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New to Atari


Shift838

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I am looking to learn the Atari (8 bit). I have never owned one and I want to start out on the emulators. I have downloaded the Altirra emulator.

 

I am looking to get hard disk images working, etc. I have even read (not sure if it is true) that the Altirra can map comm ports on the PC or use your internet connection so you can telnet out for terminal programs?

 

I read you can have even 80 columns some how.

 

I am pretty ignorant when it comes to Atari but would like to learn it.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

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Hello. You're request is kind of a tall order. It would be good to start digging into it and post any (more specific) questions that come up. Altirra a a great start. I suggest Altirra emulating a U1MB and VBXE upgrade. This will provide the HDD and 80 column stuff you are interested in. The U1MB should be settup with SpartaDOS X.

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Hello. You're request is kind of a tall order. It would be good to start digging into it and post any (more specific) questions that come up. Altirra a a great start. I suggest Altirra emulating a U1MB and VBXE upgrade. This will provide the HDD and 80 column stuff you are interested in. The U1MB should be settup with SpartaDOS X.

 

I have gone through the PDF doc for Altirra, but there is no mention of U1MB or VBXE. I did find a hard disk configuration option on one of the menus.

 

Where can I find more information on configuring these. What is a good source for obtaining SpartDOS X ?

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I'll see about putting a "package" together for you sometime this holiday weekend. There is a substantial learning curve to get it all put together yourself quickly, so a nice set of preconfigured stuff will give you a working sophisticated setup as a basis to learn from. I think it would have been easier for me to be able to start with something put together correctly rather than do a lot of digging and making a lot of mistakes like I did.

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I'll see about putting a "package" together for you sometime this holiday weekend. There is a substantial learning curve to get it all put together yourself quickly, so a nice set of preconfigured stuff will give you a working sophisticated setup as a basis to learn from. I think it would have been easier for me to be able to start with something put together correctly rather than do a lot of digging and making a lot of mistakes like I did.

 

Thank you. That would be great. I appreciate the help.

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Thank you. That would be great. I appreciate the help.

 

No prob. I'm about 75% done. What I will give you will not need an installation. You will just run it in place. What drive letter will you be putting it on (so I can tweak the .INI file accordingly)? Altirra does have the wonderful ability to be run in a "portable" mode via .INI files. Unfortunately the paths that get stored in the .INI file are not relative, but instead are absolute (with drive letter). So I guess you could say it is "almost" portable. Anyway, let me know and I'll try to get the .INI right for you.

Edited by fujidude
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No prob. I'm about 75% done. What I will give you will not need an installation. You will just run it in place. What drive letter will you be putting it on (so I can tweak the .INI file accordingly)? Altirra does have the wonderful ability to be run in a "portable" mode via .INI files. Unfortunately the paths that get stored in the .INI file are not relative, but instead are absolute (with drive letter). So I guess you could say it is "almost" portable. Anyway, let me know and I'll try to get the .INI right for you.

 

I'll plannking on putting your package in C:\ATARI\ALTIRRA

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Okay I have something ready for you. I zipped it using 7Zip and the BZIP2 type. Some unpackers will not support BZIP2 style. If you have trouble, get yourself 7Zip.

 

I hand tweaked the .INI files (maybe not the backup copy ones) to point to C:\Atari\Altirra... instead of where I had built it (on W:). Hopefully that works out. You can tweak them yourself if you need to. It's always best to use Altirra to modify .INIs but in your case you don't know where everything is, so simple drive/path edits by hand seem appropriate (if needed). They shouldn't be needed though.

 

You should launch the Altirra via one of the two shortcuts (.LNK files) I put in there. One is for general use. The other is just for SIDE Loader use. The two .VHD files loacted in the HD folder are virtual hard disks. The one called PRIMARY.VHD is used by the Altirra general use shortcut. It is a hard drive that is only in Atari APT format. There is no FAT partition on it. The other one, SIDE Load.VHD, has only FAT32 on it. You can mount that in Windows and put things on it etc.It is possible to have both APT and FAT32 partitions on one VHD, but I wanted to simplify things for you a bit. And with separate links and .INI files, it is easy to use two different dedicated .VHDs anyway.

 

The download is available right here.

 

More info:

 

When in SpartaDOS X, you will come up in 80 column mode. Some software needs you to be in 40 column mode before use. You can switch between 80 and 40 column mode with these commands:

 

CON 40

CON 80

 

I have not only SpartaDOS 4.47 stuff setup in this, but also the SDX 4.47 toolkit stuff as well. There is a great and handy menu program called Sparta Commander (accessed via SC). It is 80 column mode and works a treat. The regular MENU program, I find is not good for hard drive use. It is too easy for it to become overloaded when it tries to "learn" the directory structure of the disk if there are lots of files and directories (which can be pretty typical for a hard drive). So, since this is setup as a hard drive configuration, I would stick to SC. Sparta Commander is better by far anyway!

Edited by fujidude
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Okay I have something ready for you. I zipped it using 7Zip and the BZIP2 type. Some unpackers will not support BZIP2 style. If you have trouble, get yourself 7Zip.

 

I hand tweaked the .INI files (maybe not the backup copy ones) to point to C:\Atari\Altirra... instead of where I had built it (on W:). Hopefully that works out. You can tweak them yourself if you need to. It's always best to use Altirra to modify .INIs but in your case you don't know where everything is, so simple drive/path edits by hand seem appropriate (if needed). They shouldn't be needed though.

 

You should launch the Altirra via one of the two shortcuts (.LNK files) I put in there. One is for general use. The other is just for SIDE Loader use. The two .VHD files loacted in the HD folder are virtual hard disks. The one called PRIMARY.VHD is used by the Altirra general use shortcut. It is a hard drive that is only in Atari APT format. There is no FAT partition on it. The other one, SIDE Load.VHD, has only FAT32 on it. You can mount that in Windows and put things on it etc.It is possible to have both APT and FAT32 partitions on one VHD, but I wanted to simplify things for you a bit. And with separate links and .INI files, it is easy to use two different dedicated .VHDs anyway.

 

The download is available right here.

 

More info:

 

When in SpartaDOS X, you will come up in 80 column mode. Some software needs you to be in 40 column mode before use. You can switch between 80 and 40 column mode with these commands:

 

CON 40

CON 80

 

I have not only SpartaDOS 4.47 stuff setup in this, but also the SDX 4.47 toolkit stuff as well. There is a great and handy menu program called Sparta Commander (accessed via SC). It is 80 column mode and works a treat. The regular MENU program, I find is not good for hard drive use. It is too easy for it to become overloaded when it tries to "learn" the directory structure of the disk if there are lots of files and directories (which can be pretty typical for a hard drive). So, since this is setup as a hard drive configuration, I would stick to SC. Sparta Commander is better by far anyway!

 

Thanks! I appreciate it. Now i just need to learn all the Atari commands and in and outs..

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