Altirra 4.10 released

[phaeron]

39 minutes ago, Larry said:

My ultimate goal is to get a MyIDE-II cart working with a non-Incognito 800 with real hardware.  I have successfully gotten a MyIDE-II working with Altirra (XE) as a first step.  But I am hung up trying to copy files from a 20,000 sector DD ATR to the hard drive image on the the MyIDE-II.  Is there a way to mount large ATR's in Altirra?  On real hardware, I make periodic sector copy backups of my hard drives to APE ATR's.  But I see no way to mount/use a large ATR in Altirra. (?)

Thanks.

 

You can use large ATRs the same way you'd use any other ATR. Altirra supports ATRs up to the max size of 65535 sectors, with sector sizes up to 8K. When creating a new disk, you can also choose the Custom profile:

The one catch is that you do need to set the disk drive emulation type to one of the Generic profiles to do this, at the bottom of the disk drives dialog. This is the default. If you've changed it to something like 1050, though, then you're going to run into errors because a 1050 can't read a 20K sector double density disk.

 

[+Larry]

I'm still having trouble getting a VHD to work with the Altirra MyIDE-II cartridge.  I'm wondering if retained settings aren't an issue?  I downloaded a new copy of Altirra 4.20 test 15, and had the same problems.  I can't get the MyIDE to work with the VHD.  I've made new VHD files, but with the same results.  (SIO patch is turned off.)  Are there any specific rules for the VHD -- like maybe it must be a specific size (like 16 MB)?  If I use a pre-made .IMG file (from a fellow AA member!), it works great, but if I make a new VHD, when I save my FDISK2 settings and go back to MyDos, the MyIDE never connects.  I'm using the 4.9.B16 rom.  I get a "buzzing" sound and error 160 when I try to access the drive.  I got it to work one time, and as fate would have it, I made the HD D2:, instead of 1.  Is there a way to erase all my old settings in Altirra, so that I'm truly starting fresh?

 

And if anyone has any suggestions, please speak up!  I've worked on this off-an-on for 3 days.

[phaeron]

7 hours ago, Larry said:

I'm still having trouble getting a VHD to work with the Altirra MyIDE-II cartridge.  I'm wondering if retained settings aren't an issue?  I downloaded a new copy of Altirra 4.20 test 15, and had the same problems.  I can't get the MyIDE to work with the VHD.  I've made new VHD files, but with the same results.  (SIO patch is turned off.)  Are there any specific rules for the VHD -- like maybe it must be a specific size (like 16 MB)?  If I use a pre-made .IMG file (from a fellow AA member!), it works great, but if I make a new VHD, when I save my FDISK2 settings and go back to MyDos, the MyIDE never connects.  I'm using the 4.9.B16 rom.  I get a "buzzing" sound and error 160 when I try to access the drive.  I got it to work one time, and as fate would have it, I made the HD D2:, instead of 1.  Is there a way to erase all my old settings in Altirra, so that I'm truly starting fresh?

 

And if anyone has any suggestions, please speak up!  I've worked on this off-an-on for 3 days.

I'd be hard pressed to think of retained settings that would cause one hard disk image to work and not another. That rules out most of the traditional settings like Fast Boot, which would either break neither or both images. Also, if you're able to set up the drive in FDISK then clearly at least low level disk access is working.

 

You could try setting up your hard disk with similar partitions as the working one and see if that works. Usual gotchas apply, like making sure partitions are active and assigned to the right drive letter.

 

[+Larry]

Still flogging this MyIDE (unsuccessfully), so please let me ask a few specific questions:

 

If I use the "Create VHD" dialogue in Altirra to create a 16 MB drive, when I'm done it gives me specific geometry (35 cyl, 15 hds, 63 sec/tk).  Is this the geometry I should put in the MyIDE FDISK (as manual Init)?

 

Does Altirra "format" this VHD (so once the dialogue is finished, it should be usable)? 

