Raven. A homemade Atari-like computer

[agranlund]

Thank you, there is work to be done... First of all, some welding to review. What I don't understand is: are the Fat partitions usable with the adapter? Because I could start from there to copy the files and run tests. I thought that with the adapter I could only use the Tos partitions.

With EmuTOS, you can pretty much use whatever you want. Big-endian, little-endian, TOS, DOS, TOS/DOS dual-custom-hddriver-invention.. it doesn't care and basically works with just about anything you can throw at it (I hope they add FAT32 filesystem support some day, that would be really neat)

In that respect, the adapter wont really change anything or require you to change anything, to use your existing drive in EmuTOS (and MiNT loaded from EmuTOS)

The thing that the adapter brings is opening the door for being able to use non-EmuTOS operating systems (or Atari software that directly speaks to the IDE hardware instead of going through EmuTOS, but those are far and few between)


Atari TOS, and also MagiC, being much older doesn't have fully featured drivers built in. The only thing they are capable of is loading 3rd party drivers off the bootsector of a disc, and they are quite picky doing so assuming an Atari style IDE interface. And then those external drivers themselves are usually more picky / less advanced compared to EmuTOS's built-in driver. They usually expect things to be the Atari way.


Unfortunately Atari decided to wire up the IDE port differently compared to how PC (and Amiga) did it.
(I followed the "standard" PC/Amiga way on Raven which is hindsight was a mistake, but I never counted on wanting to use non-EmuTOS stuff then, hence the need for the byteswap adapter to make it wired up exactly the same as a real Atari)

And even if a 3rd party driver itself would support Intel IDE interface, that doesn't guarantee that the OS's extremely minimal IDE code is able to load that driver off the bootsector to launch it..
(this is why HDDrivers PC-compatibility options will render an IDE drive non-bootable under Atari TOS - sure, the driver will make the disk work in TOS, but TOS itself is not able to load and start the driver from such disk in the first place)

[Atarian Computing]

Specifically, "en/gemsys/magic/xtension" seemed to be the root of those problems -- most likely the .SLB Files.
Again, your mileage may vary.

Yeah, I've reported this issue years ago but it never got fixed. This is not a Raven specific problem. I've replaced the problematic files from the original installation.

[luciodra]

Right ?

IMG_2531.jpg (649.15 KiB) Viewed 646 times

[agranlund]

@luciodra , yep that's how it looks in my machine too

Edit:
Well, except that my adapter has female connector on the motherboard side and male connector at the other side. Basically acting like a direct extension of the male connectors on the motherboard (except also swapping D7:0 with D15:8).

To it, I am connecting either adapters/dom that directly has female connector (acting as if it "is" the cable itself) or a female<->female IDC cable that connects to an adapter with male (device) pins.

I don't know if your female-female variant connected to male sd-card adapter ends up being the same or not, never tried any such IDE to SD-Card adapter in Raven nor the ST.
Ie; I don't know if the pinout of those male (device) pins would be exactly the same, or reverse, of female (cable) pinout.
Or I might just be confusing myself, and others now

[agranlund]

Yeah, I've reported this issue years ago but it never got fixed. This is not a Raven specific problem. I've replaced the problematic files from the original installation.

Ah thank you, that's really good to know!

[agranlund]

@luciodra , hmmn, I would tripple check that the adapter situation does what you need it to do.
I could be confused but I'm concerned if the polarity of the two rows are wrong in your setup.

red being pin1 from the motherboard, which is the bottom-left pin on the motherboard as well as on the output end of the byteswap extension pcb. I could be wrong but to me it looks like pin1 on the sd-card adapter is the one marked green.

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If you made one of the right-angle female plugs exit the top side of the small adapter pcb and the other exiting the underside, then I think it'll work as a female-female cable as opposed to a female-male extension-cable? (with the caveat that I haven't though anything through here)

[luciodra]

...and in fact it doesn't work, but I didn't do any damage...

[luciodra]

What if I used this

31qGN+upNtL._AC_.jpg (14.92 KiB) Viewed 617 times

to join these, in this position?

IMG_2533.jpg (429.21 KiB) Viewed 617 times

[agranlund]

@luciodra , yep that should work.

[luciodra]

Thank you !