Fujinet and Slots Use Question

[Rafael1138]

Hi, I'm new in the Fujinet use and there is something I still do not understand and can't found a clear explanation.

 

The Fujinet has 8 Slots, and I load 2 games, one in slot 1 and other one in slot 2. When I select slot 2 and press option to load it, the Fujinet always load the game/app located in the slot 1.

 

There is no way to load any slots or the way I want to use is not the proper way?

 

Thank you.

[sl0re]

I think of them as drives 1-8 and the system is going to boot from drive one.

Edited June 14, 2023 by sl0re

[manterola]

When you press Option your are just rebooting the computer and  confirming the selection of games or programs for each emulated disk drive, i.e., first game in D1: and second game in D2:.

Now while rebooting, the computer will try to boot from D1: therefore you get the first game all the time.

What you can do is to press the first button of the fujinet to get a drive or image rotation, so what you loaded in D1: goes to D2: and what was in the D2 goes to D1:

The problem is that it is not always easy to produce a cold reboot without turning the computer off. If you have an Uno art or avgcart,you can produce a cold reboot by pressing a button, or if you have an alternative OS you can trigger a cold start with Shift-Reset.

Another eaiser solution is to power the fujinet externally using a phone USB charger, then when you turn off your computer the fujinet will still be powered and will keep the games you selected.

 

[TZJB]

15 hours ago, Rafael1138 said:

Hi, I'm new in the Fujinet use and there is something I still do not understand and can't found a clear explanation.

 

The Fujinet has 8 Slots, and I load 2 games, one in slot 1 and other one in slot 2. When I select slot 2 and press option to load it, the Fujinet always load the game/app located in the slot 1.

 

There is no way to load any slots or the way I want to use is not the proper way?

 

Thank you.

 

If you are new to Atari 8 bit computers you need to know that (aside from other device types) you can only boot from a disk drive that is designated D1:. The same is true of Fujinet which emulates physical disk drives D1: to D8: in fixed positions. It is the Atari Operating System that determines it will only boot the disk in D1:.

 

However if you have an SDrive-MAX which emulates D1: to D4: you can highlight any of the four drive positions to be D1: and boot from it. They are not fixed disk drive positions.

[_The Doctor__]

also consider when using ultimate 1 meg / incognito, AVGcart, subAVGcart, etc. with SDX that it's possible to BOOT up, pull configs/autoexecs, batch files etc. from other drives and folders whether it be D3: or what have you

Edited June 14, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[DrVenkman]

21 hours ago, Rafael1138 said:

The Fujinet has 8 Slots, and I load 2 games, one in slot 1 and other one in slot 2. When I select slot 2 and press option to load it, the Fujinet always load the game/app located in the slot 1.

 

There is no way to load any slots or the way I want to use is not the proper way?

 

This. You can't boot from FujiNet from any disk image except the one you have mounted in D1:

 

If you have a 2-disk game, or a game that uses a Side A and Side B, you can mount them in the D1: and D2: slots, and when the game prompts you to swap disks or flip it over to Side B, you can pretty the button on the FujiNet device itself to cause it to swap the locations of the disks and continue loading or playing the game. 

[Peri Noid]

Actually you are all wrong - you forgot the disk swap button. Do something like this:

- Press the Option key in FN loader. The computer will start to reboot.

- As soon as it resets, press the Start key - it will make your Atari to enter tape loading mode - just to give you a lot of time to do the next step.

- Press the disk swap button to select the slot you want to boot from. The computer will literally tell you the selected slot.

- Holding the Option key, press the Reset button (keep holding the Option key.

- The disk from the slot you selected should boot.

It works for me just fine.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Peri Noid

[DrVenkman]

10 minutes ago, Peri Noid said:

Actually you are all wrong - you forgot the disk swap button. Do something like this:

- Press the Option key in FN loader. The computer will start to reboot.

- As soon as it resets, press the Start key - it will make your Atari to enter tape loading mode - just to give you a lot of time to do the next step.

- Press the disk swap button to select the slot you want to boot from. The computer will literally tell you the selected slot.

- Holding the Option key, press the Reset button (keep holding the Option key.

- The disk from the slot you selected should boot.

It works for me just fine.

That's the most convoluted way I can imagine, plus it ignores a few things:

 

First, if the OP has already booted some game from D1:, many games cannot be cleared from memory with a warm start. So trying to then swap disks to put the image from D2: into D1: and booting the second game won't usually work. The Atari has to be cold-booted anyway. Might as well go back to the FujiNet CONFIG utility when the Atari reboots and put the game you actually want to play into D1: 

 

Second, the OP could also use the web interface to load/unload/swap disk images without pressing buttons on the device at all.

 

Third, why in hell would someone put two different games into two separate drive slots, but want to boot from D2: first? Why not just put that game into D1: in the first place? FujiNet is not some console multi-cart where you select the game you want from a fixed menu of entries. It's a hardware serial I/O device emulator. 

[Peri Noid]

imagine, you have a set of images/programs you usually use. THe need to map them to D1 everytime you want another one costs some time - you need to open a server/card, find a file and map it. It's much easier to select the one you currently need using my way. Second, you can turn off loader boot at power on - then you can skip loader boot and jump diretly to the image you want. And you can manualy map the loader image to, let's say, D8 and swap to it whenever needed. 

 

But first of all - I answered the OP question on how to boot from D2 and so on.

[TZJB]

I just knew I shouldn't be reading this at this time of night. @Peri Noid has scrambled my brain. 🤪.

 

 

[DrVenkman]

26 minutes ago, Peri Noid said:

But first of all - I answered the OP question on how to boot from D2 and so on.

But you didn't - you told him to swap the D2: image into the D1: slot to boot from. Which several of us have already told him. 

[_The Doctor__]

It's just clumsy no matter how you slice it.

If you have to run to your PC/Laptop for so much, might as well be APE

NEON might be able to give us the look and feel of the WEB UI on the Atari itself maybe, but redirecting/serving itself to the Atari seems to have it's own challenges. My thoughts were to give the Neon Pages as http://FujiNetN/

or something like that. Since N is so prevalent in the FujiNet orbit, Might be easy to remember.

 

A hotkey that will rotate to and BOOT last selected slot/image is not a bad thing, it sure would make usability of the device more pleasant

Edited June 14, 2023 by _The Doctor__

[Peri Noid]

9 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

But you didn't - you told him to swap the D2: image into the D1: slot to boot from. Which several of us have already told him. 

Only @manterola mentioned something similar - yet, I gave the full solution. Let's not argue about it, though. It's possible - one may accept it or reject this way, but it works. Let the OP decide.

[manterola]

Since I have a Shift-Reset for cold start in my OS I keep loading several disk images with different games in all the slots of fujinet and then I perform a disk rotation and cold reset with the key combination.

Same effect could be achieved by simply powering the fujinet device from USB. First boot will load fujinet interface to select the disk images, then option will boot D1: . After you are done with the first image or game in D1: , press the drive rotation button and then power cycle your Atari computer.

[Rafael1138]

Thank you all for the explanation. It make sense the Computer Boot D1 by default. Didn't think about that.