 

Should this VHD show up in Windows (This PC)?  It does show up in the correct path as "Hard Drive Image File."  But after completing the FDISK dialogue with Init, Make, and Exit/[Save]), MyDos never sees it after doing the "O" configuration, then trying to do the I/N format.  I just get Error 160.

 

A few other bits of info.  I'm using Win 11 Home, Altirra 64, and the Internal MyIDE device with system rom 4.3I

 

 

 

 

[phaeron]

6 hours ago, Larry said:

If I use the "Create VHD" dialogue in Altirra to create a 16 MB drive, when I'm done it gives me specific geometry (35 cyl, 15 hds, 63 sec/tk).  Is this the geometry I should put in the MyIDE FDISK (as manual Init)?

Oh god, you're still using tools that use CHS geometry? Yes, you do need to match what is in the VHD with what the MyIDE driver is using. I thought you were using fjc's FDISK.

 

To explain further, there are two types of hard disk addressing, cylinder/head/sector (CHS) and linear block addressing (LBA). CHS addressing requires the software configuration to match the geometry of the drive, because to use the drive, the software has to compute addresses using the same head and sectors-per-track counts that the drive is using. LBA addressing is superior because it simply uses one big logical sector number to address all sectors on the drive, so the only thing the software needs to know is the total number of sectors on the drive -- similarly to the way that SIO disk drives work. I had thought that all Atari hard disk drivers had moved to LBA by this point, but I guess not.

 

Raw image files don't have any geometry info in them, so you will need to enter in this information when setting up the device. VHD images do contain this info and the emulator will automatically set it as long as you Browse to the image.

 

6 hours ago, Larry said:

Does Altirra "format" this VHD (so once the dialogue is finished, it should be usable)? 

It's usable in that no low-level formatting is needed, as the VHD only stores formatted data. You do still need to partition and format any disk images within it, of course.

 

6 hours ago, Larry said:

Should this VHD show up in Windows (This PC)?  It does show up in the correct path as "Hard Drive Image File."

No. VHDs are not automatically mounted in Windows as disks, and you don't need them mounted in Windows to use them in Altirra. For this case, you don't have a reason to.

 

For cases where this is useful, you can mount VHDs in Windows in three ways:

• Right-click and select the Mount VHD Disk Image in Windows option on the disk in Altirra
• Right-click > Mount on the disk image in File Explorer
• Mount VHD in Disk Management

However, the only reason to do this is if the disk image has a FAT16 or FAT32 filesystem on it, either directly, or inside an APT partition setup. This is useful to copy files in and out of the FAT16/32 partition. Non-PC hard disk images should never be mounted in Windows as in some cases it will automatically write to and corrupt the boot block on the disk as soon as it is mounted. This is because if it ever sees a boot block that it thinks is a valid MBR but without disk signature, it will write one back to the MBR without even asking. APT-formatted drives with protective MBRs are safe to use this way, everything else is unsafe.

 

6 hours ago, Larry said:

But after completing the FDISK dialogue with Init, Make, and Exit/[Save]), MyDos never sees it after doing the "O" configuration, then trying to do the I/N format.  I just get Error 160.

Error 160 is a drive number error, if it using standard DOS errors. That's usually the result of trying to use a drive number that's higher than the number of drives configured in DOS, which is a weird thing to encounter as part of this.

 

The first thing to check is whether you're seeing the drive indicators flash. Normally, Altirra will flash an indicator at the bottom when a read or write occurs on the hard disk, so that will tell you whether FDISK is able to access the drive at all.

 

Beyond that, I'd recommend making a copy of the image you were previously able to get working, and see if you can run FDISK to reinitialize that image.

[_The Doctor__]

On real hardware,

The MyIDE stuff I used was in the MyIDE itself, is that what you are using Larry?

When I set mine up using the built in MyIDE stuff, It was CHS not LBA. This was on MyIDE and MyIDEII.

While there might be other ways to set up a MyIDE, I like others probably used whatever it came with at the time.

I hope that is slightly useful information. Whoever made the working image that was sent to you might shed some light on how and when as well as what versions of the emulation and what versions of the MyIDE/MyIDE II were used and with what possible software.

