7800 control dev?

[chriswhit]

A while back I built a dev system. I have a computer with windows 98 with the 7800 control program installed. Recently I tried to dump a cart just to figure out how it works. I started the transfer on my 7800 but when I open 7800 control it doesn't even give me a chance to type a command and the program just times out. When I try to type a command I get this pop up. This MS dos program has terminated. Click the close button in the corner of the window after you have viewed output or any error messages. The last time I used a dos program I was 9. Am I using the program wrong or could it be a corrupt file or improper install. I'm not very good with dos. Any help would be great. Thanks

[+Mitch]

A while back I built a dev system. I have a computer with windows 98 with the 7800 control program installed. Recently I tried to dump a cart just to figure out how it works. I started the transfer on my 7800 but when I open 7800 control it doesn't even give me a chance to type a command and the program just times out. When I try to type a command I get this pop up. This MS dos program has terminated. Click the close button in the corner of the window after you have viewed output or any error messages. The last time I used a dos program I was 9. Am I using the program wrong or could it be a corrupt file or improper install. I'm not very good with dos. Any help would be great. Thanks

How are you opening the DOS prompt on your Win 98 PC? I usually click start>run and type command then hit enter. You can then navigate to where ever your 7800ctrl program is located and run it.

 

Mitch

[chriswhit]

A while back I built a dev system. I have a computer with windows 98 with the 7800 control program installed. Recently I tried to dump a cart just to figure out how it works. I started the transfer on my 7800 but when I open 7800 control it doesn't even give me a chance to type a command and the program just times out. When I try to type a command I get this pop up. This MS dos program has terminated. Click the close button in the corner of the window after you have viewed output or any error messages. The last time I used a dos program I was 9. Am I using the program wrong or could it be a corrupt file or improper install. I'm not very good with dos. Any help would be great. Thanks

How are you opening the DOS prompt on your Win 98 PC? I usually click start>run and type command then hit enter. You can then navigate to where ever your 7800ctrl program is located and run it.

 

Mitch

 

I put a shortcut on my desktop and just tried to open it from there. I'll try that and see what happens. Thanks for the response

[chriswhit]

A while back I built a dev system. I have a computer with windows 98 with the 7800 control program installed. Recently I tried to dump a cart just to figure out how it works. I started the transfer on my 7800 but when I open 7800 control it doesn't even give me a chance to type a command and the program just times out. When I try to type a command I get this pop up. This MS dos program has terminated. Click the close button in the corner of the window after you have viewed output or any error messages. The last time I used a dos program I was 9. Am I using the program wrong or could it be a corrupt file or improper install. I'm not very good with dos. Any help would be great. Thanks

How are you opening the DOS prompt on your Win 98 PC? I usually click start>run and type command then hit enter. You can then navigate to where ever your 7800ctrl program is located and run it.

 

Mitch

 

Thank you works great now. Thank you. Plus one for reputation

[shadow460]

EDIT: I didn't see you'd gotten it solved. Good deal!

 

Got a feeling on this...

 

How much memory is in the computer? If it's 512 MB or greater you may run into trouble with DOS programs. Generally the error given is "There is no enough memory to run this program" blase, blase, when in reality you have a cool 768 megs in there and the DOs programs takes, like, 2.

 

Hit "Start -> run" and type msconfig in the box. Click on the System.ini tab and scroll down to the folder marked vcache. Hit "New" for a new line (the folder is probably empty) and type MaxFileCache=500000. Type it exactly like that with no spaces. The number is a number of bytes that you can raise or lower as long as it doesn't exceed 512 megabytes. Leave the period off. If you have the MaxFileSize, set it equal to or lower than the MaxFileCache. When that's done, shut the computer completely down and then restart it.

Alternately you can pull some of the RAM, but then what would be the point of spending lunch money on it?

 

Something else you might try is to run 7800ctrl from a boot disk in a pure DOS environment. the control program can reside on the hard disk along with the files you dump. Assume, then, that I'm loading from a boot disk and want to dump Beany Bopper. Assume the control program resides in the Program Files folder inside a folder named DevOS. These would be the lines and the commands are after the > prompt:

 

Starting Windows 98 ...
A:>C:
C:>cd\Progra~1\DevOS
C:\Progra~1\DevOS>7800ctrl.exe -tTEST beany~1.bin

 

We switch from the boot disk in the floppy drive to the hard disk by typing C: at the prompt. This takes us to the root of C drive. The next line takes up from the root of C: to the directory where the control program is. The last line tells the computer which program you want to run, what you want it to do, and the name or destination of the resulting file. I think I'm missing something in the 7800ctrl command line, though. The ~1 is simply the DOS "nickname" for the files and or folders. DOS names can't exceed 8 characters, so they have to be shortened. Progra~1 is the name for the "Program Files" directory. "MyDocu~1" is My Documents. You'll get very familiar with these on a 98SE box, trust me.

 

What CPU and chipset are you running? Mine is a PIII 800 with an Apollo Pro chipset. If you don't know the chipset, it can be found using the brand and model number of the motherboard. Also, are you running 98 Standard or 98 Second Edition? AFAIK, Standard is virtually extinct, and there are about three of us left on the whole planet running 98SE.

 

BTW, you'll need to dig through the BIOS to run from a boot disk. The old gray Phoenix BIOS menus are rather cryptic, but the blue Award ones are simple to navigate. If you need help setting it up, just ask.

Edited January 28, 2010 by shadow460

[chriswhit]

I do have a new issue. Most of my Icons seem to open 7800control even if they have nothing to do with it especially anything with atari info stored. even icons that are shortcuts to saved pdf files

edit: it seems to be all my desktop icons that have the letters dev in the name. I'm going to see if my computer will let me rename them. Don't know if that will help.

 

Second edit its all my text files renaming didn't help. I think I'm going to have fun with this issue.

Edited January 28, 2010 by chriswhit

[+Mitch]

I do have a new issue. Most of my Icons seem to open 7800control even if they have nothing to do with it especially anything with atari info stored. even icons that are shortcuts to saved pdf files

edit: it seems to be all my desktop icons that have the letters dev in the name. I'm going to see if my computer will let me rename them. Don't know if that will help.

 

Second edit its all my text files renaming didn't help. I think I'm going to have fun with this issue.

 

I'm not sure how it could have happened but it sounds like you somehow managed to change the target location on them. It might be easier to recreate them then to try and fix them.

 

Mitch

[chriswhit]

I do have copies of them on a cd. I don't know if they were constructed in dos but if they were then I have a good idea what happened. I changed a dos setting in an attempt to get 7800ctrl to work. I made it so dos couldn't detect windows but don't remember how I did it lol. I don't know if that would cause this issue but I'm guessing it might.