AtariSIO driver and utilities V0.30

This program is proteced under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2. Please read LICENSE for further details.

Visit http://www.horus.com/~hias/atari/ for new versions of AtariSIO.

Installation

Please read the file "INSTALL" for full installation instructions or "INSTALL-tools" if you only want to build only the tools (dir2atr, adir, ataricom).

Other docs

Information about the tools (dir2atr, ataricom, adir) can be found in "README-tools".

README.RPi contains information specific to the Raspberry Pi (installation instructions and wiring of GPIO-to-SIO connection).

README.lotharek contains information about using Lotharek's 1050-2-PC/SIO2PC USB adapter

About Atarisio

AtariSIO consists of multiple parts:

atariserver, a tool to emulate Atari floppy drives and printers
atarixfer, a tool to read/write disk images from/to Atari floppy drives
an optimized kernel driver for 16550 and 16950 UARTs to handle
the timing critical low-level part of the Atari SIO protocol
a set of utilities to handle ATR (and other) disk images
(adir to list the directory of an image and dir2atr to
create a disk image from a directory of files on your PC)

AtariSIO supports the following interfaces:

one chip SIO2PC serial cables with the SIO command line connected
to RI, DSR or RTS
1050-2-PC (with MAX232), command connected to RTS
Ape ProSystem cable (with 14C89), command connected to DTR
Direct GPIO connection to Raspberry Pi UART using a 3.3v<->5V level
shifter
FTDI FT232 based SIO2PC and 1050-2-PC adapters and cables
other USB serial adapters (eg Prolific PL2303) may work as well
in SIO2PC mode but in general can't be used in 1050-2-PC mode
because of hardware / timing restrictions

Highspeed SIO support:

atariserver and atarixfer support all "Ultra speed" SIO transfer speeds down to Pokey divisor 0 (about 125kbit/sec) but will be limited by the capabilities of the UART and the driver.

16550 UARTs can only operate at 19.2, 38.4 and 57.6 kbit/sec.
With the AtariSIO kernel driver also the XF551 and Happy Warp
speed protocols (at 38.4 kbit/sec) are supported.
16950 UARTs can only operate at 19.2, 38.4 and 57.6 kbit/sec
when using the standard Linux serial driver.
With the AtariSIO kernel driver all transfer speeds plus
XF551, Happy Warp and 1050 Turbo modes are supported.
FTDI FT232 and Prolific PL2303 based USB serial adapters and
the Raspberry Pi UART support all transfer speeds but not the
XF551 or Happy Warp mode.

Utilities

Starting with version V0.20 both atariserver and atarixfer support reading and writing of DCM, DI and XFD images, in addition to the standard ATR images. Furthermore, transparent compression and decompression is supported if you compile AtariSIO with zlib support. This means, for example, that you can directly read and write from/to an .atr.gz file without needing to (de)compress it by hand.

The file type is determined by examining the file-extension. Recognized extensions are .atr, .atr.gz, .dcm, .dcm.gz, .xfd, .xfd.gz (which are not case-sensitive, so .ATR.gz will also work).

In case the image-file has a non-recognized extension (eg. .exe), an ATR image containing the file is created on the fly. This allows you to directly load .COM/.EXE/.BAS/... files.

Starting with version V0.30 the AtariSIO kernel driver supports multiple interfaces on a single computer. This allows you to connect eg a SIO2PC and 1050-2-PC interface to two serial ports and access these via /dev/atarisio0 (the default) and /dev/atarisio1.

On both atariserver and atarixfer you can use the "-f DEVICE" command line option to select the interface to use, or you can set the ATARISERVER_DEVICE and/or ATARIXFER_DEVICE environment variables.

Differences between AtariSIO kernel driver and Linux serial drivers

If you are running AtariSIO on a x86 PC and have a 16550 or 16950 UART then using the AtariSIO kernel driver is the preferred method. It offers better timing, higher reliability and more features than the alternative of using the standard Linux serial API.

