exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I found myself with an Atari STe for the first time about a year ago. I recently upgraded it to 4mb and added an ACSI2STM SDCARD hard disk substitute in GemDrive mode. I have a very usable stable system, that sucessfully runs both applications and demanding HD converted games like Sleepwalker However, I have a couple of annoying niggles. Often after exiting an hd game I can only successfully run a new game after a full power on/off reboot. Also, if I want to change my desktop which thankfully I don't need to do often. I have to use my SD Card in my Laptop and do it in STEEM SSE. This is because saving changes in my desktop preferences results in an unreadable 0 bytes desktop.inf file and as a result a boot results in a looping restart. Interestingly all other file operations and types of file save successfully all the time. Just to see if it helps, I'm now going to try setting up AHDI and ICD images to see if they work better. I would be very interested to hear thoughts from those who understand this area well about 1) The cause of my desktop.inf issue. 2) The pros and cons of the various hd images available.

Some information is here.. I know little about the ACSI2STM, but generally speaking I don't use mine because of the power off issue that you mention and it is extremely slow compared to the Ultrasatan.

Yippee wrote: 17 Nov 2024 17:59 Often after exiting an hd game I can only successfully run a new game after a full power on/off reboot.

That is unfortunately pretty normal. It is down to the quality of the HDD game adaption. The game doesn't restore everything quite back to the state it was when the game was launched. Live with it? Contact the HDD adapter and raise an issue? There are sometimes duplicate different HDD adaptions from Pera Putnik, Dbug etc. try a different one?

Yippee wrote: 17 Nov 2024 17:59if I want to change my desktop which thankfully I don't need to do often. I have to use my SD Card in my Laptop and do it in STEEM SSE. This is because saving changes in my desktop preferences results in an unreadable 0 bytes desktop.inf file and as a result a boot results in a looping restart.

Not noticed that here but it is not something I would have done in a long time. Which version of ACSI2STM do you have?

Yippee wrote: 17 Nov 2024 17:59 This is because saving changes in my desktop preferences results in an unreadable 0 bytes desktop.inf file and as a result a boot results in a looping restart. Interestingly all other file operations and types of file save successfully all the time. Just to see if it helps, I'm now going to try setting up AHDI and ICD images to see if they work better. I would be very interested to hear thoughts from those who understand this area well about 1) The cause of my desktop.inf issue. 2) The pros and cons of the various hd images available.

What version of TOS do you have? The reason I ask is because you have an STE and I know that for 1.62 and 2.06 desktop.inf was replaced by newdesk.inf.

If you have desktop.inf that suggests you may be using TOS 1.6 which isn't the best version of TOS for your STE and I'd suggest you may want to upgrade it to 1.62 or 2.06 as it has some bugs, or get a dualTOS rom with both.

I can't say if that will fix your issue, but it's worth getting rid of a buggy version of TOS for a more stable version.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 18 Nov 2024 11:07 What version of TOS do you have? The reason I ask is because you have an STE and I know that for 1.62 and 2.06 desktop.inf was replaced by newdesk.inf. If you have desktop.inf that suggests you may be using TOS 1.6 which isn't the best version of TOS for your STE

Is that accurate? I thought that STe TOS (1.06 and 1.62) both use desktop.inf and only 2.06 uses newdesk.inf

alexh wrote: 18 Nov 2024 12:16

rubber_jonnie wrote: 18 Nov 2024 11:07 What version of TOS do you have? The reason I ask is because you have an STE and I know that for 1.62 and 2.06 desktop.inf was replaced by newdesk.inf. If you have desktop.inf that suggests you may be using TOS 1.6 which isn't the best version of TOS for your STE

Is that accurate? I thought that STe TOS (1.06 and 1.62) both use desktop.inf and only 2.06 uses newdesk.inf

Sorry yes, slight error on my part due to a testing issue with Hatari I didn't notice. 1.62 does use desktop.inf, that being said 2.06 is a much better version of TOS and worth the upgrade.

Just to share with everyone. I resolved the strange DESKTOP.INF file corruption that occured when I changed my desktop preferences using the ACI2STM, by reflashing it with firmware version 5.0. Previously I had 5.0a installed. So either 5.0 has modifications that solved the problem or the process of reflashing itself resolved the problem?