SIO2USB

[Bunsen]

There is no reason to sell them with Flash drives/USB thumb drives so perhaps that could lower the price and something like this while well thought out and packaged beautifully, perhaps a version without the package and the case?

 

Yes, there is a reason. Not all usb drives are supported by the device. We are up to make a compatibility list: http://www.abbuc.de/modules.php?name=Forum...opic&t=3241

[Mathy]

Hello Bunsen

 

One should mention, that standards (like for instance the USB mass storage standard) aren't always implemented correctly by hardware companies. Meaning a USB stick by manufacturor X might not react to the same commands in the same way as the USB sticks of manufacturor Y. That's (I guess) why you needed a different driver for each USB stick in windows 98 and that's also why not every USB stick is supported by the SIO2USB interface.

 

And then there is Murphy's law. If the first USB stick you buy doesn't work with the SIO2USB interface, chances are pretty high, the second one you buy won't work either. And the third, and the fourth ... There will probably be lots of people who use lots of different USB sticks from lost of different manufacturors without any problems. But just because it's not easy to take your Atari to the shop and test a USB stick before you buy it (with the exception maybe of Beetle and his laptop), the developers of the SIO2USB interface decided to include a USB stick that is known to work. Just to be sure.

 

Greetings

 

Mathy

[Heaven/TQA]

just got my one today... I must say...very very impressed. worth every euro cent i have spend...it's top quality very good, copied all my ATRs i had on the included sandisc 1gb stick... great!!! the manual is top notch, same goes to the quick reference guide! (on the pics i thought the device is little bit smaller but anyway).

 

the LCD is cool as hell... but unfortunatly i left my competition pro at home but i will heading tomorrow back for christmas holidays so i will get mine next time...

 

my 130xe is now a nice dev kit... sio2usb + turbo freezer Xe... the firmware of both is very similar... (yup... ABBUC guys rule!).

 

cool guys!

[jdh]

Santa paid an early visit, got mine on Saturday It really is a quality piece of work, worth every cent.

'nuff respect to the team who made this!

 

This device is a major convinience for me, i've not managed to find anything to connect my MacBook to my Atari using SIO2PC

[Roydea6]

Got mine yesterday, just to excited to post then, up nearly all night enjoying. Thanks go to the developers. This is a nice drive.. The only thing missing is the Fuji logo. /|\

[Marius]

I do agree with you all that Sio2USB is great. But there are a few things I am missing.

 

1. There is a certain inflexibility with 'non standard' sized ATR's. Thomas Grasel explained me that there are ATR's with an illegal header (or an illegal sector size). These ATR's are most of the time created from a single COM file with a tool. Unfortunately I have thousands of these ATR's, and I first have to convert them into 'normal size' ATR's before they work on SIO2USB. In my opinion, these ATR's should work without modification. It is a compatibility issue, I don't like. Sio2IDE and Sio2SD both do accept un-common ATR's. (like a 17KB ATR, or a 72KB ATR).

 

2. Sometimes I have some high-speed timing trouble, I don't have with sio2SD or sio2IDE. I have this with sio2USB connected to my Atari with BlackBox, but also connected to my Atari with QMEG. It occurs on my 16MB partition with SpartaDOS. After a cold boot i need to reboot again sometimes.*

 

3. I have the feeling that 16MB partitions are accessed rather slow. I don't have this on Sio2SD and Sio2IDE. I think this has something to do with the FAT system of USB sticks. IN earlier firmware of Sio2SD this problem did exist, but that is fixed now.*

 

4. I have to contact Thomas Grasel about that again, but i really think the sio2usb should be compatible with the apetime.com download tool*

 

5. I really think a good Sio2USB support forum would help. There is that forum on abbuc.de and ofcourse here on AtariAge. But a Sio2USB only forum... that would be great (like the support forums of atarimax)

 

Don't get me wrong. I really LOVE new products, and I think Sio2USB is a very cool thing to have, and use. I love the finishing touch: it comes in a real box, manual and the hardware is installed in a firm case. That rulezzz bigtime. The display is very cool, and the user-interface of the Sio2USB system is great too.

 

I hope they will fix those things I wrote above, and then it is real good. Till then I keep using my Sio2SD's. No problems with sio2SD.

 

Thanks for all the Atari Support folks!

Marius

 

* = Sometimes I have the feeling I'm they only one using the Disk version of spartados on a 16MB partition. I really could advice people: give that a try. It is really cool. Unfortunately I notice some compatibility problems with devices like Sio2USB, probably because it is not tested well enough with that kind of ATR's/DOS systems.

[cas]

Hello Marius

 

I do agree with you all that Sio2USB is great. But there are a few things I am missing.

 

1. There is a certain inflexibility with 'non standard' sized ATR's. Thomas Grasel explained me that there are ATR's with an illegal header (or an illegal sector size). These ATR's are most of the time created from a single COM file with a tool. Unfortunately I have thousands of these ATR's, and I first have to convert them into 'normal size' ATR's before they work on SIO2USB. In my opinion, these ATR's should work without modification. It is a compatibility issue, I don't like. Sio2IDE and Sio2SD both do accept un-common ATR's. (like a 17KB ATR, or a 72KB ATR).

 

Christian from Vienna has written a small ATR-fix tool that can fix all your ATRs in a Batch.

http://www.wyk.at/detail.asp?newsid=48

 

2. Sometimes I have some high-speed timing trouble, I don't have with sio2SD or sio2IDE. I have this with sio2USB connected to my Atari with BlackBox, but also connected to my Atari with QMEG. It occurs on my 16MB partition with SpartaDOS. After a cold boot i need to reboot again sometimes.*

 

3. I have the feeling that 16MB partitions are accessed rather slow. I don't have this on Sio2SD and Sio2IDE. I think this has something to do with the FAT system of USB sticks. IN earlier firmware of Sio2SD this problem did exist, but that is fixed now.*

 

4. I have to contact Thomas Grasel about that again, but i really think the sio2usb should be compatible with the apetime.com download tool*

 

5. I really think a good Sio2USB support forum would help. There is that forum on abbuc.de and ofcourse here on AtariAge. But a Sio2USB only forum... that would be great (like the support forums of atarimax)

 

Please report also these ideas and suggestions to Thomas Grasel directly.

