Induus GT drive, not very cheep but I bought it anyway... We will see if it work with CP/M.. The disks maybe DS/DD so I may still need to get the ATR8000 running and add the old 5.25 drives to it... Thanks for the help in the question of CP/M... Peter The IndusGT with ramcharger will run CP/M on the drive itself, you use the A8 as a terminal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoodByteXL Posted August 8, 2021 Share Posted August 8, 2021 15 hours ago, Peter Rabitt said: Yea I know this may show up SDX but it is a question all doses I guess... To be more precise: M -> Mode is either Sparta for the SDFS directory structure or Atari for all the AtariDOS 2.0 clones and their directory structures in single and double density only. If you switch from Sparta to Atari mode, impossible format settings will automatically be re-adjusted to legal Atari settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Peter Rabitt Posted August 9, 2021 Share Posted August 9, 2021 (edited) OK, I tried the SDX with Atari format...It work as you would know but it appeared to only be in sd...Is that so??? Awaiting the ram charger 65K and hope that all my CP/M disks (5.25) are not in ds/dd. If so I still have to get the ATR8000 running and the external disks drives I had use with them on my BBS...I also had 3-4 hard drives a whole 5meg each and lots of $$$ then... Also A 8" if I can find it... Peter Edited August 9, 2021 by Peter Rabitt edit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillC Posted August 9, 2021 Share Posted August 9, 2021 5 hours ago, Peter Rabitt said: OK, I tried the SDX with Atari format...It work as you would know but it appeared to only be in sd...Is that so??? The US Doubler is capable of double density, but this option must be selected in the SDX format menu. Post# 207 above shows this menu, select drive first using number or letter, then pressing D toggles between the different density options. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted August 10, 2021 Share Posted August 10, 2021 On 8/9/2021 at 1:15 PM, Peter Rabitt said: OK, I tried the SDX with Atari format...It work as you would know but it appeared to only be in sd...Is that so??? Awaiting the ram charger 65K and hope that all my CP/M disks (5.25) are not in ds/dd. If so I still have to get the ATR8000 running and the external disks drives I had use with them on my BBS...I also had 3-4 hard drives a whole 5meg each and lots of $$$ then... Also A 8" if I can find it... Peter 23 hours ago, BillC said: The US Doubler is capable of double density, but this option must be selected in the SDX format menu. Post# 207 above shows this menu, select drive first using number or letter, then pressing D toggles between the different density options. Yep. And it also works with a Happy 1050 as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JAC! Posted August 27, 2021 Share Posted August 27, 2021 Repost about a suggestion for improving the compatibility of "TD": " - With "TD.COM ON" the YASH screen is messed up. Reason is, that an interrupt routine of Sparta DOS always inserts the TD line at the start of any display list with some blank lines, even if a program creates a new non-standard display list. This doesn't work with YASH, since it needs an own display list with DLIs and the insertion of the TD line together with some blank lines makes the display list too long for ANTIC. And since the YASH display is shifted down by the TD line the DLIs use wrong colors, since they are based on VCOUNT values. The Sparta DOS manual states the following on p. 108: "TD ON may be incompatible with some programs. If you are having problems with a program, try TD OFF, or do not install it at all." A solution would be that Sparta DOS checks, if a normal display list (with 24 blank lines at the beginning) is shown and if not, the TD line is not displayed. And/or the TD line is only inserted, when there are enough blank lines at the beginning of the display list AND the display is not shifted down for the TD line, i.e. replace 8 blank lines of the DL with the TD line. Perhaps the Sparta DOS developers can do something about this, since the current behaviour of TD may affect all programs with an own display list? " 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted September 1, 2021 Author Share Posted September 1, 2021 For the interested, here is one chapter out of the SpartaDOS X 4.50 Programming Guide, which is now being in the works. The chapter in question is about SIO (Sector I/O) device drivers in SDX. Subsequent chapters on the kernel drivers etc. are planned, but it will take some time considering that the relatively simple matter of the SIO driverage took 8 pages. Critical remarks (including related to the language) welcome. sdx_sio_drivers.pdf 7 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faicuai Posted September 1, 2021 Share Posted September 1, 2021 1 hour ago, drac030 said: Critical remarks (including related to the language) welcome. Hope you don't mind, but found a little error (first page of manual): "Absolutely The Best and Most Powerful 8-bit Disk Operating System (as of 9/2021)". That's more like it. If my IBM Mainframe and MS-DOS mentors / peers would have seen this back in the day (or even today), they would have been blown away, for sure! Bring that v4.50 on! