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#81
Hardware / Re: Question instead sharing w...
Last post by Ronald J. Hall - 06-12-2024, 18:44:53I personally have never used a Gotek device of any kind.
I always preferred mass storage like the Ultrasatans.
I understand though, that lots of people use the Gotek.
I always preferred mass storage like the Ultrasatans.
I understand though, that lots of people use the Gotek.
#82
Hardware / Question instead sharing wisdo...
Last post by Petari - 06-12-2024, 15:23:39I dealt in last days with Atariausgabe editions 1-9. They used some really not well made depacking system, to be able to put as much possible (well, with that packer, which efficiency is unknown, as packer self is pretty unknown, so relative) . What is my point here ? It is RAM requirement of games. I did examinations for parts 1-3, and some 85% of games can work with 512 KB RAM (or 1 MB RAM in case of hard disk adapt). The thing is that depacking system uses 65 KB of RAM, and that makes big part of games not working with 512 KB RAM (or 1 MB in case of hard disk adapt) . My idea is to make it usable for people with not so much RAM in their ST machines. But it needs more floppy disk space (of course, they wanted to put as much possible games on DS floppy (max capacity about 820 KB) . Without packing, those releases take space in range 1000-1400 KB. What is fine with HD DS floppies (of course, there were no HD SS floppies).
So, my question is: do now popular HW floppy emulators like Gotek support HD floppy mode ?
Yes, I know that it needs to be supported on Atari ST side . I dealt with it back in 1990 . The thing is that DMA chip is capable for much more than HD floppy transfer speeds.
I want to publish floppy images of this Atariausgabe editions, in unpacked form - what needs floppy capacities over 1 MB, so HD . And now lot of people using Gotek instead floppy drives.
Other way is to use my hard disk driver Virtual Floppy feature - max capacity supported is 2 MB . Or using my iTOS releases. More details on my Site . We can be more compatible than those forcing after Atari ST era solutions. We want to run old Atari ST(E) SW with modern storage.
So, my question is: do now popular HW floppy emulators like Gotek support HD floppy mode ?
Yes, I know that it needs to be supported on Atari ST side . I dealt with it back in 1990 . The thing is that DMA chip is capable for much more than HD floppy transfer speeds.
I want to publish floppy images of this Atariausgabe editions, in unpacked form - what needs floppy capacities over 1 MB, so HD . And now lot of people using Gotek instead floppy drives.
Other way is to use my hard disk driver Virtual Floppy feature - max capacity supported is 2 MB . Or using my iTOS releases. More details on my Site . We can be more compatible than those forcing after Atari ST era solutions. We want to run old Atari ST(E) SW with modern storage.
#83
News / Re: How to be useless
Last post by Ronald J. Hall - 03-12-2024, 18:36:16Quote from: Petari on 03-12-2024, 17:35:11And atariage still 'delivers' : Connecting 4 drives at once
Huh - I was writing already 10 years ago that avoid connecting 2 or more hard disks on 1 port of Atari ST(E) machines - because they are old, and extra load may cause unreliable work, or even some failure by components (in adapters too). And now, when it is old some 35 years 4 drives ... Why doing it at all ? Only clever thing with so old drives is to save/copy valuable data from them to some newer storage (someone said SD card ?), and then put them aside, in museum.
I'm not sure why Rcamp is trying to use 4 Megafiles either. Look at all the space and electricity that will take up. He would be far better off going with one of the many newer mass storage solutions available these days.
I did have a Megafile 60 and a Megafile 30 together one time but that was waaaay back in the early 90's. Even then, one of them kept overheating and would have to be shut down occasionally to let it cool off.
#84
News / Re: How to be useless
Last post by Petari - 03-12-2024, 17:39:30
#85
News / Re: How to be useless
Last post by Petari - 03-12-2024, 17:35:11And atariage still 'delivers' : Connecting 4 drives at once
Huh - I was writing already 10 years ago that avoid connecting 2 or more hard disks on 1 port of Atari ST(E) machines - because they are old, and extra load may cause unreliable work, or even some failure by components (in adapters too). And now, when it is old some 35 years 4 drives ... Why doing it at all ? Only clever thing with so old drives is to save/copy valuable data from them to some newer storage (someone said SD card ?), and then put them aside, in museum.