The kernel driver supports XF551 and Happy Warp modes, which requires switching the baudrate in a very tight timeframe. It also supports playing back CAS files with FSK blocks (copy-protect information).

When using a 16950 UART the AtariSIO kernel driver can configure it to match the non-standard Pokey baudrates almost exactly, giving best possible compatibility with Atari floppy drives and highspeed SIO routines.

If you want to use AtariSIO with an USB serial adapter or with the on-board UART of the Raspberry Pi the AtariSIO kernel driver cannot be used and atariserver/atarixfer have to use a userspace SIO protocol implementation that uses the standard Linux serial API.

The serial API and some of the (USB) serial drivers have some quirks which means it's in general not possible to match the SIO timing specs as closely as the kernel driver. But for general SIO2PC and 1050-2-PC use the timing will be good enough.

One limitation is that XF551 / Happy Warp modes won't work as it's not possible to switch the baudrate from 19.2 to 38.4 kbit/sec at the correct time (there's only a ~200us window for that).

Another limitation is that command frame detection and automatic baud rate switching can't use the same technique as the kernel driver and is thus a little bit less reliable (but in general still good enough).

USB 2.0 controllers with a USB 1.1 OHCI companion controller (eg the ones used in AMD chipsets) can have problems detecting command frames at low Pokey divisors (about 3-4 and below). This is caused by the rather high latency of these controllers. USB 2.0 controllers with a UHCI companion (eg in Intel chipsets) and USB 3.0 controllers don't suffer from this issue.

One workaround for this issue is to put a USB 2.0 hub between the PC/laptop and the USB serial adapter.

Another workaround is to disable use of the command line (a feature that is only available in the userspace implementation) which uses a timing based detection of command frames.

Disabling use of the command line can also be beneficial on SBCs like the Raspberry Pi that don't expose any UART handshake signals on GPIO connectors.

A benefit of the Raspberry Pi UART and most USB serial adapters is that they can match the non-standard Pokey baudrates closely enough to get low Pokey divisors and Happy/Speedy ultraspeed modes working.

Using atarixfer

atarixfer is used to read/write disk images from/to a Atari drive connected to your Linux box with an 1050-2-PC cable.

atarixfer can operate in 2 modes, read and write mode, selectable by the "-r" and "-w" options:

-r imagefile create ATR/XFD/DCM image of disk -w imagefile write given ATR/XFD/DCM image to disk

Several other options are available to tweak operation mode:

-f device use alternative AtariSIO device (default: /dev/atarisio0) The device can also be set via the ATARIXFER_DEVICE environment variable, the "-f" option overrides this. -d enable debugging -e continue on errors The default is to abort on errors -p use APE prosystem cable (default: 1050-2-PC cable) -l use early rev Lotharek 1050-2-PC USB cable Versions sold before 2019-08-15 have inverted command-line signalling. See also README.lotharek -F s|e|d|q force SD/ED/DD/QD disk format When reading a disk this bypasses density detection and uses the specified format instead. Use it to work around density detection issues or fix up wrongly copied disks (eg SD image written to ED disk). When writing a disk sectors not present in the input image or the forced format will either be padded with zeroes (if the forced format is larger) or skipped (if the forced format is smaller than the image) -R num retry failed sector I/O 'num' times (0..100) Default is no retry on errors -s mode high speed: 0 = off, 1 = XF551/Warp, 2 = Ultra/Turbo, 3 = all Default is off. Happy Warp, XF551 and 1050 Turbo only work with the AtariSIO kernel driver. 1050 Turbo Mode requires a 16950 UART and the AtariSIO kernel driver. It may also work on FTDI USB serial cables if strict SIO timing is enabled. Ultra Speed mode with a Happy 1050 or Speedy requires a 16950 UART and the AtariSIO kernel driver, an FTDI USB serial cable or the on-board Raspberry Pi UART. -T timing SIO timing: s = strict, r = relaxed Default is strict timing on AtariSIO kernel driver and relaxed timing on standard Linux serial drivers. -u enable workaround for US Doubler format detection bugs -x enable workaround for XF551 format detection bugs -1 ... -8 use drive number 1...8 (default is 1)

Examples:

Create disk image from an Happy drive with highspeed SIO using an FTDI USB adapter

atarixfer -f /dev/ttyUSB0 -s 3 -r myimage.atr

Using atariserver

atariserver is an SIO-server, like SIO2PC or APE.

