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NEW MIO production run.


MEtalGuy66

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The reason I asked is because I can think of a few situations where it might be good to have some menu options in ROM. What if you have a hard drive, loose your configuration, and (like me) have you're floppy drive squirreled away because when you have a hard drive the floppy is never used. You just want to turn the hard drive "on" again. Another would be a case where the user has no floppy and no hard drive and uses the serial port and a terminal emulator in flash cart, and the serial port configuration gets corrupted. I suppose the biggest problem would be the user who had 80 col video turned on but did not have the 80 col monitor connected. I know that the simple answer is just to keep a floppy drive (or any SIO drive for that matter) close at hand, but part of the joy of spending lots of money on a hard drive is that you never have to look at a floppy drive again :) Maybe I should ask the question a different way... if I don't have a hard drive, what is the default configuration for the serial port, parallel port, 80 col video, and any other boot options? Does the MIO have any issues getting along with other PBI devices (ie would I want to disable any of the above because they conflict with another device?)? The non-hard drive user would probably be the only one who didn't have "miomenu.com" not close at hand.

 

 

As far as I know, theres no "common practice" way to hook more than one PBI device at a time... Like the black-box, the MIO "hogs" all 8 PBI device IDs, so theres no way to make it work with other PBI devices even if you rigged a way to hook them up simultaneously. It does however work well with all sorts of cartridges. (No, NOT the MyIDE carts, since the My-IDE OS-patch disables PBI support)

 

The default configuration on a stock MIO at present is as follows: no drives remapped (eg. Floppy D1: is boot device). R: enabled (300,8,N,1) P: enabled (64k spooler, no linefeeds). D6: = 192k ramdisk, D7: = 256k ramdisk, D8: = 512k ramdisk.

 

As far as not being able to boot from a floppy because your drives are "packed away".. heh. An SIO2PC cable fits in your desk drawer quite easily.. And 99.9% of EVERYONE has an SIO2PC (or some method of booting/transferring disk images to/from a PC) that they keep VERY handy...

Edited by MEtalGuy66
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As far as I know, theres no "common practice" way to hook more than one PBI device at a time... Like the black-box, the MIO "hogs" all 8 PBI device IDs, so theres no way to make it work with other PBI devices even if you rigged a way to hook them up simultaneously. It does however work well with all sorts of cartridges. (No, NOT the MyIDE carts, since the My-IDE OS-patch disables PBI support)

 

The default configuration on a stock MIO at present is as follows: no drives remapped (eg. Floppy D1: is boot device). R: enabled (300,8,N,1) P: enabled (64k spooler, no linefeeds). D6: = 192k ramdisk, D7: = 256k ramdisk, D8: = 512k ramdisk.

 

As far as not being able to boot from a floppy because your drives are "packed away".. heh. An SIO2PC cable fits in your desk drawer quite easily.. And 99.9% of EVERYONE has an SIO2PC (or some method of booting/transferring disk images to/from a PC) that they keep VERY handy...

 

Interesting about the MIO hogging all 8 BPI devices, hopefully it really can be the only PBI device needed (it's close now). Sounds like the defaults would work well for those of us without harddrives. I suppose anybody who had a harddrive and lost their configuration probably has problems that simply enabling the drive won't fix. Yea, I got to thinking as I was writing that, my floppy drives are sitting off in the corner because I've been using SIO2SD, which doesn't take up that much space either :) Do I have to use a MIO utility to change the baud rate or can application programs do that through the handler?

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Interesting about the MIO hogging all 8 BPI devices, hopefully it really can be the only PBI device needed (it's close now). Sounds like the defaults would work well for those of us without harddrives. I suppose anybody who had a harddrive and lost their configuration probably has problems that simply enabling the drive won't fix. Yea, I got to thinking as I was writing that, my floppy drives are sitting off in the corner because I've been using SIO2SD, which doesn't take up that much space either :) Do I have to use a MIO utility to change the baud rate or can application programs do that through the handler?

 

The firmware setting for baud rate is just the default that the handler uses.. The handler fully emulates the 850 interface handler, so yeah you have software control over the baudrate from your application. Also, you have the option to turn off the internal firmware hanlder and either load your own custom handler, or just manipulate the 6551 ACIA's registers directly from your application.

 

A note on this: with the firmware handler, ICE-T does not work correctly with the MIO's serial port. This is a problem with ICE-T, not the MIO.. ICE-T has the same problem when running in atari800win, and using the R: handler that it provides.. Programs such as BobTerm, 850 Express, DeTerm, FlickerTerm, BBS Express Professional, etc. All work fine with the firmware R: handler, and this eliminates the need to load a handler from disk.

