swap issues part 2: the empire strikes back

[Badwolf]

there are some games (looking at you Seven Cities of Gold) where the game disk is mounted into slot 1 and a blank .atr is mounted in slot 2.  I boot the game, get to the screen where she asks to insert map disk. I hit the big ole left button on the FJ and nothing. Nada. zip. NO computer dude telling me "disk 2" or anything. I mount the blank .atr in slot 1 in web config, program doesnt recognize it and just says please insert map disk (very polite). Yes the disk was configured using the seven cities of gold disk wizard thiny.

 

So Im basically stuck. Have to use real floppies to play this sucker. 

Other programs no problem. 

 

Any ideas?

Edited February 6 by Badwolf

[_The Doctor__]

POST your .atr's that you are using and a capture of your monitor/debug info that will show each step and the response on the way.

That info is obtained using a usb cable the the FN and it's flasher software. Might shed some light and see how it does or does not recognize the disk.

[Badwolf]

Here's the ATR. Here's my debug file. You can see it recognized the BUTTON_A: SHORT PRESS and performs an action, but it does not set the slot.  

COmparison, a successful disk swap should show this in the log:

[19:21:14] BUTTON_A: SHORT PRESS
[19:21:14] ACTION: Send image_rotate message to SIO queue
[19:21:14] Fuji cmd: IMAGE ROTATE
[19:21:14] setting slot 1 to ID 31
[19:21:14] setting slot 0 to ID 32

Seven Cities Of Gold A.atr

debug.txt

[_The Doctor__]

where is your blank disk made by SCoG? That is the one that needs be verified as recognized or not by FujiNet...

[Mr Robot]

Yeah this is one of those timeless problems, you get the same issues with SDrive and SIO2SD. 

 

The disk slots are not disk drives and an atr is not a disk, it is just a disk side. 

 

What should happen is the device should emulate disk drives, not 'slots', and each drive should be able to have multiple disk sides allocated to it. Then you'd need two buttons, one to select disk drive, one to cycle disk sides for the selected drive. Each drive should be able to handle multiple disks/sides for software that came on multiple disks but only supported a single drive. I'd imagine you'd not need more than 2 disks per drive so a max of 4 sides.

 

This would get around the issue and would also probably be more intuitive for people who are struggling with the disk rotation thing. 

 

I'd then probably reduce the number of emulated drives to 4 or something. It would be very unusual to need more than 4 drives at a time.

 

Edited February 12 by Mr Robot

[_The Doctor__]

Good news is you have the buttons and the logic.

bad news is 8 drives minimum to be enough for some BBS's and such.

Drive 1 and Drive 2 are the only ones that would ever need more than 2 disks with two sides

all other Drives would be fine with 1 disk and 2 sides.

This would then cascade into a Disk set file of sorts if you wanted to give the mice everything so they wouldn't ask for milk with the cookie

 

Edited February 12 by _The Doctor__

[Atari8guy]

17 hours ago, Mr Robot said:

Yeah this is one of those timeless problems, you get the same issues with SDrive and SIO2SD. 

 

The disk slots are not disk drives and an atr is not a disk, it is just a disk side. 

 

What should happen is the device should emulate disk drives, not 'slots', and each drive should be able to have multiple disk sides allocated to it. Then you'd need two buttons, one to select disk drive, one to cycle disk sides for the selected drive. Each drive should be able to handle multiple disks/sides for software that came on multiple disks but only supported a single drive. I'd imagine you'd not need more than 2 disks per drive so a max of 4 sides.

 

This would get around the issue and would also probably be more intuitive for people who are struggling with the disk rotation thing. 

 

I'd then probably reduce the number of emulated drives to 4 or something. It would be very unusual to need more than 4 drives at a time.

 

Just for the sake of my own education... I don't understand this?  How would having mulitple sides help? surely the Atari doesn't know if you've flipped the disk or just inserted a new one?  what am I missing?  ELI5 (or 3 maybe)

Edited February 13 by Atari8guy

[_The Doctor__]

some games used to be made for 2 drive and it asks for you to flip disk 2 to side b or disk1 to side a etc.

so you toggle once instead of 3 or more times for each request, then when it asks for a character or save disk you can rotate instead of flip.

I understand his pain, as I used to play multidisk games by interstel that were flipping nightmares

[Mr Robot]

5 hours ago, Atari8guy said:

Just for the sake of my own education... I don't understand this?  How would having mulitple sides help? surely the Atari doesn't know if you've flipped the disk or just inserted a new one?  what am I missing?  ELI5 (or 3 maybe)

The OP is a good example, Seven Cities of Gold comes on a 2 sided disk (or maybe 2 disks with one side on each, either way, you end up with two ATR files) and it needs a blank DOS disk in Drive 2 for saves. In emulation land that's another ATR.

 

In a real atari you'd put the SCoG disk in drive one, the save disk in drive 2 and boot the Atari. At some point you'd be asked to eject disk 1 and insert side B (or disk 2) into drive 1, the Save disk would stay in drive 2. 

 

In emulation land you'd insert ATR 1 in slot 1, and the blank ATR in slot 2, you now have nowhere to insert the 2nd SCoG ATR. If you put it in slot 2 you don't have anywhere for the save disk, if you put it in slot 3 when you press the rotate button, atr 1 becomes atr 3, the blank atr becomes atr 1 and the second SCoG atr becomes slot 2, press it again and now the second SCoG ATR is in the right slot but the blank ATR is now in slot 3 

 

There's basically no way to leave an ATR in slot two and rotate between two different ATRs in slot 1

 

There are lots of cases where the software supports 2 drives but expects you to load from drive 1 and save to drive 2, if it takes more than 1 disk/side to load, it falls apart in modern devices.

 

 

[mozzwald]

You can always manually swap / re-mount disks with the web interface. I realize it's not as easy as pressing a button, but it achieves the same result.