U1MB, Incognito, SIDE2, SIDE3, 1088XEL/XLD Firmware 4.0 Released

[Level42]

Some info from the SD card association's site:

 

Is the old SD Memory Card Formatter (Version 4.0 or prior) available?

No. Previous versions of the Formatter are not available. The old Formatter may not work properly with recent Windows and Mac OS X/macOS versions. You should always use the most current version of the Formatter from our SDA website.

 

Return to Questions

Can an SD memory card be reformatted with other than SDA standard FAT file systems?

This is not recommended because you will lose the ability to use the card to reliably transfer data between SD memory card and SD host products.
Some SD host products reformat SD memory cards other than SDA standard FAT file systems. This process may restrict the data portability of cards with other SD host products and create other issues. SD host product manufacturers should only reformat cards using the defined SDA standard FAT file systems.

 

 

So, no way to try and use an older version (not getting it from another, uncertain, source) to force FAT32. Also, might be that we face the issues they mention in the second part.

[Jacques]

On 7/19/2021 at 7:16 PM, Jacques said:

I think I've just located another issue to previously reported SIDE3CLK.SYS problem.

That said, the last choice of my SDX boot multi-config(.sys) is not remembered  by SIDE3.

It's nothing urgent, but it would be good to know the issue is acknowledged(?), so last used config.sys selection gets fixed some time in the future, maybe together with RTC?

Edited July 22, 2021 by Jacques

[flashjazzcat]

1 hour ago, Jacques said:

It's nothing urgent, but it would be good to know the issue is acknowledged(?), so last used config.sys selection gets fixed some time in the future, maybe together with RTC?

Please ask Trub about this. I emailed him about this and other issues a week or so ago and haven't heard anything yet.

[Jacques]

1 hour ago, flashjazzcat said:

Please ask Trub about this. I emailed him about this and other issues a week or so ago and haven't heard anything yet.

Let's try this one: @trub?

[flashjazzcat]

Didn't work last time I tried it.

 

 

[Level42]

Well, I reformatted the fastest SD card with the official SD card tool (full erase), but naturally I'd end up with en ExFAT card. SO I reformatted it with OSX's Disk Utility to FAT32 and used the Erase step (Disk Utility allows erasing in 4 steps, the highest is militia grade, 7 times overwriting your data etc. but we don't have any security concerns here...)

 

I flashed my SIDE3 to 0.40

 

I tried the SIDE3 in my absolutely STOCK 130XE and the behavior stays exactly the same. 
CAR and BIN files first show the clock going around about 7 times time and then a NAK error.

2nd try to load the same game, presto, works fine. It happens to ALL CARs and BINs.

Worse: PDM files do NOT run on the 130XE !?!?!?

[flashjazzcat]

I hesitite to ask, but could you possibly make an ISO of one of these cards (it should ZIP down small if you just put a few files on it) so I can check there are no compatibility issues with the file system?

 

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well, I am still running Win XP 32Bit here and the FAT32 formatters I currently use work fine under XP. Do not know for sure if they will work with newer Windows versions though.

 

If I remember correctly one could use (Sandisk) SD-Formatter 4.0 to get larger SD-card sector sizes than 8k, e.g. 16k and 32k and thats what I did when using the (old) PDM-player from FJC in the past. Afaik, this tool still does not format larger cards than 32GB with FAT32.

 

Then there are two FAT32 formatters that work under WIN XP and format e.g. a 64GB SD-card, 128GB USB-stick and 256GB USB-stick just fine with FAT32 (and Win XP has no problems reading them and writing to them). 

 

But if you are using a newer version of Windows or some Win emulation under Mac OS, I do not know if any of these programs will work. You will simply have to find out yourself...

 

FAT32_Format.zip SD-Formatter_V4.zip

[flashjazzcat]

On 7/22/2021 at 5:20 PM, flashjazzcat said:

I hesitite to ask, but could you possibly make an ISO of one of these cards (it should ZIP down small if you just put a few files on it) so I can check there are no compatibility issues with the file system?

Perhaps I can format an ISO on the Macbook and mount this in Altirra here instead just to be sure a FAT32-formatted 64GB volume is recognized properly?

[flashjazzcat]

Thanks to @Level42 for sending a DMG across. I converted this to a 64GB ISO and tested it with the current release version of the SIDE3 loader in Altirra and everything worked without incident.

