Questions about partitioning and TOS

[Dopy25]

My machine currently has TOS 1.0 and it runs. I'm not ready to upgrade the TOS yet so I would like to know if it is possible to boot into a partition meant for TOS 1.0, then auto boot a later TOS from the drive, and use a second (or multiple) partitions that can be read in later TOS and DOS.

 

I have the low cost SD solution from masteries, posted for sale here:

 

 

Has anyone had any luck doing anything similar? I'm not even sure where to begin to partition the SD card image on a windows PC in order to do this. I am sure I could figure it out if my TOS was later, but for now I have no idea how to actually create an image with partitions in windows for use on older TOS.

 

Thanks for any tips or direction. 

[Tillek]

You don't want to use TOS 1 with mass storage.

 

My recommendation... get the EmuTos boot disk image and leave that in your floppy drive.  We can help with that if needed.

 

This will boot to EmuTos, and then start the HD boot (it has it's own built in HD driver).

 

I've also seen that they've worked on a technique to boot that image from a HD (and I think you can do it as an executable too).

[Tillek]

Also, you can boot emutos and run your partition software... Just be careful that the partition is legal for whatever TOS you plan to upgrade to eventually.  EmuTos will let you have up to 2gb partitions (Fat16) and those won't work in other TOS versions (I'm not sure if BigDOS would make them usable or not... never tried).

 

[ijor]

I used TOS 1.0 back at the day with hard disks, for several years, without much problems. Yes, it has some bugs, but drivers such as ICDpro work around most of them. Running TOS from RAM is not really practical if you have less than 2 MB.

 

[TGB1718]

13 minutes ago, ijor said:

I used TOS 1.0 back at the day with hard disks

Same here, although I did have to upgrade the memory of my 520STM to 1 MB,

I did have an ICD interface (still have it, although all hard disks have died of old age  ) and used ICD drivers

[Dopy25]

Oh crap I should have specified. I have a 520ST that is upgraded to 4MB. I have the RAM to run an emulated TOS, but I am unsure if it will work like that. My goal is to start my machine running TOS 1.0 with an autoboot TOS (1.04?). Is that doable?

 

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Dopy25

[Dopy25]

2 hours ago, Tillek said:

My recommendation... get the EmuTos boot disk image and leave that in your floppy drive.  We can help with that if needed.

 

This will boot to EmuTos, and then start the HD boot (it has it's own built in HD driver).

 

I've also seen that they've worked on a technique to boot that image from a HD (and I think you can do it as an executable too).

I do not have a floppy drive at all. 

 

Can you tell me more about this boot image from HD? My main concern is if I can have a partition that 1.0 can read, and a partition that 1.0 cannot read. Will that mess anything up with the sd card (hard drive) or the system itself?

[Tillek]

I can try to find the information (I didn't really have a use for it myself so I didn't pay much attention since I prefer the disk method (which I can pop out when I want to "change TOS").

 

I'm going to start by saying that in some ways I've done this and it should be fine.  "Should" meaning that there are many reasons why TOS wouldn't find a partition compatible and I can't say with 100% certainty that in all cases it will be ok.

 

So I guess the question is, are you talking about partitions that are simply going to be too big for TOS 1.0's limits?  Or a file system incompatible with 1.0?  Something else?

 

I'm also just going to say this as well.  I have had bad luck in the past with TOS/DOS(Win) partitions getting corrupted.  Others will swear by them and hey... YMMV.  If you're just dealing with games or something you can easily copy again, no problem.  If it's the source code for the next great Atari ST game....  ... back up often.

 

Out of curiosity, are we talking about a 520 without the built in drive?  Or something else with a dead drive?

[Tillek]

Hey... looks like they did more with it and gave it a GitHub home.

 

https://github.com/czietz/emutos-bootloader

 

[Dopy25]

31 minutes ago, Tillek said:

So I guess the question is, are you talking about partitions that are simply going to be too big for TOS 1.0's limits?  Or a file system incompatible with 1.0?  Something else?

 

I'm also just going to say this as well.  I have had bad luck in the past with TOS/DOS(Win) partitions getting corrupted.  Others will swear by them and hey... YMMV.  If you're just dealing with games or something you can easily copy again, no problem.  If it's the source code for the next great Atari ST game....  ... back up often.

 

Out of curiosity, are we talking about a 520 without the built in drive?  Or something else with a dead drive?

