AVGCART

[Mr Robot]

19 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

22 hours ago, tmp said:

clearing atr/atx/cas selection on dir change could be removed

That would be GREAT because having cart-emulation and SIO-server running concurrently is precisely a cornerstone of AVR's strength and versatility.

 

There would need to be some way to see what files were actually allocated to what slots if this survives a power cycle

 

21 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

How? I can't boot Monkey Wrench II with AVG. What is the correct .CAR encapsulation I need to generate? What is the descriptor-header for such .CAR type?

 

Monkey wrench II is a type 21 right cart. Monkey Wrench II XL is a type 53 left cart.

https://github.com/atari800/atari800/blob/master/DOC/cart.txt

 

 

[_The Doctor__]

Maybe you set the right cart image in auto power up select of the avg while the avg is in the left port then move the avg to the right cart port and then power up?

Edited July 30, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[Faicuai]

1 hour ago, Mr Robot said:

see what files were actually allocated to what slots if this survives a power cycle

 

That would not be needed. Instead, just being able to keep .ATR assignments while NAVIGATING across different directories, in a single session, with cart's selector. Ok if not remembered between sessions, because in one session we may want mount FS2 images while, on another session, DOS XL 2.30 with Altirra Basic Extensions cart.

 

Manual cart-shortcuts, on the hand, work really well as they are.

 

 

1 hour ago, _The Doctor__ said:

set the right cart image in auto power up select of the avg while the avg is in the left port then move the avg to the right cart port and then power up?

 

That could work, since it would avoid rewriting cart's Selector-menu to run in $8000-$9FFF address range. As long as IDE-registers can also be pre-set tp boot=ON, that would be a huge step forward, putting AVG on a class-of-its-own... although it already is, in several key ways... ;-)

[rmzalbar]

On 7/30/2021 at 10:28 AM, _The Doctor__ said:

Maybe you set the right cart image in auto power up select of the avg while the avg is in the left port then move the avg to the right cart port and then power up?

What happens if you have an XL and accidentally set this? Can you recover from that or is it JTAG time?

[_The Doctor__]

I would suspect holding one or two of the cartridges buttons down during power up would be able to reset things or gain access should the changes be made. as it's been on most things...

[a8isa1]

Auto Start (CONTROL + SHIFT + A) does not seem to be working for me with DD21, FloB edition.

 

Thinking that I might be typing the wrong sequence I temporarily rolled back to 0020.   The feature works fine.

 

Unfortunately, my test created more problems for myself.   After reinstalling DD21 I discovered that I had forgotten to clear Auto Start. AVGCart was now automatically booting to Action. Since  CONTROL + A also does not work in DD21 I had to repeat my steps. Reinstall 0020, clear Auto Start setting, reinstall the DD21

 

Regards,

 

-SteveS

Edited August 2, 2021 by a8isa1

[_The Doctor__]

3 hours ago, a8isa1 said:

Auto Start (CONTROL + SHIFT + A) does not seem to be working for me with DD21, FloB edition.

 

Thinking that I might be typing the wrong sequence I temporarily rolled back to 0020.   The feature works fine.

 

Unfortunately, my test created more problems for myself.   After reinstalling DD21 I discovered that I had forgotten to clear Auto Start. AVGCart was now automatically booting to Action. Since  CONTROL + A also does not work in DD21 I had to repeat my steps. Reinstall 0020, clear Auto Start setting, reinstall the DD21

 

Regards,

 

-SteveS

@tmp  some thoughts?

[tmp]

9 hours ago, a8isa1 said:

Auto Start (CONTROL + SHIFT + A) does not seem to be working for me with DD21, FloB edition.

 

Thinking that I might be typing the wrong sequence I temporarily rolled back to 0020.   The feature works fine.