 

Carsten

[ataridano]

* = Sometimes I have the feeling I'm they only one using the Disk version of spartados on a 16MB partition. I really could advice people: give that a try. It is really cool. Unfortunately I notice some compatibility problems with devices like Sio2USB, probably because it is not tested well enough with that kind of ATR's/DOS systems.

 

While I don't have SIO2USB I did recently get an SIO2SD drive and am looking forward to creating a 16MB partition (maybe more than one) to use with SpartaDOS. Unfortunatly, the only way I know to do that is to download a premade 16MB ATR and I haven't found one so far. I don't use an emulator and have no way to create one myself. Maybe someone has a 16MB harddrive image full of "favorite" games/utils/etc that they've made available??

[Bunsen]

Maybe someone has a 16MB harddrive image full of "favorite" games/utils/etc that they've made available??

 

On Mirko's site (www.atarixle.de) you will find a 16 MB atr image with his windows-like GUI named BOSS-X preinstalled:

http://andymanone.dyndns.org/atarixle/down...reinstalled.zip

(last link in the download section)

[tjb]

I picked up mine from the post office today! What a great piece of hardware! Many thanks to all those involved in its production!

 

tjb

[MEtalGuy66]

APE can create any ATR you want... Its one of thr pulldown options, if I recall..

 

a 16 meg sparta partition would be 65536 double density (256byte) sectors.. Just plug in the numbers, give it a file-name, and your done..

 

The trial version of ape is of course available from http://www.atarimax.com

[cas]

Hello Marius,

 

2. Sometimes I have some high-speed timing trouble, I don't have with sio2SD or sio2IDE. I have this with sio2USB connected to my Atari with BlackBox, but also connected to my Atari with QMEG. It occurs on my 16MB partition with SpartaDOS. After a cold boot i need to reboot again sometimes.*

 

Which SpartaDOS "kernel" do you use (which SprtaDOS Version?). Can you try with an Version without high speed SIO build in Sparta DOS, but HighSpeed SIO in the OS or similar, if there is a different behavior in regards of your 16MB image file?

 

3. I have the feeling that 16MB partitions are accessed rather slow. I don't have this on Sio2SD and Sio2IDE. I think this has something to do with the FAT system of USB sticks. IN earlier firmware of Sio2SD this problem did exist, but that is fixed now.*

 

The SIO2USB Firmware has one (1) buffer for a FAT Allocation Cluster. If the Sector-Allocation Information of a large file (16 MB) spans two clusters, the buffer cache is invalidated on each Atari sector read/write which accounts for slow access. Also, fragmentation of files on the USB Device can account for slow access. Fragmentation isn't an issue anymore on a PC (or MAcOS, Linux), as the FAT tables are all stored in memory on a big computer. The SIO2USB as an embedded device has very little internal memory, and can only buffer small amounts of data, and may need to re-read and parse the FAT structure information on each access from the Atari. So if fragmentation occurs (for example, when deleting some single density images and the copy an 16 MB image, the 16 MB image is very likely to be fragmented), defragment your media.

 

* Try to format the USB Stick with the maximal possible cluster size (the SIO2USB formatter automatically uses the optimal Clustersize for the SIO2USB)

* try to defragment the USB Stick on a PC

* try to move the 16 MB image to a different location on the stick or try to copy it on the internal storage. Test if it makes a difference.

 

Please share your findings with us if possible.

 

Carsten

Edited January 8, 2008 by cas

[Marius]

Which SpartaDOS "kernel" do you use (which SprtaDOS Version?). Can you try with an Version without high speed SIO build in Sparta DOS, but HighSpeed SIO in the OS or similar, if there is a different behavior in regards of your 16MB image file?

 

I have been using a 16MB SpartaDOS 3.3a partition for ages, with no system any problem. I have used Sio2SD, Sio2IDE, SIO2PC, APE. No problems at all. and with sio2usb it fails. I have been testing on: Qmeg, Sp+OS, BlackBox atari. Different atari's. All trouble.

 

I have also many trouble with other ATR's. Even ATR's with LEGAL headers. I can boot GOONIES.ATR on SLOW SPEED with sio2USB but on high speed it won't do a thing. This game boots on high speed from SIO2SD and APE.

 

A few weeks ago I have mailed to the support email adress from sio2usb, but no answer. Yesterday I have mailed another issue; I hope I will get answered.

 

I think compatibility is the most import goal to get. I think it is a very bad idea a special tool is needed to fix ATR's to make them compatible with Sio2USB. ATR's that work with sio2PC/APE should work on any other ATR-related device. Even when they have an illegal header or whatever. If it is a 'risky' issue that illegal header, then make the ATR automatically READ ONLY at least.

 

* Try to format the USB Stick with the maximal possible cluster size (the SIO2USB formatter automatically uses the optimal Clustersize for the SIO2USB)

* try to defragment the USB Stick on a PC

* try to move the 16 MB image to a different location on the stick or try to copy it on the internal storage. Test if it makes a difference.

 

I have been doing the cluster thing, and it increased speed, but I still have problems. Biggest trouble is with HighSpeed OS atari's

 

Please share your findings with us if possible.

 

I will do that, but I hope you guys will make this device better.

 

If you like I could also mail the ATR's that result in trouble.

 

Thanks

Marius