Trying to run Diamond GOS 3.0 in Altirra - HELP

[DBenoit]

It was suggested to open a new thread, so here I go.

 

Simply put, I'm trying to run Diamond GOS 3.0 with the utilities disk in Altirra 4.01. After some struggle I've gotten Altirra seemingly working, GOS boots, but when I install the utilities disk I only get this error.

 

 

Current Altirra setup:

Base system    NTSC 130XE
Additional Devices    None
OS Firmware    Atari XL/XE OS ver.3 [29F133F7]
Mounted Images    Disk: Diamond GOS3 Utilities.ATR [93FCA643]
Cartridge: DIAMGOS3.ROM [3671BDC5]

 

I am brand new to this, so I don't know enough to know whether I'm making an Altirra mistake, a Diamond GOS mistake, or a general Atari computing mistake. The extent of my Atari computing experience is being fascinated by Basic Programming for the 2600 as a kid, and trying for the last few weeks to get this emulator working. I have never experienced the real hardware. I don't know whether the GOS manual left out a step that was too obvious to need explaining at the time, or if I've broken something that normally just works.

 

Has anyone gotten this working in Altirra? Or if you've gotten it working on real hardware, is there something to the procedure that might not be obvious to a newbie who has only tried emulation?

 

Thanks to anyone who can help. And thanks to this forum for saving GOS 3.0 from becoming lost.

[flashjazzcat]

Diamond has no file system drivers built in, so you need to boot DOS as well.

 

[DBenoit]

I'm getting closer, but no success yet. First I tried SpartaDOS, but this results in Diamond booting with no ability to move the cursor. Next I tried DOS XE, and this time Diamond greeted me with DRIVE A already on the Desktop, with my mouse working.

 

 

However, I still don't understand how to install the utility disk.

 

Edited September 21, 2022 by DBenoit

[flashjazzcat]

Try DOS 2.5? DOS XE can't read DOS 2.x volumes without the DOS2.SYS driver being installed (IIRC). I imagine the utility disk is in DOS 2 format.

[DBenoit]

 

Let it be known for all time: use DOS 2.5 with Diamond. The whole thing booted faster, and the utilities disk worked in one try. I didn't do anything else differently. DOS 2.5 is the whole trick.

[flashjazzcat]

You can use Diamond with different disk operating systems: your problems stemmed from using DOS XE (which cannot read DOS 2.x volumes without an additional driver) and SDX (which - IIRC - requires a special patched version of Diamond):

 

https://sdx.atari8.info/index.php?show=en_addons

 

See bottom of page, although this is Diamond 2.0. You can copy the contents of the Diamond utility disk to a disk formatted with the DOS of your choice, I imagine.