AVGCART

[ricky]

Thanks for your instructions, I actually have the CTRL -Shift keys not working.

I connected an 800Xl in place of the faulty 130XE, and I managed to update (bb29).

Now, although I replaced the OSXEX2 file according to this firmware, there is no longer an ATR file loading correctly. 

ATR files were loading correctly just before the firmware update, where does this bug come from?

For the moment, I will open my 130XE to disconnect and reconnect the keyboard cable

(this happens from time to time with these old machines) because it's my only A8 that has an RGB output.

Edited October 31, 2023 by ricky

[tmp]

i'm not sure what version are you running now since in the original post you were talking about bc29 -> 0029, now you mention bb29 (which would be a downgrade), 0029 is the latest and greatest (for now)

 

i don't know if you also have sio cable connected (you mention only pbi/eci) but if any of those cables is connected, osxex2 is not needed for atr emulation (it will use sio cable by default and pbi/eci if sio is not connected, both methods don't need patched os (osxex2))

 

what happens when you launch atr files? is the machine you're testing it on stock (no extra hw like u1mb)? you can also try to disable os forcing by setting it to disabled (CAPS for menu, os select)

[ricky]

During update 0029, I saw Cart: bb29, , I thought I had installed bc29 before. Now it is 0029 which is well installed.

Yes the SIO cable is well connected and I am using a stock 800XL.

I deactivated the Auto mode of the OS, and the ATRs are loaded with a lower speed, as if HSIO was deactivated.
I then put the OS back in Auto and the ATRs are loaded again, with the HSIO on any divider.

 

So, there is nothing more to understand, the bug is gone and I can make any settings to make it work.

 

One question, the HSIO divider goes faster from 0 to 9 or in the opposite direction?

Is it normal for 'Force 1088kb to turn Off again each time I start it, even though I set it to On and then saved the settings?

 

Thanks again for your help, I really love this AVGCART..

Edited November 1, 2023 by ricky

[tmp]

the smaller the divider, the faster the transfer so 0 is the fastest

 

force 1088kb setting is not saved on purpose since it requires atari powercycle to get back to the selector so currently it needs to be enabled manually before executing something that requires 1MB extmem to run (which hopefully isn't that often)

 

 

[ricky]

Ok thank you, I cut the pear in two by setting the divider to 5, which is more than sufficient.

 

Yes it's true that there are not many programs that are 1088KB, on the other hand I wanted to launch the 1Mb version

of the Atari Blast game with 'force 1088kb' on, and it does not load, and tells me: Program Requires 1Mb Ram Extention.

Try to see for yourself? Thanks..

Atari Blast ! (1Mb Ram).xex

Edited November 1, 2023 by ricky

[tmp]

AVGCART has 1MB memory and that is shared among various functionalities depending on settings and what's being run and since XEX files also use this memory, there's not enough left for 1MB extmem

the solution would be converting that XEX to autobooting ATR but it's much easier to just use CAR version of atari blast, which doesn't even need extmem (and loads way faster)

[ricky]

Ah ok thank you, that's good to know.
I actually have the ATR version which loads very well, the same goes for the CAR.

I will go to bed less stupid for tonight 🙃

[dabone]

Just got my avgcart in the mail today, did anyone else's look like this??

 

On the inside, everything made it alright, but boy I was scared when I saw this on my mail pile at work.

 

[TheHoboInYourRoom]

Not mine. Sorry to hear that.

Goes to show what all the packing is for.

[TZJB]

10 hours ago, dabone said:

Just got my avgcart in the mail today, did anyone else's look like this??

 

On the inside, everything made it alright, but boy I was scared when I saw this on my mail pile at work.

 

 

Quite horrific and not the norm thankfully. I thought it was an envelope at first as it was so crumpled.

 

The package has been soaked in water by the looks of it, then sent through the postal system while wet.

 

The plastic internal anti-static wrapping should hopefully have protected the contents from what you implied.

 

At least the address was still legible and you received it!

 

 

 

 

[dabone]

The actual cart, cables and candies were untouched. Now I just have to learn to use it.