Huh - I was writing already 10 years ago that avoid connecting 2 or more hard disks on 1 port of Atari ST(E) machines - because they are old, and extra load may cause unreliable work, or even some failure by components (in adapters too). And now, when it is old some 35 years 4 drives ... Why doing it at all ? Only clever thing with so old drives is to save/copy valuable data from them to some newer storage (someone said SD card ?), and then put them aside, in museum.
#86
Software / Re: About my hard disk driver ...
Last post by Ronald J. Hall - 01-12-2024, 01:06:54Thanks for the explanation, appreciated.
#87
Software / About my hard disk driver SW
Last post by Petari - 30-11-2024, 11:38:08 About my hard disk driver SW:
I work on this for some 17 years. Intention was/is to make easy to use, with some useful extra features, low RAM consuming (ASM code) and very important: compatible driver/partitioner SW. With what good old Atari ST(E) SW works well. As it is mostly for floppies, some changes my be needed in SW, code for hard disk work. More compatible driver - less changes needed. Then, easy data transfer with modern computers is very useful, especially since Internet time. Atari TOS developers went actually on DOS compatible format with floppies and hard disks in filesystem (FAT12 and FAT16). However it is not 100% compatible. Everyone can see it if looks with Hex viewer some disk image - Intel byte order is used, while CPU 68000 is not such (normal byte order by numbers). As I did looot of 'adapting for hard disk' - mostly games, I have really big experience about usual SW, and how hard disk driver needs to work. See lower for more details.
Started with Atari ST hard disks since 1992 - then designed IDE adapter and used it with 40 MB 3.5 inch drive - my first hard disk. As driver I used AHDI driver by Atari . Later used 2.5 inch IDE drives, capacity in range 80-160 MB . And I learned in short time that is worth to make multiple partitions, with size under 32 MB, because then they are DOS compatible, so was able to access them with PC with DOS, Windows. That was good for file transfers . My Atari ST activity lowered, as I used mostly PC for work, playing new games on much faster computer, 3D graphic cards arrived, and Internet too . One of things what I spent more time around 1999-2000 was making images of all my Atari floppies, and save them to hard disk - as images, as files for usage from hard disk. Then learned that it may need some changes in SW to make it work from hard disk. Talking not about copy protected SW. I had (and still have) some original games, but I made them to work from hard disk . For instance Microprose F1 GP - it's on 4 floppies originally. That was good experience, and I even used packing. New interest for Atari ST came by appearance of Flash cards - at around 2003 - I bough 128 MB Sandisk CF card, and Flash card with standard IDE connector (Transcend) - much more practical than those large, noisy and power hungry drives. And could connect it to PC - via USB reader. Also good emulators of Atari ST appeared on then pretty powerful PCs (CPU clock over 1 GHz, so faster than ST at least 100x ) . Steem became my favorite - and it had 2 types of hard disk emulation. And as it is relevant here, details: "Hard drives" - it is in Disk menu section, and I would call it Filesystem emulation. Now some call it GEMdrive and like - misleading , in fact it is not real hard disk emulation, or even drive - just some DIR on host computer assigned as logical drive (partition C-P) on emulated Atari ST(E) .It is based on redirecting file/DIR function calls (read, write, seek, etc) to host filesystem. And includes of course long filename conversion to 8.3 format . And because that way not all hard disk functions work - can not access hard disk specific sectors (area), as no such. And that means that SW what use such calls will not detect hard disk, and will not run properly or at all. Because it is written for regular system - with hard disk with partitions, MBR, partition locations etc. AUTO boot hard disk driver takes care about it - and it is called from TOS FAT16 filesystem handling code . In TOS is even no any code to interpret MBR and set/mount partitions - it is on driver SW . Sure, space in TOS in ROM is limited, plus it gave space for driver SW developers to solve it in diverse ways, to add some new features for better/easier usage ...
I work on this for some 17 years. Intention was/is to make easy to use, with some useful extra features, low RAM consuming (ASM code) and very important: compatible driver/partitioner SW. With what good old Atari ST(E) SW works well. As it is mostly for floppies, some changes my be needed in SW, code for hard disk work. More compatible driver - less changes needed. Then, easy data transfer with modern computers is very useful, especially since Internet time. Atari TOS developers went actually on DOS compatible format with floppies and hard disks in filesystem (FAT12 and FAT16). However it is not 100% compatible. Everyone can see it if looks with Hex viewer some disk image - Intel byte order is used, while CPU 68000 is not such (normal byte order by numbers). As I did looot of 'adapting for hard disk' - mostly games, I have really big experience about usual SW, and how hard disk driver needs to work. See lower for more details.