CHS has been a staple not only for MyIDE but also MIO and Black Box etc as real hardware.

You probably can't rely on autodetect for any of it in emulation on virtual containers, so entering them by hand is probably the only way to go.

How would the emulation know the cards detected geometry otherwise?

 

Edited August 4, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[phaeron]

https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test20.zip
https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test20-src.7z

 

Something a little different -- this build adds some basic accessibility support:

• The Display pane now supports reading out text for screen readers, such as Windows Narrator. This reads out the text using a similar mechanism to Copy Text, except that it will also identify and bracket inverse text. This works at the emulated hardware level where the cursor is not visible, so currently screen readers can't tell where the cursor is and scanning the text is necessary. Support for this needs to be enabled in Configure System > Accessibility currently, as the UIAutomation API is pretty fragile and for some reason the On Screen Keyboard likes to activate it too. XEP80 displays are not yet supported.
• Restructured windows a bit to fix a focus issue that would trap the focus when trying to navigate between panes with Narrator+Left/Right, and added Previous/Next Pane commands to explicitly cycle between the panes.
• Fixed a bug with hidden minimize/maximize controls being present on docked window frames, which showed up in Narrator navigation.
• Added some invisible window captions so that splitters can be distinguished from panes.
• Ctrl+C now works to copy out the contents from Altirra's fancy message boxes.

 

[+Larry]

Success!!!

 

Thanks so very much to several folks here for the suggestions and info provided.

 

I was never able to create a VHD and get it to work with Altirra, but I was able to take the working .IMG file and use the MyIDE FDISK2 to create a blank partition and then make it bootable with MyDos (as Avery suggested).  I did not try FJC's FDISK, but will later.  I've used an earlier version of it to create APT partitions for the IDE-2 (real hardware).  I've had MyIDE versions since the hardwired models, and never had any issues with the supplied FDISKs for partitioning and getting the MyDos drives to work.  To answer Doc's question, I used both the built-in MyIDE and the .XEX version.  I was not aware until very recently (or had forgotten) that FDISK2 was built into the some of the MyIDE rom versions.

 

From everything that I've seen, I believe the problem must rest in getting the geometry correct.  No matter what I tried, I could never successfully save the partition info when going back to MyDos.  But the .IMG file came right up correctly -- first time, every time.

[+bf2k+]

Anyone know where I can get Blackbox firmware for use in Altirra?

[Mclaneinc]

7 hours ago, bf2k+ said:

Anyone know where I can get Blackbox firmware for use in Altirra?

There you go..

bbrom134.rom bbrom141.bin bbrom144.bin bbrom216.rom

[+bf2k+]

10 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

There you go..

bbrom134.rom 16 kB · 5 downloads bbrom141.bin 16 kB · 5 downloads bbrom144.bin 16 kB · 6 downloads bbrom216.rom 64 kB · 5 downloads

Thank you sir...

[jindroush]

@phaeron is there anything like counting DLIST scanlines and/or complaining about potential invisibility on PAL/NTSC? I thought it'd be nice addition to .dumpdlist
Tried to play with View/Overscan, but did not find anything useful (something like 'display average PAL monitor overlay' or something like that)

[phaeron]

22 hours ago, jindroush said:

@phaeron is there anything like counting DLIST scanlines and/or complaining about potential invisibility on PAL/NTSC? I thought it'd be nice addition to .dumpdlist
Tried to play with View/Overscan, but did not find anything useful (something like 'display average PAL monitor overlay' or something like that)

The Normal overscan mode is intended to provide an "averagish" visible region for 4:3 NTSC displays. I was under the impression that vertical visibility was not an issue for PAL -- the full 8-247 region is basically always visible.

[Mclaneinc]

On 8/5/2023 at 9:58 PM, bf2k+ said:

Thank you sir...

My pleasure, I'm not here very much these days, but still like to help out where I can..

 

Paul..

Edited August 7, 2023 by Mclaneinc

[E474]

Quick question.

