exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

@stephen_usher still happy for you to send it here and I'll upgrade it.

PhilC wrote: 11 Nov 2020 19:48 @stephen_usher still happy for you to send it here and I'll upgrade it.

Thanks. I'll wait until the replacement programmer arrives and if that doesn't work I'll send it over to you, if that's OK?

Yes no problem

PhilC wrote: 11 Nov 2020 17:45 Yeah no worries, I have a few spare 4gb ones, ill burn an image and send you it. Pm me your address again please.

Will do...but I think I/we probably need a set of steps to follow in creating a working CF card (assuming that the card is 'compatible' with a TF536 (and whatever f/w that needs).

Thanks again for your support and all the time you & others are devoting to helping get us up & running!
:thumbup: :2k2:

@JezC im still a relative Atari ST newb but the easiest way I make them is using an image that TF made and then adapted it. I'll see about making a better version and will upload it somewhere

@PhilC PM sent.

You're doing better than me...and I've been an ST user since 1987...but had a break from regularly using them for about 20 years from the late 90s until a couple of years ago.

Old age (and parenthood plus an occasional beverage) seems to have helped me forget most of what I knew about them back then ;)

Even a link to that original TF image would be a big help in the meantime.

stephen_usher wrote: 11 Nov 2020 19:44 It's not really seeing the CF card at all at the moment. The Microdrive doesn't seem to be spinning up at all, so maybe not enough power. Neither CF card is Atari formatted. The adapter is the one sold by Exxos.

Atari TOS (and HDDriver) wont be able to communicate properly with the card no matter if it's Atari or PC partitioned.
The actual IDE commands from the Atari ends up wrong so for example when the Atari thinks it's sending an "identify yourself" command, it ends up as gibberish in the eyes of the IDE device.
This is why you're getting rubbish name and sizes when scanning the devices with HDDriver.

EmuTOS will handle it fine as it supports both types of interfaces.
It will work in Atari TOS if you're using a "twisted cable" for turning that Amiga interface on the TF536 into an Atari one.

(Saying that, I think P.Putnik has a custom patched TOS 2.06 that works with twisted interfaces. I assume you'll need his driver as well)

I plan on using EmuTOS with the TF, as soon as it will boot it, which needs the firmware updated.

stephen_usher wrote: 12 Nov 2020 07:22 I plan on using EmuTOS with the TF, as soon as it will boot it, which needs the firmware updated.

@agranlund I'm using your EmuTOS boot ROM images on my H4 to start EmuTOS from floppy...and even with that I've not yet managed to get a CF card to be recognised on the TF536 in EmuTOS.

I'm wondering if it is indeed the issues with the firmware programmed into the TF536...

I'll see if @PhilC knows which version he programmed in initially & then I can see about updating it at some point (need to set up my RasPi + suitable image & cabling etc first...)

@JezC it was the first stable release that I used which doesn't have the 64mb bus error and means IDE doesn't work as well.

Check the firmware topic for the latest version and I'm willing to bet that'll solve your problems.