Incognito SIDE help

[dragos]

ok, being an Atari noob, I am having trouble figuring out the SIDE part of Incognito.

 

I can map xex files and load them with SIDE, but I cannot get Spartados to recognize the card.

 

Any help pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

[adam242]

You have to create an APT partition on your CF card for SpartaDOS to use. There have been a few threads about this, try searching.

 

Here's flashjazzcat's page with the toolkit:

http://www.atari8.co.uk/apt/tools/index.html

[FastRobPlus]

You have to create an APT partition on your CF card for SpartaDOS to use. There have been a few threads about this, try searching.

 

Here's flashjazzcat's page with the toolkit:

http://www.atari8.co.uk/apt/tools/index.html

 

There's some great info there, but I don't think it will help unless you can get FDISK and the other tools initially loaded without the use of SIDE.

[adam242]

 

There's some great info there, but I don't think it will help unless you can get FDISK and the other tools initially loaded without the use of SIDE.

 

I'm pretty sure I ran the tools from an .atr image using an SIO2PC interface.

[Britishcar]

As a noob as well, I can take an early stab at your problem.

 

Have you been able to make APT partitions using FDISK?

 

http://atari8.co.uk/apt/tools/index.html#fdisk4

 

Here's how I got mine going:

 

1) Format your CompactFlash card on Windows or a Mac as a FAT32 device. On the Mac, I think it's just listed as FAT.

 

2) Then run FDISK however you can. I ran FDISK off of a virtual floppy on a German SIO2USB thumb drive device after downloading it and the other tools in the suite.

 

3) This helped me a LOT: http://www.atari8.co.uk/apt/docs/APT%20Software%20Manual.pdf

 

4) You're going to want to use 1, 2, 3 or maybe 4 actual floppies or drives or other SIO stuff at some point so start your APT Compact Flash partitions at maybe DE: (D5:) or so. I could only set up one partition at a time and then save the table. If I set up more than one APT partition at a time, FDISK would lock while trying to save the partition table. Go figure.

 

5) FORMAT the APT partitions using SpartaDOS X after you've made them. Otherwise they will only save junk. Ignore the "this isn't a floppy" message. Then switch to D5: or whatever you've made and you should have the CF working like a virtual hard drive.

 

Now, unless a more advanced user knows better, your XEX files should be copied to your FAT partition using straight Windows or Mac. I use a USB to CompactFlash device and copy them in from a Mac. So...your XEX files will never "be" in your SpartaDOS harddrives. You'll run them from the "L" key in the Incog menu and you'll access your APT harddrive partitions from SparaDOS.

 

If I've said something wrong here, please correct me. I hope this is clear...?

[AtariGeezer]

 

There's some great info there, but I don't think it will help unless you can get FDISK and the other tools initially loaded without the use of SIDE.

In your case since you don't have an SIO2SD, SIO2PC or SIO2USB,

1) Format your CF card on your PC/Mac in FAT32.

2) copy FDISK.exe from the FDISK4 Standalone Beta to your CF card.

3) Boot your 800 while pressing the /I\ atari key to get to the Bios screen, Enable both SDX and SIDE.

4) Press the "L" button to get to the SIDE Loader and run fdisk.

5) Create partitions "C" to "N" with 65,535 sectors @ 512 bytes.

6) Save your Partition Table.

7) Reboot.

From SDX, type "Format" and hit enter.

9) Press "U" to change the Unit #, then enter "C" to "N" (one step at a time).

10) Edit the V)olume name if you wish for each partition.

11) Press "B" to build the Directory.

12) Repeat from step #9 until you have all partitions completed.

13) Put your CF card back in your PC and format in Fat32. This will set up your new adjusted Fat32 size...

 

You should really consider buying/building a SIO2SD, SIO2PC or SIO2USB interface in the near future

[dragos]

Thanks for all your repsonses. I was able to get the atr from flashjazzcats page and from there run fdisk and partition and format my card. I now have 6 partitons starting at e: so as not to interfere with d1 - d4 on my sdrive if i choose to use that

I can boot it to e: without the sdrive

 

I now have my incognito fully configured and it is thanks to the folks here and SJcarden being extremely patient in IRC.

 

Thanks again!

[candle]

Don't know if this is released to the pub, but there is FAT16 driver for SDX supporting up to 1GB partitions, thus making FAT16 partition visible to SDX

No FAT32 driver is available as yet, this will require major sdx core rewrite, and some sacrafices (ie breaking off compatibility with stock machines (64k limit))

OTOH this is no issue to average SDX users novadays (either having Ultimate or Incognito)

[flashjazzcat]

Don't know if this is released to the pub, but there is FAT16 driver for SDX supporting up to 1GB partitions, thus making FAT16 partition visible to SDX

Yes - it's on the latest SDX Toolkit ATR, although the last time I looked it supported max. 32MB partitions (optimally - speed-wise - with 8KB clusters).

Edited October 4, 2013 by flashjazzcat

[candle]

32MB version is a joke, bad one too

[drac030]

The driver on the Toolkit ATR is the old one. There is a newer version, supporting up to 2 GB actually, but, since it required internal changes in SPARTA.SYS, SDX 4.47 is required. SDX 4.47 is not yet released, so the new FAT driver isn't either

[flashjazzcat]

Sounds great Konrad. Looking forward to write capability somewhere down the line, too (this is more important than raw capacity to me). This is going to be the easiest and fastest way to move large amounts of information between the A8 and the PC, hands-down, bar-none.

[greblus]

32MB version is a joke, bad one too

Depends on one's sense of humour . It's still better than copying data over sio2pc and definitely better than nothing. Fat32 support in SDX would be great but 32MB is not an issue, write support would be more useful.