My first A8 (emulated) complete with U1MB and SIDE2

[+Stephen]

2 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

You are awesome, I couldn't see that for looking! Thank you so very much, that makes life so much easier!

Don't feel bad.  I've been using Altirra since day one - 2009 IIRC, and there's more that I don't know about it, than what I do know.  It evolves so fast - it's impossible to keep up!  That is a great problem to have.

 

LMAO - literally 30 seconds after I close this tab, I see

 

[Mazzspeed]

Just now, Stephen said:

Don't feel bad.  I've been using Altirra since day one - 2009 IIRC, and there's more that I don't know about it, than what I do know.  It evolves so fast - it's impossible to keep up!  That is a great problem to have.

The biggest problem is there's so many options I keep thinking "must remember that one"...

 

...Then I promptly forget where I saw the option.

 

My memory is shocking!

[bfollowell]

14 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

You don't need the SIDE2 ROMs. As soon as you connect the SIDE2, regardless of what is on the ROM, with the PBI HDD activated, it should just work.

 

 

Yep, it worked just like you said it would. I haven't done too much with it yet other than try FDSIK and confirm it shows a generic drive, but it does work. I'll play with it some more now that I have it working.

 

What I'd really like to do is get the 1088XEL-U1MB ROM working with Altirra, but that doesn't seem to want to work correctly. It boots up just fine, but then I have no keyboard control once I get into the 1088-U1MB menu, so I can't do anything. Even if I can't though, just having the U1MB working like this will help me a lot.

 

Thanks!

 

[+DrVenkman]

11 minutes ago, bfollowell said:

What I'd really like to do is get the 1088XEL-U1MB ROM working with Altirra, but that doesn't seem to want to work correctly. It boots up just fine, but then I have no keyboard control once I get into the 1088-U1MB menu, so I can't do anything.

This has bitten me twice, and far enough apart in time (well over a year) that I forgot the (simple) solution: ensure Stereo is enabled in the Altirra menus. 

 

[_The Doctor__]

1 minute ago, DrVenkman said:

This has bitten me twice, and far enough apart in time (well over a year) that I forgot the (simple) solution: ensure Stereo is enabled in the Altirra menus. 

 

so it defaults to the non keyboard pokey.... if stereo isn't on... if it's mimicing the pcb exactly then the pcb layout for the dual pokey is at fault the select line needs to be transposed between the two.

[Mazzspeed]

20 minutes ago, bfollowell said:

 

Yep, it worked just like you said it would. I haven't done too much with it yet other than try FDSIK and confirm it shows a generic drive, but it does work. I'll play with it some more now that I have it working.

 

What I'd really like to do is get the 1088XEL-U1MB ROM working with Altirra, but that doesn't seem to want to work correctly. It boots up just fine, but then I have no keyboard control once I get into the 1088-U1MB menu, so I can't do anything. Even if I can't though, just having the U1MB working like this will help me a lot.

 

Thanks!

 

bfollowell,

 

Did you use a fixed VHD size or a variable VHD size? I'm beginning to regret creating a variable VHD size as fdisk says my drive isn't big enough to create a FAT partition.

 

Does anyone know if there's any way around this or do I just have to start again?

[phaeron]

3 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

Did you use a fixed VHD size or a variable VHD size? I'm beginning to regret creating a variable VHD size as fdisk says my drive isn't big enough to create a FAT partition.

 

Does anyone know if there's any way around this or do I just have to start again?

Fixed or variable shouldn't matter here. That refers to how the data in the VHD is stored, whether it is just one big blob covering the entire virtual drive or if it only stores the blocks that have been used. Either way, the capacity of the virtual drive is the same as when you created it.

 

What you need to do is resize the VHD's capacity. Altirra can't do this, but some other utilities can, since it's a standard hard drive image format used by virtual machine software.

 

[Mazzspeed]

16 minutes ago, phaeron said:

Fixed or variable shouldn't matter here. That refers to how the data in the VHD is stored, whether it is just one big blob covering the entire virtual drive or if it only stores the blocks that have been used. Either way, the capacity of the virtual drive is the same as when you created it.