 

[mimo]

21 hours ago, dabone said:

The actual cart, cables and candies were untouched. Now I just have to learn to use it.

 

Thats good news.
This is a great resorce https://atari8bit.net/tutorials/de-re-avgcart/

I think it's pretty much up to date

[tmp]

new beta, merging features/fixes from the latest SUBCART fw

 

AC30
====
- XEX is now also (TAB) mountable (ATR/ATX/CAR/CAS/XEX)
- added support for MAP files
- menu item Mounts->Save to MAP
- hide/unhide files referenced in MAP file
- shortcuts and autorun can now store all current mounts
- new option to not clear mounts on reentering selector
- CTRL-SPACE doesn't clear mounts on reentering selector
- fixed ECI/PBI cable detection when autorun is active
- fix for CTRL-ENTER in search

[woj]

After owning my Ataris for over 1.5 years I finally acquired the AVGCART, really have no idea why I have not gotten it earlier, I am totally blown away! I have now sorted out all intricacies regarding integrating it with U1MB in Side2 mode, SIO mode and all.

 

I do have one nudge with it, and that is exiting from XEX files that have a clean exit to DOS (for example SysInfo), they all bring me back to SELF TEST, while it would be so nice to end up back in the cart menu, at least that's what I got used to with SIDE3 😉

[_The Doctor__]

depends on what way you go in as to how it comes back out. AVG allowing for it's own soft loader as well as, pbi, and sIDE loader etc etc. because of that some things that won't run on one loader normally will run on the other, or with sio cable instead. You end up with different ways of returning to the system, some programs when launched from side loader return to side loader others don't, some to DOS, some to help etc. If in side mode with u1m then it works just like a side cart. If in full AVG without u1m then you have the full complement of ways to go about it. After a bit your memory of what does what and works with this or that will be a stream of consciousness. Instinctively you will select the thing you wish for without a hitch, including how each DOS etc will behave with whatever launch and return method

Edited February 17 by _The Doctor__

[+CharlieChaplin]

47 minutes ago, woj said:

After owning my Ataris for over 1.5 years I finally acquired the AVGCART, really have no idea why I have not gotten it earlier, I am totally blown away!

 

Yep, the AVeraGe cart. is great!

And the Sub AVeraGe cart. is even greater !  😃

 

[woj]

12 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

depends on what way you go in as to how it comes back out. AVG allowing for it's own soft loader as well as, pbi, and sIDE loader etc etc. because of that some things that won't run on one loader normally will run on the other, or with sio cable instead. You end up with different ways of returning to the system, some programs when launched from side loader return to side loader others don't, some to DOS, some to help etc. If in side mode with u1m then it works just like a side cart. If in full AVG without u1m then you have the full complement of ways to go about it. After a bit your memory of what does what and works with this or that will be a stream of consciousness. Instinctively you will select the thing you wish for without a hitch, including how each DOS etc will behave with whatever launch and return method

I am talking about well-behaved programs that run with all possible loaders, and directly from a XEX file. I can run the same file from the AVG loader, it exits through dosvec, which in this case is SELFTEST, when I run the same file from the U1MB SIDE loader when the SIDE2 emulation on AVGCart is on, it exits back to the SIDE loader. So this is essentially about AVGCart not providing an exit point in dosvec. I am not going to argue for very long it should, there might be a good technical reason for this (I can imagine that the loader does not want to leave any of its (re-init) code whatsoever in any parts of RAM to increase compatibility with all possible games, which I believe are the main drive here...), just something that I noticed.

 

Speaking of which, there is one more thing I got a bit confused about in AVGCART, yesterday I though I got it, but today's experiments threw me off again. The SIDE emulation seems to have a handful of different modes when it comes to it actually being active. At first I thought that after turning it on with Shift-Ctrl-S it was active when the SD card in the cart had the APT partition on it, and otherwise it was in-active. But today the SD card that does not have the APT on it got booted up with the SIDE2 emulation on, I had to press the cart button to get to the AVG loader. Looking at the options with ? it said SIDE emulation is in "AUTOSIDE" mode. With this I got totally lost what triggers the SIDE mode on or off (apart from the physical buttons). Googling for "avgcart autoside" gave me essentially nothing. 1. It is not clear what "AUTO" is in this case. 2. I am not sure which path I took to make the option to be in "AUTO". Anyone? 