It offers a text-based (curses) user interface which allows interactive configuration, loading / saving of images etc.

In addition to that most configuration settings, disk images etc can also be set via command line options. Read the user interface section below for more detailled information.

Command line options

-f device use alternative AtariSIO device (default: /dev/atarisio0) Note: if used, this has to be the very first option! The device can also be set via the ATARISERVER_DEVICE environment variable, the "-f" option overrides this. -C use SIO2PC cable with command line on CTS -D use SIO2PC cable with command line on DSR -N use SIO2PC cable without command line -F disable non-standard disk formats If enabled atariserver will only accept standard single / enhanced / double density disk images that match what a 1050 with a Happy/Speedy/... upgrades support -m monochrome mode -o file save trace output to Setting this option will write all messages output in the log window to a file. -s mode high speed mode: 0 = off, 1 = on (default) -S div,[baud] high speed SIO pokey divisor (default 8) and optionally baudrate -T timing SIO timing: s = strict, r = relaxed Default is strict timing on AtariSIO kernel driver and relaxed timing on standard Linux serial drivers. -X enable XF551 commands -t increase SIO trace level (default:0, max:3) Use this option multiple times to set a higher trace level -B percent set tape baudrate to x% of nominal speed (1-200) -P mode file install printer handler mode sets EOL conversion: r=raw/none, l=LF, c=CR, b=CR+LF path is either a filename or |print-command, eg |lpr -p write protect the next image -1..-8 set drive number for next image / virtual drive -V dens dir create virtual drive of given density, the second parameter specifies the directory. dens is s|e|d|(s|d)|S|D s/e/d create a standard ~90/130/180k SD/ED/DD image. s and d create a SD/DD image with given number of sectors. S and D create a SD/DD image, the number of sectors required to store all files from the directory is calculated automatically. load into current drive number, and then increment drive number by one if the filename ends with '.cas' or '.cas.gz', the CAS-image is loaded and tape emulation is started

To load several images you can start atariserver with the following options (for example):

atariserver dos.atr -3 -p data1.atr -V d filedir

This will load dos.atr into D1:, data1.atr into D3: and create a virtual drive in double density (720 sectors) out of the directory filedir. D1: and D4: will be writeable, whereas D3: will be write protected.

Environment variables

ATARISERVER_DEVICE

Sets the device to use instead of the compile-time default (/dev/atarisio0).

eg use /dev/ttyAMA0 by default: export ATARISERVER_DEVICE="/dev/ttyAMA0"

ATRPATH

If you set the environment variable ATRPATH atariserver will look for image files in the specified (colon separated) directories if the image can't be found in the current working directory. ATRPATH works both on the command line and in the user interface. For example:

export ATRPATH=/home/atari/dos:/data/xl/magazines

The user interface

The atariserver screen is divided into several regions:

The topmost line show the program version and the current working directory (or the image name if you display the directory of an Atari disk image, or some other information about the currently displayed information).

The window below is the drive status window. It contains the status of the 8 disk slots. From left to right the following information is displayed:

the slot number (D1: to D8:)
the size of the loaded image in sectors
the density of the image:
'S' = SD / 128 bytes per sector
'D' = DD / 256 bytes per sector
'Q' = QD/512 bytes per sector
'1'/'2'/'4'/'8' = 1/2/4/8 kbytes per sector
the write protect status ('W' = writable, 'P' = write protected)
the modification status ( = unchanged, 'C' = changed since
last load/write/create operation)
the full path and filename of the image

Below the drive status window is the current status line. It displays the currently selected cable type, SIO speed mode, and trace level.