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted September 1, 2021 Share Posted September 1, 2021 3 hours ago, drac030 said: Subsequent chapters on the kernel drivers etc. are planned Looking forward to it very much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted September 2, 2021 Author Share Posted September 2, 2021 10 hours ago, Faicuai said: "Absolutely The Best and Most Powerful 8-bit Disk Operating System (as of 9/2021)". From my experience with Atari I can certainly say that SpartaDOS X is extraordinary as a DOS for Atari, but perhaps it can be named so without involving the Absolute. I am also sure that "8-bit" there is meant as "Atari 8-bit". In the Atari 8-bit world I do not know of anything which could be comparable. As for the 16/32-bit world, certainly the ST TOS is more powerful being windowed, having some (limited, but still) multitasking capabilities, being able to address big disks etc. SpartaDOS X is close to some of that, though, all the more considering the limited resources it has to live with. I am sure that there may be other 8-bit operating systems which in themselves look (and perhaps also are) more powerful, like perhaps GEOS, SymbOS etc. (also FJC's GUI). SpartaDOS X in this company does not look very impressive, but has (IMHO) the great advantage of being backward-compatible: all the new features aside, one can still run programs which were written long before SpartaDOS was even intended. Its internal design is certainly well-thought and ingenious. The deficiencies, if there are any significant ones, are mostly just human errors in the implementation. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faicuai Posted September 2, 2021 Share Posted September 2, 2021 11 minutes ago, drac030 said: but perhaps it can be named so without involving the Absolute. Of course it can be named without it... it's just a sprinkle of superlatives, here and there! But knowing what I have seen and used on the 8-bit world, it is quite ahead of everything I know... even in the most basic metrics you can think of (eg. max. supported sector size, max. # of files per directory, max. # of directories, relocatable file-format, expandable driver-model, etc., etc. ??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Peter Rabitt Posted September 2, 2021 Share Posted September 2, 2021 OK, SDX is the best, maybe, of the ATARI 8 bit world but has a little ways to go. I have used it for about 8 years to run my BBS (back in the 80's) on and worked GREAT. Now with the advent of new products it does not appear to be up to the challenge of new... I am referring to the read and write of the SD memory in the fujinet, sdrive max, sdrive arm... I am still trying to get programs off the sd card to floppy disk to use in test and repairing disk drives 1050 and the Indus. Yes I downloaded the programs from the web. Most here from our users and them moved them to the SD cards from my pc... I can see them when I boot one of the SD type units but have no way to move them to the drives...If I boot with SDX i get 0000 free sector when i try to access the SD cards. If i boot off the SD cards the menu show them and i can put them in a drive to boot from but them I need dos to do anything...Maybe I am not seeing something... Can anyone tell me what to do of at least point me in the right direction??? Yes I have A8 computer with memory to spare...600xl 64k upgrade, 800xl 256k upgrade, and a 800xl with 64k memory. If I need to I can drag out my 400 with 64k memory.... Still working on my ATR 8000 so its not available yet... Hope someone has an IDEA. Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted September 3, 2021 Author Share Posted September 3, 2021 15 hours ago, Peter Rabitt said: I am still trying to get programs off the sd card to floppy disk to use in test and repairing disk drives 1050 and the Indus. Yes I downloaded the programs from the web. Most here from our users and them moved them to the SD cards from my pc... I can see them when I boot one of the SD type units but have no way to move them to the drives...If I boot with SDX i get 0000 free sector when i try to access the SD cards. Could you provide exact steps to reproduce that effect? SDX should never display "0000 FREE SECTORS" on the media it does not recognize, UNLESS the file system on that media is severely messed up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted September 3, 2021 Share Posted September 3, 2021 (edited) Peter is this across all SD cards or are you just passing one SD card around from device to device? Have