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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed May 30, 2007 6:57 pm 

Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2006 1:33 pm
Posts: 89
Smoking interface Steve! Thanks for sending it out so fast.

There is a massive speed increase with this. I am able to run at POKEY Divisor of 01 - telnet BBS is awesome at this speed.

Thanks.

Stephen Anderson


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 Post subject: Must be June 4th!
PostPosted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 5:05 am 
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Joined: Fri Apr 13, 2007 7:33 pm
Posts: 43
Location: danville, nh
My new toys arrived. So far, so good. I've been able to mount an atr and sort out my drives (usd vs happy vs standard).

Now I want to make a cart. Wish me luck!


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:55 pm 

Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:50 pm
Posts: 16
classics wrote:
WizWor wrote:
Continuing to hijack this thread, will APE know if the attached drive is Happy enhanced? I think I have two happy, two US Doubler, and two standard drives. I can tell which are the standard because they do not run the latest floppies I made (ten years ago). I was wondering if there was a DOS or utility that would sort out the rest.


ProSystem can tell you what upgrade the drives have.

Just attach the a drive by itself, turn it off/on (to clear it) and then run the 'Interrogate Drive' function.

It should be able to identify if it has a Happy 1050, US Doubler or if its a stock 1050.

Steve


I have the ProSystem Universal interface working with the current version of atariserver/atarixfer under Ubuntu Linux. However, I cannot figure out how to convince the software to "see" my US Doubler equipped 1050 as being DD capable! Is there some initialization required?

Appreciate any pointers (or even guesses at this point).


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 8:53 pm 
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Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2003 9:55 am
Posts: 1042
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Are you able to use the drive as single density, or does it not communicate at all?

Steve


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:31 am 

Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:50 pm
Posts: 16
classics wrote:
Are you able to use the drive as single density, or does it not communicate at all?

Steve


Sorry for the lack of clarity! Yes, the drive is seen as supporting SD and ED. I've successfully copied ATR images to both sizes. However, nothing I do can convince the atarixfer program to use it in true DD mode.

I'm a newbie to Atari 8-bit systems, so there may be something simple I'm overlooking.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 7:12 am 
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Joined: Tue Aug 05, 2003 9:55 am
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Location: Cleveland, Ohio
Well most of my stuff is packed away so I cant try atarixfer at the moment, but I'm looking through the source code.

When you read a double density disk are you seeing the message 'get status... OK'?


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 7:53 am 

Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:50 pm
Posts: 16
classics wrote:
Well most of my stuff is packed away so I cant try atarixfer at the moment, but I'm looking through the source code.

When you read a double density disk are you seeing the message 'get status... OK'?


Heh. It's a Catch-22 situation. I do not have any Atari DD diskettes to check. I'm trying to _create_ one in order to bootstrap myself! When I attempt a copy of a 180k XFD image to the drive, atarixfer says "unsupported format!" and exits. It clearly doesn't understand that the drive is (theoretically) capable of DD format.

If I understood a bit more about the US Doubler, perhaps I could check it from the Atari side. MyDOS does not seem to place the drive in DD mode either. Is there some initialization that needs to occur to get that mode operational?

I'm quite experienced with technical issues on small computers, but completely new to Atari 8-bit systems so go easy on me if I'm missing the obvious.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 4:34 pm 
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Is the exact message "unsupported disk format!"?

If so that means atarixfer doesnt think it knows how to write out the image you are using. It could have a non-standard number of sectors. If thats the case please attach the disk image to your message and I will take a look at it.

Steve


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 5:30 pm 

Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:50 pm
Posts: 16
classics wrote:
Is the exact message "unsupported disk format!"?

If so that means atarixfer doesnt think it knows how to write out the image you are using. It could have a non-standard number of sectors. If thats the case please attach the disk image to your message and I will take a look at it.

Steve


It calculates out to exactly 180k, but here it is anyway. I suspect the drive is somehow not in DD mode. Isn't there a command required to switch it?


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 9:15 am 

Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2006 10:49 am
Posts: 187
Location: Salzburg, Austria
Hi!

I just came back from LinuxTag in Berlin and had a quick look at your issue:
shirsch wrote:
It calculates out to exactly 180k, but here it is anyway. I suspect the drive is somehow not in DD mode. Isn't there a command required to switch it?

The problem is with the XFD file. It should be 183936 bytes in size (3*128 + 717*256), not 184320 (720*256). Where did you get the XFD from or which tool did you use to create it?

XFD files don't have a header that indicates the density and size of the image, so tools (like atarixfer) have to guess this from the file size.

The first 3 sectors of each disk are always 128 bytes (even in double density mode where all other sectors have 256 bytes each) and usually you have an even number of total sectors on a disk. So atariserver/atarixfer use the following method to determine the density and size:
- If the image size divided by 128 gives an odd number, it's a double density image with (imagesize+384)/256 sectors
- If it's an even number, it's a single density image with imagesize/128 sectors.