Next comes the log window. All warning, error, debugging, and status information will be shown in there.

Below the log window a help line is displayed. It contains some hints about what input atariserver wants from you.

The input line is located at the very bottom of the screen. All user input is displayed there.

Some commands (like the 'display directory' command or the file selection screen) show a big window instead of the drive status window, the status line, and the log window.

User interface commands

You can always abort the current command by pressing '^G' (control-G).

The key-assignment of the user interface was greatly inspired by SIO2PC. So if you are already familiar with SIO2PC, you'll find atariserver easy to use :-)

Here's an overview about the currently supported commands:

'h' show help.

'q' quit atariserver.

'l' load a disk image file (ATR/DCM/DI/XFD) into a drive slot or start tape emulation by loading a CAS file.

 The drive slot must be empty or contain an unchanged disk
 image (in which case it will be automatically unloaded),
 otherwise you have to unload it first.
 If you want to create a new virtual drive from a directory,
 enter the directory and press '^V'. You will then be asked
 about the drive size, just like when creating an empty image.
 When using a custom SD/DD image, atariserver calculates the
 space needed to store all files and presents this value as a
 default for the number of sectors. If you use 'S' or 'D'
 (instead of 's', 'd') the size calculation is disabled.
 If the file extension is not one of .atr/.dcm/.di/.xfd,
 an ATR image containing the file will be created on the fly.

 In tape emulation mode use '<space>' to toggle between pause/play,
 cursor left/right to seek back/forward one block, up/down to seek
 20 blocks, pageup/down to seek to the previous/next part or home/end
 to seek to the beginning/end. With 'g' you can skip the current gap.
 Use 'q' to exit tape emulation and return back to disk drive emulation.

'w' write the image of a disk drive into a disk image file. You may either specify a single drive number (1-8) or 'a' for 'all changed' disks, to quickly write back all images that have been changed.

The filename input routine used for both 'l' and 'w' commands supports filename completion (with the '' key), quick access to your home directory using '~/' at the beginning of a filename, and a built-in history (accessible with '' and '' keys). You can position the cursor within the line with '', '', '' or '^A' for start of line, '' or '^E' for end of line. Delete characters either with '' or '' keys. '^U' clears the whole input field. If the first key pressed in file input is a standard (alphanumeric) key, the input field will be cleared.

If you press '^F' or don't enter a filename (eg just press 'l' '1' 'return'), the full-screen file selection mode is started: In this mode the contents of the currently selected directory will be listed on screen, use '', '', '' '', '' / '^A', '' / '^E' to navigate through the list. You can also search through the list by pressing the first letter(s) of a filename. If you press '' the next matching file will be selected. Note: this search is case-insensitve.

Note: If the '' and '' keys don't work most likely your terminal settings (the TERM environment variable) aren't right or your ncurses library / terminfo settings are broken. In this case either fix it or use the '^A' / '^E' keys.

Any time you have positioned the cursor over an Atari disk image file you can view it's DOS2.x directory by pressing '^D'.

'c' creates an empty image. You have to specify the drive slot in which the image should be created and the size. Just enter any (empty) drive number and then choose from the following image sizes:

 '1' is 90k SD (720 sectors, 128 bytes per sector)
 '2' is 130k SD (1040 sectors, 128 bytes per sector)
 '3' is 180k DD (720 sectors, 256 bytes per sector)
 '4' is 360k QD (1440 sectors, 256 bytes per sector)

 's' is 1-65535 SD sectors (128 bytes per sector)
 'd' is 1-65535 DD sectors (256 bytes per sector)
 'f' is 1-65535 QD sectors (512 bytes per sector)

 If you entered 's', 'd' or 'f' you'll get asked how many sectors
 you'd like to have in the image. This input routine also supports
 cursor-movement and a history (like the filename input routine),
 but of course no filename-completion or file-selection mode :-)

'u' unload (free) a disk drive. Specify a drive number to unload, or 'a' for all drives.

