BoatofCar Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 (edited) I've recently dug my 1200XL out of my parents' basement and, after fixing the infamous keyboard problem, am eager to start gaming again. There seem to be a lot of multicart/SIO2SD options out there. What I'd like to do is have a self-contained device (no SIO2PC) that I can store a maximum of about 50 games on and is easy to use. I know there's nothing as simple as a Harmony cart for the A8, but the closer to that the better. Any suggestions? Edited January 28, 2014 by BoatofCar 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Hi! Good to hear you want to start using your 1200XL. You are lucky, because there are solution just as simple as a Harmony cart for the A8. SIDE2 and MyIDE ][ do both have excellent drag-'n-drop game loaders (using a CF card in stead of a SD card). If you absolutely need disk-image support (because you want to play games that only exist on multiple sided disks) you'd better go indeed for a SIO2SD (or a Sio2USB made by ABBUC) I'm not sure a SIDE2 fits in the tight slot of a 1200XL, but I'm sure the MyIDE ][ will fit. Have fun with your 1200XL, I'm sure you are going to like this. Could you tell us which games you have in mind? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 And MyIDE ][ and SIDE2 both can contain as much games as the capacity of the CF card allows you to, so you are not limited to 50 games max. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoatofCar Posted January 28, 2014 Author Share Posted January 28, 2014 Hi ProWizard, Thanks so much for replying! So, just so I understand, the only reason for me to get a SIO2SD would be if I want to run multi-disk games like Ultima for instance? It sounds like the MyIDE ][ is my best bet then. Question: Does MyIDE ][ use .atr files? Can it handle BASIC programs? Some of my favorite games were the ones that came with ANTIC magazine. As far as games, some of my favorites are Blue Max One on One Star League Baseball MULE Food Fight It's a short list, I know! I'm looking forward to discovering many more games that I never got a chance to play, like Rescue on Fractalus, and Bruce Lee, as well as the rest of the XE arcade ports I never got a chance to play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I'm not sure a SIDE2 fits in the tight slot of a 1200XL, but I'm sure the MyIDE ][ will fit. Confirmed: SIDE2 doesn't fit without widening the cart tunnel, but MyIDE 2 does. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoenixdownita Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Hi ProWizard, Thanks so much for replying! So, just so I understand, the only reason for me to get a SIO2SD would be if I want to run multi-disk games like Ultima for instance? It sounds like the MyIDE ][ is my best bet then. Question: Does MyIDE ][ use .atr files? Can it handle BASIC programs? Some of my favorite games were the ones that came with ANTIC magazine. As far as games, some of my favorites are Blue Max One on One Star League Baseball MULE Food Fight It's a short list, I know! I'm looking forward to discovering many more games that I never got a chance to play, like Rescue on Fractalus, and Bruce Lee, as well as the rest of the XE arcade ports I never got a chance to play. I got both, SIDE2 to really shine almost requires U1MB, that is because many games are big enough to require the extra mem, with MyIDE2 some of said games use bankswitching within the card (see R16 support). Also ATR support from SIDE2 is only thru U1MB. On the other end MyIDE2 needs its own MyBIOS to really work well, although FAT32Loader can work in many cases. And that MyBIOS is its issue, as without burning it into an EPROM (or U1MB OS Slot) the Flash version resides in RAM (as OS RAM) and many games don't like that, the ROM-able version of MyBIOS (called R2) has much better compatibility. Regarding ATR support, SIDE2 requires U1MB for that, while MyIDE2 has 2 modes, via MyBIOS and via FAT32Loader, compatibility is OK (MyBIOS has better compat than FAT32Loader) but as soon as the game has custom SIO routines it gets tricky and messy and it doesn't work .... "Seven Cities of Gold" being one example, Sijmen (the author of MyBIOS) attempted a quick hack on it to make it to work but it ended up locking further on .... how many ATRs like that are there? Not sure but I found quite a few and it's annoying .... SIDE2 + U1MB seems to have similar issues with ATR once custom SIO is in the picture, so it's a wash. Also multidisk ATR support on MyIDE2 is only thru MyBIOS and the partition/image space [depending on what you are trying to achieve] which is even more confusing [way too many ways to achieve one goal]. I ended up with both because I wanted U1MB to experience all games that require 128MB of RAM or more [mind you there's not much really] and because it allows OS flashing but at the time I sensed that flashing