With the competition of the fishing opener and Mothers Day, the May meeting brought in only a few members. I hope we will have a better turnout in June. This time of year, there never seems to be enough time for all of Minnesota's activities. After the meeting, while buying my DOM, Glenn showed me a list of what was on the 8-Bit CD-ROM that SPACE recently purchased. Old names are on there along with new names, and lots of them. This hoard of public domain software can only be a good thing for SPACE, and has come at a good time. I hope Brian, or one of our other members with an IBM, can get this project rolling.
I won't be at July's meeting. I wish I could say that I was doing something exciting, but won't be able to attend because of work schedules.
See You In August.
On Thursday, June 4th, we lost a very dedicated ATARI Club Member and current President. Don Langford passed away due to a Blood Clot and his loss is going to be hard to digest for sometime to come. Our Prayers and condolences go out to his family.
Thank You Don for that part of your life you shared with us.
With Mother's Day coming up and the fishing opener taking a toll, it is easy to imagine how many members would be able to make it to the May meeting. If you thought ten members you get a Gold Star. Add to the above nightmare just to get past the construction on Larpenteur Avenue and it wouldn't seem improbable of not having a May meeting at all. I drove past the entrance to the Center three times before I saw the small sign showing how to get there. The only reason I didn't give up is because I saw one car in the parking lot so I knew there had to be a way.
Oh, well, we did have a meeting after all and with just ten of us it was rather short but spirited meeting. the night ended on a high as the Club unbelievably passed the thousand mark. We did this with the renewal of one membership and the sale of eight DOM's which gave us receipts of $44.00 for the evening. Our only expense was $10.00 forthe BBS phone bill for May. Our balance now stands at $1007.75.
Next month we shouldn't have to deal with a Holiday or any other special event so I am hoping and expecting a much better turn out. I am sure there will be fishy, OOPS, I mean fish stories to pass on at the June meeting. Hope to see a lot more of you there.
P.S. I hope the construction will be done by the time the June meeting is upon us but if it isn't, just be careful and watch for the signs. See you all there.
Subj: Atari article: Notes on HD install with MIO
Date: 98-05-11 11:18:21 EDT
From: mcurrent@carleton.edu (Michael Current)
To: kirscheg@juno.com, mschm65612@aol.com
From: cb541@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (James R. Gilbert)
Date: 20 Apr 1998 04:12:22 GMT
Some Notes on using Hard Drive(s) with MIO
Russ Gilbert
These notes cannot/do not replace the MIO owner's manual. It is intended to give some helpful hints that the owner manual may leave a bit unclear.
The MIO can only use hard drives with 256 byte sectors. These would be only the older MFM, RLL and SCSI hard drives, probably less than 100 megs in size.
For MFM and RLL hard drives, a SCSI to MFM or SCSI to RLL adapter/controller must be used. The most common is the Adaptec 4000A, aka ACB-4000A controller, used with a Seagate ST225 20 meg hard drive. Any 256 byte/sector mfm hard drive can be used with the MIO and 4000A, however. The RLL Adaptec controller is the ACB-4070. I don't think using RLL drives with the 4000A or a MFM with a 4070 is a good idea. 256 byte/sector SCSI hard drives exist, such as the Seagate ST225N.
SCSI hard drives have the controller built into them, so no 'in between' controller is needed. SCSI uses a convention of ID number and Logical Unit Number (LUN). It seems the ID number is always 0 for a setup with a single controller. ie. the ID number identifies the controller number. I suppose you can somehow daisy chain controllers. You'd have to daisy chain controllers if you used two SCSI drives, which would have two separate controllers (remember the SCSI has built in controllers).
The LUN is the physical drive number. You must set a jumper on the drive itself to indicate which drive it is. 0, 1, 2, 3 etc.
So, drive 1 on the controller is ID 0, LUN 0. Drive 2, attached to the same controller would be ID 0, LUN 1.
The MIO also can use SASI drives. I have no idea what these are.
Ok, now to my notes on specifics of setting up.
I. THE CABLES. POWER SUPPLY AND JUMPER SETTINGS:
Keep your cables short. No more than about one foot in length is probably best. Any pc power supply can be used that has the 'standard' four hole 'D' shaped power plugs. Newer power supplies may not have the correct plug, or an adapter may be needed. The power requirements of the controller and HDs should be carefully determined, and matching power given to them.
There must always be a drive 0. If more than one drive is to be used, the termination resistor, somewhere on the hard drive itself, must be removed. Only the last drive MUST have this termination resistor and no other drives can have it, as I understand. There are no termination resistors on the cables themselves (the MIO documentation seems to indicate there should be.) Sometimes the termination resistor isn't where you can get at it, it is inside the drive someplace. Possibly a drive like this would have to be the last drive.