you tried lowering the SD card devices divisor? Have your Ataris had the sio caps removed? Have you checked your images in and emulator? Have you tried adjusting SDX's filter to different modes? Could you post your configs, .bats, etc.... make sure it's what the SpartaDos X is actually using... if comms to the disk are iffy it might be pulling from SDX cart and not disk, in that case make such changes with the SDX user image tool and use that cart/rom and see if it changes things. Not all devices get along with the same SD cards and sizes of SD cards or even the format of the SD card... You may have to look for the common denominators of all devices if you move the SD card around... If the images are .atr's, .atx's of game disk etc. you wont read the directory of them as always, but you could sector copy most atr's to real disks. post a couple of the problematic .atr's here for us to look at. If it's just xex's etc on the SD card and not in Atari file system/ APT etc... then you are relying on the devices loader to launch the disks or files... in that case you may need to load SDX's FAT.SYS off the toolkit disk.... Lot's of idea's and guesswork here sine we can't clearly understand what you have set up and are doing... Edited September 3, 2021 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Peter Rabitt Posted September 4, 2021 Share Posted September 4, 2021 OK I can answer some of the above questions... 10 hours ago, drac030 said: Could you provide exact steps to reproduce that effect? SDX should never display "0000 FREE SECTORS" Sorry I got the wrong dos mixed up. It was the MYDOS that did that.. SDX only said 138(?) unknown file or something...Sorry. 9 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said: Peter is this across all SD cards or are you just passing one SD card around from device to device? Have you tried lowering the SD card devices divisor? Have your Ataris had the sio caps removed? Have you checked your images in and emulator? Have you tried adjusting SDX's filter to different modes? I have each sdrive and the fujinet with their own sd card.. 16 gb. I do not know what a sd card divisor is???? Do I need to do that and where is the info... I think I saw something about speed and caps on the 1050 drives but not the computer... How do I check MY images??? I do not understand?? Don't for get I am OLD and Atari BBS was 40 plus years ago and I have been living in the ms dos/windows world...This is all new to me...We did not have all this back in the 80's I know there is a 300 page manual for the sdx. I have not read it but I guess before I go any father I will have to read every page.. Just think I did not have to read 300 pages to make my SDX4.19 to work on the BBS...So I do not know about the filters to different modes...What ever they are??? 10 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said: Could you post your configs, .bats, etc.... What configs, bats, etc??? I am trying to get a file from the sd to a floppy disk so I can check out a Indus drive with extra ram!! AS far as most of the other questions I don't use the A8 for games, I am trying to get them going so i can get my old BBS running and retrieve the old files if they have not gone to the big bit bucket in the sky... I do thank you all for the help so please do not give up on me... Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted September 4, 2021 Share Posted September 4, 2021 unkown file system perhaps? try FAT driver from SDX toolkit, maybe some screen shot of what's going on could help... since it was mydos and not spartados you won't have all the stuff I mentioned of course Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Peter Rabitt Posted September 4, 2021 Share Posted September 4, 2021 OK I would like to try something but how do I get the "tool kit" to a floppy or ?? to read/load the file???? Remember this question is how to get files from the SD cards to floppies.... Yes I can download them from the web, move them to an SD card, but can not get them to floppies to use them. The sd cards are great for loading games from and all but !!! MY WHOLE PROBLEM!!!! I can use what ever DOS that will allow me to do the acts you are asking me to do. I have the original sdx 4.19,and sdx 4.49, I have a few different version of MYDOS, and other dos's. Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted September 4, 2021 Share Posted September 4, 2021 I think the problem here is not any shortcomings in SDX, but not knowing how to mount a disk image using FujiNet. All the listed disk operating systems generally do not care where a disk is hosted, since the Atari's IO system is completely hardware abstracted. Learn how to mount disk images and most of your problems will probably disappear. Consider the FAT on the SD card as a 'container' for multiple floppy disk images. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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