One person's positive review of the Rapidus

[Mark2008]

In past years, I was not happy with Rapidus, but this year, I am.  So quick review.

 

My setup:  

 

Atari 130XE w/VBXE, Rapidus and AHIUSB keyboard device, SDX is supplied by an SDX cartridge.

It does not have a Ultimate 1mb.

 

What I use it for, compiling PL65 program that is in development.

 

I use a Ramdisk for compiling, both reading LIB files and writing out the final XEX.

 

Without Rapidus - the time takes 2 minutes flat.

 

With Rapidus, with reasonable settings:  42 seconds.

Rapidus with maximum settings: 25 seconds.   However, if I turn on R/W cache in Bank 0 - that is not compatible with the XEX I"m creating. 

 

Problems:  The main problem, continues to be the RESET key.  Without Rapidus installed, hitting reset can exit from my program and return to SDX prompt without cold booting.

With Rapidus installed - it might cold boot.

 

Workarounds: I find if I hit the reset key and purposely hold it down and slowly release it - it rarely cold boots.   But also I've found since I do use SDX, DEVICE CAD - what this does, is I can now, simply define a key combination like CTRL+SHIFT+INVERSE and  pretty much exit any program and return to SDX prompt.

 

Therefore ---I code, compile, test...code, compile test...the machine does work reliably, and this workflow is sped up by the rapidus.  42s is much improved over 2 minutes, I'm happy with the purchase and glad I have it.

 

I know Lotharek says you can have better reliability out of rapidus with his 64k sram product, unfortunately, that is not something I'm able to test, I don't have that product.  But this setup is fine, and I'm probably not going to upgrade it further.

 

Also the AHIUSB is only mentioned so peopel can consider the number of expansions in the system and weight that against reliability.  The USB keyboard adapter is useless to me.  It doesn't map < and >  or clear or insert keys, which I use all day, every day....without the keys mapped, I guess it might enable playing some games, but my programming language requires < > and my editor requires clear and insert.

 

I do recommend the product for this workflow, it's been enjoyable.

 

 

 

 

[tuf]

Nice review.  Interesting to hear about your project and workflow.  

[Mark2008]

long term update - 

 

So, I found that my Atari 130XE was no longer reading 16k carts.

 

At first I believed it was a problem with the 130XE, but it turned out the Atari still works fine with 16k carts, whenever I remove the rapidus, the 16k carts work, add the rapidus back, and 16k carts stop working, just like that.

 

So, to troubleshoot the 16k cart issue, I tried a different rapidus - same issue.  I tried having a pro install the 64k sram upgrade.  Same issue.

 

So, I did want to mention, that for those contemplating the 64k sram upgrade, for me it did no harm.  However, it did not fix the reset issue, it did not fix the 16k cart issue.

I don't really know what it is supposed to fix, only that it was mentioned as being an aid by the lotharek website for problematic installations and hence, I gave it a go, but no luck.

 

I still value having the rapidus, even if my dream of an ultimate atari would have everything working without issue.