IDE Plus 2.0 - new IDE host adapter

[+Larry]

Perhaps I'm missing something that Philsan said.

 

What is a solution that doesn't involve SIO?

 

-Larry

 

I'm not real Sparta-savvy, but can't you use APE's PC Mirror to move your files? Even the "trail" version of APE supports copying files from the PC to the Atari (but not vice versa). You just put the files in a PC folder, select that folder from the Mirror and copy away to the IDE+2. The Atari just "sees" the Mirror as another drive, while APE does all the work.

 

-Larry

 

 

What is the easier way to copy many files from PC to IDE+?

 

I made a 16MB SpartaDOS disk with MakeATR PC program, I copied files on it, I attached it to Atari with SIO2SD and I copied files with copy command (it is amazing to see the speed of IDE+ compared to SIO2SD).

 

The biggest problem is that I have to rename hundreds of filenames to 8.3 format when I copy them to SpartaDOS disk with MakeATR.

The problem with that is we are still limited to a max of 6k/sec over SIO. This is fine for small files, but copying over a 6MB WAV file or big collections of MODs for NEO-Tracker sucks bigtime.

[+Stephen]

Perhaps I'm missing something that Philsan said.

 

What is a solution that doesn't involve SIO?

 

-Larry

There was mention of the MyIDE tool which allows a PC to write directly to the CF card in a format that the MyIDE can read. Hopefully this can be adapted to the newer IDE devices. This is what I was referring to.

[drac030]

I think the latest Altirra (maybe the latest beta, I don't know if this was released) emulates IDE Plus hardware. So the procedure may be this:

 

1) copy the entire disk contents into a file using the dd command (on a PC)

 

2) "mount" this file as an IDE drive under Altirra

 

3) copy files:

 

- if your files have 8+3 names, just use PCL: device under SpartaDOS X (the driver is on the Toolkit disk) to copy from PC to Atari partitions

 

- if your files have long (or otherwise illegal, from the SpartaDOS' point of view) names, use TAR as I wrote above (TAR 1.5 automatically converts long names to unique 8+3 names for SpartaDOS, although the resulting names may be not extremely pretty)

 

4) close emulator

 

5) get the file that contains the disk's contents (the one created in pt. 1 above) and copy it back to the physical disk using dd

 

I personally didn't try that but the AtariArea admin, dely, says this procedure is working for him.

Edited July 8, 2011 by drac030

[Rybags]

Yes, supposedly Altirra2.0 test 8 can emulate IDE Plus 2.

 

I just can't get it to work, I PM'd flashjazzcat and he says his works but he can't quite remember how he got it working.

 

Is there a raw image of the IDE Plus 2 BIOS around? I think we need to plug that into Altirra.

[Roydea6]

This one will have the IDE BOOT conf. fixed.

 

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-2.00-test10.zip

 

Fixed with test9 but this was available now.

[phaeron]

Yes, the last official release (1.9) won't do it as you need one of the 2.00 test releases, specifically 2.00 test-7 or newer.

 

Altirra emulates the flash ROM, so run the flasher to program the virtual device and then save out the ROM image with File > Save Firmware > Save KMK/JZ IDE Main Flash. You can then rebind the image permanently in System > Firmware > ROM Images.

[Rybags]

Still no good here.

 

Run the flasher and I get "IDE Plus not found".

 

That's with the IDE HDD enabled as KMK/JZ version 2 and an image file mounted, and the SDX ROM pointed to in the ROM images.

[Roydea6]

 

Type any rom name here ^

 

 

 

 

 

Just a few pictures [Might Help] Good Luck!

Edited July 8, 2011 by rdea6

[Rybags]

I've got SDX going from the ROM just fine.

 

I run the LBA0507 program to "flash" the IDE BIOS but it can't find it.

 

The way I see it, it's a chicken/egg situation. How can you create a ROM so the emulated device can exist properly when the ROM has to exist already?

 

How about if you just attach your IDE BIOS ROM and I'll see if that works?

[Rybags]

OK, got it.

 

I deleted the Registry entries completely, something must have been holding it back.

[drac030]

The way I see it, it's a chicken/egg situation. How can you create a ROM so the emulated device can exist properly when the ROM has to exist already?

 

Do an experiment on real hardware: run LBA0507.COM, answer "Y" to the first question, "N" to the second question, "Y' to the third question.

 

You'll end up with an empty PBI ROM. Now run LBA0507.COM again and see how does it react on such an empty ROM.

[phaeron]

You need not to have a ROM image file mounted in order to do the bootstrap flash, as the flash ROM needs to either be empty or to have a valid BIOS in order for the flasher to recognize it. I ran into this problem during development and that's the reason why there isn't a placeholder message ROM for the IDEPlus 2 mode like I did for the V1 IDE emulation. Unlike the disk emulation, you don't need to mount an empty file for the emulated flash ROM to exist.

[Rybags]

That's the mistake I made - I assumed there needed to be some placeholder file that gets written to.

 

All fixed now though.

 

I'm now working on a little project I'll probably call "ATRLoad" which will allow running of ATR images that can be booted from extended RAM with a stock OS. That'll allow some disk only games to be run from a file as long as your machine has enough RAM.

