is Diamond OS still available ?

[andy_bernstein]

Question for Curt:

 

Is the Diamond OS (and any compatible application) still available ?

 

Also, is there something better than Diamond OS (in terms of a GUI interface) for the Atari XL / XE or is Diamond the only alternative ?

 

Thanks for any info.

 

AB.

[Curt Vendel]

Andy,

 

No new copies, occassionally Diamond shows up here and there. Alan Reeve and I talked a long while back and Alan said anything Diamond OS related could be freely distributed around.

 

I finally bought a registered copy of APE, so I'm going to dump all of the Diamond OS, developers, Write, Paint, etc... disks and post them, I also have the original Diamond developers manual which I will scan and post as well.

 

As for the Diamond GOS cartridge, the other issue is with the PAL used on it as it was a custom design done by ICD, Inc and I'm not sure if anyone ever cracked it, so getting Diamond on a Piggyback cart could pose a problem, then again maybe not with Sunmarks 1MB+ carts and Steve Tuckers Flash Carts, it could be possible to put all the Diamond OS and utils right onto a single cart.

 

As for something better, I have tried BOSS XL in emulation and it is really nice, there is also SAM which I bought from David Garratty (not spelling that name corrrectly, sorry) which is really slick and has some apps for it too.

 

If you've got an SIO2IDE or the MYIDE interfaces and HD or using APE connected to a PC and you boot with Diamond or Boss or Sam enabled, then it really makes navigating through everything a lot easier.

 

 

 

Curt

[classics]

Andy,

  As for the Diamond GOS cartridge, the other issue is with the PAL used on it as it was a custom design done by ICD, Inc and I'm not sure if anyone ever cracked it, so getting Diamond on a Piggyback cart could pose a problem, then again maybe not with Sunmarks 1MB+ carts and Steve Tuckers Flash Carts, it could be possible to put all the Diamond OS and utils right onto a single cart.

 

There is a Diamond GOS flash-cartridge image in the forum, it runs on the 1mbit cartridge hardware fine, but only uses half the cartridge capacity, same for Spartados X.

 

If someone could find out how these carts store thier 'romdisk' contents, much larger carts could be made and flashed.

 

Spartados X uses about half its 64k cart for the utilities in the 'CAR:' drive, or about 32k of space. If someone figured out how to expand the romdisk, you could have nearly a megabyte of romdisk with spartados X on an 8mbit cartridge.

 

Steve

[andy_bernstein]

Curt and Steven,

 

Thank you for replying so fast.

 

If you read some of my previous posts, you probably remember that I went back to programming (so far Basic language only) and, being a Macintosh user, I have very little programming tools (beyond C65) at my disposal so, if any OS can make my task easier, I'll go for it.

 

Also, I have never stated this before but I want to thank Steven Tucker for developing his Flash Cartridge (plus Steve, Thank you for the SIO2PC cable from a while ago). It's the first time casual developers can test their creations on a real cartridge without the need of an EPROM burner. Just for this, I'll be forever grateful.

 

Finally, I'm giving a hand to Analmux on his GTIA upgrade. I'm going back to iron soldering this month (first step: STEREO POKEY UPGRADE) but to manufacture the PCB board (beyond the prototype) will probably require quite a few people interested. Hopefully, enough people will be interested in.

 

That's all for now - thanks for everything.

 

From the crazy Hollywood world...

 

AB.

[Goochman]

Andy,

 

   No new copies, occassionally Diamond shows up here and there.   Alan Reeve and I talked a long while back and Alan said anything Diamond OS related  could be freely distributed around.

 

  I finally bought a registered copy of APE, so I'm going to dump all of the Diamond OS, developers, Write, Paint, etc... disks and post them, I also have the original Diamond developers manual which I will scan and post as well.

 

  As for the Diamond GOS cartridge, the other issue is with the PAL used on it as it was a custom design done by ICD, Inc and I'm not sure if anyone ever cracked it, so getting Diamond on a Piggyback cart could pose a problem, then again maybe not with Sunmarks 1MB+ carts and Steve Tuckers Flash Carts, it could be possible to put all the Diamond OS and utils right onto a single cart.

 

 As for something better, I have tried BOSS XL in emulation and it is really nice, there is also SAM which I bought from David Garratty (not spelling that name corrrectly, sorry) which is really slick and has some apps for it too.

 

 If you've got an SIO2IDE or the MYIDE interfaces and HD or using APE connected to a PC and you boot with Diamond or Boss or Sam enabled, then it really makes navigating through everything a lot easier.

 

 

 

Curt

 

Curt,

 

I have a Diamond GS cart that I was unable to get working with MyIDE - DO you know of anyone who has been successful doing this?

[analmux]

Finally, I'm giving a hand to Analmux on his GTIA upgrade. I'm going back to iron soldering this month (first step: STEREO POKEY UPGRADE) but to manufacture the PCB board (beyond the prototype) will probably require quite a few people interested. Hopefully, enough people will be interested in.

 

Well, have you read the "Do you want better graphics"-poll? I think 30 people are interested.

 

I think I'll continue developing the upgrade after chrismas, when my programming is done for the Super Mario clone.

 

-----

mux

[TXG/MNX]

There is a Diamond GOS flash-cartridge image in the forum, it runs on the 1mbit cartridge hardware fine, but only uses half the cartridge capacity, same for Spartados X.

 

Steve

 

I didn't test this version yet, because i have the real Diamond OS cartridge. But was this version the ROM version or the Disk version you made for the 1Mb cart ?

 

TXG/MNX

[Gunstar]

If you have an SIO2PC or MYIDE, etc. ATOS is the definitive graphic operating system that goes far beyond any of the others in scope, it requires at least several megs of HD space on an Atari harddrive or PC HD though. he does plan on giving a tutorial or something to set it up on floppy drive only systems though, in the near future. i have mine set up with SIO2PC/APE and SpartaDOS, it's awsome!

 

http://cth.dtdns.net/atos/

 

The best part is it's totally free! Tom made this environment that totally blows away any other 8-bit windows envirnoment (including C64 GEOS by a mile!) and he did it for the pure love of Atari 8-bits and it's free. I offered to send him some money, thinking it was shareware, but he'd have nothing to do with it! Great guy!