flashjazzcat Posted October 14, 2020 Share Posted October 14, 2020 (edited) 32 minutes ago, moonlight_mile said: Which would be the best to get for use with the side2 an 800xl or 130xe? Revised answer: 130XE, since using SIDE2's SDX with 64K is a miserable experience. If you go for an 800XL, get one with a RAM upgrade. Edited October 14, 2020 by flashjazzcat 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlight_mile Posted October 14, 2020 Author Share Posted October 14, 2020 I see 8bit fix has a fully socketed 800xl. I am leaning that route since I am pretty confident it has been fully tested and being everything is socketed it should make a upgrade fairly easy. I would like a 130 but it doesn’t appear any are out there for a sane price at the moment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted October 14, 2020 Share Posted October 14, 2020 27 minutes ago, moonlight_mile said: I would like a 130 but it doesn’t appear any are out there for a sane price at the moment. Yes: I just had to swap one of my own XE boards with a blighted customer board, and given the prices of XEs at the moment, that smarted a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mimo Posted October 14, 2020 Share Posted October 14, 2020 What is wrong with your current Atari? and which flavour is it? a syscheck from tf_hh might help with your ram issues, it can be used as an OS/RAM upgrade as well as a syscheck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlight_mile Posted October 14, 2020 Author Share Posted October 14, 2020 What is wrong with your current Atari? and which flavour is it? a syscheck from tf_hh might help with your ram issues, it can be used as an OS/RAM upgrade as well as a syscheckThere is definitely something wrong in the ram department. It didn’t show its face until I started working with the side2 cart. I may eventually work on it but I think it is probably a better idea to get another Atari just so I have a backup. Hell, I only paid around $50 for the xe a few years ago. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted October 14, 2020 Share Posted October 14, 2020 Having a second machine would certainly be a useful troubleshooting aid as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bhall408 Posted October 14, 2020 Share Posted October 14, 2020 6 hours ago, flashjazzcat said: Revised answer: 130XE, since using SIDE2's SDX with 64K is a miserable experience. If you go for an 800XL, get one with a RAM upgrade. That is the setup I have... What am I missing out on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted October 14, 2020 Share Posted October 14, 2020 35 minutes ago, bhall408 said: That is the setup I have... What am I missing out on? You have what? A 130XE or an 800XL? If the latter, you're missing out on extended RAM into which SDX will load most of its drivers. Without said RAM, and owing to the considerable size of the SIDE.SYS driver (which will also install most of itself in extended RAM where available), you commonly end up with a toweringly high MEMLO which make running all but a handful of applications completely impossible. Even FDISK (the APT partition editor) will not run on such a setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bhall408 Posted October 14, 2020 Share Posted October 14, 2020 Just now, flashjazzcat said: You have what? A 130XE or an 800XL? If the latter, you're missing out on extended RAM into which SDX will load most of its drivers. Without said RAM, and owing to the considerable size of the SIDE.SYS driver (which will also install most of itself in extended RAM where available), you commonly end up with a toweringly high MEMLO which make running all but a handful of applications completely impossible. Even FDISK (the APT partition editor) will not run on such a setup. I have an 800XL and a 65XE out at the moment, with the SIDE2 in the 800XL. I must say I've only done light usage of SDX on the 800XL, so perhaps had not run into the crazy high memlo issue. I was just about to start trying some of my own homebrews on that device, and I have them set to compile at 0x3000, which I had thought would be pretty generous. I have not been able to get the CF card working yet, but I figured I just needed to invest the time to read the instructions So I have been using it as a clock/SpartaDOS cart, along with an SDRIVE MAX and a Lotharek SD adaptor (have used the Lotharek more) for loading stuff from SD in the meantime. Have a FujiNet on order, and am really looking forward to that! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlight_mile Posted October 23, 2020 Author Share Posted October 23, 2020 Good news! I got an 800xl and the side2 works! I did order a Hong Kong 800xl. Most of the chips are socketed except the ones for the ultimate 1 Meg. Doh! Well at least I have the side2 working!Thanks for the help! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlight_mile Posted October 23, 2020 Author Share Posted October 23, 2020 I know in order to use fdisk extended memory is needed. But is there a hack to run that on a stock 64k machine? