Spartados 3.2d Won’t boot [Resolved but still some questions]

[800_Rocks]

[Resolved but read on] Reading another thread in this forum I changed the ‘FastSIO’ setting in my SDriveMax from from $06 to $0a and now Spartados 3.2d loads!  What follows is my orig post with a few other questions at the bottom that O am still seeking answers to. 

I know nothing about Spartados. I have a good 130XE. I was told that Spartados 3.2d was good for loading from disk. I found several .ATR images that look promising based on their names. However none of them load from my SDriveMax. They star to load for a few seconds then just stop leaving the 130 hung until cycling the power switch. Also using other DOS versions like 2.0s and 2.5 and MyDos3, etc. I can not read the Spartados 3.2d .ATR.  Is that expected? Maybe I have a bad .ATR but I’ve tried several. Is there any trick to booting Spartados 3.2?  See the image names in tiny font at the very bottom of the image. What do the words in square brackets mean?  [dirt] and [fte] for example?  Do you have a good source of a known to work spartados 3.2d?  Note I have the same problem with all the Spartados .ATRs that I have found so far. So 3.2g fails the same way.  Thanks for any help.

Edited August 6, 2020 by 800_Rocks
Resolved

[+Nezgar]

The SpartaDOS Ultraspeed i/o handler kicks in very soon during the load, so it most likely means that is failing due to an incompatibility with the settings on the Sdrive MAX.

 

First, I think theres a setting to turn off "turbo mode" ? That would force regular speed IO.

 

Try lower ultraspeed/turbo divisors - ie A real US Doubler or Happy uses divisor $0A, speedy is $09, or slower but still 2x "warp" speed is $10.

[TGB1718]

8 hours ago, Nezgar said:

The SpartaDOS Ultraspeed i/o handler kicks in very soon during the load, so it most likely means that is failing due to an incompatibility with the settings on the Sdrive MAX.

A lot of my old disks had US Doubler although the "real" disks load fine in 1050's, some, but not all have issues

on S-Drive MAX (I think those may well have OS/A+ as their OS), also none of these disks will load in Altirra,

as soon as the High Speed handler is loaded it hangs.

 

I wrote a Disk Copy program way back in the day to copy DD Disks in 2 passes on a 130XE, I included FastIO routines

in the code, it works fine on the 1050 and S-Drive. but again hangs in Altirra

[+CharlieChaplin]

DOS 2.0s, DOS 2.5 and MyDOS use the DOS II format, whereas SpartaDOS uses the Sparta DOS FileSystem (SDFS) - they are incompatible to each other. Afaik, SpartaDOS can show the dir. of a DOS II disk and the program MENU.COM on the SpartaDOS diskette can copy files from DOS II to SpartaDOS and vice-versa. But DOS II is completely unable to read a SpartaDOS disk or show its dir.

 

A8 DOS worlds:

 

1) DOS II or DOS 2.x: DOS 2.0s, DOS 2.0d, DOS 2.5, Smart DOS, Top DOS, MyDOS, Bibo DOs, Turbo DOS, Super DOS, DOS XL, OS A+ 2.0, etc.

 

2) SDFS: Sparta DOS 2.x, Sparta DOS 3.x, SDX 4.x, Bewe-DOS, Real DOS

 

3) others (incompatible to everything else): DOS 3.0, DOS 4.0, DOS XE, OS A+ 4.x,

 

[TGB1718]

Does anything exist that can use all types of those DOS's, by that I mean a utility that would allow

Read/Write to/from any one to any other one ?

 

If not, then maybe I might just do it for the hell of it 🤡

[_The Doctor__]

3 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

Does anything exist that can use all types of those DOS's, by that I mean a utility that would allow

Read/Write to/from any one to any other one ?

 

If not, then maybe I might just do it for the hell of it 🤡

might be cool to have a util to handle ALL DOS variants directly rather than the current methods of loading this driver or that and then loading whatever DOS as a stepping stone to finally get something to your target DOS....

[+David_P]

If you run SpartaDos X with the AtariDos.SYS driver loaded, you can access any Sparta (or family) and DOS II (or family) disk.

 

The market share of DOS 3, DOS 4, DOS XE etc is slim to none.

[TGB1718]

I have a lot of OS/A+ disks that I used long, long ago, would help with those sorts.

 

Just had a Realisation, many years ago I started writing a program in Visual Basic to do

this very thing between .ATR files, but never completed it, found the .exe in an old folder,

here's a screenshot, funny the things you forget 😄, files are dated in 2010

 

At this point it was just reading the image of a single disk.

[_The Doctor__]

The point is a direct utility to handle conversions between all, and why not? There are plenty of people using all manor of DOS out there... MyDOS still has quite a following as does DOS XL and OSS A+ etc etc... DOS 3 is rarely used but DOS 4 has been used a bit over the years. DOS XE not as much but still got some use. Part of the journey that someone programming such utilities would get is a deep dive into what each DOS does best... who knows it might lead to some other DOS being born down the line. I don't understand why folks argue against useful utilities... AtariDOS.SYS is not the answer that's pretty evident.

 

The utility will need to be able to reset SIO and the XF to get some of the more problematic DOS types to be read by the XF551.

Should prove a fun challenge or diversion for the project.