[Louis]

I have tried this.

 

Made an image with DD

Mounted with Altira.

 

Can read/write to all partitions in SDX.

But the first partition contains a 32G SpartaDOS version.

On real Atari I use COLD /N to boot from that partition.

 

In Altira I only get "BOOT ERROR".

 

Any ideas?

 

regards

 

Louis

[phaeron]

A new thread for emulation issues might be a good idea, if this one is getting too messy.

 

But the first partition contains a 32G SpartaDOS version.

On real Atari I use COLD /N to boot from that partition.

 

In Altira I only get "BOOT ERROR".

 

You need to turn off the SIO patch option, or enable the SIO override detection option and do a real reset.

 

The problem is that the emulator doesn't know which drives are being handled by PBI devices. Normally, the OS polls PBI devices at the beginning of the SIO routine to give each one a chance to handle the request. When the SIO patch is enabled, though, the emulator intercepts SIOV for certain devices and the IDEPlus code can't handle the boot request. SpartaDOS works fine because it uses its own SIO routines which the emulator doesn't know about, but when you boot the OS tries using SIOV and that's where the problem arises.

 

The "SIO override detection" option is something I added recently to address this without forcing all drives to run unaccelerated. What it does is that it delays acceleration for a drive until a request for it actually goes across the SIO bus. If the OS ROM or a PBI device is intercepting the drive, this doesn't happen and the hook doesn't kick in, avoiding the problem. However, if you change the drive mappings you need to do a hardware reset, warm or cold, in order for the emulator to reset this state and redetect which drives are mapped by IDEPlus. A software reset isn't enough.

 

I'm sorry if this is a bit confusing to setup -- I haven't gotten around to updating the help file yet.

[DocRotCod]

Hope I didn't totally miss the boat on this but I would 1 or 2 of these. Any remaining stock?

[Simius]

You may register now: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/184720-ide-plus-20-preorder-starts-now/

[Rybags]

ATRLoad now to working stage. http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/184802-atrload-run-full-disk-games-as-executables/

 

Works nicely with IDE Plus 2. Although you'll need to have a CONFIG that doesn't use extended RAM for DOS.

 

No such problem from the BIOS-based loader though.

 

Spelunker loads nice and quick. The code is a bit inefficient still, so improvements to be had.

[+Larry]

A question about swapping drives. (Sorry if I missed this somewhere.)

 

+2 can have 16 partitions, so I could have 16 small, individual drives. Can I boot from any one of them just by swapping the "BR" flags? Or is there more to it than that. So I could put several "top ten" disks in small partitions and boot from any number?

 

Whereas the "Load Executable" from the config screen is a loader to load games, etc. in XEX/EXE BLOAD format?

 

-Larry

[+remowilliams]

+2 can have 16 partitions, so I could have 16 small, individual drives. Can I boot from any one of them just by swapping the "BR" flags? Or is there more to it than that. So I could put several "top ten" disks in small partitions and boot from any number?

 

It seems that swapping the BR flags does the job. I just booted Blue Max off of D9: as D1: in .8 seconds.

[+remowilliams]

Question - using hdsc (1.5), it doesn't seem to recognize drives higher than D9: It just tells me 'src and destination must differ' when attempting something like 'HDSC D2: D10:'

 

Is there a newer version or something?

 

EDIT: Nevermind, just figured out to use Alpha instead of numbers for the drives. i.e. D10: = J:

[+Larry]

Thanks, Remowilliams! I'll give it a go!

 

-Larry

 

 

+2 can have 16 partitions, so I could have 16 small, individual drives. Can I boot from any one of them just by swapping the "BR" flags? Or is there more to it than that. So I could put several "top ten" disks in small partitions and boot from any number?

 

It seems that swapping the BR flags does the job. I just booted Blue Max off of D9: as D1: in .8 seconds.

[+remowilliams]

This unit is ace with the 2.5 form factor CF adapters.

 

[+Larry]

Yes, I think it is definitely the nicest looking of all I've seen, but are you bothered by the too bright amber LED's?

 

On mine, the two amber LED's (Master + Slave) absolutely "drown out" the green activity light. For the time being, I've put foam mounting tape over the amber and red LED's. You can still see their "glow," but now the green LED is also visible. (Not really necessary, but seems much more balanced, and the +2 blue activity light is on the back side of the 44-pin adapter, so it is not really very visible.) But I'm still looking for a better solution -- thinking of painting those LED's to dim them. Even thought of cutting the traces. Has anyone else thought of a good solution (if it bothers them)?

 

I'll try to post some "before and after" pics. tomorrow.

 

-Larry

 

 

This unit is ace with the 2.5 form factor CF adapters.

[+remowilliams]

Yes, I think it is definitely the nicest looking of all I've seen, but are you bothered by the too bright amber LED's?

 

They aren't quite as obnoxious as they look in the pic, I can easily see the green activity light, though it is dimmer than the other two.

 

On another note - has anyone had success with the MNT.COM utility? Every time I've tried to use it it just says that it can't detect the IDE interface...