Kev’s Blog – Page 166 – Kev's Development Toolbox

November 30, 2015February 21, 2021

Installing a CosmosEx on an Atari ST (SD card based HD and floppy replacement)

I’ve had my eye on the CosmosEx device for the Atari ST for a while – it provides SD card based harddrive support, floppy emulation using .st image files, and has support for USB based flashdrives, either formatted in ST or DOS format. I decided to finally order one and it arrived this weekend.

The most incredible thing is it’s built around a Raspberry Pi, plus some other additional custom built hardware. Quite an incredible piece of custom designed and built kit.

My first dilemma was whether I should connect it as an external floppy drive (requiring to find a DIN 14 cable which is apparently hard to come by nowdays), or replace my internal floppy drive with the CosmosEx. Given that the CosmosEx connects directly to the internal floppy ribbon cable and power supply, this seems like a much easier option. To mount it permanently in the case you have to cut a notch at the back of the case for the harddrive connector, and widen the existing floppy disk access so you can get to the entire front of the CosmosEx device when inside the case.

I’m not sure I wanted to go that far, so it’s currently mounted loosely inside with the top cover off, and I have ordered an IDE floppy extension cable so I can extend the cable outside the case and have the CosmosEx sit on top of the case.

I’ve learnt a bunch of random things getting this setup this weekend:

TOS 1.0 ROMs can only access 256MB hard disk partitions. The HD support is also pretty buggy and terrible (generally known fact), so upgrading to 1.04 may be a future project.
The SC1224 Atari color monitor does in fact support both 50Hz (European) and 60Hz (US) games if you adjust the vertical sync just right with a screwdriver in the vsync hole on the back of the monitor. From playing with menu disks burnt to real floppies in the past, I’d come to the conclusion that I couldn’t play any menu disks that were deliberately changing to 50hz (like most European games do) because the monitor would start rolling. If you adjust the vsync though just enough to stop the rolling, when toggling back and forth from 50 to 60Hz the monitor does actually adjust between the two modes automatically. I hadn’t worked this out before, but some Googling about the SC1224 monitor did say that it supported both modes, and yes, it does (I have the Goldstar model)

So far I have an SD card partitioned with a few 256MB partitions and I’m using the ICD driver. This is apparently not the best available driver but is currently free, so trying this one out for a while.

So far, very happy! The option to download .st images on the fly from an internet connection is also very cool!

November 29, 2015

Watch animation of code executing on an ARM1 in your browser

I’ve spent some time this year learning ARM assembly, so this post on The Register got my attention. To celebrate 25 years of ARM architecture, a group has developed a browser based animation of the ARM1 cpu executing – you can zoom in/out and pan around the visualization with your mouse. Even if’ve no specific interest in ARM take a look anyway, this is quite an incredible, interactive browser based 3d model.

November 26, 2015

Raspberry Pi Zero for $5

The Raspberry Pi at just $35 I think is one of the most amazing things that has arrived in recent years, bringing low cost computing to schools and hobbyists.

Today however, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced the Pi Zero … for $5. Incredible!

If you’re in the UK and can pick up a copy of The MagPi magazine, there’s a free Pi Zero taped to the front cover…

November 26, 2015

BGR: “when it comes to smartphones, Microsoft sadly seems as clueless as ever” (and why a dockable phone is a step backwards)

Microsoft is still not getting much love for its new Windows Mobile Lumia phones, recently dubbed by TechCrunch as “the best phones no one buys“. When Microsoft announced the new flagship Lumia 950 would only be available via a single carrier in the US (AT&T), I wondered if this was because the other major carriers in the US were not interested in carrying the phone. As it turns out though, the decision to only sell through AT&T was Microsoft’s decision. In a response to why those chose to limit to a single carrier, the response from Microsoft was:

“…We’re refocusing our channel strategy, narrowing it in the short-term and planning for broader operator availability long-term”

The Microsoft quote above is from BGR’s article “Does Microsoft even want people to buy Windows Phones anymore?” – the title which really says it all, but also adds “… when it comes to smartphones, Microsoft sadly seems as clueless as ever”.

Microsoft’s FY16 Q1 Financial Results announced that their Phone sales for Q1 were down 56%. Ouch. The Lumia 950 release was after Q1 though, so maybe they’re seeing some increase now the new phones are out, but probably not that much. Missed sales targets in 2015 were also mentioned in the company’s SEC 10K filing, and given as the reason for the $7.6bn write off for it’s recent purchase of Nokia.

Of all the features of the 950 phones, the Continuum feature is probably the most interesting, being able to take the phone mobile and then plugin a desktop monitor and keyboard when you get to the office or get back home, but honestly, who would actually do this? The phone itself doesn’t have direct connectivity to a monitor or keyboard either, you have to buy the additional $99 dock. Sales people who spend a lot of time traveling on the road perhaps might be interested in this, but it doesn’t seem to fit into any current usage pattern for how a ‘typical consumer’ would use their mobile device. And this is not a new feature either. Remember when the Motorola Atrix launched in 2011? One of it’s promoted features at the time was it’s ability to dock and use a desktop monitor and keyboard (running a slimmed down Linux version). Don’t remember this? No probably not. Neither does anyone else.

Access to my apps and data through a single device is not a step forward

If phone docking was such a great idea then all smartphones would be dockable by now. My aging Galaxy S3 supports an HDMI connection to a monitor via a USB adapter (and USB keyboards for that matter too), but I think I’ve used that feature maybe twice in the past 2 years, and only out of curiosity, not for any real practical purpose . Focusing on the physical device itself as the gateway to apps, data or services that I need to use seems like the wrong approach. If my apps and data are online in the cloud then why would I limit myself to accessing them through a single physical device that I need to plug in to other physical devices in order to get access? I’d rather access my apps and data through a browser which I already have on my existing (not even current gen) Android phone, on my personal laptop (running OS X), on my work laptop in the office (running Windows 7), on my desktop in the office at home (running Linux Mint), or for that matter on any device anywhere. Web-based access to practically anything, anywhere, from any device is here today and the typical usage pattern for most users.

… access through a single dockable device seems like a step backwards, not a step forwards; it’s a usage pattern that is not relevant today.