Anyone have a Black Box or MIO for sale

[peteym5]

Thankyou for your help. I am having MetalGuy66 Repair this thing for me. Once I get the files off the hard drive, it will most likely be scrapped and replaced with an actual SCSI hard drive I had been looking at on EBAY, 9GB to 73GB for under $20. I have to do some research on these things to make sure they will work with the MIO and how to adapt the 68 pin and cable to the 50 pin plug on the MIO. I see there are adapters out there. Would also need a power source to make the hard drive external, one of those four pin flat plugs the are found on PC power supplies. I could get an enclosure real cheap and just feed in a SCSI cable through a hole.

 

I also considered SD card or Compact Flash card tech as a possible replacement.

[russg]

Don't think you can use a 9 or 73 GB hard drive.

The MIO and probably the Black Box can only access 65536 x 256 byte sectors, or 20 megabytes. If the BB

can do 512 byte sectors, that would maybe make 40 megabytes.

That's because the Atari can only access 16 bit addresses, for 65536, the 6502 has only 16 bit addresses.

ie. you can only PEEK or POKE up to address 65535, I'm pretty sure.

($FFFF is top address, 65535 plus 0 makes 65536).

There's talk of using a SD in a cartridge, don't know how that works. Maybe multiple 16 meg partitions.

Lemme see, that is possible 256 16 meg partitions. or 4 GB.. ?

Or, maybe 65535 16 meg partitions for 109 GB. or would that be more than that.

Edited August 13, 2015 by russg

[tschak909]

slight corrections:

65535 x 256 bytes = 16 megabytes, almost.

 

The limit is because of SIO (and therefore CIO's limitation of a 16-bit sector address. (this is all that is allocated in the data structure, if it were say, a 24 bit number, or a 32 bit number, you could go much larger, but again, this is more to do with a failure of imagination, than anything else.)

 

SpartaDOS X as of 4.4x has lifted this ceiling slightly, by allowing 512 byte sectors, giving 32 megabytes.

 

-Thom

[peteym5]

slight corrections:

 

65535 x 256 bytes = 16 megabytes, almost.

 

The limit is because of SIO (and therefore CIO's limitation of a 16-bit sector address. (this is all that is allocated in the data structure, if it were say, a 24 bit number, or a 32 bit number, you could go much larger, but again, this is more to do with a failure of imagination, than anything else.)

 

SpartaDOS X as of 4.4x has lifted this ceiling slightly, by allowing 512 byte sectors, giving 32 megabytes.

 

-Thom

I was just reading about that SpartaDos 4.47 using 24bit addressing, multiplying that by 512 bytes. If I calculate this correctly, that would end up being just under 8GB. Think every Atari Game, Utility, and program ever written won't fill a 3rd of that.

[Kyle22]

The 65c816 handles 24 bit addresses, but, that would require an extra byte for SDX to communicate that data to the HD controller. This is no trivial matter. It is wishful thinking, and would be great if it could happen, but it would require a major rewrite.

 

If this could be possible, I would really like to know.

[phaeron]

Existing filesystems and SIO-like interfaces are restricted to 16-bit sector numbers, but that has nothing to do with the CPU memory addressing. A 6502 has no problem doing 28-bit LBA through the existing PATA/CF interfaces and could theoretically do LBA48. All you need is some large integer routines and a reason to actually do it.

[flashjazzcat]

Exactly. This is how existing partition editors are able to place partitions anywhere on a large disk. The only thing imposing a hard limit of 32MB partition size is existing file systems. Drac030 designed an extended DCB protocol called XDCB, allowing 32-bit sector addressing through SIO and this is used by all the APT drivers, simply awaiting a FS which takes advantage of the extra bits.

[drac030]

I can add that the SDX 4.47 internal buffer cache uses 24-bit sector addresses. Therefore FATFS.SYS can handle disks much larger than 32 MB. Of course, not via SIO, but I think serial disks this large lack sense anyways.

 

The 32 MB limitation in SDFS may be surpassed without greater difficulty. A worse thing is the 16 MB limit for a file's size. Anyway, everything of course can be coded up, the only problem is if the SPARTA.SYS fits under the ROM after that (in the USE OSRAM config, that is).

