exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hi Roger,

There are some very helpful guys on the Atari ST Musicians Network over on Facebook - and one of them will probably be able to upload a digital copy of the manual for your reference.

There is also a video tutorial for it which might help you once you actually get it started up...hopefully I'm allowed to post an external link here (Mods - please tell me if not and I will remove it & PM it to Roger instead) - I did look for it on this website but couldn't find it.
http://www.notator.org/html/img_video.html

If you try to load the program without the dongle inserted I think you will eventually get an error message, so if it's not coming up with that, then it sounds like the dongle is at least partially working.
If I can make time tomorrow I will try my copy on a 1040 with TOS 1.04 & report back with my results with & without the dongle present. I'd try a completely clean boot & then run Notator from there as 1M of ram is pretty much the bare minimum for Notator itself IIRC - with very little space left for MIDI data.

Which version of Notator are you running? I will see which ones I have available for testing as well.
I'm pretty sure that @Cosmic Puppet is using 3.21 (which is the last ever version & works with the original dongle plus the Log3 adaptor for Notator Logic) & I've definitely got that somewhere...

I presume you are running it in hi-res (it won't work in med or low)...definitely OK when loading from floppy (I was doing that for the first year or three until I could afford a hard drive) but it does take an eternity...I have memories of going & making a brew while it loaded...

To properly investigate this graphics funny, you will need to use EmuTOS (which should be easy for you!) rather than TOS 1.04 and also load NVDI, so I suspect you will need more RAM in your machine as well.

No point worrying about the MIDI gear just yet - though pretty much any recent PC (and presumably Mac as well?) should allow you to receive General MIDI data and have it play via the s/w generated GM sounds..all you'd need is the MIDI to USB interface to plug into your PC or Mac.

Anyway, I've just been summoned to bed by my better half (yes, there is a thumb-shaped depression on top of my head!) so I hope to post an update here tomorrow evening.

Hi @anodyne Roger.

Here is a clone of my system, that I load from my UltraSatan:
Just double click Notator and it should load.

I've swapped the : for a space by changing the autoload file. I can't reset it for you as I don't have my Atari just now, but if you click New Song in the drop down menu this will set it back to default.

This is from my Notator Floppy disk which I've had since '95 which is quite reliable.

Loading from floppy would hang every once in a while.

See if it works with my Notator copy.

Here is Notator by itself for copying to floppy:

Thanks @JezC

Here's a link to the vid you mentioned:

Cosmic Puppet wrote: 13 Aug 2020 00:00 See if it works with my Notator copy.

Here is Notator by itself for copying to floppy:

NOTATOR.zip

Thanks! I will test later today (Thursday). I was using 3.21 from a couple of different downloads, which is why I rather suspect the dongle, but having a known working version will definitely help me to narrow things down a bit.

I tried a version from the web and had lots of trouble. It was early days when I was building my setup. Turns out my version is pretty good even though it's off a 27 year old floppy disk.

I would say if my version doesn't work then it's Dongle or something else as I used to use it on another Atari which was a different revision and it was as reliable.

Also, I only get the broken line issue with EmuTOS. It's not present on TOS 1.04.

All the files in the two copies of Notator you sent are identical to one of my copies (which IIRC was downloaded from the exxos site earlier). So the problem isn't with the software. I tried running without the dongle, and I get the same result as with it: the system hangs (can't move the mouse cursor) after displaying the splash screen. That's similar to what I get under Hatari (where of course there is no dongle). So unless someone has a bright idea, I'm going to assume the dongle is dead.

Cosmic Puppet wrote: 13 Aug 2020 20:36 I tried a version from the web and had lots of trouble. It was early days when I was building my setup. Turns out my version is pretty good even though it's off a 27 year old floppy disk.

I would say if my version doesn't work then it's Dongle or something else as I used to use it on another Atari which was a different revision and it was as reliable.

Also, I only get the broken line issue with EmuTOS. It's not present on TOS 1.04.

Yes, that's why I'm doing this. But I figure that if it won't work with TOS 1.04, it's not going to work with EmuTOS. I learnt a long time ago that when debugging, you try to change only one thing at a time, so you know what's causing the problem. So I want to get it working in Atari TOS and make sure that I see the exact display, then switch to EmuTOS and observe the difference(s).

Ah, that's makes complete sense. I hadn't thought of it like that.

UPDATE - I tried it on my STe and it works! So now I shall carry on with my original plan. Sorry for the noise. Possibly the cartridge port on the 1040ST is dead, or perhaps it didn't like me launching Notator from B:. Since I only have an A: drive on my STe, I didn't have the choice there ...

anodyne wrote: 13 Aug 2020 21:39 UPDATE - I tried it on my STe and it works! So now I shall carry on with my original plan. Sorry for the noise. Possibly the cartridge port on the 1040ST is dead, or perhaps it didn't like me launching Notator from B:. Since I only have an A: drive on my STe, I didn't have the choice there ...

I just read this as my 1040 STFM (TOS 1.02) was loading Notator from the internal Gotek drive...which worked ok.

Anyway, glad to hear you got it running, so that dongle is now looking to be a working one, great!

How much RAM do you have installed in your STE?

Good luck with the rest of the bug hunt!