If you load the mydos45d.xfd into atariserver you'll notice that it shows up as "1440 sectors SD".

If you have more of these images (check the filesize), here's a small shell script that can fix them (just start it with"xfdfix in.xfd out.xfd"):
#!/bin/sh

if [ $# -ne 2 ] ; then
        echo "usage: $0 infile outfile"
        exit 1
fi

dd if="$1" of="$2" bs=128 count=1
dd if="$1" bs=128 count=1 skip=2 >> "$2"
dd if="$1" bs=128 count=1 skip=4 >> "$2"
dd if="$1" bs=256 skip=3 >> "$2"

BTW: In general I'd recommend using ATR files instead of XFD files, although there are also some broken ATRs flying around they contain at least a header that can be checked if the file is broken :-)

so long,

Hias


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 10:04 am 

Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:50 pm
Posts: 16
HiassofT wrote:
Hi!

The problem is with the XFD file. It should be 183936 bytes in size (3*128 + 717*256), not 184320 (720*256). Where did you get the XFD from or which tool did you use to create it?


I found it somewhere on the web - can't recall exactly.

Thanks very much for the explanation. I was getting fooled by the size, since I did not realize the US Doubler wrote a "hybrid" format with those 128 byte sectors up front. Or, am I misunderstanding your comment?

Next problem: I formatted a diskette as single-sided, 40-tracks, DD using SpartaDOS from the 800XL. It reported its size correctly when accessed from the DOS prompt.

As a test, I tried transferring it to the Linux box using:

$ atarixfer -p -w test.atr

It ids the diskette as having 720 256-byte sectors, reports transferring that many, but the image file ends up twice as large as it should be!

Again, I'm probably creating my own problems. But, I'm not sure what I did incorrectly. What I want to do is format the diskette at US Doubler Single-Sided Double-Density and be able to transfer such an image between the drive and the Linux computer.

Thanks in advance for helping.

Steve


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 11:23 am 

Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2006 10:49 am
Posts: 187
Location: Salzburg, Austria
shirsch wrote:
Thanks very much for the explanation. I was getting fooled by the size, since I did not realize the US Doubler wrote a "hybrid" format with those 128 byte sectors up front. Or, am I misunderstanding your comment?

To be exact, the floppy formats all sectors to 256 bytes (when using DD), but the floppy drive only uses the first 128 bytes of the first 3 sectors. This is a little bit of a hack so that the OS can boot DD disks (the Atari OS tries to read the boot sector(s) in single density).

So, from a user (and Atari OS) point of view, the first three sectors are always in single density. Therefore the disk image formats have to reflect this, but unfortunately quite some people got it wrong and created disk images where the first three sectors where padded with zeroes to a 256 bytes per sector size.

Quote:
Next problem: I formatted a diskette as single-sided, 40-tracks, DD using SpartaDOS from the 800XL. It reported its size correctly when accessed from the DOS prompt.

As a test, I tried transferring it to the Linux box using:

$ atarixfer -p -w test.atr

It ids the diskette as having 720 256-byte sectors, reports transferring that many, but the image file ends up twice as large as it should be!

Congratulations, you found a bug in atarixfer :-)

This was a really stupid bug, internally it created a 360k image instead of an 180k image. I've fixed this and uploaded a new version to the snapshot directory (atarisio-080604.tgz).

so long,

Hias


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 11:48 am 

Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 5:50 pm
Posts: 16
HiassofT wrote:

Congratulations, you found a bug in atarixfer :-)

This was a really stupid bug, internally it created a 360k image instead of an 180k image. I've fixed this and uploaded a new version to the snapshot directory (atarisio-080604.tgz).
Hias


Glad to be of service! I am well known at work for being able to immediately break any new bit of code (regardless of how well tested it claims to be). Not sure if this is a blessing or a curse, however.

Update: Tried the new build and that problem is fixed. I've discovered an interesting "gotcha". If I boot the 800XL from a SpartaDOS SD diskette, then format a DD diskette in the same drive, I must access that diskette at the DOS prompt (e.g. by doing a directory on it) before atarixfer picks up the density correctly. Otherwise, it tries to read from it as if it were ED and blows up with a read error. Is this expected?

Anyway, thanks again for the fix!

Best,

Steve


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 Post subject: SIO pcb jacks
PostPosted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 9:29 pm 

Joined: Mon Dec 27, 2010 9:49 am
Posts: 10
I picked up mine at Halted Specialties, I am not sure if they still have anymore left.


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 Post subject: Re: Atarimax SIO2PC USB Universal Adapter Now Available!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:29 pm 

Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2011 7:27 pm
Posts: 1
Just received my SIO2PC USB and absolutely love it - my 1981-issue 48k A800 runs just like it did back in the day! Installation of APE was a no-brainer, and I was up and running in about 3 minutes. Thanks Steve!


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