 

Unfortunately, my test created more problems for myself.   After reinstalling DD21 I discovered that I had forgotten to clear Auto Start. AVGCart was now automatically booting to Action. Since  CONTROL + A also does not work in DD21 I had to repeat my steps. Reinstall 0020, clear Auto Start setting, reinstall the DD21

 

Regards,

 

-SteveS

i forgot to mention that, it was moved from A to N since there are some ps/2 keyboard adapters that are sending spurious CTRL-SHIFT-A keypresses which causes autorun being randomly set

[Mr Robot]

8 hours ago, tmp said:

i forgot to mention that, it was moved from A to N since there are some ps/2 keyboard adapters that are sending spurious CTRL-SHIFT-A keypresses which causes autorun being randomly set

I've updated De Re AVGCART, are there any other changes that I'm not documenting there? I should mention Flob and it's ability to save state.

 

[_The Doctor__]

11 hours ago, tmp said:

i forgot to mention that, it was moved from A to N since there are some ps/2 keyboard adapters that are sending spurious CTRL-SHIFT-A keypresses which causes autorun being randomly set

um, that's not cool... the ps/2 adapters needs to go away or be reprogrammed then. The AVG's intuitiveness shouldn't have to suffer for their mistakes.

Thank you for answering this important question and providing work a-rounds for those adapters. I think some of those adapters have been fixed as well (firmware/pic updated), any remaining folks providing them should be notified that their offerings need an update as well.

Edited August 3, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, _The Doctor__ said:

um, that's not cool... the ps/2 adapters needs to go away or be reprogrammed then. The AVG's intuitiveness shouldn't have to suffer for their mistakes.

Thank you for answering this important question and providing work a-rounds for those adapters. I think some of those adapters have been fixed as well (firmware/pic updated), any remaining folks providing them should be notified that their offerings need an update as well.

Very rude.  The way things work, is when a standard such as the PS/2 adapter has been around for decades, new devices should work with it, not the other way around.

[_The Doctor__]

heh, that's not rude. When a defect is found in a car... old or new... even if decades old we fix it. We thank the folks who discovered it or came up with a fix for it. In those circles I never had an issue arise for letting anyone know something could use an update or fix, and in fact often have been thanked for doing so. Guess it would depend on the person or mindset though, maybe it's an AA forum thing, really don't know. Simple reprogram or firmware update for the old adapter is only a bad thing unless we consider it a hack instead of a fix maybe? Then maybe it's ok?

 

A thanks for a work a-round is always a good thing (and I provided one), but most folks would still like to fix the root cause (including those that designed them). Most like the feedback and love to fix up their stuff, and most don't get as defensive about it as some users of their creations do in defense of the items either. It's a crazy world on the interwebz.

[Faicuai]

34 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

heh, that's not rude.

Of course it is not (don't even spend an iota on that matter).

 

From a genuine retro-p.o.v., our (old) A8 platform never came equipped with PS/2 interfaces for input devices, and they were not originally re-designed for them either (without ever discarding or taking for granted the validity, relevance and practical value of such standard, and the ways we could exploit them productively, of course).

 

In any case, it is wonderful to see such a great deal of flexibility and responsiveness adapting the cart's operation to particular (non-Atari) users' environment... even when it still does not manage to boot properly on original, unmodified Atari 800 hardware... ??

 

 

[tmp]

On 8/3/2021 at 2:39 PM, Mr Robot said:

I've updated De Re AVGCART, are there any other changes that I'm not documenting there? I should mention Flob and it's ability to save state.

i don't even remember, i've been dragging the 0021 beta for way too long, i should just wrap it and make it final, i'll do that over the weekend and go over the commits to figure out what's new/changed since 0020

[+mytek]

On 8/3/2021 at 8:14 AM, _The Doctor__ said:

um, that's not cool... the ps/2 adapters needs to go away or be reprogrammed then. The AVG's intuitiveness shouldn't have to suffer for their mistakes.

Thank you for answering this important question and providing work a-rounds for those adapters. I think some of those adapters have been fixed as well (firmware/pic updated), any remaining folks providing them should be notified that their offerings need an update as well.

