ATR8000 help

[sloopy]

guess i will have to test it, make sure it works, but i am open to offers in IM...

 

sloopy.

[a8maestro]

I emailed Rick yesterday to see if he had any ATR8000s for sale. In the mean time I did some more experimenting. I've added a floppy drive to the unit, and I think I've got it jumpered correctly. The drive will spin up, and the red activity light on the drive will blink in unison with the Atari beeps, but I still get the boot errors. However, the floppy drive is destroying the data on any disk I put in it. I can freshly format and copy DOS to a disk in my 1050, but if I try booting it with the ATR, the disk is unreadable in a 1050 again. It doesn't physically destroy the disk because I can reformat it and re-use it. I can't be sure that I don't have a bad floppy drive, but I'm beginning to suspect I have a bad disk controller in the ATR. I guess I'm going to have to wait until I can get another unit so I can try swapping a few things.

 

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions everyone.

 

 

have you heard back form him at all? I've gotten no response

 

 

 

Hello,

 

I am still around. But after starting a new job at the end of August, I got a rush of orders. Some 8 orders and 20 or items I did not have made(one item in almost 2 years because I needed to make the case). I am just now finally getting them finished. I rarely get to look at email more than once or twice a week. Because of the holiday, less than that.

 

 

I will catch up.

 

 

As far as the ATR-8000, I do have another tested good unit.

 

You can have a problem with either the drive or the atr8000. Format the 1050 disk 5 to 10 times in a row to see what happens. Or do a full 'format, write data, read data' cycle(even with DOS to make sure it boots each time) 5 to 10 times on a disk with the 1050 to check out the media.

 

Use a damp head cleaner on both drives.

 

All of these things are nearing end of life. One of the reasons I have tossed out so many commercial and used floppies-I have ~1000 new ones to keep me a few more years.

 

 

Rick

[a8maestro]

Hello,

I acquired an ATR8000 quite some time ago. I've finally cleaned it up and I'm attempting to get it up and running, but I'm running in to a few problems, and I was hoping someone can send me in the right direction.

 

I've confirmed that the unit I have is the 64k model, but I have no documentation, drives, or disks with it. I've pulled the EPROM and compared the contents with the image I found elsewhere on this forum, and they match perfectly. When I plug it in to my Atari (I've tried an 800, 800XL and 1200XL) with no other peripherals, I get a couple of beeps like it's attempting to load something from the ATR8000, then I just get BOOT ERROR down the screen.

 

From what I can gather, the unit is meant to load a device driver in to memory - I assume that's what it's trying to do? I don't have any drives hooked up when I try this (none connected to the ATR8000 and no Atari drives either).

 

Am I meant to have a drive and may be a boot disk? I assume I need a boot disk for CP/M, which I'd love to get if anyone has a copy.

 

I'd appreciate any suggestions or comments on how I can verify if my ATR8000 is working, before I go on the hunt for some old floppy drives to hook up to it.

 

 

Hi,

In Atari mode, the ATR8x00 acts like a peripheral controller. It doesn't boot any driver. It already knows about drives and printers. You do have to load a driver so the Atari can use R:, but the ATR is ready for that too.

 

It will want a standard, non atari, drive to boot from, numbered 0/1.

 

If you want to boot CP/M, then you will need several disks to setup the Atari as a terminal, and the ATR as a CP/M computer. I am working on a set for an order and will make more.

 

The manual for the ATR8000 is online here...http://atari.a8maestro.com/info/8ball/atr8x00/atr8kman.txt. The CP/M manual is not part of this manual. I add info as I get it or make it to...http://atari.a8maestro.com/info/8ball/ballho.htm.

 

 

Rick

[a8maestro]

With no disk drives attached to the ATR8000 My 800XL does the Atari fart and then drops to BASIC. No attempt to boot a disk.

 

Not sure what would happen if the internal jumpers are set for the "RS-232 Terminal" instead of "Atari". Jumpers J7 and J10 determine the usage of the SIO port.

 

For normal SIO port functionality J7 jumpers should be on pins 1-3 and 2-4. J10 jumper on 1-2.

 

Does your ATR8000 happen to have a hard disk interface? It might be trying to boot that.

 

If you get past your error condition the ATR8000's printer buffer should be active. You would be able to issue an LPRINT "whatever" command from BASIC without errors if the ATR8000 is being acknowledged. If it's not responding you will get "Error - 138".

 

-Steve Sheppard

 

I've double confirmed the jumper settings and they are as you describe. There is no hard disk interface card or any other card other than the main logic board. The ROM is version 3.02+. I have re-seated all of the socketed chips. The power supply rails are a nice clean 4.93v with no ripple.

 

When powered up, it makes one disk-type beep, then pauses about 2 seconds, beeps again, prints BOOT ERROR, pauses 2 seconds, and repeats.

 

To confirm, this will work on an 800XL, right? I can't remember if these units were 400/800 only wor if they worked on newer machines.

 

 

The ATR8x00 will work on all atari 8 bit computers that can use sio peripherals.

 

Rick

[OldAtarian]

Hello,

I acquired an ATR8000 quite some time ago. I've finally cleaned it up and I'm attempting to get it up and running, but I'm running in to a few problems, and I was hoping someone can send me in the right direction.

 

I've confirmed that the unit I have is the 64k model, but I have no documentation, drives, or disks with it. I've pulled the EPROM and compared the contents with the image I found elsewhere on this forum, and they match perfectly. When I plug it in to my Atari (I've tried an 800, 800XL and 1200XL) with no other peripherals, I get a couple of beeps like it's attempting to load something from the ATR8000, then I just get BOOT ERROR down the screen.