Ok so what I understand is that TOS 1.0 requires a different format that my SD adapter can understand, and it is unreadable in Windows. I got it from here:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/jajpcc8pcp623do/1GBRTWIKI1_6TOS100.RAR/file

 

Reading this requires a program called drvimg. Using said program on windows, I can transfer files to it. It makes it kinda hard and I am not even sure how to rename the drive partitions, they are in Spanish. I would like to boot this image in TOS 1.0 with an emulated TOS in the auto folder. From there I would like to know if I can have a partition on the disk (SD card) that is FAT so I can read and move files easily within windows.

 

I am completely new to this entire operating system and will most likely only use this for games for now. Any files I put on it would be easily replaceable. I actually goofed at one point trying to move files to the auto folder, and inadvertently made a partition unusable. I have no idea how that happened so I just wrote that image to SD again and went from there. 

 

It's the 520ST. External power, no internal drive of any kind, HDD or Floppy.

 

  

30 minutes ago, Tillek said:

Hey... looks like they did more with it and gave it a GitHub home.

 

https://github.com/czietz/emutos-bootloader

 

I will totally check this out. Seems like it might be exactly what I was looking for!

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Dopy25

[Dopy25]

Well maybe I didn't do it right, or maybe my SD card hard drive adapter is not supported. I downloaded the pre supplied image and flashed it to a 4gb SD card.  It made a 200mb ish partition so I made 2 more fat partitions, roughly 1.7gb each. I put the SD in the adapter and fired it up. I let it power itself first, then powered the Atari like usual. It just boots to nothing on the gem desktop. 

 

Using the 1.00 tos image I linked before, everything boots into a desktop with hard drives and floppy icons (but no floppy drives attached).

 

I tried to move the emutos.sys file to an auto folder but it didn't do anything. Also not sure I made the auto folder on the right partition. 

 

Here is what loads when I boot from the image I previously linked:

Then it loads this desktop:

 

I don't think the driver this solution uses supports fat partitions. Any ideas?

[masteries]

There is a SD card image (or hard disk image) that automatically boots EmuTOS from hard drive,

 

Otherwise, as far I now TOS 1.0 only supports partitions up to 256 MB, and uses a special format

that is not a standard FAT16, due to this TOS 1.0 and 1.02 partitions are not readable under Win / Mac / Linux

 

Despite this, there is a PC software from Peter Putnik, called DrvImg that lets manage these TOS 1.0 and 1.02

hard drive images.

 

If I remember well, the user 1200 XL M.U.L.E. (I am not 100% sure if this user or another) created

many partitions using ICDPro drivers in the Atari ST computer;

after this the user created a hard disk image (from the SD card) in his PC via an imager software,

and uses DrvImg to manage the content of TOS 1.0 / 1.02 partitions in the PC

 

Regarding mixed TOS 1.0 / 1.02 and TOS 1.04 and up partitions at once,

in the same SD card... I never seen something similar, no experience

if mixed older and "modern" TOS partitions can live in the same SD card.

 

 

Really the partition interpreter is the TOS operating system, the hard disk device

is a data sectors provider, it read or write sectors to the storage surface;

and the TOS interpret these as FAT partition, or GEM partition...

 

 

Edited October 15, 2022 by masteries
Refining text

[masteries]

Fresh information from Peter Putnik, useful for Dopy25. Thanks to this info you could do the task of use the same partitions for TOS 1.0 and up, and manage these partitions in a PC:

 

"It is true that TOS 1.00-1.02 have limit of 256 MB for partitions. But they are FAT16 partitions, basically same as partitions under later TOS versions. And my partitioning/driver SW creates TOS/DOS compatible partitions on TOS 1.00-1.02 too. TOS version is detected, and then button TOS 1.02c will be checked on. Or user can check on, if runs it under higher TOS v. Program will not allow setting partitions bigger than 256 MB, and will do partitioning parameters good for those TOS versions. And it will be perfectly accessible on modern computers - Windows, Linux, MacOS ..."