Started with Atari ST hard disks since 1992 - then designed IDE adapter and used it with 40 MB 3.5 inch drive - my first hard disk. As driver I used AHDI driver by Atari . Later used 2.5 inch IDE drives, capacity in range 80-160 MB . And I learned in short time that is worth to make multiple partitions, with size under 32 MB, because then they are DOS compatible, so was able to access them with PC with DOS, Windows. That was good for file transfers . My Atari ST activity lowered, as I used mostly PC for work, playing new games on much faster computer, 3D graphic cards arrived, and Internet too . One of things what I spent more time around 1999-2000 was making images of all my Atari floppies, and save them to hard disk - as images, as files for usage from hard disk. Then learned that it may need some changes in SW to make it work from hard disk. Talking not about copy protected SW. I had (and still have) some original games, but I made them to work from hard disk . For instance Microprose F1 GP - it's on 4 floppies originally. That was good experience, and I even used packing. New interest for Atari ST came by appearance of Flash cards - at around 2003 - I bough 128 MB Sandisk CF card, and Flash card with standard IDE connector (Transcend) - much more practical than those large, noisy and power hungry drives. And could connect it to PC - via USB reader. Also good emulators of Atari ST appeared on then pretty powerful PCs (CPU clock over 1 GHz, so faster than ST at least 100x ) . Steem became my favorite - and it had 2 types of hard disk emulation. And as it is relevant here, details: "Hard drives" - it is in Disk menu section, and I would call it Filesystem emulation. Now some call it GEMdrive and like - misleading , in fact it is not real hard disk emulation, or even drive - just some DIR on host computer assigned as logical drive (partition C-P) on emulated Atari ST(E) .It is based on redirecting file/DIR function calls (read, write, seek, etc) to host filesystem. And includes of course long filename conversion to 8.3 format . And because that way not all hard disk functions work - can not access hard disk specific sectors (area), as no such. And that means that SW what use such calls will not detect hard disk, and will not run properly or at all. Because it is written for regular system - with hard disk with partitions, MBR, partition locations etc. AUTO boot hard disk driver takes care about it - and it is called from TOS FAT16 filesystem handling code . In TOS is even no any code to interpret MBR and set/mount partitions - it is on driver SW . Sure, space in TOS in ROM is limited, plus it gave space for driver SW developers to solve it in diverse ways, to add some new features for better/easier usage ...
#88
Software / Terminator 2 freezes on Ocean ...
Last post by diamondspringwater - 30-11-2024, 04:22:44Terminator 2 freezes on the Ocean start up screen on my Ste and Falcon, seems very strange because I know I've played it before on my ste. I can't figure out why it's freezing now.
#89
Hardware / Re: SedecarTrigde and hard dis...
Last post by Petari - 23-11-2024, 14:03:28And something what everyone who deals with, using computers should know: even smallest error at some point can make whole thing not working well, or even at all . Yeah, probably most known is error in code. But same is with usage of it - despite measures in OS, GUI - if user's whole approach is wrong (based on own low knowledge, or bad advices, sites and like) it will fail.
And I dare to say that those who do SW, HW development - well, part of them does same mistake - just ignoring some details, and that results in product being not so useful. Of course, they ignore negative comments too. As we know word negative is not always negative - Covid test negative - that's positive thing :-) Writing about errors of someone - may be helping act. Grow up 'geniuses' !
And I dare to say that those who do SW, HW development - well, part of them does same mistake - just ignoring some details, and that results in product being not so useful. Of course, they ignore negative comments too. As we know word negative is not always negative - Covid test negative - that's positive thing :-) Writing about errors of someone - may be helping act. Grow up 'geniuses' !
#90
Rules and announcements / Maintenance 2024
Last post by msolajic - 22-11-2024, 20:45:37Hello,
All registerd members that did not activate their account in the last 30 days and all members that have never been logged in are now deleted from the database.
Sorry if any inconvenience is caused by this action, and feel free to register again.
Also, forum is upgraded and e-mails sent now should not be on a spam list.
All registerd members that did not activate their account in the last 30 days and all members that have never been logged in are now deleted from the database.
Sorry if any inconvenience is caused by this action, and feel free to register again.
Also, forum is upgraded and e-mails sent now should not be on a spam list.