 

  I'm running Altirra under wine, and the online help system is broken (in wine). I can't find the mappings for Start, Select and Option in the UI, what are they mapped to on the keyboard (I literally can't find this info anywhere in the UI!).

 

  Thanks!

[thank you]

2 hours ago, E474 said:

Quick question.

 

  I'm running Altirra under wine, and the online help system is broken (in wine). I can't find the mappings for Start, Select and Option in the UI, what are they mapped to on the keyboard (I literally can't find this info anywhere in the UI!).

 

  Thanks!

I don't have access right now but pretty sure it's F2, F3, and F4, in some order...

[E474]

20 minutes ago, thank you said:

I don't have access right now but pretty sure it's F2, F3, and F4, in some order...

Thanks very much, it's:

 

F2=Start

F3=Select

F4=Option

 

I checked by loading the XL OS Self test, and verified by doing the same on atari800 (it's not obvious which is which for Start and Select in the Keyboard self-test, but it's in the man page for atari800, so I could work backwards from there, though it's a bit confusing as they don't use the same Function keys).

[phaeron]

The F2/F3/F4 keyboard shortcuts for Start/Select/Option are in the keyboard layout and can be changed in the keyboard mapping.

 

Altirra's defaults for this match Atari800WinPLus 4.0 and the 1200XL and 130XE keyboard layouts. Atari800's default key mapping is reversed for SSO, and I'm not sure why -- I guess it might have been to match the 800XL order, but that's vertical, vs. the horizontal layout of the 1200XL and 130XE that aligns with the PC function keys.

 

[E474]

Hi @phaeron,

 

   Thanks very much for your reply. New user feedback, so treat accordingly.

 

   Unfortunately, the help system is broken in wine64, so I couldn't access the keyboard layout. It's not available online, as in on a website, so I couldn't Google it. When I looked yesterday via Google, all I could find was the Altirra Basic PDF and the Altirra Hardware PDF. I've just tried again, and found a page on scridb which actually does list the keyboard bindings, see: https://www.scribd.com/document/347085024/Altirra-Keyboard-Reference - but the rest of the online help is, as far as I know, unavailable on the internet.

 

   I couldn't find the mappings for Start, Select and Option in the Altirra UI itself. If I went to Tools->Configure Keyboard Shortcuts, the F2, F3 and F4 weren't listed, but all the other F function keys where listed, e.g. F10 - Debug.StepOver. I found this very frustrating to use, as I was only interested in the "special" Atari keys (Select, Option, Start), and I couldn't find anything in the UI to say what they were defined as. My expectation was something along the lines of the MAME key bindings.

 

   What would have been appreciated would have been a note saying:

 

F2=Start

F3=Select

F4=Option

 

   On the initial setup dialog, on the first screen when Altirra is initially started. For a new user this would have been really helpful.

 

   One other thing I found was that the Menu bar and items are very small under wine, but can be fixed by:

 

$ winecfg

 

Choose the "Graphics" tab, and use the "Screen resolution" horizontal slider to change it to something more legible.

 

I also noticed that whenever I relaunched Altirra, it would boot the previously used ATR (Arcadia.atr in my case), and it wasn't immediately obvious how to turn this behavior off. Also, choosing an Atari XL OS ROM was a bit confusing/busy as there was a large tree of 400/800/XL/etc., images that got displayed. Another thing I noticed was the the handling of Basic On/Off was a bit confusing, I thought I had set it to boot with pressing Option to disable Basic, but I got Altirra Basic regardless.

 

Thinking about this last night, I considered installing the Altirra sources as they would/should include the sources for the online help, but then this morning I remembered I had used a Linux eBook reader a couple of years ago that supported opening .CHM files, so after a bit of digging I could read the online help with "Calibre". This can open some of the online help pages, but on some of them I get a dialog saying "ERROR: Destination does not exist", though you can make out the page behind the dialog, but it's black text on a dark grey background.

 

Hope this helps!