 

So, this means that the Mac-formatted FAT32 volume is handled properly by the loader. The only possible divergence on real hardware would be a corner case (uninitialised memory, etc) triggered by such a large volume (extremely unlikely since no such problem has been observed with other volumes), or low-level IO errors on real hardware (highly likely given the intermittent nature of the issues as observed).

 

Edited July 24, 2021 by flashjazzcat

[Level42]

Well we had some talk about this yesterday and I ended up suggesting I’d try and remove AntiX from my 600XL temporarily to see if it may cause any issues. However a bit later I realised this was pointless since on the stock 130XE it shows exactly the same behaviour. Worse, PDMs don’t load on that one I dare to say the 600XL despite all its upgrades is “more compatible” then the stock 130XE.

 

Since Jon ruled out software issues there can only be one conclusion: 

there are timing issues on SIDE3 hardware with certain types of SD cards.

[candle]

19 minutes ago, Level42 said:

Since Jon ruled out software issues there can only be one conclusion: 

there are timing issues on SIDE3 hardware with certain types of SD cards.

and how you came up with that conclusion i wonder?

NAK is DMA related, garbage in directory might be memory issues (side3 memory), and yet you decided to blame timing for SD cards?

any scope screenshots to back this up?

 

[flashjazzcat]

NAK is the SD card completely failing to return the proper response or expected data token in quite a generous timeout period. DMA and buffer transfers in general cannot generate errors since they're just blindly moving data from place to place.

 

So, it might be a pat diagnosis, but it's not an unreasonable one.

[flashjazzcat]

Meanwhile, I am quite pleased to have made some progress with the read/write FAT16/32 driver I have been working on quite intensely over the past two weeks. This rather uneventful video shows a 128K file of 16-bit integers being written to a FAT16 volume via the SIDE3 loader's CIO FAT driver:

 

 

Reading the file back ('TEST TEST.DAT') is extremely quick owing to the fact the driver supports burst IO (and why wouldn't it), but writes are quite slow here because this version of the driver uses only one sector buffer and this particular FAT16 volume has tiny 1K clusters (128 cluster allocations therefore take place when writing the file). Of course it's early days yet and there will be weeks and months of debugging and optimisations still to come.

 

The 'internal' version of this FAT driver is ROM based and obviously supports long filenames (since the loader uses them), and will support the creation of new files with said long names. So if you create an ATR on the fly, you won't be limited to some phonetic short name.

[Level42]

9 hours ago, candle said:

and how you came up with that conclusion i wonder?

NAK is DMA related, garbage in directory might be memory issues (side3 memory), and yet you decided to blame timing for SD cards?

any scope screenshots to back this up?

 

So it’s not timing but something else on SIDE3. As an send-user (who has no knowledge of how SIDE3 works internally) I can only say that I’ve so far tried 6 different SD cards with SIDE3 and none of them work without issues.

 

3 of these cards are brand new and manufactured by one of the (if not -the-) top brands in SD cards.

 

With the little resources I have, (like time) I’d like to help in finding what’s causing it, timing, memory, buffers, steam valves, whatever it may be the cause so that it can be eliminated and fixed.

 

Honestly, it’s not a good thing if SIDE3 is so picky regarding to which SD cards it “likes”.

Edited July 25, 2021 by Level42

[Mazzspeed]

17 hours ago, Level42 said:

So it’s not timing but something else on SIDE3. As an send-user (who has no knowledge of how SIDE3 works internally) I can only say that I’ve so far tried 6 different SD cards with SIDE3 and none of them work without issues.

 

3 of these cards are brand new and manufactured by one of the (if not -the-) top brands in SD cards.

 

With the little resources I have, (like time) I’d like to help in finding what’s causing it, timing, memory, buffers, steam valves, whatever it may be the cause so that it can be eliminated and fixed.

 

Honestly, it’s not a good thing if SIDE3 is so picky regarding to which SD cards it “likes”.

Can I ask, where did you buy these cards from? Are you absolutely certain they are the real deal?

 

There's plenty of counterfeits out there that could result in the issues you're seeing. Furthermore, the packaging is pretty convincing.

[Level42]

Well, I don’t think a company like Amazon would risk selling fakes…..

Edited July 26, 2021 by Level42

[flashjazzcat]

26 minutes ago, Level42 said:

Well, I don’t think a company like Amazon would risk selling fakes…..