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted October 23, 2020 Share Posted October 23, 2020 9 minutes ago, moonlight_mile said: I know in order to use fdisk extended memory is needed. But is there a hack to run that on a stock 64k machine? You could try using the SDX Imaging tool to strip other drivers (ATARIDOS.SYS and such) out of CONFIG.SYS on CAR:. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted October 23, 2020 Share Posted October 23, 2020 In a pinch, I hook up a floppy drive on D1: with a a sparta formatted disk containing an alternate config.sys to do this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted October 23, 2020 Share Posted October 23, 2020 2 minutes ago, Nezgar said: In a pinch, I hook up a floppy drive on D1: with a a sparta formatted disk containing an alternate config.sys to do this. An excellent idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlight_mile Posted October 23, 2020 Author Share Posted October 23, 2020 Cool. What should the config.sys file have in it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted October 24, 2020 Share Posted October 24, 2020 USE OSRAM DEVICE SPARTA OSRAM DEVICE SIO DEVICE SIDE That should get you going. Type MEM at the SDX prompt. If you get less than $2000 for 'Main', you're doing well. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormtrooper of Death Posted October 24, 2020 Share Posted October 24, 2020 moonlight_mile, I also use the SIDE2 on a 64K 800XL. When using FDISK, i made several partitions but started naming them D3:,D4:,etc. I didnt make D1: and D2: partitions, because i wanted to keep using my 1050 drive as D1: using a Spartados formated floppy containing the startup CONFIG.SYS (for my 64K 800XL) D2: can be used for other SIO addonns like Sio2SD. There might be better solutions for a 64K SIDE2 setup, but I am not an expert in Spartados X.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted October 24, 2020 Share Posted October 24, 2020 (edited) 7 minutes ago, Stormtrooper of Death said: When using FDISK, i made several partitions but started naming them D3:,D4:,etc. This is good practice, IMO. It's also a good idea to do this on U1MB/SIDE systems, since mounted (PBI-hosted) ATRs can then boot from D1: without affecting HDD partitions and you have D2: for two-disk volumes or other SIO devices. Edited October 24, 2020 by flashjazzcat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted October 24, 2020 Share Posted October 24, 2020 I typically have 8 APT partitions starting at D5:, on the off chance I get the urge to do something stupid like mount 3 or 4 ATRs in the Loader at the time, or move a bunch of random stuff off ATRs via RespeQt, FujiNet or my SDrive-MAX to my APT partition(s). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlight_mile Posted January 15, 2021 Author Share Posted January 15, 2021 I hate to reincarnate a dead thread but, I got a desoldering station for Xmas and was thinking about installing an ultimate 1 Meg. Now, I know there are issues with my extended ram on my 130xe but if I installed the u1m in the 130 would it solve the issues I had with my side2 cart? While I am at it I might install sockets for the original ram chips but if I can get around my extended ram issue with the u1m that would be great. Thanks for any info. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted January 15, 2021 Share Posted January 15, 2021 depends on the ram issue, I'd fix any flaky chips first or remove the flaky chip(s) first, you don't want a soon to short out memory chip pulling the address low or loading it down... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dinadan67 Posted January 15, 2021 Share Posted January 15, 2021 8 hours ago, moonlight_mile said: Now, I know there are issues with my extended ram on my 130xe but if I installed the u1m in the 130 would it solve the issues I had with my side2 cart? While I am at it I might install sockets for the original ram chips but if I can get around my extended ram issue with the u1m that would be great. When you install the U1MB, then just remove the flaky extended ram. U1MB only needs the base 64k. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlight_mile Posted January 15, 2021 Author Share Posted January 15, 2021 Thanks for the input. There isn’t an easy way to determine what ram chip(s) may be bad is there? I know there is that diagnostic hardware available but I really hate to kick in the money for something there is a good chance I will only ever use once. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted January 15, 2021 Share Posted January 15, 2021 @moonlight_mile There are two resistors you can swap to swap the extended 64KB with the base 64KB - then you can run RAM testers like Sys-check or shoestrings checker to identify the specific chips that are bad. https://atariage.com/forums/topic/251315-sys-check-v22-ready-to-use-batch-available/page/5/?tab=comments#comment-4374699 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted January 16, 2021 Share Posted January 16, 2021 you can also pressure fit piggy back a good chip on a bad one if it's not shorted, normally only 1 or two ram chips fail and it's easy enough to see the improvement... then pull the bad one and solder a good one in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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