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Newbie questions regarding SIO2SD


Lastic

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Since I now own a AVG Cart, UnoCart, SDrive2 and even an Atari 1050 and a XF551, I do keep having one issue with Demo ATR's.

 

I can load them perfectly using a poor man's SIO2PC cable hooked to RespeQt but would prefer to load them on the Atari without having a Mac/PC next to it.

 

As such I was considering a SIO2SD .

 

But

  • anybody got the grey version from Lotharek , does it match a 130XE ?
  • am I correct that it's powered via SIO ?
  • should I wait until AVGcart becomes more compatible with XBIOS ATR's and/or IRQ Loaders

Demos I can think off that I would like to run are :

 

  • Timeless Announcement
  • Cool Emotion
  • Bitter Reality

Would these load from SIO2SD ?

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I cannot imagine why these demos would not load on both devices. They are just plain ATR-files.

 

But these demos are (I think) European demos, so there can be problems when you load them on NTSC machines. That is not caused by the SIO2SD or SDrive Max. It is caused by the differences in PAL and NTSC machines.

 

The SIO2SD has less bugs than the SDrive Max (at the moment). But the SDrive Max is cheaper and the firmware is constantly updated and has great support. My personal experience (I have both) is that Lotharek, who sells the SIO2SD, sells a great product but does not give a lot of support. SDrive Max supports ATX-files (original disk dumps with copy protection) and SIO2SD does not.

Edited by Fred_M
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I cannot imagine why these demos would not load on both devices. They are just plain ATR-files.

 

But these demos are (I think) European demos, so there can be problems when you load them on NTSC machines. That is not caused by the SIO2SD or SDrive Max. It is caused by the differences in PAL and NTSC machines.

 

The SIO2SD has less bugs than the SDrive Max (at the moment). But the SDrive Max is cheaper and the firmware is constantly updated and has great support. My personal experience (I have both) is that Lotharek, who sells the SIO2SD, sells a great product but does not give a lot of support. SDrive Max supports ATX-files (original disk dumps with copy protection) and SIO2SD does not.

Thanks for the details.

 

I should have specified that I own a PAL 130XE.

 

I can’t run them from my cart solutions nor the Sdrive2.

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Exactly Doctor ;)

 

I don't have a sdrive 2, but when I googled for it I found this topic: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/266882-sdrive-arm-sdrive2-issuesquestions/

 

It looks like there was a problem with ATR-images larger than 128k. The cool emotion disks are 133k each. According to the topic, a firmware update should be available :)

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You can find them here

 

Cool Emotion - HARD

Timeless Announcement - BitBusters
Bitter Reality - Slight
Thanks a lot for wanting to do this.

 

 

All three loaded without a hitch via my SIO2SD.

 

"Cool Emotion" and "Timeless Announcement" loaded fine with the SDRIVE-MAX (v0.09). I could not get "Bitter Reality" to boot up with the SDRIVE-MAX, however. It starts to load and then the whole process just stops; no BOOT ERROR or anything, it just stops dead.

 

I mighty add, though, that I have had a problem or two with getting my SDRIVE to communicate with other peripherals properly. Hopefully I will be able to get the firmware upgraded this weekend and then I will try the "Bitter Reality" demo again to see if anything changes.

Edited by SS
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I've bit the bullet and ordered an SIO2SD from Lotharek.

 

From what I understand it might be possible with the SDrive2 also but the firmware needs to be updated , alsp any news regarding this ?

The firmware released by Hiattus wasn't compatible with the SDrive2 if I understood the topic here http://atariage.com/...ssuesquestions/ correctly.

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