Stephen J. Carden Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 ProWizard! I have a .com file that brings up my IDE Plus Menu's and It would not take much to add that into the dos as a Hot key. Way back in the Day of the TransKey (orginal Version) it had to additional control lines on the pcb so that a Shift+Control Keypad 5 would bring up the BB Menu and Print Screen would do that same function on the Black Box. It is hard when you design these hardware devices to get everything in them. If you keep trying to put everything in the upgrade then the upgrade never comes out so I am sure what KMK and Jacek have put into rev e will most likey take care of 98% of the users. The other 2% will never be happy becuase they can always find something they think should be in the Hardware Upgrade. Take Care all! Steve http://www.realdos.net Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 IDE Plus's menu is already reached with a hotkey (built into the PBI BIOS), but what ProWizard wants to see is the IRQ feature already present in the later revision hardware used to facilitate ATR swapping, dynamic partition mounting, etc. The button which generates an IRQ is currently unused, and although this is doubtless because the developer has had no time to develop a BIOS update, it's clear that the IRQ button was added to support something along the lines of what ProWizard is talking about. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen J. Carden Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 The one PBI Device I like as well as the Black Box is the IDE Hardware Devices. The IDEa The IDE Plus 2.0 Rev D. I have 2 of these. The IDE Plus 2.0 Rev Ds I have one of these. This is an upgrade I did so I could hook .1 40 pin IDE Cables to and hook up old IDE Hard drives. The IDE Plus 2.0 Rev S. I have 4 of these and I have not soldered the corvox chip upgrade to it. and they currently have Revision D Firmware. Here is a picture of all 7 of my IDE Plus 2.0 Rev D, Ds, S Currently I do not own an IDE Plus 2.0 Rev B. or C. I hope to get at least one each of these PBI devices. One of the other things I like is I can use my IDE Plus 2.0 Rev D, Ds, S with my Ultimate 1 Meg, my Stereo Pokey, KRH, KRH-II, TransKey-II, most of my carts, sio2pc, SIO2SD, SIO2IDE, SDrive, SIO2CF. and sio2usb. So Jacek and KMK have spent a lot of time making the IDE Plus 2.0 Rev D, Ds, S work with most everything including being able to stack more than one IDE Plus on the Same PBI Buss. What I am trying to say all my Atari 8-bit Friends I am most sure this upgrade is going to come out of the Box Kicking Butt and working great. Now this new version working with CF Chips is really good since it is hard to find an adapter to go from IDE to CF so I am very Happy the new Rev E has that CF card interface. Then again I am very happy I have all the IDE Plus that have for my Collection. Take Care! Steve http://www.realdos.net 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen J. Carden Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 I would agree with you FJC. I have yet to see that KMK did not have something in mind. He is very good at least I think so. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 (edited) It is hard when you design these hardware devices to get everything in them. If you keep trying to put everything in the upgrade then the upgrade never comes out so I am sure what KMK and Jacek have put into rev e will most likey take care of 98% of the users. The other 2% will never be happy becuase they can always find something they think should be in the Hardware Upgrade. Hi Stephen J. Carden, Did you investigate that 98% thing you are talking about? Sometimes I get a bit tired from people who bring up statistics they can not prove. It's like the saying that 78% of all statistics are made up. The reason I type this, is that comments like about that 2% that give the idea that I'm talking about exceptional use of the device, or excessive wishes; which is absolutely untrue. Next to that, I was not talking about satisfaction, but about the insight of what is making a device the best or the ultimate HD interface. IDE+ 2.0 is a good candidate for that yes, but in my opinion it lacks at least one of the two wishes I have. I think a lot of the regular users in Atari 8bit land are already familiar with the fabulous FAT32 loaders in SIDE2 and MyIDE 2. This is -of course- technically spoken already possible with the IDE+ 2.0 ... but the software for it, is not written yet; and as I already wrote: I hope once it is written, it will also be backwards compatible with previous released revisions of IDE+ 2.0 ... so this wish will absolutely in no way delay the release of this new IDE+ 2.0 revision. I can not imagine that only 2% of the people would use or love this feature. I think this feature is absolutely needed for the sign of approval "Ultimate Harddisk Interface for atari 8bit" In the past I have already expressed my wish of being able to swap ATR's and to be able to (un)mount atr's more easily. Development team listened (thanks again for that) so they created the IRQ button on the device (since rev. D) So: the swapping feature is already there. You can mount D1: and D2: ATR's using SDX and then you can swap these ATR's with that IRQ button that you'll find on the latest released IDE+ 2.0 (I guess that is Rev. D). I have around 10 of these Rev. D IDE+ 2.0 interfaces. I also asked for a hard-wired WRITE PROTECTION switch (like the black box has). They listened again (THANKS!) and bring it to the device. A feature I use a LOT! I see chances, not limitations. I think that mounting process of ATR's is rather complicated. In the first place I'm not a regular SDX user (although I start to like SDX more and more). So I think also here a lot of people would appreciate an easier way of mounting more ATR's with a few easy key clicks. Games like The Brundles or Summer Games need disk swapping, also productive software like SynCalc (which I use a lot) won't run from a large harddisk partition, so I need to swap ATR's there. Next to that I asked for that menu coming up on the fly. Well... I am pretty sure that those 98% you were talking about, would never get back as soon as they have seen THAT feature coming up. The hardware is already ready for that (it's the IRQ button that now swaps ATRs). In the blackbox the blackbox menu, and especially the DISK menu is one of the things I use most while running a program. I need to be able to make a new fresh 'floppy disk' partition on the fly (just like I can insert a fresh disk in my 1050 while a program runs) ... I wish to be able to swap to another partition of chose while I'm working. Let me emphasize though that this last feature (a disk menu while running a program on the atari) is the less important for me. The FAT32 and the more easy mounting ATR's are keyfeatures I really really miss on the IDE+ 2.0. How awesome would it be if the more than excellent FAT32 loader FJC wrote could be ported to the bios of the IDE+2.0 ... that would be awesome. Edited January 30, 2016 by ProWizard Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 Apologies for my inaccurate earlier comment: I had forgotten that the IRQ button is already able to swap ATRs. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bf2k+ Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 I think I'll need another one of these... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danwinslow Posted January 30, 2016 Share Posted January 30, 2016 me for two. I love this community, things are still live and active and going strong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voy Posted February 15, 2016 Share Posted February 15, 2016 Simius: I'm interested in one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bumzyman Posted February 15, 2016 Share Posted February 15, 2016 Well I've been away from the scene for a little while but coming back and finding this new development is great. I'm definitely in for a few of these new interfaces if for nothing else but to support the community. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panther Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 Great timing, I was just looking into some way to hook up an SSD. I'm interested in two. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ndary Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 yes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
venom4728a Posted February 26, 2016 Share Posted February 26, 2016 I would also like one! Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 I am not sure, but don't think this has any extra memory attached to it. Am I right? If it did then I think this would be the perfect upgrade! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 I am not sure, but don't think this has any extra memory attached to it. It's got RAM alright, but addressed at $DE00-$DFFF and not in vast quantities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
morelenmir Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 It's got RAM alright, but addressed at $DE00-$DFFF and not in vast quantities. Ahhh yes - 32kB SRAM. Not really an answer for both RAM expansion & 'hard drive' emulator then? Do you know what the rational was behind such a small amount? I would have thought it might have been more economic to not add any RAM at all. Maybe it comes by default on one of the IC's used in a different way by the board? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 Well, where do you think such stuff as the partition table, ATR mount information etc. are held? A HDD controller must have some RAM for such private purposes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flashjazzcat Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 32KB of RAM... seems like Nirvana when one has only 896 bytes for everything (in Ultimate 1MB PBI). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drac030 Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 Yes, 32k is plenty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panther Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 (edited) 32KB of RAM... seems like Nirvana when one has only 896 bytes for everything (in Ultimate 1MB PBI). Nobody should ever need more than 896 bytes! Edited March 8, 2016 by Panther 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 9, 2016 Share Posted April 9, 2016 Any news on this fabulous new edition of IDE+ ? Can't wait to try it out! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted April 9, 2016 Share Posted April 9, 2016 Yes, when WILL we finally see the firmware version that incorporates this "on the fly" menu like the black box has? This was the reason we asked for the addition of the button in the first place.. Not some dumb "blind partition swap" crap.. I own the last 2 revisions of this interface, and I'm not dumping another cent into a "third design" until I see the originally promised firmware functionality from the existing interface. If the current developers are not willing to do it, then they should un-ass ALL of the source and technical documentation so that someone else can properly advance the firmware development. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted April 9, 2016 Share Posted April 9, 2016 interested depends on final price Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marius Posted April 9, 2016 Share Posted April 9, 2016 Yes, when WILL we finally see the firmware version that incorporates this "on the fly" menu like the black box has? This was the reason we asked for the addition of the button in the first place.. Not some dumb "blind partition swap" crap.. I own the last 2 revisions of this interface, and I'm not dumping another cent into a "third design" until I see the originally promised firmware functionality from the existing interface. If the current developers are not willing to do it, then they should un-ass ALL of the source and technical documentation so that someone else can properly advance the firmware development. Hmmm I really wished you used more gentle words, but I have to admit: I agree with you for 100% about the fact that this device needs that 'on the fly' menu. I have some situations here on my a8 where I really wished it had this functionality like the black box, the MIO and even the MyIDE has. It seems that the device is thought as mainly being a SDX harddisk interface. Using SDX makes an on the fly menu rather unneeded. But Atari is more than SDX, and there are enough situations thinkable where you want to do some disk/partition/image operations without leaving the program you are currently running. Especially the mounting and swapping of ATR files and apt partitions should be possible during operation. It would make this harddisk interface definitely the best in the world. I hope it will be made some day. Until then, I keep enjoying my IDE+ 2.0 ... it's still a very fine device. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panther Posted April 9, 2016 Share Posted April 9, 2016 It's not like people developing all these projects are making their fortunes off of it. Most barely break even, let alone get compensated for their time. I'm sure they wouldn't mind you helping out and creating the on-the-fly menu... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.