+slx Posted October 3, 2017 Share Posted October 3, 2017 All this is about original 400/800 "non-XL" machines: I am trying to use tf_hh's 400 RAM card to best effect by burning an EPROM with Fastchip and Omnimon for the 400/800. While I have found a lot of documentation I have not been able to collect the necessary ROM files (or at least to assemble them in a form that works on Altirra before I burn them). My understanding is that I need 8K of OSN OS ROM which is patched to allow, inter alia, access to Omnimon with System Reset + Option, 4K of Omnimon and (optional) 2K of FastChip which should be assembled in the following sequence: Fastchip C000-CFFF empty/zero D000-D800 (hardware registers) FP ROM D800-DFFF OS ROM E000-FFFF I would be happy with a single file I can burn but short of that appreciate any vectors on where to find working ROM files. There is documenation about an extended Omnimon and a combined Omnimon/ROMDOS but I understand these to require a RAMROD board that allows for bankswitching in the C000-CFFF area. As I will eventually try to use these on an Incognito 800 as well, would that support bankswitching of the OSN type in the C000-CFFF area? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted October 3, 2017 Share Posted October 3, 2017 If you find bits and pieces you can use the Windows/Dos COPY /B command to append files together. I had to do that the other day with an XEGS Rom that was out of order. You can also mix and match accelerated FP routines but they'd have to be ones that fit into the original 2K if you also want OmniMon. The FP routines are platform independent though the "extra fast" ones that also have code around $CC00 would need that extra Rom on older machines. In theory you could probably get the "extra fast" FP routines going - the ones that also use Rom around $CC00. You'd need to combine it with an original 800 OS or at least one that's not expecting Ominmon code at $C000. You'd then have much of the $C000 space available for something else. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sup8pdct Posted October 3, 2017 Share Posted October 3, 2017 I have`only seen 2 monitor type programs for 400/800. Both use the 4K at $C000, $CFFF. One has 2 4K banks that can be selected under program control. Would say that omnimon would be similar to one of those 2. Extra hardware is required to support bank switching tho. Don't know if any emulator supports bank switching the $cxxx. Also depends on what address needs to written/read to switch banks. James 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACML Posted October 3, 2017 Share Posted October 3, 2017 I am also looking for the Omniview ROM image for the 400/800 that I'd like to use on tf_hh's 400 RAM card. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1050 Posted October 4, 2017 Share Posted October 4, 2017 Your order is somewhat whacked, but I can understand how easy that can happen so no worries. So Fastchip is different from Fast Chip and they work differently too. Marslett wrote Fastchip and it's a replacement for the standard FP math pack rom that lives at D800-DFFF. Fast Chip is something else that also occupies that region as well as C000-CFFF - this one has no source, can't find much about it and have nothing to gauge it's speed by in the first place. Omni something C000-CFFF empty/zero D000-D800 (hardware registers) Fastchip D800-DFFF OSN ROM E000-FFFF Is how it should be set up for the new 400 card. Not sure where I got the ramrod OSN that the attached burnfile contains but am thinking it was posted in this group on the subject of the ramrod board. It appears to contain the 8K omni though which would require active eprom addressing scheme and that part is unknown to me since I don't have one of the ramrod boards set up for an 8k omni - I say that only because I don't know if it's a combo monitor/80 column viewer and it sure could be both. The source code for OSN calls for OMNI only as if both are fired up with a jump to CFF5 from OSN code. But the ramrod code I have, has garbage there, so it's NOT clear at all if the OSN offering here will actually work or not. Since no emulator allows Cxxx rom, there can be no test there that will work, it must be done with the new 400 rom card. So the first half is OSN as found on the ramrod code and the second half is standard OS B and you'll have to fire up Omnimon via a jump to CFF5 which inserts it's interrupt vectors into the interrupt table such that it should work with normal keypresses for Omnimon from then on? At least that's the hope I have. So find enclosed what I have at the moment, a nebulous OSN which I believe to be version 4 since it's a bit different than the version 601 source code recently found. My own Omin800 rom which was found in an 800 haul as a dismounted eprom in a film can with nothing but a label to tell me of what it was. No other documentation was ever uncovered about it. I did get a ramrod user to come back and say 'thanks, it worked a treat.' So there is that much, and it does have working code at CFF5 that does insert interrupt vectors and set about to 'live' large - the 8k version in the ramrod image had garbage there and not sure what to make of it. So the DOS mode copy file1+file2 file3 method needs the /b switch slapped up side it's head or you'll get short builds that can't possibly work right. Enclosed find the copy.txt that has added at the bottom the useage I used to build the burnfile from all the parts I've been able to gather. So now you can build it in reverse order if that is what you want too. Make copy.txt like this: copy /?