[peteym5]

I had some thoughts getting around the 16mb/32mb (256/512 byte sectors) limit and still only use 16bit sector addressing . One is to move the VTOC and Directory Sectors 361 to 368 (DOS2, MYDOS) to a special area at sector 65536 that would free up those sectors for files. Since root directory information is sequential, this also gets around a limit of 64 files on the root directory. However, since 16 bytes used for each directory entry, it will only need 16 sectors for the directory and 32 sectors for the VTOC. 48 sectors total. I know SpartaDOS does not put the directory, VTOC, and sector pointer map sectors in a fixed spot, but that can also be moved to the special area.

 

I have to dig up some info on how MYDOS uses the control bytes at the end of each sector. I remember DOS2 uses 3 bytes from end is # of bytes used, 2 bytes from end is file num + 2 high bits of next sector, 1 byte from end is low 8 bits. I think MyDOS uses 4 control bytes.

 

Another one is to use Blocks instead of sectors, every 4th sector has the "Control" pointer to the next block. I think Atari DOS 3 did the block thing but was very unpopular so Atari went back to DOS 2.5, 2.6x, etc.

[flashjazzcat]

I wouldn't bother messing trying to make MyDOS handle more than 16MB since the kludgy chain-link extension to the DOS 2.x file system makes it ill-equipped to handle extremely large files (try deleting a 1MB file in SDX and then do the same thing with MyDOS).

 

DOS 3 - as I understand it - basically used a version of FAT, which is to say a collection of forward linked lists of cluster IDs. The main reason it used clusters was not because of the limitations of sector addressing but in order to fit the entire FAT into a single sector.

 

Any kind of file system which embeds file link pointers in the data sectors is less than optimal for large volume use, if for no other reason that it requires iteration of the entire data region of the file simply in order to erase it. SDFS (the SpartaDOS X file system) is better than DOS 2.x, DOS 3, MyDOS and even FAT, since the structure is optimised for quick allocations and random access.

[drac030]

Yes, DOS 3 and DOS 4 had something which could be called "FAT 8". In DOS 3 it is (IIRC) 128 clusters per volume, 1k each, 8 ED sectors per cluster. In DOS 4 it is 256 clusters per volume, six physical sectors each (768 bytes in SD/ED and 1,5k in DD).

 

The only FS which is close to SDFS in functionality is the DOS XE FS. It is even "safer" in terms of data recovery. Sadly the DOS XE itself is not developed enough to handle large volumes reasonably well (it e.g. holds up the entire disk bitmap in a buffer in memory, which for a 16 MB volume makes 8 KB - well...)

Edited August 13, 2015 by drac030

[peteym5]

Most people would probably make a SpartaDos and MYDOS partitions on a hard drive simply because SpartaDos has compatibility issues with wrtites to PortB, using Ram under OS. TurboBasic for example will not work with SpartaDOS. I know I made a few cartridge based games that loaded stuff into RAM $C000 to $FFFF so I can use the rest of the RAM for digital sounds, Screen, and Player Missile Memory.

 

3 or 4 16MB partitions would just about hold every executable game ever made for the Atari 8-bit. Only thing you cannot run are those whole disk games, unless someone has a hack that I not heard about.

Edited August 13, 2015 by peteym5

[flashjazzcat]

Most people would probably make a SpartaDos and MYDOS partitions on a hard drive simply because SpartaDos has compatibility issues with wrtites to PortB, using Ram under OS. TurboBasic for example will not work with SpartaDOS. I know I made a few cartridge based games that loaded stuff into RAM $C000 to $FFFF so I can use the rest of the RAM for digital sounds, Screen, and Player Missile Memory.

SpartaDOS's mandatory occupancy of the Shadow RAM is an excellent reason get some extended RAM and use SpartaDOS X instead. My own upgrade path in the 80s was DOS 2.5, MyDOS, SDX, then an extra 64KB of RAM... and this was without any hard disk at all. I guarantee the path to SDX would have happened even more quickly if I'd had a Supra HDD or similar.

[drac030]

Turbo-BASIC XL works fine with SpartaDOS X as long as the computer has 128k RAM or more.