The CTRL+SHIFT+A key is a null key for the Atari which doesn't normally even activate the key click sound. So it gets optionally sent every 3 minutes by the TK-II to reset the attract mode timer, which essentially allows the built-in screensaver to be deactivated. This feature has been around for about 5 years now, and is not considered to be a mistake. The feature can be enabled or disabled via CTRL+ALT+S which toggles it, and being a non-volatile setting,  it will be restored to its last selected state upon power-up.

 

I as well as others really like this feature. With modern day displays not being subject to burn in like the old CRTs, it's nice to have a way to automatically disable Atari's color cycling screen saver.

 

So this is not a spurious key send or  defect that needs correcting 

 

Edit: And thank you @tmp for modifying your firmware to allow this TK-II feature to still be used ?

 

[_The Doctor__]

This explains why my SDX ctrl shift A assignment fails by firing off when I don't want it to with the TK II, the old AVG assignment method works fine with the sdx trap as the trap only happens only after SDX boots and loads and functions only when not in the AVG setup.

 

Could I request that the TK II delay sending such key presses for a certain period of time? that way AVG at least on start up wouldn't be affected? Or at least be in the default off position in the initial programming images?

 

At least I now know what has caused the issues finally (certainly didn't remember or think of it), this also explains the difficulty finding shift control combinations when discussing MyIDE/MyBIOS choices and word processor shift control combinations as well. How far back in the TK line does this 'feature' go as I'd like to sort this out and turn it off on any TK variant or similar I might own. I should have realized that it wasn't a difference due to what Atari I was using but rather what add on was in the Atari that caused the issues.

Edited August 5, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[Mclaneinc]

I saw talk of booting a rom and a disk at the same time via a shortcut, suppose I want to boot Assemed and DOS 2.5, when I try it only lets me shortcut 1 item as a time...I know I'm missing a brain cell, how do you do this via this shortcut method?

 

Thanks..

[tmp]

use tab to assign atr to virtual drive and either RETURN on CAR (if they're both in the same dir) or press shortcut under which you've set that CAR file (that resides elsewhere)

Edited August 5, 2021 by tmp

[flashjazzcat]

9 hours ago, mytek said:

So this is not a spurious key send or  defect that needs correcting 

As long as it's off by default.  

[Mclaneinc]

Thanks tmp, was just playing and tried doing the above and was stunned when it worked, came back to say ignore me but you had beaten me to it...

 

Thank you for looking at this for me..I'd done it via setting the shift plus atr way, just tried the tab way you said...Both brilliant..

 

Going to play with the template options, a small but very handy thing, ps @Mr Robot, thank you for the tutorial on the site, use that and the SD-Max one almost daily

Edited August 5, 2021 by Mclaneinc

[+mytek]

51 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

This explains why my SDX ctrl shift A assignment fails by firing off when I don't want it to with the TK II, the old AVG assignment method works fine with the sdx trap as the trap only happens only after SDX boots and loads and functions only when not in the AVG setup.

What is this SDX trap you are referring to? Is this something of your own doing, or a function within SDX?

 

Quote

Could I request that the TK II delay sending such key presses for a certain period of time? that way AVG at least on start up wouldn't be affected? Or at least be in the default off position in the initial programming images?

How much of a delay would be required?

 

Quote

At least I now know what has caused the issues finally (certainly didn't remember or think of it), this also explains the difficulty finding shift control combinations when discussing MyIDE/MyBIOS choices and word processor shift control combinations as well. How far back in the TK line does this 'feature' go as I'd like to sort this out and turn it off on any TK variant or similar I might own. I should have realized that it wasn't a difference due to what Atari I was using but rather what add on was in the Atari that caused the issues.