 

A further note: Several people in the past have released "optimized" R: handlers for the MIO.. I havent tried these handlers, and they may resolve the issues with ICE-T... I don't know..

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Are you insane? I owe these to people.. These are not mine to do with as I wish..

 

Yeah let's smash a few of them, and make it take even LONGER for me to get the remaining orders done...

 

Yeah that's a GREAT IDEA, Steve...

 

Well ya know, I thought once you were done with your XF551 collection :)

 

I am jealous - these look SO much nicer than the original I have.

 

Stephen Anderson

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post-8775-1220417167_thumb.jpg

 

Dude - you gotta YouTube a video of those being sledgehammered :)

 

Stephen Anderson

 

:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

 

No eye rolls necesary. Old inside joke from IRC - from MANY many months ago about rare hardware and YouTube. Nothing to see here, move along.

 

Stephen Anderson

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There was a thread some time ago about who was the developer. I'm afraid I don't remember if it was here or on the Usenet newsgroup. May be some search and googling could help.

 

What I do remember is that, according to info posted in that thread, it wasn't Mike Gustafson. I understand he developed the first versions of Sparta DOS. But later on, when SDX was released the company was much bigger, and he was probably more in the role of technical lead (CIO, CTO) of ICD, than directly developing.

 

I think I have found that thread. The conclusion was that it was Gustafson:

 

http://groups.google.pl/group/comp.sys.ata...mp;dmode=source

 

Also the FAQ says so. This is interesting, because SDX soooo internally differs from the 3.x, and I tend to really admire its designer. Comparing to SpartaDOS 3.x, the SDX is almost like Windows 95 to Windows 3.11 :]

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I think I have found that thread. The conclusion was that it was Gustafson:

 

http://groups.google.pl/group/comp.sys.ata...mp;dmode=source

 

Also the FAQ says so. This is interesting, because SDX soooo internally differs from the 3.x, and I tend to really admire its designer. Comparing to SpartaDOS 3.x, the SDX is almost like Windows 95 to Windows 3.11 :]

 

I'm about 97% certain the FAQ says so simply because I saw this very newsgroup thread, with the apparently conclusive posting from Jeff Williams.

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I think I have found that thread. The conclusion was that it was Gustafson

 

Yep, it was that one. So I wasn't remembering well.

 

Anybody knows who is the poster (Jeff Williams)? He has sources for most ICD/OSS stuf !!! OTOH, its still not 100% clear if he is authoritative. He seems to have some internal ICD info, but not too much. Gustafson wasn't exactly an employee of ICD, and not just a coder. I'm not sure if he was Tom's partner, minority owner, or not, but he certainly was one of the founders and technical lead of the company.

Edited by ijor
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Well, Hurricane IKE has trashed Houston pretty good... I have no power, internet connection, etc. They are saying possibly up to 2 weeks just to restore power in most areas. But, my house got the power lines physically ripped out of the service panel, so I am going to have to file on homeowners insurance and hope they act quickly. I really dont know how long things are going to be this messed up.

 

Needless to say, I can not do anything with the MIO project until some of this stuff is fixed. The good news is that nothing inside my house got damaged. All the MIO realated parts & equipment is safe & sound.

 

I will do my best to keep everyone up to date on the status of this mess...

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Well, Hurricane IKE has trashed Houston pretty good... I have no power, internet connection, etc. They are saying possibly up to 2 weeks just to restore power in most areas. But, my house got the power lines physically ripped out of the service panel, so I am going to have to file on homeowners insurance and hope they act quickly. I really dont know how long things are going to be this messed up.

 

Needless to say, I can not do anything with the MIO project until some of this stuff is fixed. The good news is that nothing inside my house got damaged. All the MIO realated parts & equipment is safe & sound.

 

I will do my best to keep everyone up to date on the status of this mess...

 

Hi Ken-

 

Sure sorry that you were impacted. Hope that you can restore your home to something approximating "normal" soon.

 

Nothing like you had, but the remnants of IKE produced 50+ mph winds way up here in Indiana and dumped huge amounts of rain clear into Chicago. Quite a storm!

 

-Larry

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Hi Ken-

 

Sure sorry that you were impacted. Hope that you can restore your home to something approximating "normal" soon.

 

Nothing like you had, but the remnants of IKE produced 50+ mph winds way up here in Indiana and dumped huge amounts of rain clear into Chicago. Quite a storm!