'x' exchange (swap) two disk drive numbers.

'd' display the (DOS2.x) directory of an image. Please note that this function only works with DOS2.x compatible disk formats (like DOS2.x, MyDOS, Turbo-DOS, ...), but not with Sparta-DOS disks!

'f' format a drive This clears all sector data of the image and initializes it with an empty directory and DOS 2.x or MyDOS VTOC.

'p','P' write-(un)-protect a disk drive Specify a drive number to (un)protect, or 'a' for all drives. If you save a drive to an ATR image, the write protect flag will also be saved.

't' set trace level

's' enable/disable high speed SIO '0' disables highspeed and commands not supported by stock drives (like the "get speed byte" command). '1' enabled highspeed mode (this is the default).

'S' set high speed pokey divisor/baudrate By default atariserver uses Pokey divisor 8, also known as "3xSIO", at (about) 57.6kbit/sec. This option allows you to select a custom Pokey divisor in the range 0-63. Optionally you can specify the baudrate by appending ",BAUDRATE" (eg "0,126000" to use Pokey divisor 0 at 126kbit/sec) to override the default baudrates. This feature was mainly added for testing purposes, in general you should stick to the default baudrates.

'T' set strict / relaxed SIO timing When using the AtariSIO kernel driver strict timing is the default. Enabling relaxed timing is only needed for some older highspeed SIO routines that are too slow to cope with back-to-back byte transmissions. When using standard Linux serial drivers the default is relaxed timing. This adds additional delays when waiting for transmission to finish which is required to work around transmission latencies and quirks in some serial drivers. Strict mode results in SIO timing closer to the official specifications but can be problematic on some drivers / computers.

'C' set SIO2PC cable type / command line 'r' command line on RI/RING input (this is the default) 'd' command line on DSR input 'c' command line on CTS input 'n' no command line Note: the "no command line" is only available when using standard Linux serial drivers. The AtariSIO kernel driver doesn't support this mode. One drawback of the "no command line" mode though is that it doesn't work as well as the modes with a command line if you have other Atari peripherals connected to the SIO bus. So better use this mode only if you have no other options or if atariserver is the only SIO device on the bus.

'a','A' activate/deactivate disk drives, printer or remote control Use this feature if you want to (temporarily) deactivate a device, eg if you want to access a real disk drive or printer. All configuration settings for deactivated devices are kept, but atariserver won't respond to commands for these devices until they are activated again.

'r' reload virtual drive atariserver will rescan the directory and add new files to the virtual drive. Use this function if you copied some files to a directory that is currently used as a virtual drive (new files don't show up automatically on virtual drives, the directory is only scanned when creating a virtual drive).

'i' install printer handler See the section "Printer Support" for more info.

'I' uninstall printer handler

'F' flush queued printer data This writes out all temporarily buffered data to the printer file or external program.

'X' enable/disable XF551 commands If enabled atariserver will respond to XF551 commands using the XF551 highspeed mode (about 38.4kbit/sec). Note: this only works with the AtariSIO kernel driver.

SIO trace levels

By default (in debug level 0) atariserver will only print warnings and error messages related to user input.

In trace level 1 atariserver will output all processed commands in user readable form.

In trace level 2 atariserver will output all received command frames in hex, together with the command result.

In trace level 3 atariserver will (in addition to level 2) also dump the contents of the transmitted data blocks.

Virtual drives

Virtual drive support in atariserver is somewhat similar to the "PC mirror" feature of APE. It allows you to directly access files on your harddisk (without fist creating an ATR image) and also to store new files on your harddisk by simply writing to a virtual drive.

When you load a virtual drive atariserver internally creates a disk image of the specified directory on the fly. This is also the reason why you need to specify the number of sectors and the density. If you use one of the standard disk formats (s/e/d), the image will be in standard DOS 2.x format. If you manually enter the number of sectors the image will be created in MyDOS format and subdirectories are enabled, too.