it from MyIDE2 would have been problematic [and it is due to SDX and MyIDE2 clash], so that is why I also got SIDE2, I was hoping to share the same CF among the 2 but it didn't work. In my case my first CF couldn't be recognized by PBI (U1MB way of booting ATR thru SIDE2) although it worked fine on MyIDE2, end result is that I couldn't boot/mount ATR from SIDE2, everyhting else worked on SIDE2 [XEX loading from FAT32]. The second annoying part is that APT support among the 2 devices is non existing, meaning the APT partitions created on SDX for MyIDE2 are non usable on SDX from SIDE2/U1MB and viceversa, not sure where the bug is but the CF card layout for the APT part is not compatible, FAT32 can be shared so at least there's that. In the end I suspect that the most compatible way to play with ATR is SIO based although I personally will not venture there, it already costed me quite a bit to get both devices .... I wonder if a card could be built that uses both the cartridge slot and a cable to SIO so we can have our cake and eat it to and not require custom OSes, that would have been my choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Confirmed: SIDE2 doesn't fit without widening the cart tunnel, but MyIDE 2 does. I am trying so hard to not go all Beavis & Butthead but I can't help it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1agaZinJHg 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoatofCar Posted January 28, 2014 Author Share Posted January 28, 2014 Yeah, I'm not really wanting to do any major surgery on the already brittle aging plastic case, so it wasn't a hard choice for me. phoenixdownita, why didn't you just get an SIO2SD? Wouldn't that have been cheaper than buying the two carts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoenixdownita Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 (edited) Yeah, I'm not really wanting to do any major surgery on the already brittle aging plastic case, so it wasn't a hard choice for me. phoenixdownita, why didn't you just get an SIO2SD? Wouldn't that have been cheaper than buying the two carts? I thought MyIDE2 would be enough [and with the ROM version of the OS is actually quite good], then I realized I also wanted to play the games that require >128KB of RAM hence U1MB, as I wanted to flash U1MB (and there are ATRs to flash) I thought that thru SIDE2 it would have been smooth sailing so I ordered U1MB+SIDE2 in bundle, it turns out those bootable ATRs don't work as flawlessly (depending on the tools that generated them). In the end SIO2SD would have been cheaper and likely more compatible albeit slower ... oh well, live and learn, didn't know all the gotchas. Edited January 28, 2014 by phoenixdownita Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 <a very detailed description of pros and cons> You are right, and you described exactly the weaker points of these devices. But on the other hand, an awesome lot of games are available as .XEX, which all work perfect on both SIDE2 and MyIDE2. MyIDE2 also has the feature of running roms, which is not very important, but CAN be cool if you use a stock 64KB atari. Games like Karateka and Commando do not run on 64K machines as .XEX file. So that makes compatibility of MyIDE2 a bit higher on Stock atari. The feature of the SOFT-OS version of MyBios is indeed not so compatible, but I see it as an extra. You don't have to use it; if you are already satisfied with the amazing amount of .XEX and ROM files that runs from it, there is no need of using MyBIOS at all. With the MyBIOS you can do some extra things. Like running Basic games, but also using the tools that are not too exotic. In my case: I use BobTerm a lot, to connect Telnet BBS's. This runs very well with MyBIOS, MyDOS... on a stock atari, without any upgrade at all. So that's why I asked topic starter: which games do you have in mind to run. Well he answered that: Blue Max One on One Star League Baseball MULE Food Fight It's a short list, I know! I'm looking forward to discovering many more games that I never got a chance to play, like Rescue on Fractalus, and Bruce Lee, as well as the rest of the XE arcade ports I never got a chance to play. All this stuff will run on MyIDE2 on a stock atari. And yes: your request of Basic games: it all runs fine on MyIDE2. There are a few downsides indeed: 1. It does not have a reset button. So... when you want to play another game, big chance you have to powercycle your atari. That is something I try to prevent as much as possible. Side2 has this reset button. With other devices like sio2SD you also have to powercycle your atari a lot. 2. MyIDE2 is not 100% compatible indeed. But so far as I can see only the SIO based solutions are 100% compatible. Phoenixdownita is right, there are games that are 'hard coded on the pokey' so I/O does not go through the OS, but through own routines. There is no solution for this. Even with the most expensive interfaces like blackbox it is not possible to router all I/O to the harddisk. 