Set the jumper which selects the drive number. The first one for drive one. These jumpers can often be identified by searching for drive information from the drive manufacturer on the www (eg. www.seagate.com).
A fifty pin ribbon cable connects to the MIO. The red 'line' on the cable is wire #1 and goes to pin 1. Pin one is at the top back of the MIO. It is possible to put this ribbon on backwards. With the pin type headers, great care and patience should be taken to line up the holes and pins and gently push the cable connector on the pins. Removing the connector should be done slowly, probably prying with a small screw driver, first one side then the other. It is VERY easy to bend and break the head pins, great care must be taken installing and removing the cables.
For MFM and RLL drives, there is a 34 pin and a 20 pin ribbon cable to the drives, coming from the adapter. The 34 pin can be daisy chained. Each drive gets a separate 20 pin ribbon. The J0 on the 4000A is for drive 1 and J1 is for drive 2. Be sure the 20 pin connections and the jumper settings on the HD match. And be certain of the pin 1s on your connections. More than one connection can be done backwards. The slot connectors with a notch are nice because you can't put them on backwards.
II. WITH CONNECTIONS MADE, YOU ARE READY TO POWER UP:
The sequence is first hds, then MIO and finally computer. The hard drive lights should blink a few times and the controller light should blink a few times, then all hd and controller lights should go out (if they don't, something is wrong with your setup or hardware). With lights out on the hd and controller, turn on the MIO.
Finally turn on the computer. Hold SELECT and hit RESET to enter the MIO menu. Select 'T' for drive type, and hit 'N' to select the number of the drive you want the hd partition to be. The MIO menu determines a hd partition. A partition cannot be larger than 16 megs. You can partition a single hd to be more than one 'Drive #' in order to use more of the hard drive over 16 megs.
I'm only going to describe a single hard drive setup. If you understand this, you can add another one.
Say the hard drive is a 20 meg. You want a 16 meg partition and a 4 meg partition. You select, say, drive # 3 to be a Hard drive. I forget when you hit SPACE and when you hit ENTER, but you go thru the interface, ID, LUN, Cylinders (Drive size is automatically computed), Heads, Start Sector and End+1 sector. For a 16 meg partition, the start sector should be 1 and the End+1 sector 65536. The number of cylinders and heads you have to know from the hard drive manufacturer. Often, this is printed on the hd. For a second partition on the same physical hd, you would start with sector 65536 and end with the about 81180 (for 20 meg drive).
Ok, you can't save the configuration yet, the hd hasn't been low level formatted. For this use the hdfmtph6.com on the MIO disk you got. I had best, actually only, success with hdfmtph6. Other hds may do better with one of the other hdfmtphX, but hdfmtph6 worked best for me. You will be asked the ID, LUN you want to format. 0, 0 for the first partition. Then you'll be asked what type of controller you have. Finally you'll be asked 'buffered' or 'unbuffered'. You might get a hint from hard drive tech specs on this, but 'Buffered' worked best for me for a ST225 and Olivetti XM 5220/2.
The behavior of hdfmtph6 isn't very friendly, it doesn't let you know if it is hung or what is going on. Normally you begin the low level format and the hd light comes on for some time. Then the screen shows verifying blocks and the # of blocks to verify. If an error occurs, the whole process starts over. If lots and lots of errors occur, there is probably something wrong with your setup. Also, if the initial stage, before the verify, takes longer than, say, five minutes, something is wrong. I waited an hour once, I think. Everything could burn up, or something, the program just keeps going, saying nothing.
A successful completion of hdfmtph6 will tell you success and tell you also the number of sectors on the hd. Write this down, as it is the last sector you can use for partitioning in the MIO menu.
Finally, you go into the MIO menu, save the configuration and then run hdfmtdir.com to put the Atari Directory structure on the hd. All above is with SpartaDOS. MyDOS may have some differences, and, actually I suggest using MyDOS with the Black Box and SpartaDOS with the MIO.
Copy DOS (say x32d.dos) to the hd, type 'boot x32d.dos' and now you can boot from the hd. The MIO configuration will load from the hd when you do a power up sequence. Other than the first time, you can leave the MIO on all the time. Just be sure the hd is up to speed and finished initializing before turning on the computer.