If you add files (on your PC) to the specified directory after you loaded a virtual drive, they won't be visible from your Atari. You'll have to unload a virtual drive an then load it again since atariserver only examines the directory at the time when you load a virtual drive.

If you write files to a virtual drive (from you Atari), atariserver examines the written data and looks for changes made to the directory sectors. When writing files to a disk Atari DOSes first set the file status to "open for write", then write the file data, and then clear the "open for write" flag when the file is closed. Whenever the "open for write" flag is cleared, atariserver will write the newly created/changed file back to harddisk.

You can also create new directories from MyDOS or delete files. You may even format a virtual drive. But atariserver is quite careful about these operations: If you delete a file, it won't be deleted on your PC. If you format a virtual drive, no changes are made to the files on your PC. Just file writes are handeled. So the virtual drive feature should be quite safe to use.

Virtual drives offer another feature: they contain special boot code which load MyPicoDos from atariserver (MyPicoDos is a "gamedos" which supports COM/EXE/BIN/BAS files). Additionally the original (long) filenames are stored in a file named "PICONAME.TXT" so that MyPicoDos can display the original filename instead of the (most likely) shortened 8.3 filename.

MyPicoDos itself is not stored on the virtual drive, it is loaded directly from atariserver using the special SIO command $6D.

Printer support

Atariserver now also supports emulation of a printer. The printer data can either be saved to a file or be sent to an external program (like lpr). If the destination file starts with the pipe character "|", the following characters specify the external program.

When atariserver receives printer data the first time the external program is spawned and data is sent to its standard input. The status window will show an "S" before the printer filename to indicate that the external program is running.

If atariserver doesn't receive any SIO frames for 15 seconds the external program is closed and the printer job is finished. As soon as new printer data arrives, the external program will be started again.

When atariserver closes the external program it will wait until it has finished. During this time atariserver won't respond to command frames or user input.

You can close the external program manually any time using the 'F' key (flush printer data), so you don't have to wait 15 seconds.

The EOL conversion specifies how the ATASCII EOL character (155) should be handled. In raw mode no conversion is applied. If conversion is set to 'LF', a linefeed (character code 10) is sent to the file/ external program instead of 155. If set to 'CR+LF' a carriage return followed by a linefeed (13+10) is sent.

Remote control support

Atariserver can be fully controlled from the Atari using a very simple protocol. A separate SIO device ID ($61) is used, therefore the remote control feature does not depend on any loaded disk images or the like.

The easiest way to remotely control atariserver is to use the 'remote.com' program from the tools/6502/ directory in the source tree. This program supports reading the SpartaDos command line so that you can quickly configure atariserver from a batch file or SpartaDos config.sys. If you load this program from other DOSes or use an empty command line it runs in interactive mode.

Note: Real.Dos by Steve Carden automatically converts the whole command line to upper case which breaks all commands that deal with case-sensitive options (eg loading a file or running shell commands). I'm not sure if this is true for all versions of Real.Dos but at least this was the case with the one version I tested.

Here's a list of the currently supported commands plus their parameters:

CMD parameters

st print status

xc exchange drive with drive

lo load into drive

lv load virtual drive from directory with density . The density is specified in the same format like in the -V command line option.

cr create new drive with density

un unload drive

wr [] write drive to a file. If no is given, the current filename of the image will be used

wc write back all changed images

wp set write protect of drive . If is '0', write protect is turned off, if it is '1', write protection is enabled.

pr 0 uninstall printer handler

pr 1 install printer handler. specifies the EOL conversion. It can be either 'r', 'l', 'c' or 'b'

pr f flush printer data

sp set SIO speed. '0' is slow, '1' is high, '2' is 'high with pauses'

xf Enable (if = '1') or disable (if = '0') XF551 mode

cd change current working directory to

ls list files in directory

sh execute a shell command on the Linux PC. can be any valid command line. Note: to prevent atariserver from waiting forever the spawned command will be terminated after 5 seconds.

ad Activate (if = '1') or deactivate (if = '0') a device. is either a drive number (1-8), 'a' for all drives or 'p' for printer.

pl text... display a line of text in the log window.