[Luke210]

14 minutes ago, woj said:

With this I got totally lost what triggers the SIDE mode on or off (apart from the physical buttons)

https://atari8bit.net/tutorials/de-re-avgcart/#SIDE_2_Emulation

Control + S?

Edited February 18 by Luke210

[tmp]

ctrl-shift-s enables autoside mode which is persistent (what it does is that on poweron it skips going into selector and just enables side2 emulation for use with u1mb, somebody requested such features years ago), it is disabled using ctrl-s (or via settings menu)

shift-s just reboots with ide registers enabled, you probably  wanted that (depending on what you were trying to achieve)

 

as for returning from xex, that's something i realized i could improve a few years ago but completely forgot about it, i'll put it in some todo (when i'm thinking about it, it's possible that somebody else mentioned this in the past and i already promised to look into that, if that's the case, the original person wasn't bugging me enough allowing me to forget so it's definitely his fault, not mine!)

 

[woj]

1 hour ago, tmp said:

ctrl-shift-s enables autoside mode which is persistent (what it does is that on poweron it skips going into selector and just enables side2 emulation for use with u1mb, somebody requested such features years ago), it is disabled using ctrl-s (or via settings menu)

shift-s just reboots with ide registers enabled, you probably  wanted that (depending on what you were trying to achieve)

Thanks, but this does not then explain what I have seen happening. Yesterday I turned the SIDE2 emulation on with Shift-Ctrl-S. What this did was that I had it on when booting with the APT partitioned SD card in, and it was off when I was booting with a non-APT SD card. Yesterday it was consistent. I must have done something in the process, because today it started booting with the SIDE2 emulation on with both cards, and I had to use the button to get into AVG menu. 

 

So I turned it off with Ctrl-S, checked that it is off with ?, my U1MB has PBI/HDD on, SpartaDosX enabled. I go into AVG menu after clean power on and with an APT SDX boot card in, pressed Shift-S, I was expecting the computer to reboot into SDX with boot from APT drive. Instead it just clean rebooted to Basic. What am I missing here? (This does happen when the SIDE2 mode is turned on permanently with Shift-Ctrl-S).

 

The other thing I tried doing - (with SIO connected), mount an ATR with Shift-2 to D2, the ATR happens to be bootable, and then reboot with Shift-S to try to trigger SDX boot to get into SDX with D2 mounted, this just boots the ATR as if it was in D1. (I did manage to do something like this with a non-bootable ATR yesterday, just do not remember how...).

[tmp]

19 minutes ago, woj said:

Thanks, but this does not then explain what I have seen happening. Yesterday I turned the SIDE2 emulation on with Shift-Ctrl-S. What this did was that I had it on when booting with the APT partitioned SD card in, and it was off when I was booting with a non-APT SD card. Yesterday it was consistent. I must have done something in the process, because today it started booting with the SIDE2 emulation on with both cards, and I had to use the button to get into AVG menu. 

config is saved on card, if you switch cards, you switch configs

 

19 minutes ago, woj said:

So I turned it off with Ctrl-S, checked that it is off with ?, my U1MB has PBI/HDD on, SpartaDosX enabled. I go into AVG menu after clean power on and with an APT SDX boot card in, pressed Shift-S, I was expecting the computer to reboot into SDX with boot from APT drive. Instead it just clean rebooted to Basic. What am I missing here? (This does happen when the SIDE2 mode is turned on permanently with Shift-Ctrl-S).

cart jumps to COLDSTART for a cold restart (reset line on atari is unfortunately output only)

that most likely doesn't trigger u1mb to boot sdx so you probably need to either get into u1mb menu and boot sdx there or use some modifier key with reset key to get it to boot sdx (i'm not familiar with u1mb usage and i have no u1mb to test on, if all fails, it has a detailed manual)

