Best environment for 4MB STE

[Silly_Pony]

I just took my STE out of storage. It has NVDI 2.51, SpeedoGDOS, Geneva with NEODESK 4. This is a nice environment, but It's using up 1.5mb of ram. It's just whatever software I could find in a disk image archive.

What's a more sensible setup to save ram? I know there's lots newer NVDI etc but how much ram will it eat?

I've also got a copy of MagiC 2 lying around...

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Depends on what you want to do with it. For games, just run TOS and you have a lot of memory.

If you want a multitasking system, then Magic and Magxdesk are pretty light on memory. Alternative desktops like Jinnee are good but take up more memory.

Geneva and Neodesk as a combination are good too, but I don't remember how much memory they use.

You don't need SpeedoGDOS with NVDI, but NVDI is essential. You can lower the amount of Cache memory for the fonts in the configuration file if you aren't using a ton of them.

[Silly_Pony]

The version of NVDI I have doesn't do fonts. That's why I installed SpeedoGDOS.

Obviously I want multitasking, that is why I installed it.

What would be the lowest memory using version of NVDI which does fonts, and where can I get an english version?

Same for magic. Where?

[lp]

The version of NVDI I have doesn't do fonts. That's why I installed SpeedoGDOS.

Obviously I want multitasking, that is why I installed it.

What would be the lowest memory using version of NVDI which does fonts, and where can I get an english version?

Same for magic. Where?

http://fatrakoon.co.uk/awarez

[Silly_Pony]

I've seen that site before.

Funny thing is though, It's all unusable! Whoever runs it has copied and pasted files from 1.44mb discs into a zip. All these installers expect to be run from floppy, so this is totally useless on an STE because it won't fit in a 720k disc.

I can't even get TOS 2x to read blank 1.44mb images in hatari, so installing it there and copying it over to my real atari is a no-go. What emulators will mount windows folders and also create and read 1.44mb disc images?

[TheNameOfTheGame]

I've seen that site before.

Funny thing is though, It's all unusable! Whoever runs it has copied and pasted files from 1.44mb discs into a zip. All these installers expect to be run from floppy, so this is totally useless on an STE because it won't fit in a 720k disc.

I can't even get TOS 2x to read blank 1.44mb images in hatari, so installing it there and copying it over to my real atari is a no-go. What emulators will mount windows folders and also create and read 1.44mb disc images?

They're useable. I used them when I got started. Just copy all the NVDI files over to the hard drive and run the install from the folder. It doesn't have to run the install from floppy. I think you have to delete a file called NextDIsk or something though.

Hatari and Steem use Windows folders. About 1.44mb images you can probably create one with MSA convertor 2.1. Yes, in fact I just made one up and it opened in steem.

[Silly_Pony]

Inside NVDI's disc 2 there's a folder called INSTALL.DAT which contains disc2.sfx...

Probably important. Anyway, like you said steem will read a HD floppy image, I'm going to give that a whirl.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Inside NVDI's disc 2 there's a folder called INSTALL.DAT which contains disc2.sfx...

Probably important. Anyway, like you said steem will read a HD floppy image, I'm going to give that a whirl.

I know. You put it all on the hard drive and it will install from there. Do it however you want though, but it does work from the hard drive.

[Silly_Pony]

NVDI installed, Magic Installed, get this error:

Please run the system extenstion WDIALOG, which is supplied with NVDI, or use the multitasking system MagiC 4.

I click quit, get some bombs and "AES already present". Then land in ordinary TOS.

Try to start MagiC:

Offscreen-Treiber nich gefunden.
MCMD wird gestartet...
System wird angehalten.

System hangs.

EDIT: copied everything to a hard disk image with Atari's HD driver installed instead of using a windows folder. It boots. MagiC is weird!

[SteveBagley]

It's not MagiC that's the problem but rather the way Hatari attempts to patch tos to provide shared folder support not working with MagiC (someone would need to write an XFS to do it properly).

Steve

[Silly_Pony]

Another late night, doc?

[MetalCruncher]

Old versions of NVDI aren't worth the effort. On plane Atari standard resolutions Warp9 outperforms NVDI,
and uses much less memory! NVDI5+ is however fast and works with videocards - it also uses a lot of mem!
All GDOSes are memory-hungry, especially those, that can use vector-fonts - and Speedo is not the only one,
there are several others. However, if vector-fonts aren't needed, use a regular GDOS.
Also advanced "desktops" like Neo use a lot of memory. A small "desktop" like Teradesk works fine with
Geneva. If Teradesk is set as shell for Geneva, Neo can still be loaded as an application, if it's AV-serving
is switched off, for temporary use.
MagiC/X is a bad alternative to Genava, though impressive, it replaces ALL of TOS (more mem) and is
less compatible.

[Silly_Pony]

I never ever got Terradesk to work as a Geneva shell.

[Eero Tamminen]

I can't even get TOS 2x to read blank 1.44mb images in hatari

Hatari supports floppy images up to ~3MB (85 tracks, 36 sectors, double sided) size just fine.

Attached is screenshot of using floppy image just created with Hatari:

hatari-tos206-largest-floppy.png