Russ Gilbert April 19, 1998
russg@en.com or cb541@cleveland.freenet.edu
(Ewwwww! I love followup my own post)
The Seagate doc on ST225. It doesn't give bytes/sector, just total capacity in megs (1,000,000 bytes, not 1,024,000 bytes). # tracks, heads, discs, other stuff, sectors per drive. The point is, I'm pretty sure Seagate is specifying 512 bytes per sector, not 256. The other point is, I think probably ANY MFM drive will work (or can at least try it), with MIO and Adaptec 4000A, the bytes/sector isn't all that important. The hdfmtph6 will make the 256 bytes per sector with 81000 'blocks'=sectors, whereas the Seagate doc says 41820 total sectors. Another thing. The termination resistor 'bank' or 'network'. IT TOO CAN BE PUT IN BACKWARDS. So make a mark on the 'outside' of it if you remove it, so you can put it back in properly.
Subj: Atari article: European Software Reviews - Part 1
Date: 98-05-11 15:50:07 EDT
From: mcurrent@carleton.edu (Michael Current)
To: kirscheg@juno.com, mschm65612@aol.com
From: jmouchmino@aol.com (JMouchmino)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Date: 1 May 1998 21:35:20 GMT
EUROPEAN SOFTWARE REVIEWS - PART 1
G stands for graphics
A stands for animation
S stands for sound
V stands for overall value
Reviews only reflect my opinion...
3-D Pac
Raindorf Soft - Germany
G - 65% - clear and adequate
A - 45% - average
S - 80% - partly digitized!
V - 55%
The name says it all!
Very frustrating game, unfortunately...
180!
Mastertronic - UK
G - 74% - good hi-res stuff
A - 70% - nothing fabulous, but nicely done
S - 75% - with speech!
V - 67%
Nice darts game!
A competent program.
A-Zone
B-Ware - UK
G - 50% - very average
A - 35% - substandard stuff
S - 28% - obnoxious... V - 32%
Substandard platform game!
Move over...
Acrobat
Muenzenloher Software - Germany
G - 30% - basic stuff
A - 50% - nothing extraordinary
S - 33% - you gotta be kidding...
V - 55%
A very old (1982 or something) and simple title.
Actually, it's just a Circus clone, so is worth a try or two; at least,
no bad surprises...
Action Biker
Mastertronic - UK
G - 50% - not fantastic; sloppy presentation
A - 60% - control is OK
S - 55% - not great, but there's worse
V - 62%
After all, this was a budget game (sold on tape at a very cheap price),
so... Not unforgettable but quite playable...
Adax
LK Avalon - Poland
G - 74% - colorful
A - 77% - nothing to complain about
S - 72% - debut of the Polish era...
V - 74%
Difficult but very pleasant arcade adventure with some cool touches.
A very professional game.
AD 2044 - Sexmisja
LK Avalon - Poland
G - 74% - very clear
A - N/A
S - N/A
V - ??%
A point and click adventure which seems to have numerous locations and
looks really great to play, but COMPLETELY in Polish; maybe with a dictionary...
Advanced Pinball Simulator
Code Masters - UK
G - 59% - looks like a Spectrum game!
A - 50% - not really super
S - N/A
V - 63%
This game could've been nice, but it's just too difficult to play.
Technically speaking, it's far from fabulous.
Adventures Of Robin Hood
English Software - UK
G - 60% - colorful, but sprites are ridiculous
A - 56% - nothing difficult to do...
S - 52% - what can I say here?
V - 40%
Very repetitious gameplay.
No imagination.
Air Strike
English Software - UK
G - 35% - uninspired...
A - 40% - jerky...
S - 35% - nothing new...
V - 22%
Joystick responsiveness is the whole problem...
Sorry, but I feel this one is just too frustrating.
Airwolf (later released as Blue Thunder)
Elite - UK
G - 50% - colorful, but you still get a sloppy presentation screen...
A - 40% - sluggish
S - 30% - normal...
V - 35%
Could've been fun...
This one starts so-so and quickly becomes irritating.
Amaurote
Mastertronic - UK
G - 86% - really great hi-res graphics
A - 84% - nice, too...
S - 86% - very good music and super sound effects
V - 74%
Highly original game, once you know what to do...
Strange stuff, so may not appeal to everyone.
Amnesia
Robert Stuart - UK
G - 92% - stunning detail
A - 93% - even more stunning!
S - 65% - does its work...
V - 82%
A game similar to Matchboxes...
Simple, but expertly designed PD game; REAL Atari programming...
Arax
? - Germany
G - 74% - nicely drawn
A - 72% - again, good stuff
S - 60% - OK
V - 69%
Vertical shoot'em up similar to Xevious or Flak.
Tough, but a nice little program.
END OF PART 1
Published by the Saint Paul Atari Computer Enthusiasts (SPACE), an independent organization with no business affiliation with ATARI Corporation. Permission is granted to any similar organization with which SPACE exchanges newsletters to reprint material from this newsletter. We do however ask that credit be given to the authors and to SPACE. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of SPACE, the club officers, club members or ATARI Corporation.