228 replies to this topic

[flashjazzcat]

I have half a dozen ST / Amiga mice and I'm buggered if they're not going to get well used!

[Philsan]

I have an Amiga/ST trackball that wants to be always plugged into port 2.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

flashjazzcat, on Wed Feb 1, 2012 1:52 PM, said:

I have half a dozen ST / Amiga mice and I'm buggered if they're not going to get well used!

I thought I only had 2 ST mice, 2 ST/AM compatible mice, and a trak-ball, but while sorting stuff I'm now at 13 ST and comp. mice and 3 trak-ball's and I'm not even finished. Next thing is to put them to use.

[Stephen]

If the mouse is plugged into port 2, where am I supposed to plug my XEP-80? The trash can - haha.

[MEtalGuy66]

Candle is right.. The atari is not primarily a mouse-driven machine. The Joystick is the far predominant form of non-keyboard input. Mouse support should be relatively low on the priority list, and a Joystick in port one should definitely be supported by default.

[Jacques]

That's how it should be! Joy in port 1 is perfect and enough. But mouse plugged into port 2, shouldn't screw the control. There's no point in keeping port 2 "active" by SIDELoader.
Candle wanted feedback on SIDELoader? Now he has it. Should we beg any longer for it being user-friendly? If that's not enough, I don't think so.

For me, personally, port 2 joy control in SIDELoader is senseless, port 1 is just enough and 99,9999% of users have joy in there. That's why port 2 should be disabled, so - let's say - mouse or anything else doesn't cause trouble.

And "prrrrr, prrrrr" sound of loading by SIDELoader for me is terrible and doesn't remind SIO at all, but that's just opinion. Thanks god that SDX mode doesn't have it and it's quiet. There's no logic simply why SIDELoader should have it Geez, it's not SIO solution, SDX mode doesn't have it, KMK-like interfaces don't have it, and yet we have LED on interface if anyone's unsure whether it's loading.
Or maybe at least switchable SOUND ON/OFF option set in NV-RAM, so everyone's happy? Unless Candle's doing SIDELoader only for himself
Personally, I don't see any point in asking for feedback, while good arguments are crashing into Candle's stubborness

Edited by Jacques, Wed Feb 1, 2012 5:57 PM.

[candle]

good arguments if presented by single person are just person's opinions, not what the GP wants
or we have a case of megalomania here?

prr prr

[Jacques]

I counted more than just me admitting to use of mouse in port 2, here

[candle]

so i've noticed, and will take into consideration, as opposed to prr prr
besides, how you can tell, that if i remove it, someone won't jump out of the bushes demanding it to be restored?

[Jacques]

That's why I proposed "prrr, prrr" solution That it could be set from SIDE Loader (on/off) and actual setting stored in NV-ram, so one sets whatever he likes and sticks with it

And thanks for considering port 2 issue

Edited by Jacques, Thu Feb 2, 2012 4:56 AM.

[flashjazzcat]

No-one's saying that the menu should operate with anything other than a joystick in port 1. The point is that anything plugged into port 2 shouldn't cause the joystick input to go berzerk. I believe it does so because Candle wanted to support both inputs. It's not a difficult programming task to put right, however, and therefore this is a complete non-issue and the debate totally unnecessary.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

Why not make the second joystick port "switchable": Off, Joystick, ST Mouse, Amiga Mouse

Mathy

[fibrewire]

How does the track ball present itself? I think that would be okay for a mouse-like input.

[Philsan]

fibrewire, on Thu Feb 2, 2012 9:08 PM, said:

How does the track ball present itself? I think that would be okay for a mouse-like input.

Best Electronics sells a beautiful Atari/Amiga mouse compatible trackball.
I tested it with Jon's GUI demo.

[kogden]

Is there a way to move files between the FAT32 and SDX partitions at present? Not whining or anything, just would be great to not have to rig up a USB IDE adapter and yank the flash drive off the cart to move some XEX files to the FAT32 partition that don't run under SDX for me for whatever reason.