Note: all spaces between the command an the parameters may be omitted. 'lv 1 2880d /tmp/foo' is identical to 'lv12880d/tmp/foo'.

Description of the remote control protocol:

Atariserver accepts remote control commands at the SIO device id $61. You have to set DDEVIC to $61 and DUNIT to $01.

To send a command to atariserver, set DCOMND to $43, DSTATS to $80, point DBUF to the buffer containing the ascii string and set both DBYT and DAUX to the length of the string. This way command strings of (almost) arbitrary length are supported. Set DTIMLO to 7. If you are using a slow computer and want to execute commands that might take longer than approx. 7 seconds (eg when loading a big virtual drive) you might consider setting DTIMLO to a higher value (30 or so).

Atariserver also supports a "NOP" command. You can use this to check if there's an atariserver attached to your Atari. Just set DBYT, DAUX and DSTATS to $00 (this is an "immediate" SIO command without a data frame).

If the command succeeds, the SIO routine will return with a status value of 1. In case of an invalid command or if the command failed status 144 is returned. If you get an error 138, no atariserver was listening. In case of any other errors something else went wrong.

Now check the status of the last operation: Set DCOMND to $53, DSTATS to $40, DBYT to 4 and point DBUF to a 4 byte buffer. After the SIO call these 4 bytes contain the following information: Byte 0: Status of last command (1 is OK, >=128 means error) Byte 1: unused Byte 2/3: length of the (additional) response (LO/HI). If the length is 0 this means there's no additional response available.

If the response length is 1 or greater, you can read it in blocks of 128 bytes:

Set DCOMND to $52, DSTATS to $40, DBYT to $80 and point DBUF to a 128 byte buffer. To read the first 128 bytes, set DAUX to 0, then set it to 1 to read the second 128 byte block, then to 2, ... until you read the whole response.

Note: if the response length is not a multiple of 128, the last block will contain some additional (unused) bytes. Just ignore them, only the number of bytes reported by the status command are valid!

You may read the response blocks in any order and you may also read it multiple times (if you like). The response will be available until you send the next command to atariserver.

It is a good idea to transmit a NOP command (DBYT, DAUX, DSTATS set to 0) to atariserver after reading the response so that the response buffer will be freed immediately.

Troubleshooting

In case you experience troubles with AtariSIO you might consider enabling debugging output:

At the moment the userspace utilities have debugging enabled by default. If you (or someone else :-) switched it off, re-enable it by setting -DATARISIO_DEBUG in the CXXFLAGS and CFLAGS settings in the Makefile.

The kernel module supports three different debugging levels (standard: only warnings, noisy, and very noisy) both for the atarisio driver and the interrupt routine. You can enable the debugging stuff by setting the "debug=x" and/or "debug_irq=x" module parameters (default is '0', maximum is '3'). I'd recommend you start with level '1' and enable the higher levels later. Please note: debug level '3' is extremely noisy and may itself cause troubles on slower PCs that can't handle the huge amount of printk()s, especially in the irq handler!

If you are using Linux kernel 2.6.x (or newer) with sysfs support you can also tune the debug settings of the kernel module anytime via the /sys filesystem. The kernel module parameters can be found in /sys/module/atarisio/parameters/, "debug" and "debug_irq" can be modified by root. For example:

echo "2" > /sys/module/atarisio/parameters/debug

Behind the scenes

Compared to SIO2PC and APE, atariserver uses a slightly different philosophy when dealing with disk images. SIO2PC and APE both use a "harddisk type" philosophy: if you loaded a, lets say, 130k (enhanced density) image, the disk will always be a 130k disk from the Atari's point of view - the Atari cannot change this, just like you are not able to format a 10MB harddisk with 8MB or with 20MB.