 

-Larry

 

I can't imagine what it must have been like down in Texas. We got some really nasty rain all weekend and 50-60MPH winds for a few hours yesterday evening. My house wasn't damaged, but tons of trees are down and tens of thousands are without power. We've been running on generators at work all day, and some schools are closed. A guy I work with had a tree come down on his car. Like you said, quite a storm.

 

Stephen Anderson

Edited by Stephen
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Okay, risking the dumb-question-of-the-thread award....

 

What exactly does an MIO do?

 

I remember ICD releasing these things back in the late 80s, and the built in parallel and serial interfaces were cool, but as far as I could tell, the extra memory was only for ram-disks. Is that right? If i plug one of these into an 800XL can it run expanded memory applications and games? or is it still a 64K computer with a huge ram-disk hanging on the back?

 

Does the MIO negate the need for a Rambo memory expansion?

 

BTW the 80-column adapter with VGA output does look extremely cool!

 

 

Thanks

 

Graham

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Okay, risking the dumb-question-of-the-thread award....

 

What exactly does an MIO do?

 

I remember ICD releasing these things back in the late 80s, and the built in parallel and serial interfaces were cool, but as far as I could tell, the extra memory was only for ram-disks. Is that right? If i plug one of these into an 800XL can it run expanded memory applications and games? or is it still a 64K computer with a huge ram-disk hanging on the back?

 

Does the MIO negate the need for a Rambo memory expansion?

 

BTW the 80-column adapter with VGA output does look extremely cool!

 

 

Thanks

 

Graham

 

Any 6502 based machine that has additional RAM is "a 64k computer with a huge ramdisk hanging off it".

 

The 6502 can only adress 64k at a time.. The difference between the MIO RAM and other extended ram expansions that you typically see on atari 8-bits is in the way that banks are switched. Customarily, people have used the PORTB register of the PIA chip (which was used for the 3rd & 4th joystick ports on the 800) to control bank switching. This siwtches banks in 16k chunks.. In otherwords, when the CPU is looking at an extended ram bank, it sees 16k of extended ram and can only look at 48k of it's base RAM.

 

The MIO uses its own registers for bank switching, and switches banks of only 256 bytes each. Thus, you can still access almost the full 64k of 6502 base ram.

 

What makes a RAMDISK a RAMDISK is the handler that is loaded. You can load a ramdisk handler that uses your internal (PORTB switched) extended ram, or you can load a RAMDISK handler that uses the MIO ram. You can even load both handlers at the same time..

 

Or, you can write a program that accesses the extended ram directly (whether it be MIO ram, or some internal extended ram expansion) The only difference between various ram expansions is the register you use to switch banks, the bit arrangement within the regsister (in the case of all the different PORTB switched expansions), and the size of the banks.

 

So.. Yeah.. If you get extended ram, and all you ever do is load a ramdisk handler, then yeah.. Thats all it is.. A Ramdisk.. If on the other hand, you write a program that directly accesses the ram and uses it to store data for one purpose or another, then you are using it for program data..

 

I will say this: The MIO's extended ram is particularly well suited for disk manipulation type applications because it's bank size is the same as a double density disk sector.. 256 bytes...

 

The MIO also has a built in SCSI/SASI hardisk interface, print spooler, and a firmware menu that lets you remap floppy drives/hardrives/ramdisks to any dx: number..

 

We are currently working on expanding its features far beyond this..

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The memory on the MIO was originally intended be used as memory for the ramdisk(s). It is standalone to the device itself which is why you can turn the Atari off and it will keep its contents. Nothing precludes you from directly accessing the memory but the way it is mapped is not the same as any XL/XE banking as it is seen 256-bytes at a time at $D600-$D6FF. So no, the extra memory is not visible to standard software.

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And as for the planned 80-column, it is a character-set based 80x25 VGA using 8x16 characters. It is self-contained as it has its own internal video memory and does not interfere with the machine. It is not completely my design-- I chose not to re-invent the wheel for a simple character display. The framebuffer VHDL core is available as open-source and was originally coded for a SoC device. My plan here is to "Atarify" the hardware interface and at the same time add a few things the original design didn't do.

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I know there wasn't a ton of software that used the extra 64k of the 130Xe, I can only think of Alternate Reality Dungeon, and I think the word processor PaperClip had a XE version using the extra Ram. Would those programs not see the MIO's extra ram?

 

Quite a few really...

 

http://www.atarimania.com/faq.php?p=73

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