If not, how much of an undertaking would it be? Are the FAT32 routines used in SIDE loader written in a reusable fashion? I might be willing to take a stab at something like that.

SIDE loader is awesome BTW. Works great on my MyIDE (SDX, not stock BIOS) with a transcend module.

Thanks!

--Kevin

[flashjazzcat]

Someone very clever is supposedly going to write a FAT32 driver for SDX at some point, which will allow limited transferring of files between SDX and FAT partitions. Unwise to keep breath held, however...

Until then - SDX can't make head or tail of FAT32.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

IIRC some SIO2-devices have special XIO command's to load files directly from disk instead of from an inside an ATR. As I haven't used any of these devices yet, I don't know any details of this. But I'm sure the SIO2IDE device has these special XIO commands and at least one other SIO2-device also has these.

Mathy

[kogden]

flashjazzcat, on Sun Feb 5, 2012 2:32 PM, said:

Someone very clever is supposedly going to write a FAT32 driver for SDX at some point, which will allow limited transferring of files between SDX and FAT partitions. Unwise to keep breath held, however...

Until then - SDX can't make head or tail of FAT32.

An SDX FAT32 driver would be really slick.

For some reason my Mac didn't want to format the partition as FAT32, it wanted to use FAT16 as it was a 128MB partition. Using "newfs_msdos -F 32 <device>" from the command line took care of it however.

Any plans to add the ability to load from an SDX partition in SIDE Loader?

[Marius1976]

The last few days Mr. Atari and I had a discussion through e-mail about his FAT32 support in MyIDE. I found out that older versions of OS X (all versions except Lion) do not want to mount a prepared/initialised disk that is FAT32 initialised by his MyIDE menu.

After some analysis I found out that he kills the MBR and starts the FAT32 info right on sector 0, on the very first byte.

Indeed: with windows the CF card can be written and read. But with my Macs with OS X 10.6.8 and 10.4.11 the CF card is not usable.

My idea would be:

A FAT32 partition of a certain size (definitely smaller than the complete space of the CF card) and a certain size non allocated space left on the CF card.

In MAC OS X it is rather easy to create such a partition, and it looks good too.

My question is:
Is it a good idea to kill the MBR? All new CF cards and USB sticks do come with a valid MBR and with valid partition info (on offset 01BEh in MBR).

Is SIDE using valid MBR or is SIDE also writing FAT32 partition info right on offset 00h on sector 00h?

Am I right that killing the MBR will decrease compatibility on non-windows systems, like linux or Mac Os x?

any feedback from people who really know how this works is highly appreciated by me.

I want to know why the FAT32 initialization of MyIDE does not work on Mac OS X. Before I go writing my own FAT32 initializer I need to know that I'm in the right direction or not!

Thanks.

[candle]

side is using APT Marius, so there is a proper MBR with all partition info required
fat32 partition created with fdisk FJC wrote will be compatible with OS X
formatting like you say is intended for floppies, and it will be valid for both Linux and Windows
makes me wonder why stripped version of FreeBSD has problems with it

[Marius1976]

@candle

When I analyse the initialization of the MyIDE menu, I see that on the place where usually the MBR is stored, now the FAT32 Boot Record is saved.

So no MBR, but only FAT32 boot record (also a very stripped version of the FAT32 boot record btw.)

When I investigate the CF card with Mac OS X disk utility it can not show partition info. Usually there is something like "MBR" in the info, but with the MyIDE initialized CF card there is something like :UNKNOWN (or NONE).

When I use the newest version of OS X (Lion 10.7.3) I can use the MyIDE Fat32 space, but... as soon I go to disk utility on the Mac, the CF card is useless again.

My idea is that sector zero (the MBR) needs to be used with very special care. I think the MBR can not be ignored or killed.

Is that true?