 

19 minutes ago, woj said:

The other thing I tried doing - (with SIO connected), mount an ATR with Shift-2 to D2, the ATR happens to be bootable, and then reboot with Shift-S to try to trigger SDX boot to get into SDX with D2 mounted, this just boots the ATR as if it was in D1. (I did manage to do something like this with a non-bootable ATR yesterday, just do not remember how...).

that could be a bug, i'll have to test that

Edited February 18 by tmp

[flashjazzcat]

23 minutes ago, woj said:

So I turned it off with Ctrl-S, checked that it is off with ?, my U1MB has PBI/HDD on, SpartaDosX enabled. I go into AVG menu after clean power on and with an APT SDX boot card in, pressed Shift-S, I was expecting the computer to reboot into SDX with boot from APT drive. Instead it just clean rebooted to Basic.

As tmp inferred, restarting SDX once it's been suppressed (in order to boot with SDX off) requires jumping back into the U1MB setup menu with HELP+RESET (or START+RESET if you happened to configure it that way). If SDX is enabled in the settings, you then need just press 'C' to boot into SDX.

[woj]

1 hour ago, tmp said:

config is saved on card, if you switch cards, you switch configs

 

Duh! This explains a lot, thanks!

 

1 hour ago, tmp said:

that could be a bug, i'll have to test that

 

It seems it is, see the picture, I mounted the ATR with Ctrl-2 and it appeared both as D1 and D2.

 

1 hour ago, flashjazzcat said:

As tmp inferred, restarting SDX once it's been suppressed (in order to boot with SDX off) requires jumping back into the U1MB setup menu with HELP+RESET (or START+RESET if you happened to configure it that way). If SDX is enabled in the settings, you then need just press 'C' to boot into SDX.

 

Thanks, this keeps escaping me, it is not the first time that you are pointing me to this or related solution. Nevertheless, I still did not figure out a way / procedure on how to start the whole setup with both an ATR mounted through SIO, and the emulated SIDE2 HDD being visible at the same time. Thinking about it, it might not be possible at all. I can boot SDX with an ATR through SIO (modulo the bug above), or with the APT/HDD booting with the partitions visible in SDX, but not both. (Not that I really need it so bad, if HDD/APT is functional, then I can also mount the ATR through PBI from the U1MB SIDE2 loader, so I am covered, but I just wonder...)

 

[tmp]

4 minutes ago, woj said:

Thanks, this keeps escaping me, it is not the first time that you are pointing me to this or related solution. Nevertheless, I still did not figure out a way / procedure on how to start the whole setup with both an ATR mounted through SIO, and the emulated SIDE2 HDD being visible at the same time. Thinking about it, it might not be possible at all. I can boot SDX with an ATR through SIO (modulo the bug above), or with the APT/HDD booting with the partitions visible in SDX, but not both. (Not that I really need it so bad, if HDD/APT is functional, then I can also mount the ATR through PBI from the U1MB SIDE2 loader, so I am covered, but I just wonder...)

mounting atr via tab/shift-number and then running s2sdx3.car should work

[flashjazzcat]

10 minutes ago, woj said:

Nevertheless, I still did not figure out a way / procedure on how to start the whole setup with both an ATR mounted through SIO, and the emulated SIDE2 HDD being visible at the same time. Thinking about it, it might not be possible at all.

I'm a little rusty regarding AVG operation (it's a must useful situation that I'm lacking knowledge about AVG while tmp apparently doesn't own an U1MB at all, LOL), but this is certainly possible with U1MB/SIDE if one simply takes care to avoid clashing drive numbers on SIO volumes and HDD partitions. The problem might be something along those lines, anyway. I tend to leave D1: and D2: free of HDD partitions just so that I can mount SIO-hosted or FAT-hosted disk images on those drive numbers (although only SIDE3 - currently in a very WIP and buggy form - allows auto-mounting of FAT-hosted disk images).