>copy.txt burnfile.zip I am working on OSN version 601 but the results are lacking the proper power up sequence. It wants to set up interrupt vectors via OMNI branch to CFF5 before the ram has even been cleared and the OS system properly installed. Unless Newell decided to just plug in the proper powerup vector at FFFC as an afterthought rather than have the code assemble in that manner? I have more work to do in other words, this is what I gots right now. It's likely there will be other issues with 601 too. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted December 29, 2017 Author Share Posted December 29, 2017 burnfile.zip First, a big thanks to 1050 for providing an OS N burnfile. It's been quite some time but a quiet spell after Christmas has finally allowed me to burn the burnfile (my first self-burnt EPROM ever!) and complete the installation in my 400 (which I converted to PAL at the same time). It seems to work with the following effects: There is no "Memo Pad" on boot. I assume that space was sacrificed for extra routines. The system boots to a blank screen with a cursor. The screen colour is a hideous dark green instead of blue. I assume this was done on purpose to differentiate OS N? I can call Omnimon by jumping to $C001. I can't call it using [OPTION] + [system Reset] but as System Reset seems to be completely dead I assume that's a problem with my 400's keyboard. (see separate thread) Would appreciate any feedback on whether that constitutes normal behavior. If it is easy to change the screen colour back from green to blue that would be nice, too. Probably just a single byte in the OS code, but which one ? Is there a manual for 400/800 OS N around? Google only showed OSNXL. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted December 29, 2017 Author Share Posted December 29, 2017 (edited) Quick update: Checked the firmware in Altirra. No Memo Pad title either, but a darker shade of blue instead of green. Maybe a case of color pot adjustment. Guess I need to repair/replace my keyboard to get System Reset working again. Edited December 29, 2017 by slx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1050 Posted December 30, 2017 Share Posted December 30, 2017 I will attest to seeing green screenshots of OSN so I'm tending to think it's the default color scheme there even though the code seems to be stock for that. Same method and values for even XL/XE series too, but there also the background and border (0x02C8 mapping the Atari pg 64-65) is set to be black. How that changes I haven't yet had the aha moment. But in the file supplied above, the offset to that data is 0x1EC9 and the next five bytes comprise COLOR0 thru COLOR4 as shown on pg 64-65 in mapping the Atari book. Values in hex are 28 CA 90 46 00. Later on 06h is stuffed into 0x02C8 directly which is still black but with more luminosity (?). I am a bit confused, I'll admit. GTIA modes and colors not my usual fodder either. But yes, there certainly must be a byte responsible and I'll try to find it. You are welcome and thanks so much for returning with good news even though it sounds like a bit more work is needed. Well, same here it seems. I did find a bug in 601 source (such as it is) concerning this very area just as something else that now needs my attentions. I'll do what I can when I can. So very little information exists from this era of Atari, I haven't seen such a manual for OSN. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted December 30, 2017 Author Share Posted December 30, 2017 So very little information exists from this era of Atari, I haven't seen such a manual for OSN. Seems I was just expecting too much This file on archive.org seems to be all the manual there is. More of a hardware guide to RAMROD with a brief explanation of OS N features: configurable cassette baud rate increased keyboard repeat speed graphics modes 12-15 possibility to ignore cartridges on powerup Nothing overly exciting there, so the main reason to use it in 2017 is probably the patch allowing Omnimon to be run with [system Reset + Option] (and maybe the graphics modes for XL compatibility if you're into BASIC programming). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted December 30, 2017 Author Share Posted December 30, 2017 But in the file supplied above, the offset to that data is 0x1EC9 and the next five bytes comprise COLOR0 thru COLOR4 as shown on pg 64-65 in mapping the Atari book. Values in hex are 28 CA 90 46 00 After a bit of confusion from where to count 1EC9 a simple change of $90 to $94 of byte $1ECB of the OSN file (that is the byte that will end up at $FECB) will have the system boot up in normal color. Now I only need to dig up that 400 keyboard in my basement. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1050 Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 I wish I could be so sure as you though, while doubletasking with 601 source I see in that code this setof bytes instead.FEC9 28CAB246 8680 COLRTB .BYTE $28 , $CA , $B2 , $46 , 0And by the chart, B2h is a darker hideous green. AndI swear I've seen a screenshot of that, you are rightabout hideous.So either you are using different code than I suppliedor ??? went wrong somewheres I have no clue of. Whichof course worries me that there is a 'hidden' overwritefunction within the code that would tend to negate thisOS setup COLRTB table, since the hideous green versionappears to be in 601 version exclusively, version 2 OSNhas stock Atari table (within reason).Mapping the Atari starting at page 163 for color tablesin decimal unfortunately. And also bottom of page 62 if that's closer to get too. B2h = 178.For other OS such as Puff's Ultra Speed Plus OS the valuesare 28 CC 92 46 00 and the screen is noticeably bluerwhile the letters are whiter and it's quite a good looktaken as a whole. At the same time you know at once this isNOT a standard machine you are sitting in front of.PRINT PEEK(65227)might be useful?65227 = 0xFECBand thenPRINT PEEK(710)just to be sure the overwrite isn't afoot.710 = 0x02C6 0x02C6 is the Shadow for 53272 ($D018).Thinking BASIC might inject it's own color schemehere so maybe emulator use would be better.For now I have no explanation of how you get the 601green screen without some code corruption of some sortgoing on. Or some yet to be uncovered overwrite goingon from somewhere. And I thought I gave it a good look too.As if this isn't enough, check out these dumps ofomniview which would be the file titled C000-CFFF.http://atariage.com/forums/topic/257124-found-a-130xe-with-a-hacked-os-rom/page-2?do=findComment&comment=3915948Taking the place of my offered Ominmon800 code.Not actually ROM files as they contain a six byteAtari file header which when stripped from thesefiles become genuine .rom or .bin files. As is theyare Atari executables without the execute partincluded. They will try to load into those regionsif you use DOS to load them in a standard manner,but since it's ROM and can't be overwritten it's adoomed exercise in futility. These would be theresults of a standard DOS K. Save memory choicewithout adding the RUN or INIT vectors to the'addresses to save' info inputted when making thesefiles. >>>> Go ahead, tell me all about that guy. Good on ya for figuring it out too. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted December 31, 2017 Author Share Posted December 31, 2017 (edited) I wish I could be so sure as you though, while double tasking with 601 source I see in that code this set of bytes instead. FEC9 28CAB246 8680 COLRTB .BYTE $28 , $CA , $B2 , $46 , 0 And by the chart, B2h is a darker hideous green. And I swear I've seen a screenshot of that, you are right about hideous. I re-checked the burnfile.zip from the post above in a hex editor and it does not contain a $28 $CA $B2 $56 sequence but has a $90 instead of the $B2. I even checked the file I actually burned (which was a combination of your burnfile and tf_hh's original 32K EPROM) to the same conclusion. $90 should be a very dark blue. As one of the screws holding the hinge of the cartridge flap loosened and fell into the machine right after I had finished re-assembling the 400 I have to re-open it again anyway and will re-check the color on an LCD and a CRT screen, try to adjust the color pot on the SCCC and then decide whether to re-flash the EPROM with more than $90. I am pretty adept at 400 disassembly/re-assembly by now. This will have to wait till next year, though. Edited December 31, 2017 by slx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted December 31, 2017 Author Share Posted December 31, 2017 PRINT PEEK(710) just to be sure the overwrite isn't afoot. 710 = 0x02C6 0x02C6 is the Shadow for 53272 ($D018). Thinking BASIC might inject it's own color scheme here so maybe emulator use would be better. POKE 710,0 used to be my first command in every session until I could program an AUTORUN.SYS to do it for me AFAIK BASIC, ACTION, MAC/65, etc. all use the standard colour scheme with light blue, exactly the same as for memo pad. I believe that to be the default for the E: device. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mechanerd Posted January 30, 2018 Share Posted January 30, 2018 I did dump the custom roms that I had with my 800 Ramrod board. It's an interesting combo. Someone did all the mods mentioned in the manual and included the fastmath. I ran this dumprom utility and saved the results. Also, just for being thorough i did the dump on the Omnimon 800 4kb eprom. Enjoy! AtariROMDumper.atr OMNI800.rom omniview800_c000.rom 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACML Posted January 30, 2018 Share Posted January 30, 2018 (edited) I did dump the custom roms that I had with my 800 Ramrod board. It's an interesting combo. Someone did all the mods mentioned in the manual and included the fastmath. I ran this dumprom utility and saved the results. Also, just for being thorough i did the dump on the Omnimon 800 4kb eprom. Enjoy! mechanerd, If I wanted to run a 800 with Omniview, how would I use the 4K ROM you dumped? I guess I'm asking where and how would you blend this with the 400/800 10K ROM that already exists? The 400/800 ROMs have two 4K chips and a 2K floating point chip. I want to make this a single ROM image I can burn on a 27128 (16Kx8 EPROM). I'm trying to have Omniview on a 400 with fast math. Fastchip C000-CFFF empty/zero D000-D800 (hardware registers) FP ROM D800-DFFF OS ROM E000-FFFF C000 to FFFF is 16K. What are the ROM files to build this? Edited January 30, 2018 by ACML 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mechanerd Posted January 30, 2018 Share Posted January 30, 2018 I don't think you can use this with the Fastchip since the Omniview rom add on is mapped to the same space. C000-CFFF . However, on the ram rod board you can pull the Omniview out and put the Omnimon in. There was also a piggyback board for the Omnimon to add to the ramrod so you could switch between the two option roms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ACML Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 (edited) I don't think you can use this with the Fastchip since the Omniview rom add on is mapped to the same space. C000-CFFF . However, on the ram rod board you can pull the Omniview out and put the Omnimon in. There was also a piggyback board for the Omnimon to add to the ramrod so you could switch between the two option roms. OK, that makes sense. Omniview80 C000-CFFF empty/zero D000-D800 (hardware registers) Fastchip D800-DFFF OSN ROM E000-FFFF Would this work? If so, what ROM is the Fastchip ROM and what is the OSN ROM? Edited January 31, 2018 by ACML Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sm3 Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 It doesn't seem like he has posted the fastchip nor OSN ROMs. When I created my thread for this, OSN comes in 2 ROMs and the fastchip you can't just dump and burn to another ROM, it doesn't work. But I'm no expert, user 1050 here on Atariage was helping me out. I never got further than using my stock math chip with OSN and an Omnirom that didn't work properly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 There is Fast Chip and Fastchip, two different animals.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sm3 Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 There is Fast Chip and Fastchip, two different animals.. Oh OK, but here we are talking about Fastchip from Newell aren't we? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1050 Posted February 1, 2018 Share Posted February 1, 2018 It doesn't seem like he has posted the fastchip nor OSN ROMs. When I created my thread for this, OSN comes in 2 ROMs and the fastchip you can't just dump and burn to another ROM, it doesn't work.Agree with opinion of mechanerd's offering in post #14, the only one that looks good is OMNI800.rom Which has me as the source. It should be called Omnimon4k since we now seem to have Omniview4k thanks to mechanerd in another post linked to in post #11 and there his ROM reading ATR seems to have worked. I don't have a working Atari to know why or test how good it is and dealing with rom issues while running an emulator is going to be troublesome due the patches they use etc., skewing results there. In this post at least, it seems the ROM reading ATR didn't work so very well. And I of course have no real clue as to why. I thought we corrected my misunderstanding of what the issue was with the math pack in another thread already? At any rate, I was wrong we don't need a special 2716 to do that with, according to page 3 of the ramrod instructions we only need a 350ns 2716 to burn the code onto and bob's our uncle. So it would work just fine, yet you keep saying it won't and I keep having to say I was wrong about my assumptions in another thread long ago when we didn't have good instructions for the ramrod board which is posted as a link in post #9 here in this thread. But I'm no expert, user 1050 here on Atariage was helping me out. I never got further than using my stock math chip with OSN and an Omnirom that didn't work properly Oh please, no to the Omnirom speak, it gets too confusing