 

From what I can gather, the unit is meant to load a device driver in to memory - I assume that's what it's trying to do? I don't have any drives hooked up when I try this (none connected to the ATR8000 and no Atari drives either).

 

Am I meant to have a drive and may be a boot disk? I assume I need a boot disk for CP/M, which I'd love to get if anyone has a copy.

 

I'd appreciate any suggestions or comments on how I can verify if my ATR8000 is working, before I go on the hunt for some old floppy drives to hook up to it.

 

 

Hi,

In Atari mode, the ATR8x00 acts like a peripheral controller. It doesn't boot any driver. It already knows about drives and printers. You do have to load a driver so the Atari can use R:, but the ATR is ready for that too.

 

It will want a standard, non atari, drive to boot from, numbered 0/1.

 

If you want to boot CP/M, then you will need several disks to setup the Atari as a terminal, and the ATR as a CP/M computer. I am working on a set for an order and will make more.

 

The manual for the ATR8000 is online here...http://atari.a8maestro.com/info/8ball/atr8x00/atr8kman.txt. The CP/M manual is not part of this manual. I add info as I get it or make it to...http://atari.a8maestro.com/info/8ball/ballho.htm.

 

 

Rick

 

I'd like a complete set of those discs, assuming that the CP/M disc is bootable.

[erazmus]

Bump. After a few years of sitting in my closet, I've pulled the ATR8000 out and I'm trying to see if I can get it to work. I'm really interested in finding a set of CP/M disks for the unit. I understand that there's a trick to creating the disk properly because the first two sectors are single density. Does anyone have a copy they could sell/give me? Or is there any instructions on how to successfully create a bootable CP/M disk from an image?

[+Stephen]

Bump. After a few years of sitting in my closet, I've pulled the ATR8000 out and I'm trying to see if I can get it to work. I'm really interested in finding a set of CP/M disks for the unit. I understand that there's a trick to creating the disk properly because the first two sectors are single density. Does anyone have a copy they could sell/give me? Or is there any instructions on how to successfully create a bootable CP/M disk from an image?

I believe http://trub.atari8.info/index.php?ref=indus_cpm_en will help. Look for the section titled Indus CP/M tool. If this doesn't work for the ATR8000, you may want to contact trub and see if a similar solution can be written.

[Subby]

Keep us posted on how that works out Erazmus.

If all else fails I might be able to loan you one of my CP/M boot floppies.

[erazmus]

Keep us posted on how that works out Erazmus.

If all else fails I might be able to loan you one of my CP/M boot floppies.

Thanks for the offer. Even if I borrowed your original, we'd have the problem of being able to copy the strange format. The above link to the Indus GT CP/M version has given me an idea. I have an Indus GT. I can probably hack together the 64k board for it. If that works, I can make an Indus disk as described, which will boot me in to CP/M. From there, I can probably use the appropriate tools to create a ATR8000 CP/M disk.

 

Whichever way it goes, I really want to solve this problem. Everywhere you look online, there's lots of questions about getting CP/M running on the ATR8000, but no real answers. Hmmm, this is beginning to sound like a Retrochallenge project...

Edited July 30, 2013 by erazmus

[Subby]

I'm writing this in a moment of "calm" at work, and I haven't had a chance to read the entire thread (lazy too), but you say you have an IndusGT? Is that the only floppy drive you have?

I don't know anything of the Indus board so I'll treat it as an Atari floppy drive.

 

To boot CP/M from the ATR8000, you must have a "standard" floppy drive. It must connect to the floppy drive connector on the back of the ATR8000. An Atari SIO type will not work.

 

Now all of that said, it would not surprise me at all if somebody figured a way around those limitations. Actually I'd be a little disappointed if nobody has.

[erazmus]

I'm writing this in a moment of "calm" at work, and I haven't had a chance to read the entire thread (lazy too), but you say you have an IndusGT? Is that the only floppy drive you have?

I don't know anything of the Indus board so I'll treat it as an Atari floppy drive.

 

To boot CP/M from the ATR8000, you must have a "standard" floppy drive. It must connect to the floppy drive connector on the back of the ATR8000. An Atari SIO type will not work.

 

Now all of that said, it would not surprise me at all if somebody figured a way around those limitations. Actually I'd be a little disappointed if nobody has.

I have a 360k half height IBM-style floppy drive hooked up to my ATR8000. I had some cabling problems last time I tried (several years ago) but I think I have them solved.

 

I *also* have an Indus GT (in storage). The Indus has a Z80 processor, and they released CP/M for it, as long as you added additional RAM for it. The article linked discusses re-creating a CP/M boot disk for the Indus drive, and it is theorized that a similar recovery process might work for the ATR8000.

 

I should probably take the corrupted ATR disk images for the Indus and the ATR8000 and compare them in a hex editor to see if the same corruption is happening in the first couple of sectors.

[shirsch]

Thanks for the offer. Even if I borrowed your original, we'd have the problem of being able to copy the strange format. The above link to the Indus GT CP/M version has given me an idea. I have an Indus GT. I can probably hack together the 64k board for it. If that works, I can make an Indus disk as described, which will boot me in to CP/M. From there, I can probably use the appropriate tools to create a ATR8000 CP/M disk.

 

Whichever way it goes, I really want to solve this problem. Everywhere you look online, there's lots of questions about getting CP/M running on the ATR8000, but no real answers. Hmmm, this is beginning to sound like a Retrochallenge project...

 

Did you make any progress towards a working ATR8000 system disk? I have one here just waiting for the proper software.

[Kyle22]

I hope this: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/220185-atr-8000-and-other-cpm-system-disks-here/

 

 

may help

Happy New Year!