[Wrathchild]

2 hours ago, E474 said:

What would have been appreciated would have been a note saying:

[E474]

Hi @Wrathchild,

 

   When I wrote that the help system was broken, I meant it doesn't display any help (to be absolutely crystal clear, this is under wine64).

Edited August 8, 2023 by E474
Added note on wine64.

[phaeron]

As you might expect, Altirra's help is supposed to come from its own help file, and there's only so much I can do to make up for Wine's brokenness. Compiled HTML Help has been around since Windows 98, it's not a new format.

 

I've attached the intermediate HTML source files for the CHM, which you should be able to view in any regular browser. The source files are a little tricky to view, as they're built with XML+XSLT. You can view those in a web browser, but due to current restrictions regarding localhost and file URLs, you have to host them on a web server for the browser to apply the XSLT transforms (I usually use Python with "py -m http.server" for this). These files are pre-transformed to HTML and are easier to view.

 

Besides the help file, you can also see and modify the mappings for SSO in System > Configure System > Keyboard, if you customize the layout.

 

 

athelp.zip

[E474]

Hi @phaeron,

 

   Thanks very much for the info. I put the files on a web-server, but the index.html file just contains the intro text, and I couldn't navigate to any other files (there isn't a ToC included). However, if I rename index.html to intro.html, then I can browse a file listing of the directory. 

 

   The problem with wine appears to be IE8, e.g. the rendering engine for HTML.

 

   My point about including a F2=Start as part of the first screen (the one that can be cancelled out of), is that a novice user only really needs to know a few Atari specific keys (inverse video key and Help key would also be nice, but it's SSO that will really help a new user hit the ground running).

 

   I didn't realise that you could find out what SSO are mapped to using the UI path described above, unfortunately the Customize option is actually currently greyed out. I wouldn't have attempted this without the online help, so there's a circular argument of needing the online help to figure out that the SSO keys can be defined in, well, you get the idea.

 

   The really annoying bit was looking in the Keyboard shortcuts and being able to find every Fn key apart from the ones that I wanted to use, which was why I wrote that I couldn't find the SSO definitions in the UI.

 

   Thanks again for uploading the docs as html, it's much appreciated!

[mirao]

23 hours ago, E474 said:

Hi @Wrathchild,

 

   When I wrote that the help system was broken, I meant it doesn't display any help (to be absolutely crystal clear, this is under wine64).

These two solutions work for me:

1. Install an external CHM viewer, e.g. xCHM and open "Altirra.chm" using it
2. Install wine-gecko into wine. Then you should be able to open a help from Altirra (Help => Contents). I can't remember exact instructions, but Google should help you.

[E474]

Hi @mirao,

 

   Thanks for the info, I installed xchm and it works fine with Altirra help, much better than "Calibre" (see earlier post).

 

   I originally Googled the error:

 

"Could not find Wine Gecko. HTML rendering will be disabled.
0036:err:mshtml:create_document_object Failed to init Gecko, returning CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE"

 

And got to the fix of:

 

$ winetricks ie8

 

But that didn't fix the problem, and there was a note later on in the page I originally found saying it was broken (of course I can't (re-)find the page that I found that info on). That was when I thought it would be quicker to ask what Start, Select and Option were mapped to in Altirra (and indeed that was much easier than getting Gecko installed, which I still haven't done, though I don't actually need to now, so I have no idea how long that would actually take (without asking for help, of course)). All this was on day 1 of using wine, and I was already past the rabbit hole, and deep in the warren. There's a limit to how many, "well that didn't work" web pages you can visit before you start considering alternative approaches (I guess).

 

This only came up because I was testing to see if Arcadia.atr would corrupt the display if it was loaded by a Translator disk, and when I booted the Translator disk it said "Press Select to reboot", and I couldn't find the mapping for Select because (I discovered) the online help was broken. 
 

  I have tried to post the answers for things that did (or didn't work), in case that helps others, and appreciate the tip on using xchm (which does actually work), and to be fair, it's quite easy to get a working Altirra under wine as you can just install from the Debian 11 repositories with apt-get.