Ultra Satan Advice

[English Invader]

I recently bought a US and the SD card that came with it works fine on the ST, but when I try to access it on my PC it just says that the card has not been formatted. I've tried to access the card through MS-DOS, but the PC still wouldn't recognise it.

I'm not very fluent in MS-DOS so it's quite possible that there's something I'm not doing right or it's got nothing to do with MS-DOS at all in which case it would be great if someone could tell me how I can access the card to add or remove files.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[AtariZoll]

Your problem is certainly because card is not in DOS format, but Atari TOS (AHDI) format/type partitioned.

There are 2 things you can do:
1. Using special SW what recognizes TOS partitions, so you can extract and add files, make card image:
http://atari.8bitchip.info/drimus.php

2. Partitioning card in TOS/DOS compatibility format. Then can access files directly in Windows - preferable with Total Commander.

Possible with Hddriver and PP driver. Second way is preferable, especially if you often attach card to PC.
Note: if you use only MS-DOS, 2-ond way will work too. First needs Windows XP or Linux.

[DarkLord]

If you have a 'Nix machine, you can use Mtools. I use it regularly here with Kubuntu
Linux to transfer files back and forth between my main Linux box and 2 gig SD cards
that I use in my STacy.

HTHs.

[Guest]

my advice it to use the pc and mount the sdcard to a format tool
that writes zeros to the cards full memory
then unplug it from the pc
and use hddrriver to format as tos and dos compatible
follow one of the many guides
you can end up with a state where if the sdcard has a fat/32 partition data
written to it
then you get issues with ultrasatan 'seeing; the card
so try that if you have issue to dual format or even see a card....
prep the card first too all zero ive had a few cards
that the ste could not see except when the pc wrote zeros and i unplug it before the pc again writes data to the cards file tables etc
use hddutil to format the card if its been in a pc and the atari can see it then partition it and activate the partitions
and this fixed it


did you flash jookies latest firmware to your ultrasatan!!!

he mentioned that older firmware is nolonger fully complients to new versions of hddriver.sys etc...

few topics down
needs made to a sticky i feel

try his site

http://joo.kie.sk/?page_id=255

topic V1.13 firmware ultrasatandisk


http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=24992

[English Invader]

I'm having trouble getting the US up and running with 3 different SD cards:

1) the ICD formatted one that came with the US; it came with a ton of demos and I was able to run them successfully on the ST and I was also able to add files to the card via the Drive Image software, but when I tried to run the added files on my ST all I got was the "You can only print or show this document" prompt; to make matters worse, I've inadvertently pressed the wrong button somewhere and all the files on that SD card are gone .

2) the second SD card I'm using is a ST/DOS formatted one from eBay. Again, I'm able to copy files with the Drive Image software but on the ST they still come up as print or show documents.

3) the third SD card is a plain off the shelf one that I've been trying to add a pre-prepared image from the following site:
http://atari.8bitchip.info/DiskImgPP1.html

I'm able to use the Drive Image software to browse the contents of the image, but I've had no success in getting it to run on my ST.

This is without doubt the most troublesome flash device I've encountered so far and I'm a regular user of uIEC/SD, SD2IEC, DivIDE and Harmony. Someone please help .

[nativ]

any files you copy across to the Atari need to use CAPITOL1.LET 12345678+123, 8+3 file names in Capitols, Tos 2.06 and 4.04 and the replacement OS, Magic etc. are more tolerant of file names, but others not so.

[AtariZoll]

Seems like very unreliable work. The reason may be some failure in ST (STE ?) self, cable, bad power supply or bad US .
Best would be to try on some other ST, STE to see what is exactly the culprit.

[English Invader]

I finally figured out how to get that image onto the SD card. All I need to do now is figure out how to turn ST files into TOS or PRG files. I've tried manually changing the file extensions to PRG and TOS but that doesn't work; the ST recognises them as executable files but it doesn't load them and just goes back to the desktop screen.