Atariserver uses a "floppy disk type" philosophy. When you insert a disk into your 1050, you may choose to format it either with 90k (SD), with 130k (ED) or even with 180k (DD). The floppy disk itself may store up to 360k (if you have a double-sided drive like the XF551), so there's no reason why you should be limited to a single density that you selected a long time ago.

Whenever atariserver receives a "format disk" command, it automatically creates an image matching the selected format (i.e.: matching the format the Atari sent via the "percom put" command). This makes copying disks really easy: just fire up your favourite sector copier on your Atari, and be sure any image is loaded into a disk drive. When the sector copier finishes, just write the image to an image file and copy the next disk.

At the moment atariserver only supports memory images. This means, any changes (eg. writes / format disk) are stored in RAM. Be sure to write back the changes using the 'w' or 'W' command if you don't want to loose them!

If you want to write programs using the atarisio kernel driver by yourself, here's a short introduction:

Most of the "dirty work", like handling timing constraints, calculating and comparing checksums is already done in the kernel driver. This means, you don't need to care about it when writing a user space application.

The atarisio character device driver only supports two types of operations (besides open/close): select/poll for waiting for a new command frame, and IOCTLs for all other tasks. atarisio doesn't support read/write IO (which wouldn't be too useful anyway).

You can either use the ioctls (as defined in atarisio.h) or you may use the C++ wrapper SIOWrapper.{cpp,h}.

If you want to do kind of a 1050-2-PC communication with a connected disk drive, just look into the source of atarixfer. It's not too complicated at all, in fact the interface is quite similar to the Atari SIO call $E459.

In sioserver mode, you have to poll for the receipt of a command frame, and then implement the rest of the SIO protocol 'by hand'. Have a look at the source code (AtrSIOHandler) and try to get the SIOspecs.pdf from the 'net.

******************** IMPORTANT NOTICE: *********************

If you want to modify atariserver, either test it as *
a normal user (to disable realtime scheduling), or take *
the necessary precautions! Otherwise an endless loop *
might completely lock up your computer and you'll have *
to do a hard reset! *
A simple, but very effective solution for this problem *
is to un-comment the three lines of code in the *
set_realtime_scheduling function in atariserver.cpp that *
will install an ALARM handler. This will shut down *
atariserver 5 minutes after startup. So if your PC locks *
up, just wait a few minutes and everything will be fine. *

Finally, here's a list of the currently supported SIO commands. The commands marked with an asterisk (*) are only available when the high speed mode is activated. XF551 commands are only available if XF551 compatibility mode is enabled.

Disk commands (devices $31-$38):

$20 - () format disk automatically (Speedy command) $21 - format disk (uses percom config) $22 - format enhanced $3f - () get ultra speed byte (returns 8 in high-speed mode) $4e - percom get $4f - percom put $50 - put sector $52 - read sector $53 - get status $57 - write sector (that's handled identically to put sector) $68 - () get SIO code length in bytes $69 - () get high speed SIO code, relocated to address found in AUX1 and AUX2 $6d - read MyPicoDos code $93 - ApeTime $a1 - XF551 format disk $a2 - XF551 format enhanced $ce - XF551 percom get $cf - XF551 percom put $d0 - XF551 put sector $d2 - XF551 read sector $d3 - XF551 get status $d7 - XF551 write sector

The following commands are just ACK'ed, but don't do anything: $44 - () configure drive (Speedy) $4b - () slow/fast config (Speedy) $51 - (*) flush drive cache (Speedy)

Printer commands (device $40):

$53 - get status $57 - write data

Remote control commands (device $61):

$43 - execute command $52 - read response $53 - get last command status and response length

Credits

Thanks to:

Jindroush for the DCM codec and DI format documentation.

Bill Kendrick, Christopher Lang, Thomas Havemeister, Ryan Underwood, Bohdan Milar, Steven Sheppard, Andreas Kahlenberger and many others for testing & submitting bugreports!

You have reached the end of the document

If you still have any problems, found a bug, have some ideas for future versions, or if you just want to talk to me, feel free to contact me by email at [email protected].

so long,

Hias