[candle]

it should contain valid partition table and signature (AA 55), apart from this - no other special care
if myide menu doesn't follow basics, it won't work reliable

[kogden]

candle, on Thu Feb 9, 2012 3:55 PM, said:

side is using APT Marius, so there is a proper MBR with all partition info required
fat32 partition created with fdisk FJC wrote will be compatible with OS X
formatting like you say is intended for floppies, and it will be valid for both Linux and Windows
makes me wonder why stripped version of FreeBSD has problems with it

I HAD THE SAME ISSUE! You have to format the device from the command line:

newfs_msdos -F 32 /dev/<insert your disk device here>

You can use the df command if you're unsure what the device name is to see a list of disk devices and their mount points. Basically what's going on is DiskUtility is seeing the small size of the FAT32 partition and assuming it's a floppy or tiny HDD that it thinks would be better served by using FAT16. SIDE Loader will choke and will just display a couple filename slots with garbage characters.

Like I said, use the df command to help figure out what device it is and use the "newfs_msdos" command. The "-F 32" parameter forces it to use FAT32 even on small disks. You can't do it all with the GUI....not even with OSX. Certain diskutil functions can only be called with command line parameters as well.

--Kevin

[kogden]

A little more elaboration:

After reflashing my MyIDE with SDX 4.4.5, I told FDISK on the Atari I wanted a 128MB FAT32 filesystem with 384MB for Atari partitions. No formatting was done on the Atari side yet, just partitioning. Was undreadable on Mac at first so I clicked cancel on the dialog that showed up and opened Disk Utility. I formatted the FAT32 partition fine on the mac side (LEAVE THE REST OF THE DISK ALONE!) and could put files on it but no luck on Atari side, nothing would read. After plugging the disk back into the Mac I noticed with the partition selected in DiskUtility it said FAT16 at the bottom of the window....DOH!

There is no way to force FAT32 from the GUI DiskUtility.app on small partitions. You must use 'newfs_msdos -F 32 /dev/<device>' from the CLI. Period. The device path will be something like '/dev/disk2s1'. Disk Utility will always use FAT16 for tiny drives.

After formatting the FAT32 partition properly from the CLI on the mac and slapping some games on there *BAM!* SIDE Loader worked beautifully after being launched from SDX. Of course then I had to format Atari partitions and put SIDE-Loader on there first.

MacOS X is not FreeBSD though, it just uses a huge chunk of the userland utilities and provides a BSD API among others. OSX is a bastardized CMU Mach/MacOS/BSD UNIX hybrid. There are HUGE differences. Not very stripped once you install the Developer DVD and Fink/MacPorts either.</device>

Edited by kogden, Thu Feb 9, 2012 10:35 PM.

[kogden]

OOPS After reading up a bit I realized my issue wasn't quite the same but it is probably something that should be noted for mac users trying to use SIDE loader on smaller CF or DOM modules..... At least as far as OSX 10.6 is concerned. I'm using the MYIDE.SYS SDX driver w/ APT, not the Mr. Atari's firmware. No more drinking and posting.

I never had much luck with the stock MyIDE firmware. I had to use the MyIDE tools from within Parallels for the brief period I used it.

OSX usually wants a valid standard MBR or GUID partition table or it wants to make one for you if it's not a CD or floppy. A proper MBR will definitely increase chances of compatibility. A lot.

I'd actually like to be able to use his newer OS so I can boot things like MicroSpartaDOS, RealDOS, MyDOS etc but I'm not going to boot a VM on my mac every time I want to read the drive to throw a few games on the FAT32 side.

Marius1976, on Thu Feb 9, 2012 3:46 PM, said:

Am I right that killing the MBR will decrease compatibility on non-windows systems, like linux or Mac Os x?

any feedback from people who really know how this works is highly appreciated by me.

I want to know why the FAT32 initialization of MyIDE does not work on Mac OS X. Before I go writing my own FAT32 initializer I need to know that I'm in the right direction or not!