 

[Tillek]

On 10/15/2022 at 3:07 PM, masteries said:

Fresh information from Peter Putnik, useful for Dopy25. Thanks to this info you could do the task of use the same partitions for TOS 1.0 and up, and manage these partitions in a PC:

 

"It is true that TOS 1.00-1.02 have limit of 256 MB for partitions. But they are FAT16 partitions, basically same as partitions under later TOS versions. And my partitioning/driver SW creates TOS/DOS compatible partitions on TOS 1.00-1.02 too. TOS version is detected, and then button TOS 1.02c will be checked on. Or user can check on, if runs it under higher TOS v. Program will not allow setting partitions bigger than 256 MB, and will do partitioning parameters good for those TOS versions. And it will be perfectly accessible on modern computers - Windows, Linux, MacOS ..."

 

Well, at least some people will be happy to know that ParanoidLittleMan found a way around his ban by posting through you.

 

Curious that he posts his thoughts around this specific thread (and the lack of mentioning his greatness and complete perfection) right before this post shows up.

 

 

[Dopy25]

I still can't tell if he is bashing me, or everyone else for not answering my question (or answering it wrong?... to.....him?)

 

I have yet to build a solution that will allow me to accomplish my initial goal. 

 

I know the best method would be to update/upgrade the TOS, but I am looking for a software solution first. Sure running emu TOS might not be the "best" way to run a later TOS, but with 4mb of RAM I figure it won't be e terrible experience.

I would rather not pay $40 to upgrade something and add $10 in future value to the machine. That seems like serious overkill to me.

 

My main question here is regarding auto booting into a later TOS with partitions on the SD card that can be read in TOS 1.0, as well as later TOS, and Windows. I would like to have a partition that I can put files on in Windows, that can be used on my machine, that auto boots TOS from 1.0 to TOS 1.04.

 

Example:

Partitions of 200-256 MB, one that can be read in TOS 1.0 and ran. (C drive perhaps) and the rest that the files can be managed from within Windows.

 

My machine has hardware TOS 1.0 (physical eeprom/rom in machine).

I turn on the machine and it grabs TOS 1.04 or emu TOS (not sure exactly the terms for this) from AUTO folder.

Machine then boots into later TOS from RAM (?) and can now read FAT partitions that can be used in Windows. 

 

If none of this is possible, that's fine. I am only asking if anyone either knows how to do this, or has done it before. 

 

[Tillek]

Putnik?  He's bashing eveyone who doesn't worship him and agree 100% with everything he says.  That's how he got banned just about everywhere... don't take it personally.  Actually, I find it funny how obsessed he is with AtariAge posts.  I mean, seriously... how do you attack people new to the hobby for asking "stoopid" questions and still call yourself a man?

 

(Though to be honest, I always recommend that people asking questions about the ST go to Atari-Forum or Exxos forum for this reason).

 

But back to your issue. 

 

Assuming you downloaded EmuTos from here, did you get the PRG version? https://sourceforge.net/projects/emutos/files/emutos/1.2.1/

emutos-prg256-1.2.1.zip

or

emutos-prg-1.2.1.zip

 

If you want to run this from the auto folder, one of these would be the option you want (just choose the one for your preferred language and probably the 256k).

 

I would give this a try and then have the bigger partition(s) on the card be a FAT16.  These should work fine in Windows and EmuTos and  can be up to 2gb.  (EmuTos can't read FAT32)  I think this will give you the experience you're looking for without having to buy anyone's driver.

 

[Dopy25]

12 minutes ago, Tillek said:

Putnik?  He's bashing eveyone who doesn't worship him and agree 100% with everything he says.  That's how he got banned just about everywhere... don't take it personally.  Actually, I find it funny how obsessed he is with AtariAge posts.  I mean, seriously... how do you attack people new to the hobby for asking "stoopid" questions and still call yourself a man?

 

(Though to be honest, I always recommend that people asking questions about the ST go to Atari-Forum or Exxos forum for this reason).

 

But back to your issue. 

 

Assuming you downloaded EmuTos from here, did you get the PRG version? https://sourceforge.net/projects/emutos/files/emutos/1.2.1/

emutos-prg256-1.2.1.zip

or

emutos-prg-1.2.1.zip

 

If you want to run this from the auto folder, one of these would be the option you want (just choose the one for your preferred language and probably the 256k).

 

I would give this a try and then have the bigger partition(s) on the card be a FAT16.  These should work fine in Windows and EmuTos and  can be up to 2gb.  (EmuTos can't read FAT32)  I think this will give you the experience you're looking for without having to buy anyone's driver.

 

Got ya^

 

 

Back on point here, I absolutely welcome any useful information regarding the question at hand. I can and will check those other forums.