 

The estimates that 4x16 MB partitions will hold most games are probably less or more correct. I have two 32 MB partitions with games, 102k free on one, 124k free on the other. And I am not a gamer (nor a collector of games).

 

ATR files can be loaded from hard disk as long as they do not contain specialised serial loader. Few do, even fewer are worth the trouble.

Edited August 13, 2015 by drac030

[Kyle22]

The 65c816 handles 24 bit addresses, but, that would require an extra byte for SDX to communicate that data to the HD controller. This is no trivial matter. It is wishful thinking, and would be great if it could happen, but it would require a major rewrite.

 

If this could be possible, I would really like to know.

Oops... my mis-understanding. I was somehow thinking of the physical interface.

[russg]

Right, 16 megabyte partition. I got 20 megs from the size of the Seagate ST225 MFM hard drives I used. I think maybe I got a 3 or 4

megabyte second partition on those.

I think the OP may have been kidding about 9 or 73 GB hard drive. Every thing ever written for the Atari 8-bit would fit in 1 GB.

It points out that multiple Gig hard drives are very cheap now.

The Atari '8-bit' is about the 8 bit byte size that is the data size, and the 6502 does 16 bit addressing. So, our Ataris are

8/16 bit ? The Atari ST is/was a 16/32 bit processor.

Edited August 13, 2015 by russg

[IndusGT]

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 331621087315

 

Someone just put a BB w/floppy board up...

 

Only went for $375, I'm shocked...I have two of these and I'll never sell them unless I'm starving.,

[peteym5]

Honestly I was not interested in spending over a $100 to get everything working. I still may replace the MFM plus MFM SCSI bridgeboard with just a SCSI hard drive with external enclosure. Or get something that links to a flash memory card. I have not much experience with SCSI drives and see there are 50, 68, 80 pin hookups. I know the MIO has 50 pin. What would be needed if I end up with a 68pin drive?

[AtariGeezer]

Only went for $375, I'm shocked...I have two of these and I'll never sell them unless I'm starving.,

I hear ya I'm still looking/waiting for a floppy board for my BB. An added cost of $150-$175 isn't looking too bad now for one

[peteym5]

I have not much experience with SCSI drives and see there are 50, 68, 80 pin hookups. I know the MIO has 50 pin. What would be needed if I end up with a 68pin drive?

[Roydea6]

http://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-100077-SCSI-HPDB-Adapter/dp/B001TIQ8G2

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

Why would you want partitions that are larger than 16 or 32MB? You can have up to 96 partitions per partitionlist, and 65535 partitionlists on a device connected to the BlackBox, according to my own ATARI 8 bit BOOT CD/DVD page (I can't remember everything). That should be more than enough.

 

You'd have to switch the partitionlists by hand though (or write a piece of software to do that for you).

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

[+SoulBuster]

The black box could hold 96 partitions and switch between them, but you could also change where the partition list was located. This would in effect make it limitless on the number of partitions you could have. I had it set up for cracked boot disks [games] and had 10 + partition lists [10 * 96 = 960 Partitions]

 

 

Hello guys

 

Why would you want partitions that are larger than 16 or 32MB? You can have up to 96 partitions per partitionlist, and 65535 partitionlists on a device connected to the BlackBox, according to my own ATARI 8 bit BOOT CD/DVD page (I can't remember everything). That should be more than enough.

 

You'd have to switch the partitionlists by hand though (or write a piece of software to do that for you).

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

That's what I was trying to say in my earlier post.

[russg]

 

 

 

That's what I was trying to say in my earlier post.

96 x 16,777,216 = 1.6 GB per partitionlist. 65535 partition lists x 1.6 GB would be 105,000 GB or 105 terabytes Really?

[drac030]

The APT format http://drac030.krap.pl/APT_spec.pdf supports disks up to 2 TB. And this can be allocated for a single partition, 2 TB in size. For Atari, it is "unlimited". Why have limits, when you can have none?

 

Why would anyone want partitions larger than 32 MB? For future extensions of DOS-es, of course. If there is virtually no cost of providing 24-bit or 32-bit sector addressing at low level, then why would anyone avoid it?

Edited August 15, 2015 by drac030