Of course not. It's unthinkable. Meanwhile:

 

https://petapixel.com/2018/05/31/beware-amazon-still-sells-counterfeit-memory-cards/

 

[+Stephen]

53 minutes ago, Level42 said:

Well, I don’t think a company like Amazon would risk selling fakes…..

No - they just sell battery chargers that catch fire, childrens pajamas that are not flame retardant, delete legit negative reviews, pay for and post positive reviews, etc.  Definitely a fully trustworthy company.

[+mytek]

I remember writing a little program in BASIC that would read a CF card's ID info and display it no matter what the success or non-success a Loader might have with it on the Atari. Perhaps the same can be done for the SD cards. Anyway it was because of this program that I could see that a batch of cards I bought off of eBay were not what they were suppose to be per the label. Without this program I would have never known, since the cards looked genuine from the labeling and packaging, and did work in a PC.

 

Instead of being identified as SanDisk 1GB cards with the appropriate model number, if I recall correctly they would be identified as something like "Smartxxx" instead (xxx was additional info that I now forget).

 

I found the program (as written this will only work on the XEL-CFx IDE/CF Card interface).

10 IDEPRNT=500:REM IDE PRINT ROUTINE
20 IDE=53728:REM IDE BASE ADDRESS
30 RES=53696:REM HARDWARE RESET
50 FEAT=239:REM SET FEATURE COMMAND
60 ID=236:REM IDENTIFY COMMAND
70 REM ----- DRIVE RESET -----
80 POKE RES,0
90 FOR DLY=1 TO 250:NEXT DLY
100 REM ----- DRIVE SET-UP -----
120 POKE IDE+1,1:REM SET 8-BIT MODE
130 POKE IDE+7,FEAT
140 POKE IDE+7,ID
150 REM ----- MAIN PROGRAM LOOP -----
160 FOR X=0 TO 255:DLSB=PEEK(IDE):DMSB=PEEK(IDE)
170 IF X=10 THEN ? "S/N: ";
180 IF X>9 AND X<20 THEN GOSUB IDEPRNT
190 IF X=23 THEN ? :? "REVISION: ";
200 IF X>22 AND X<27 THEN GOSUB IDEPRNT
210 IF X=27 THEN ? :? "MODEL   : ";
220 IF X>26 AND X<47 THEN GOSUB IDEPRNT
230 IF X=48 THEN ? 
240 NEXT X
250 END 
500 REM ----- PRINT ROUTINE -----
510 ? CHR$(DMSB);
520 ? CHR$(DLSB);
530 RETURN

IDETEST.BAS

 

[Level42]

Deleted

 

Edited July 26, 2021 by Level42

[flashjazzcat]

2 hours ago, mytek said:

Perhaps the same can be done for the SD cards.

sdtest.xex

 

This is a bit rough and ready (it's adapted from a pre-release testing tool), but it produces this info for my 32GB SanDisk Ultra SD card:

 

 

Here's my Sony 8GB:

 

 

Produces meaningful data in Altirra as well:

 

 

I must credit this website for the very useful information presented there:

 

https://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/sd-memory-card-faq/reading-sd-card-cid-serial-psn-internal-numbers/

Edited July 26, 2021 by flashjazzcat

[Sinjinhawke]

44 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

sdtest.xex 2.6 kB · 0 downloads

 

This is a bit rough and ready (it's adapted from a pre-release testing tool), but it produces this info for my 32GB SanDisk Ultra SD card:

 

 

Here's my Sony 8GB:

 

 

Produces meaningful data in Altirra as well:

 

 

I must credit this website for the very useful information presented there:

 

https://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/sd-memory-card-faq/reading-sd-card-cid-serial-psn-internal-numbers/

it runs but seems to exit back to the loader as soon as it finishes displaying to the screen.  Need to capture an image quickly using my phone.  More proof that FJC operates at a higher level than the rest of us mortals.

[flashjazzcat]

4 minutes ago, Sinjinhawke said:

it runs but seems to exit back to the loader as soon as it finishes displaying to the screen.

Apologies. It didn't occur to me to test it with anything other than SpartaDOS. Here's a version which displays a prompt when run from the loader:

 

sdtest.xex

 

 

[Frankie]

8 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

Apologies. It didn't occur to me to test it with anything other than SpartaDOS. Here's a version which displays a prompt when run from the loader:

 

 

I got a strange Manufacture date. Could be 2009, not sure.