 

What you need to do is resize the VHD's capacity. Altirra can't do this, but some other utilities can, since it's a standard hard drive image format used by virtual machine software.

 

OK.

 

I found a utility that worked really well called VHD Resizer and increased the size of my drive, but I still cannot add another partition, I get an error 'insufficient space'?

 

I don't get it.

 

 

[bfollowell]

8 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

This has bitten me twice, and far enough apart in time (well over a year) that I forgot the (simple) solution: ensure Stereo is enabled in the Altirra menus. 

 

 

Thanks! That worked perfectly! I doubt I'd have figured that out on my own. Definitely not for a long time anyway.

 

8 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

Did you use a fixed VHD size or a variable VHD size? I'm beginning to regret creating a variable VHD size as fdisk says my drive isn't big enough to create a FAT partition.

 

 

I think I set mine up as fixed, but I'll probably set mine up again anyway. I was just setting up a really basic drive just to see if things were working.

 

Also, I changed from SIDE2 to CF3. Now that I've got the 1088XEL-U1MB firmware working correctly, it shows the CF3 plugin loading at boot and the CF3 works without a hitch. Now to get my emulated VBXE running and try out 64 and 80 column modes.

 

Thanks guys!

 

Edited January 24, 2021 by bfollowell

[Faicuai]

6 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

OK.

 

I found a utility that worked really well called VHD Resizer and increased the size of my drive, but I still cannot add another partition, I get an error 'insufficient space'?

 

I don't get it.

 

 

If you have an on-line upload solution, send it my way, and I will upload you a specially prepared 4GB image that will get you off the ground immediately and... will show you why the A8 iis the king of the hill!  

 

Get ready for hours of enjoyment... Most of what you will need will be there, and well organized / structured.

 

Cheers!

 

[Mazzspeed]

26 minutes ago, Faicuai said:

If you have an on-line upload solution, send it my way, and I will upload you a specially prepared 4GB image that will get you off the ground immediately and... will show you why the A8 iis the king of the hill!  

 

Get ready for hours of enjoyment... Most of what you will need will be there, and well organized / structured.

 

Cheers!

 

Oh this sounds good. Can this be done via Google Drive?

[flashjazzcat]

7 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

I found a utility that worked really well called VHD Resizer and increased the size of my drive, but I still cannot add another partition, I get an error 'insufficient space'?

How big is the APT (APT->Properties)?

[Faicuai]

1 hour ago, Mazzspeed said:

Oh this sounds good. Can this be done via Google Drive?

I don't use it, but if there is any uplink I can access, let me know... (I do have Google accounts, though...)

[bfollowell]

OK, so I've used FDISK and setup my drive the way I want it. It's fairly basic so far. I'm not really sure why I bothered with an external partition, but since that's the way I'll eventually setup my CF on my real 1088XEL, I went ahead. Now, I want to format my APT partitions, but I can't seem to. I can see all of my partitions just fine from SDX, but when I run format, I see an n/a beside format and pressing F does nothing. I'm sure I'm forgetting something really silly, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it might be.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks!

 

Edited January 24, 2021 by bfollowell

[bfollowell]

21 minutes ago, bfollowell said:

OK, so I've used FDISK and setup my drive the way I want it. It's fairly basic so far. I'm not really sure why I bothered with an external partition, but since that's the way I'll eventually setup my CF on my real 1088XEL, I went ahead. Now, I want to format my APT partitions, but I can't seem to. I can see all of my partitions just fine from SDX, but when I run format, I see an n/a beside format and pressing F does nothing. I'm sure I'm forgetting something really silly, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it might be.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks!

 

 

OK, I don't have a lot of experience with SDX, or SD in general, so I figured I'd press F to format. B for Build Directory seemed to be active and it worked, so I tried that and now I don't get an error 148 Unknown file system when I try to read D3:, so I guess it worked. It seemed strange at first, but I looked through the SDX manual and I guess this is the normal procedure for RAM disks and hard drives.