 

I did not try those yet. Maybe that's what I was doing wrong. I downloaded that image from the github you provided. It says "works with TOS 1.00" but when I tried using it, nothing happened on my ST. It literally just loaded the original desktop as though I had nothing attached. I am sure I am incorrectly assuming something should show up on the desktop but I don't even get the same boot screen I do when I have the other image flashed.

 

The other problem I have is that the one image I have that works, marks the whole drive as RAW so I can't create another partition in Windows. Is there a utility I can run in GEM that let's me alter partitions? Problem is I only have one piece of hardware that loads software, it's the SD solution I bought from masteries sales.

 

The next thing I will try is to grab those files from sourceforge and add them to my SD card using the drvImg program.

[Tillek]

Right... the one on GitHub will try to load EmuTos as if it were a hard disk driver (meaning you wouldn't need the ICD drivers).

 

But if you want to run it from the auto folder, you'll need the PRG versions (and still need the ICD drivers)

 

[masteries]

13 hours ago, Tillek said:

Putnik?  He's bashing eveyone who doesn't worship him and agree 100% with everything he says. 

 

hehe

 

Its very easy to deal with bashing,

 

Simply take the useful information you need, ignore the bashing.

 

 

 

Regarding thread:

 

I attached an EmuTOS bootable SD card image, EmuTOS driver is embedded.

This image loads EmuTOS entirely into RAM, as far the image author stated.

 

Probably this can be used to create new TOS 1.0 - 1.04 suitable

partitions... never tried it. If I remember well, the author is Czietz.

 

EMUTOSUK.zip

Edited October 18, 2022 by masteries

[masteries]

On 10/17/2022 at 4:22 AM, Tillek said:

Well, at least some people will be happy to know that ParanoidLittleMan found a way around his ban by posting through you.

 

Curious that he posts his thoughts around this specific thread (and the lack of mentioning his greatness and complete perfection) right before this post shows up.

 

 

Do not confuse yourself  xD

 

The message contains only the useful information, not the rest.

The rest is not needed = ignore it.

 

As an example, I always thought that TOS 1.0 - 1.02 partitions are not really FAT16 based,

some post ago I provided wrong information, someone fixed it, and the message was

posted to fix the information, with credits.

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by masteries

[Dopy25]

5 hours ago, masteries said:

Regarding thread:

 

I attached an EmuTOS bootable SD card image, EmuTOS driver is embedded.

This image loads EmuTOS entirely into RAM, as far the image author stated.

 

Probably this can be used to create new TOS 1.0 - 1.04 suitable

partitions... never tried it. If I remember well, the author is Czietz.

 

EMUTOSUK.zip 2.57 MB · 0 downloads

Awesome. Thank you! I will give this a shot in about 8 and a half hours. haha. I have somewhere I need to be until then.

[Smithers]

On 10/17/2022 at 10:00 PM, Tillek said:

Putnik?  He's bashing eveyone who doesn't worship him and agree 100% with everything he says.  That's how he got banned just about everywhere... don't take it personally.  Actually, I find it funny how obsessed he is with AtariAge posts.  I mean, seriously... how do you attack people new to the hobby for asking "stoopid" questions and still call yourself a man?

 

(Though to be honest, I always recommend that people asking questions about the ST go to Atari-Forum or Exxos forum for this reason).

 

But back to your issue. 

 

Assuming you downloaded EmuTos from here, did you get the PRG version? https://sourceforge.net/projects/emutos/files/emutos/1.2.1/

emutos-prg256-1.2.1.zip

or

emutos-prg-1.2.1.zip

 

If you want to run this from the auto folder, one of these would be the option you want (just choose the one for your preferred language and probably the 256k).

 

I would give this a try and then have the bigger partition(s) on the card be a FAT16.  These should work fine in Windows and EmuTos and  can be up to 2gb.  (EmuTos can't read FAT32)  I think this will give you the experience you're looking for without having to buy anyone's driver.

 

Hi Tillek, I dont want to get involved in any politics I just want to thank you for all of the great help mate 🥰👍 How you doing and did you like The Doobie Brothers? I am now doing the difficult and time consuming process of downloading all of the games and files to the HDD. I managed to find the D and E partitions so 211mB total HDD... happy days🥰

Will keep on boring you guys and asking advice ha ha

Take care bud. 

Smithers  🥰👍