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 Post subject: how to disable the whole Flash part of the cart?
PostPosted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 9:04 am 

Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 10:34 am
Posts: 261
Location: NL
I would like to disable the flash part of the cart. I don't know how to program this myself.

I have an atari with built-in MyIDE OS, and I simply do not want to use the Flash rom in the MyIDE cart. I don't want the cart-menu. It should boot my first partition as soon as I power up my atari, and using the MyIDE OS I burned in an Eprom in my ATARI.

Is there someone who already did this? Please help me.

I already own a few MyIDE carts without the Flash part. But I like to use this one, because it looks far the best of all my MyIDE carts.


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 9:49 pm 
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Location: Cleveland, Ohio
If you want to completely disable the rom so that no cartridge is detected as present by the OS then you will need to disconnect one of the signals from the cartridge.

Is this on a MyIDE board with gold or tin contacts? The layout of the two boards are different.

Steve


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:48 pm 

Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2003 12:21 am
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Steve, I think all he wants to do is just a RTS, so that the cartridge just exits back to the OS to continue the boot process.

Writing to $D52x will turn the cartridge back on if you do this though...

I can try to whip something up for you if Steve doesn't get to it first...



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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 4:10 am 

Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 10:34 am
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@ Steven:

This is the one with the tin contacts. It's a 1Mbit MyIDE + Flash cart.

@ Shawn

A software solution is preferred indeed. I might change my mind, and then reprogram the cartridge later again.


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:06 pm 
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This is a dummy rom that will simply turn off the MyIDE cartridge rom and return to the OS. I have not tested it on a real cartridge.

In this case you will still be missing 8k of RAM as far as the OS is concerned, because it detected a ROM cartridge at boot time and will set the memory pointers accordingly. The actual RAM is still there though and most games wont care.

As Shawn pointed out anything that touches d520..d52f will turn the cartridge back on and lock up the computer.

If you still need the hardware solution please let me know.

Steve


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 12:13 pm 
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Use the -bin2atr option of the maxflash script to change the binary posted to a programming image.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2009 4:12 pm 

Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 10:34 am
Posts: 261
Location: NL
I might miss some info/documentation...

I don't know how to program the flash part, and i don't know what that bin2atr script thing is.

It sounds complicated? Is it?

I think you have prepared documentation for this kind of questions. Perhaps you have a link for me?

Thanks
Marius


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2009 6:26 pm 
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Here is the ATR version ready to use.

The -bin2atr is an for the maxflash programming scripts. You can find them at http://www.atarimax.com/flashcart/

Steve


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 3:42 am 

Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 10:34 am
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Very interesting documentation. I have been playing around with your maxflash.pl software, and I must say: brilliant work!

I think I'm going to play around with it some more. i'm even thinking of buying another myide with flash, or a 8mbit flash-only cart...

Nice work Steven!
Marius


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2009 9:57 am 
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I'm curious if this worked for you?

Steve


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2009 10:18 am 

Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 10:34 am
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yes but not 100%.

Yes: It does work. And with your documentation I did some other very nice things with the flash card. Very nice.

Not 100%: After powerup the screen stays black. After a reset the myide boots with my built-in 3.1 Eprom.

But that is ok.

Thanks
Marius


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 Post subject: Re: how to disable the whole Flash part of the cart?
PostPosted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:20 am 

Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 10:34 am
Posts: 261
Location: NL
Hi!

After a long time I tried this again, but it still did not work. I found out that RTS is not the right way to exit the routine. I improved this a bit, and now there is no need to modify your MyIDE cart anymore. With this new dummy your MyIDE Flash is disabled and as far I can see all memory is free to use.

Like Steve wrote above already: the only problem that could happen is that software you run on the atari switches on the flash part again.
In the past I wrote a small tool to disable/enable MaxFlash 1Mbit cart from SpartaDos command line. This worked almost the same, but the only program that did switch these 1Mbit carts back on was NUMEN demo. I'm running Numen right now from my MyIDE cart with the flash disabled, but on MyIDE cart it runs 100%... so I am really curious if someone knows a program that will crash with this flash-disabled-solution.

Anyway this might be a good alternative for people (like me) who do keep their MyIDE cart as new as possible, but do use the EPROM version of the OS, and be as compatible as possible.

Thanks to Mr. Atari for his explanation of the nature of the cart!


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 Post subject: Re: how to disable the whole Flash part of the cart?
PostPosted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 3:30 am 
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Location: netherlands
For people having the new MyBIOS, just hold SHIFT in the menu......
No need to re-flash.

XD


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 Post subject: Re: how to disable the whole Flash part of the cart?
PostPosted: Tue Apr 24, 2012 6:54 am 

Joined: Thu Feb 05, 2004 10:34 am
Posts: 261
Location: NL
Who is holding shift when I'm not home and the BBS has to reboot after a powercut ;)


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