 

I'm learning, slowly.

 

 

Edited January 24, 2021 by bfollowell

[flashjazzcat]

You can't physcially lay down tracks on a hard disk partition, so writing a blank file system is the correct procedure.

[_The Doctor__]

Quick and dirty run down...

on a real spinning disks there are more than one method and type of formatting. You can muck about in track zero and on some change the layout and geometry of the drive. You can low level the drive, writing out every sector again, correcting drift, and noting bad sectors. That drive may or may not have it's own bad sector reassignment table on board. If it does, it will map out the bad and physically locate the sector elsewhere. If it doesn't, Your formatting software should do so. Affix the list to the drive, keep a file on the drive, and a hard copy somewhere of those numbers (some drives already have a from the factory list on their labels. Once that's done. The file system building can begin.

The are also tools for sd cards/cf cards that effectively do the same things but normally once the internally wear write controller fills the re assignment area of the card, it simply corrupts and reassignment fails. Some people use the low level and firmware tools to change the card to a smaller size and give new reassignment areas with success but the card is much smaller than it used to be and will fail much sooner as it's useful life is already past. The cards should be relabeled to their new capacity. Our friends over in China learned this trick and have refurbished cards and did not labels the new capacity correctly of these near end life cards. Some unscrupulously change what the card reports as higher capacity than what is actually there and other such nonsense, these are the cards that bite us in the *ss. The tools to do this use to be freely available and you could check to see what a card really was and salvage you data etc. They've made the tools almost impossible to get. The tools were great for cards that failed due to static and other non wear related mis haps. Because the abuse took place we're not able to obtain and use such things easily. The bad actors of course still have complete access and some have their own tools. I'd say they're the tools but that's another story

 

I all instances the file system(s) (is/are) laid down after all of that. Happy times

Edited January 24, 2021 by _The Doctor__

[Mazzspeed]

7 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

How big is the APT (APT->Properties)?

Is this the screenshot your after FJC?

 

 

6 hours ago, Faicuai said:

I don't use it, but if there is any uplink I can access, let me know... (I do have Google accounts, though...)

Hmmm, with Google Drive I think you'd have to add the file to your drive and make it viewable by others. I don't usually share files this way, I'll see what I can work out.

[flashjazzcat]

1 hour ago, Mazzspeed said:

Is this the screenshot your after FJC?

Sorry - no. When you have the APT open (where you create Atari partitions), go to the APT menu and select 'Properties'.

 

[BillC]

9 hours ago, bfollowell said:

Any ideas?

Instead of "Format" you need to select "Build Directory".

[bfollowell]

51 minutes ago, BillC said:

Instead of "Format" you need to select "Build Directory".

Yeah, I finally tried that after about a half-hour.

 

Thanks though!

 

[bfollowell]

Well, I finally got my XEL-CF3 boot drive setup and got my config.sys edited and the VBXE running properly!

 

[Mazzspeed]

7 hours ago, flashjazzcat said:

Sorry - no. When you have the APT open (where you create Atari partitions), go to the APT menu and select 'Properties'.

 

Sorry my Friend, here you go. How can it have a capacity of 1MB?

 

 

Edited January 25, 2021 by Mazzspeed

[flashjazzcat]

2 hours ago, Mazzspeed said:

Sorry my Friend, here you go. How can it have a capacity of 1MB?

 

 

Thanks. The capacity is decided when you initialise the disk. You have the chance to specify the APT and (optionally) FAT volume sizes. Presumably you somehow specified 1MB as the APT size here.

[Mazzspeed]

33 minutes ago, flashjazzcat said:

Thanks. The capacity is decided when you initialise the disk. You have the chance to specify the APT and (optionally) FAT volume sizes. Presumably you somehow specified 1MB as the APT size here.

Aw shit! Oh well, it's a good opportunity to familiarise myself with SpartaDOS X. Thanks for taking a look.