3. Phoenixdownita already wrote it: there are a lot of ways to get to one goal with MyIDE. I can imagine that this looks a bit confusing to new users. My advice will be: stick to one feature at first (the FAT32 loader, which is drag 'n drop and very easy to use). When you mastered that feature, explore more... If you make a list of all the games you want to run, I can test them here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I thought MyIDE2 would be enough, then I realized I also wanted to play the games that require >128KB of RAM hence U1MB, as I wanted to flash U1MB (and there are ATRs to flash) I thought that thru SIDE2 it would have been smooth sailing so I ordered U1MB+SIDE2 in bundle, it turns out those bootable ATRs don't work as flawlessly (depending on the tools that generated them). In the end SIO2SD would have been cheaper but once you add the U1MB ..... although likely it would be more compatible ... oh well, live and learn. I think that the perfect device does not exist. I have them (almost) all, and I still can not chose which one I'm most satisfied by. The SIO based devices are amazing, but slow. Too slow for what I want. So I stick with IDE+ or MyIDE2, or SIDE2 in the near future. There are only a handful diskgames I really want to play. One of them is Johny's Trouble. Another one is The great american cross country road race. I know this last one has a good .XEX version too, but it lacks load/save which I really like. Johny's Trouble is also available as .XEX file, but needs 128K and is a little bit different compared to the disk version (I hate the controls in the .XEX version). Another game I love from disk is ECKN+ andThe Goonies. All this works perfect on my IDE+ and probably too on SIDE2 with Ultimate 1MB. The only problem so far is The Brundles. This one does not yet work on my IDE+ ... although FlashJazzCat tested this one on SIDE2+Ultimate 1MB and it worked on his setup. I can imagine, if there are one or two titles you absolutely WANT to play... and they won't run on your just purchased interface. I can imagine you are disappointed in that. But I hope you still do appreciate everything that does run. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 ...I wanted to flash U1MB (and there are ATRs to flash) I thought that thru SIDE2 it would have been smooth sailing so I ordered U1MB+SIDE2 in bundle, it turns out those bootable ATRs don't work as flawlessly (depending on the tools that generated them). Fortunately you can now flash the Ultimate without an ATR (or you will be once Candle and I iron out one small problem). As to ATR issues - they will continue to remain a mystery to me if people just scatter complaints around the forum without providing the developers with the information necessary to track down problems, or at least verify that they exist. If you are harbouring some lingering resentment regarding your experiences with Ultimate and SIDE, please do something about it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BoatofCar Posted January 28, 2014 Author Share Posted January 28, 2014 You are right, and you described exactly the weaker points of these devices. But on the other hand, an awesome lot of games are available as .XEX, which all work perfect on both SIDE2 and MyIDE2. MyIDE2 also has the feature of running roms, which is not very important, but CAN be cool if you use a stock 64KB atari. Games like Karateka and Commando do not run on 64K machines as .XEX file. So that makes compatibility of MyIDE2 a bit higher on Stock atari. The feature of the SOFT-OS version of MyBios is indeed not so compatible, but I see it as an extra. You don't have to use it; if you are already satisfied with the amazing amount of .XEX and ROM files that runs from it, there is no need of using MyBIOS at all. With the MyBIOS you can do some extra things. Like running Basic games, but also using the tools that are not too exotic. In my case: I use BobTerm a lot, to connect Telnet BBS's. This runs very well with MyBIOS, MyDOS... on a stock atari, without any upgrade at all. So that's why I asked topic starter: which games do you have in mind to run. Well he answered that: All this stuff will run on MyIDE2 on a stock atari. And yes: your request of Basic games: it all runs fine on MyIDE2. Woohoo! Placed the order this morning. I'm getting excited 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 @BoatofCar Enjoy! If you need any help with it, feel free to ask. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eightbit Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 Just be patient with the MyIDE II order It is not uncommon for these orders to take some time recently, but you will get it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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