Raspberry PI PICO ATARI ST Hard Drive Emulator (WIP)

[exxos]

Yes...and not just to help by testing in an STE with your 32MHz plug-in accelerator!

I designed a experimental patch board a while back to help fix that problem. Though "life" never stops dumping BS on me, so not sure when I will ever get time to test the thing Hopefully some point this year!

[JezC]

I designed a experimental patch board a while back to help fix that problem. Though "life" never stops dumping BS on me, so not sure when I will ever get time to test the thing Hopefully some point this year!

Well, I might be able to help with that (testing with & without the patch board) if that's any use?

[exxos]

Well, I might be able to help with that (testing with & without the patch board) if that's any use?

Possibly yes. I can re-synchronise the booster which will resolve that particular issue. I'm not sure is going to be that simple because I still believe there is some weird DMA issue going on which shouldn't. Obviously changing the CPU solves it for the most part. But I think the timings get borderline again when the booster is used. It's why I purchased a LA to measure the timings between a stock machine and a boosted one and to also overlay between the Pico drive and Ultrasatan. It is difficult to analyse such problems with so many variables But first I need to verify a stock configuration again.

I think 8 drives sold in total ? But I haven't kept up with all the goings-on due to all the chaos in my life lately and I've been extremely busy with work as well. So I don't know if people are still having problems with stock machines or not ? I don't think all 8 people are even on the forum ? IIRC I still had issues after the recent firmware update on my STE (stock machine) .So that needs to be addressed. But I don't know if there has been a firmware release or fixes since then or not ? I need to get my STE back on my desk and do some tests with everything again.

[chronicthehedgehog]

I've had no problems with mine on an STe since the last firmware release.

Gave it a quick go on my FM and that seemed fine as well - although unable to use it much on that as it's only half meg.

[exxos]

Looking back here viewtopic.php?p=102118#p102118 I likely had the 1.12 firmware while I was having issues with, assuming none have been deleted off the site since I downloaded last time ?. I think this is the same STE as I was using then.

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This one is basically a stock machine other than the HC CPU & TOS206. It also has the allegedly "Good DMA" the 001A. I've flashed V1.13 firmware.

My SD card is full of files from testing before. So it's a simple matter of just deleting currently.

It did not last long and it came up 3 bombs.

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I left it running for a while then when I got up my lunch it then bombed again.

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I suspect this is the horrid USB connector at work. I think just a slight vibration of me getting out of my chair has caused it to crash.

So what I will do next is just simply solder the power to the board to rule that out and then repeat the testing again.

EDIT:

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So bombs = power problems then it seems.

Will continue copying files about...

[exxos]

Filled up drive totally without error.

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Still need to do more copies and deletes to verify yet though. So far so good I think. I have also loaded GB6 from various places on the drive to verify programs are not corrupted.

However it died at the end of deleting all the files. Though this could be down to any number of reasons. Likely because the STE hasn't had any of the mandatory fixes done yet.

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I'm currently copying files back to the drive again. Its taking some hours to complete I probably won't have time today to do another test machine with the -38 DMA. Though it is probably getting a bit off topic of testing the drive at that point anyway.

I may try de-fragging the drive with I think it was, Diamond edge ? I have it on my Falcon drive *somewhere* think it is a free download somewhere now anyway ?

[exxos]

Found EDGE https://sourceforge.net/projects/diamond-edge/

It had me puzzled for a while. Seems it does not like trying to install from hard drive from a folder called EDGE!

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Hello my old friend.

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So this took rather a long time..

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I'm not really sure why when I selected "FRAG MAP" Showed all green basically. But when clicking optimise the whole lot went RED for like 100% fragmented

Anyway, the HDD LED is pretty much on continuously. So it is getting a good workout!

[Darklord]

Use Kobold to drastically cut down the time on those file transfers.

Just a thought...

[exxos]

Use Kobold to drastically cut down the time on those file transfers.

I have heard of it but never used it.

[Darklord]

Use Kobold to drastically cut down the time on those file transfers.

I have heard of it but never used it.

You won't believe the difference in speed! I use it when I'm backing
up the files on my BBS to SD card. There's like hundreds of folders
and literally 5000-6000 files and it does it in an incredibly short time.

It does all kinds of cool things including getting rid of those pesky
files that Windows sometimes drops all my Atari SD cards when I
use my Win10 box to access it.

Clean in in the Windows aisle, Kobold to the rescue.