already. We only had Omnimon4k at that time so that had to be it. If you'll read the third bullet in post #6 Atariage user six can fire off his Omnimon4k by doing a jump thru 0xC001. It may be that the often invoked RESET+SELECT method was an addon to XL/XE version of OmnimonXL/XE and we just didn't ever know that before. I don't think we have instructions for 4K Omni anything do we? Omniview80 C000-CFFF empty/zero D000-D800 (hardware registers) Fastchip D800-DFFF OSN ROM E000-FFFF Would this work? If so, what ROM is the Fastchip ROM and what is the OSN ROM? Yes it would work. Fastchip rom is in my burnfile.zip offering in post #5. OSN V4...? is also in there. But so far only the Atari file header version of Omniview4k is posted under a different name in the programming section linked to in post #11. So I'll strip the header and rename it correctly right here. Omniview4K.bin My original offering from way back, renamed Onmimon4K.bin Fastchip by Marslett Fastchip.bin And mechanerd's version of OSNE and OSNF combined from the other thread where it did not have the fastchip code but instead the standard math pack code. With headers over there, here it is stripped of math pack and headers as one OSNEF file version who knows what? It is a different one yet so you might give it try. E000_FFFF.bin I've been busy, I think OSNv601 is as ready as it can be without byte for byte confirmation of accuracy from anyone holding onto that code. This was recreated from PDF source only so it may contain OCR errors not yet corrected - if you find anything you may PM me or just reply here, your choice but I certainly want to know about it. OSNv601.zip And for those that don't want the hideous green of OSNv601 here is transplanted US+ color scheme which is the only hack done to it and should be quite agreeable in appearance. Osnf_boboscolor.bin OSNv601 does seem to test for which Omni is at 0xC000-0xCFFF and does branches accordingly. Have no clue if it's done right at all or not and it may be that this code isn't the actual released version in the wild - Newell may have patched the powerup vectors to do things differently and I have no way to test it at the moment. Can't sit on this in the meantime either, simply can't even suggest as to when I'll sit behind a real working Atari ever again. Fast chip was an XL/XE thing that occupied not only the original math pack area but also international character set and maybe even 0xCxxx region to some extent as well. Don't know a whole lot about it, ClausB did some work on a version of his IIRC, but the original seems to be untouchable as to source, concept or anything else. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sm3 Posted February 1, 2018 Share Posted February 1, 2018 Detailed post as always 1050 and yes, sorry, was a typo on the "omnirom" I meant to type Omnimon. While I was able to access the Omnimon via the specific key press, it did not work the way I was expecting (maybe wrong version and differing documentation). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1050 Posted February 1, 2018 Share Posted February 1, 2018 I knew what you meant, just railing against Newell's omnipotent Omni concept and the onslaught of confusion such a sexy name has caused me by the time 13 versions have interbred with themselves like this. I'm really afraid were are going to have the same issue with OSNv601 as to firing up things. The OS doesn't even clear ram before the jump to the Omni region is done. I don't see how that can work at all then. Vector at 0xFFFC-0xFFFD should be 25 F1 instead of 35 E9 if the OS is to clear ram and set itself up right. But then how to invoke things Omni? Only the people holding the actual code can tell us this. Please send us the last six bytes of any OSN - TIA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted May 25, 2020 Share Posted May 25, 2020 Was anyone successful in using the (800) Onniview or Omnimon rom dumps in the tf_hh 48K expansion board? And did anyone every run across the elusive Newell RamRod OS board? And finally, did anyone ever find the (even more elusive) RomDos version of MyDos? Of course, this was an early version of MyDos 3.0x, so it did not support more than floppies and (I think) no ramdisk. I've never seen it -- just read about it in the early mag. advertisements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JR> Posted May 25, 2020 Share Posted May 25, 2020 I did recently (well, over a year ago actually) pick up a Ramrod Board. I haven't really gotten beyond just verifying that it works. It does appear to have OSN and Omnimon on EPROMS, but just the standard math pack ROM. I really need to get those dumped. I plan to try the various Newell rom combos on my tf_hh 48K board when I get around to installing it, but I don't see why they wouldn't work. Sigh......too many projects! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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