As far as I know, the AVG cart's usage of CTRL+SHIFT+A is the first such use of this key combination in a product. Of course I don't have, nor used every single thing out there in the Atari 8-bit universe. And I wasn't aware that MyIDE was using this, nor have I heard any complaints about TK-II interfering with it.

 

Well at any rate, it is a feature that can be permanently disabled, so if there is a conflict it can be shut-off, which is the default condition of the EEPROM register when the PIC that is used for the TK-II is brand new.

 

Edit: ALT+S will show present setting, CTRL+ALT+S will toggle that setting. This is stored within the PIC16F1847's internal EEPROM, which is non-volatile, and upon power-up the value of such is used to determine the actual setting of this feature (either ON or OFF). Since the JOY2PIC programmer doesn't alter EEPROM values, if this was set prior to a firmware update, it'll still be the same after re-flashing the PIC.

 

14 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

As long as it's off by default.  

It is

 

Edited August 5, 2021 by mytek
added note

[flashjazzcat]

9 minutes ago, mytek said:

As far as I know, the AVG cart's usage of CTRL+SHIFT+A is the first such use of this key combination in a product.

I had to check that TLW doesn't use it (it doesn't), but since it's become apparent to me that SHIFT+CTRL+A is a perfectly usable key combination, naturally I now want to use it.

11 minutes ago, mytek said:

How much of a delay would be required?

Surely it's not issued until 3 minutes after a cold power up anyway?

[+mytek]

27 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

I had to check that TLW doesn't use it (it doesn't), but since it's become apparent to me that SHIFT+CTRL+A is a perfectly usable key combination, naturally I now want to use it.

Yeah it's probably very tempting, considering that not all CTRL+SHIFT keys actually work on the stock Atari Keyboard. BTW with the TK-II installed, it's PS/2 key offers a lot more possible combinations

 

Quote

Surely it's not issued until 3 minutes after a cold power up anyway?

Off the top of my head I believe that is correct for most all TK-II hardware, except I think the 576NUC+ variant does send one instance directly following power-up via one of it's keyboard power activation key presses (being used to clear the key buffer since it is a null key).

 

I keep calling CTRL+SHIFT+A the null key for a good reason. If you run the following program you'll see it comes up with a value of 255 when first entering RUN. This reflects the fact that no key has been pressed following the commencement of this simple program.

10 PRINT PEEK(764):GOTO 10

If you then press CTRL+SHIFT+A nothing will initially change, it'll continue to display 255. If you hit any other key it will display and hold the value for that key. Then by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+A  it'll revert to 255 once again. 255 also happens to be the value that can be POKED to clear the key buffer. And the other thing that will be noticed is that when pressing this null key combination, there is no key click sound emitted - because it's the null key

 

[_The Doctor__]

I've used the combo with CAD and other things, thankfully you can set the three finger salutes etc. to other combinations so I did. I'd bet the stuff is on the toolkit disk for SDX these days. It's great to know how to kill the automated feature, not sure how it was turned on in both of them... on second thought shift control s turns it on and off? that's a combo used as well. I always thought that it was the alt key in combinations with others that did the toggling for the most part on the tk's... I think I need to go find the manuals on your web page since clearly I can't remember it all as I should.

Edited August 5, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[+mytek]

12 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

I've used the combo with CAD and other thing, thankfully you can set the three finger salutes etc. to other combinations so I did. I'd bet it's on the toolkit disk for SDX these days.

Wow great explanation (NOT)

 

I guess I can interpret this as you implemented this as some kind of custom implementation.

 

Quote

It's great to know how to kill the automated feature, not sure how it was turned on in both of them... on second though shift control s turns it on and off? that's a combo used as well. I always thought the it was the alt key in combinations with others that did the toggling for the most part on the tk's... I think I need to go find the manuals on your web page since clearly I can't remember it all as I should.

CTRL+ALT+S is what toggles it as I explained earlier.

 

It's been in the TK-II Online Manual from the get go.

 

Good reference for those that have a TK-II. It shows all the special key assignments.