Geneva/Neodesk - how to?

[arti040]

I got stock Atari STe expanded with UltraSatan Mini, 4MB RAM and EmuTOS in ROM. I'd like to try Geneva/Neodesk packages as they look very promising in terms of my needs. First question is - how to start? As I read here and there, I should probably first invest some money in filesystem - PeraPutnik, HDDrive, right? - which one is better? And later create some partition(s) on my microSD card, yes? Can I do this on PC/Mac? What about next step?

Finally I want to have Atari booting Geneva and Neodesk environment.

Bonus question - can I have few other environments installed, like Mint or MagiC (as separate partitions?) and install some kind of boot-selector for them? If yes, what should look for?

[viking272]

Hi,

Having a hard disk or SD card system would be advantageous as it allows you to boot into your designated systems quite easily if you use a boot menu like Xboot 3.
Neodesk and Geneva work well and the author Dan Wilga at Gribnif has put them on his website as donationware.

You can run all these on an emulator first, that would allow you to test and trial it all out before putting it on your STE. The real thing is a lot more fun....

There's a lot of options for your ste, and yes a hard disk driver is needed. I think the icd one is free now but not sure it works with ultrasatan.
Once you add a boot menu then it can manage multiple environments like MagiC and MiNT...although I think MiNT needs more ram for a better experience.

[arti040]

Would you provide some links for how it should be performed step-by-step. I don't even know, how to start ;-)
To perpare miniSD card first? One partition per environment I want to use? And then what? XBoot? How? Where? I'm completely newbie. :?

[viking272]

What I will say is that researching and finding information is part of the joys/headaches of our beloved machines!
There is a wealth of information out there on forums, blogs and YouTube.

There is also tonnes of extra hardware gadgets and homegrown solutions too, some DIY and some you purchase so a lot of features can be added to Atari.

A quick google for Ultrasatan and partitioning finds this site:
http://joo.kie.sk/?page_id=306

I think Jookie is the main developer of the UltraSatan and he references the ICD Pro utils which are free. There are pros and cons for using Ppera's and Uwe's HD Driver, so you have to have a little read around those too but as a starting point the ICD Pro utils should work.

If you follow the above guide you will end up with between 4-8 partitions on your card and thse will be C: drive, D: drive etc.
The AUTO folder usually resides on the C: drive and all your applications, games, demos and creativity can be put on the other paritions and accessed directly from the desktop.
You could have a different SD card for each configuration but it would become tricky with all your other apps/games unless they were on another one.

You don't need a Boot manager but can install NeoDesk and Geneva directly to the C: drive and they will boot up.

The issue comes if you install say MagiC or MiNT and they start interfering with each others installations to make themselves the primary OS/desktop.

So setting each one up under a different config helps make your system more manageable.
There are guides like this:

[arti040]

Mhkey. I already know, how to create and mount partitions under GEM with ICD! Also I'm aware what GEM/BGM types are and what kind of limits they have. So there is some progress, I guess. However, this what I don't know and was not able to find any answer anywhere is - how to mount FAT16 partition under GEM. I've taken some old 2GB microSD card and created there small, 30MB-sized partition formatted with FAT16. Then - I put it into second slot of UltraSatan and... see nothing :-(

[exxos]

IMHO you should just buy HDdriver . It's designed to work properly with more modern hard drives.

There is a free demo version as well. But with limitations. https://www.hddriver.net/en/demo.html

[arti040]

Yes, I got a plan to invest some money in modern HDD driver but first I want just to learn something. As I read here and there, it should just works... but for some reason it doesn't.

[exxos]

Are you aware you have to install the drive icon on the desktop ?

[arti040]

I tried so, like with atari-native paritions I do but have no idea what letter should I assign to it as my UltraSatan does not report any partition on PC microSD card during startup - maybe here is a problem? Maybe I just did something wrong during partitioning/formatting it.

[exxos]

I tried so, like with atari-native partitions I do but have no idea what letter should I assign to it as my UltraSatan does not report any partition on PC microSD card during startup - maybe here is a problem? Maybe I just did something wrong during partitioning/formatting it.

Afraid myself personally I have never used ICD tools. But in the gem menu, depending what version of TOS you have, will basically click one of the floppy drive a icons, then going to the options menu, install devices, and use a capital C. and see if you can access it.

If you have TOS206, even just click uninstall devices and it will do it automatically. If the drive does not show up then something must have gone wrong inside ICD tools.

There is also a problem of DMA issues on the STe in particular. So you could be running into any number of issues.