[Atari74user]

Hi

You need to extract the image files. Use MSA / JayMSA archivers for this.

A little article regarding JayMSA: http://lowresmag.wordpress.com/2009/12/ ... -atari-st/

A link to JaySoft and JayMSA: http://phoenix.inf.upol.cz/~opichals/jay/stf030.htm

[AtariZoll]

I finally figured out how to get that image onto the SD card. All I need to do now is figure out how to turn ST files into TOS or PRG files. I've tried manually changing the file extensions to PRG and TOS but that doesn't work; the ST recognises them as executable files but it doesn't load them and just goes back to the desktop screen.

That's wrong idea. ST (and MSA) files are something very different than TOS or PRG. ST and MSA are image files of complete floppy, which may contain several files, subdirectories. You can not turn ST into TOS, PRG. But you can extract files, so TOS and PRG files, + other type, subdirectories from floppy image with diverse SW, for instance with some emulator. When you succeed in that, new disappointment may come: it will not work from UltraSatan in most cases. Because it is made to work only from floppy.
All in all, you need to learn some things yet
What can do is: using floppy image runner: http://atari.8bitchip.info/imgrun.php
This is special program what mounts ST, MSA image files as some kind of RamDisk, and then may run floppy SW without writing it onto floppies. But ... not everything works - read on page.
I suggest that for beginning use stuff special made for hard disks: http://atari.8bitchip.info/fromhd.php
There are no ST, MSA images, with reason

[AnakiMana]

Hi, I'm trying Floppy Image Runner, but the game I tried couldn't save my progress. I understand it must be a read-only situation. Is there a way to change it so it's writable? Or can the Floppy Image Runner be enhanced in the future to somehow allow this using either the physical floppy drive or a designated hard drive/folder?

[AtariZoll]

Hi, I'm trying Floppy Image Runner, but the game I tried couldn't save my progress. I understand it must be a read-only situation. Is there a way to change it so it's writable? Or can the Floppy Image Runner be enhanced in the future to somehow allow this using either the physical floppy drive or a designated hard drive/folder?

Using floppy drive for saves would pull it pretty much far from original idea. Doing saves on hard drive is what hard disk adapted games and HAGA perform. And often in 2 ways: you can use ingame save/load functions, which are redirected to hard drive. And it goes in many cases in floppy image file. Other way is saving so called snapshots - complete gamestate. It goes faster and can do in any moment, while ingame saves are often possible only at specific locations.
But all it requires serious digging and changes in game code. Floppy Image Runner works with unchanged games. In some rare cases saves would be possible to solve relative simple, but then when you want to load that saved game progress it would need virtual floppy change and some other things, which all are not in basic idea/concept if Image Runner: simple usage and no need to mod games. Additionally, and the reason why multiple floppy game support is not possible is: games often take completely control over keyboard input. So, you can not use some key combinations to perform virtual floppy changes - because game will make it inactive. Some may say that it is possible in Windows with CD emulators, but that's complete different story - Windows allows not taking over control over peripherals - so all inputs, disk access go via Windows.

So, since you have hard disk, card adapter, I can only recommend using hard disk adaptations. If your beloved games aren't adapted yet, please write here their names, and by time they may be HAGA-ised .

[AnakiMana]

Ok, thanks. I was after Roadwar 2000 and Roadwar Europa. I see that you have 2000 on your site, adapted for hard drive use. I think that's where I downloaded it, but I may have got it somewhere else. What I did (successfully) since writing my last post was I used Floppy Image Runner to load the .ST file, then inserted a freshly formatted disk into my STE and copied all the contents of A: to B: - then I was able to run the game off of floppy exactly as I used to over 20 years ago! I would like to use the UltraSatan with hard drive adapted copies of course, but if a game isn't yet adapted, I guess I can do it this way. (and in these games you have to save ALL THE TIME!)