New UltraSatan firmware 1.13, please update your devices

[Jookie]

Hello to all UltraSatan users,

after the recent problems of newest HDDRIVER with UltraSatan firmware some changes in SCSI responses were made to UltraSatan firmware, now UltraSatan reports better status / error codes for card not present state, card changed state, device name and info, thus it should behave better with HDDRIVER now. The other parts of the code weren't touched, so there shouldn't be any other change in the device behavior, speed or anything else. I recommend to update firmware of your UltraSatan to the newest one...

1. Download the new official UltraSatan firmware from here: http://joo.kie.sk/ultrasatan/download/ -- file named us_fw.zip
2. extract the us_fw.zip/bin/usfw_113.ldr file,
3. use the UltraSatan configurator ( http://joo.kie.sk/ultrasatan/download/ -- file named config.zip ) to upload and select the new firmware (you have to quit and start US_CONFIG after the upload to see the new firmware)
4. select the new firmware in configurator (arrows and space), write config to device ('w' key), power off and on your UltraSatan device, restart your ST and that should be all.

In case of any questions, problems and so on, please write them here and not in my e-mail, as here you might get an answer from other people also, and you won't kill me with tons of e-mails
Jookie

[DarkLord]

Jookie, I just want to say I think its great that you're still supporting the US, so
long after you released it.

Thanks man!

[Dal]

Mine was 1.05 so probably very old firmware!! All flashed with 1.13 and working nicely - Thanks Jookie!

[BoNuS]

And that solves the issue we had with the 8.46 HDdriver, nice indeed
Will update it right away !

[bladeomega]

And that solves the issue we had with the 8.46 HDdriver, nice indeed
Will update it right away !

Which issue?

[johncarteronmars]

I think congrats are in order as to the rapid responses to correcting this problem,
i'm still waiting after several years to have MS correct an annoying bug in Windows7,
they won't even admit it is there and a young european posted the solution on you
tube quite some time ago.

So thanks to Jookie and Uwe and Lotharek and anyone else that aided in this, what I feel
was a, quick response to the problem.

CUL
AZ

[BoNuS]

And that solves the issue we had with the 8.46 HDdriver, nice indeed
Will update it right away !

Which issue?

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=24931
This issue, nothing really bad happening like corrupting data or so. Just a install autoboot problem mainly (If I correctly summarize)

[johncarteronmars]

Going nowhere but having fun doing it

I've been at this for two days now. At least i got the weekend!
Oh its going to be worth it though. I have faith in this gadget.

My first question is why are there several of us having problems and there
are others that either are not having trouble or are not aware of any at least.
You would think if it was either hardware or software we would all be in the same situation.

I followed jookies instructions after uploading the firmware 1.13

I have used both a 520stfm with 4 megs and a mega st with 4 megs.
Each running tos us 2.06. And each react the exact same way

I won't even touch my mega ste until i can figure this out because it has an internal
sitting waiting to go inside and it has tos 2.06 also

I only got the first slot going a few times but once i actually shut down (not a reset)
and came back later the trouble started all over again.

Ultrasatan/hddriver 8.46 continually places an extra partition letter
that shows up on the boot screen but i can't access that drive
even though it actually has a drive icon. These partitions are all sized
correctly at least, even the extra one - it won't do anything.

I say that because in order to see the drive icons as they should be i of course have
to install devices then the extra icon shows up with the others, now
I have to drop the menu down, once on the desktop, and select "read inf file"
once the machine reads the info file that I made once the desk was as it should be
the extra icon goes away until next time

in 8.46 i have yet to see the *.inf file for hddutil, i am assuming that although it was
in previous hddriver versions it is no longer used?????????????????

After trials with 12 different cards from 16mb to 512mb , loaded for original satan disk
(all of these disks were made using hddriver 8.43, 8.44 or 8.45,)
i came to these conclusions.
My satan disk sd/cards can be used on first slot drive of my ultra satan
just like my satan disk, and they work fine but i cannot swap to the other drive
if i put a regular satan sd card in the ultra second slot after removing the original
it says the card is unreadable or damaged even if it is the exact same card.

By the way if I use one of the satan disks on my ultra, hddriver still adds
a drive letter at boot it is not just the ones i set up with hddriver 8.46.
News of the wierd.

[Nikolas]

Ah okey.
I love to see firmware updates keep on going.
In my opinion, great support and worth $

[johncarteronmars]

ok tried hddriver 8.44 this morning on mega st 4mb w/tos 2.06
and 520st w/tos 2.06 and 4 mb

booted tos and nothing else
loaded ultrasatan config which showed
*usfw_113.ldr
boot always base firmware no
sd/mmc card 1 0
sd/mmc card 2 1

quit and back to tos

run hddriver 8.44 and it showed the two devices for ultrasatan

run hdutil and using jookie instructions for fw_113
i set up for 4 partitions
all went well until "restart st"
on boot both slots were recognized on ultrasatan

but there were 5 (five) partitions listed, same as with 8.46

a c:\ icon was on the desk
i chose options - install devices - and d e f g icons appeared


c thru f could be used and show info had correct size data
g:\ when selected alert= data may be damaged
removed this icon

tried to install hddriver on c:\ system hangs on floating super bee

this is the same as hddriver 8.46

i tried 8.43 and 8.45 last night with same results

so hd 8.43 - 8.44 - 8.45 won''t make it either
although they all work well on my satan disks cards.

i cannot try any earlier versions as i don't have any.


hows that DAL, forgot my old days at CHICKSANDS ENGLAND AS A TTY OP
and USASAFS Augsburg
everything was in uppers and I didn't even notice

[Dal]

No need to SHOUT...

[Jookie]

i set up for 4 partitions
all went well until "restart st"
on boot both slots were recognized on ultrasatan

but there were 5 (five) partitions listed, same as with 8.46

Having this extra letter is a feature of HDDRIVER when the device works with removable media (e.g. you make 4 partitions, but HDDRIVER shows 5 letters). You can ignore the extra letter Uwe Seimet proposes that if you would mount your device inside your ST and thus would never change cards, I could add some option to UltraSatan which after enabling it would make that UltraSatan would report as non-removable media, and thus you wouldn't have the extra letter shown. My opinion is that most of the users of internal version will still have the cards accessible from outside like this:
http://atariage.com/forums/uploads/mont ... _thumb.jpg

...and thus from my point of view this feature is not very useful. But if a bunch of you would say that you will never change cards and thus want this extra feature, it could be added in the next firmware.

About the ST hanging when trying to install HDDRIVER on C: - well, that should be a problem of HDDRIVER, but most of the users don't have this issue (weird ). Maybe you are using some different settings of HDDRIVER than most of the people?

Jookie

[johncarteronmars]

Thanks for information Jookie, and yes I see already that it did not do any harm at all
being an extra drive designation, I can live with that . Yes I believe that somewhere along
the way I am the culprit in the small problem I am having setting the device up but I will
eventually get my act together and get it straight.

thanks again for info and all assistance you have given to us all

[johncarteronmars]

OK I finally got this thing halfway figured out and HDDDRIVER 8.46 working now ,
it was probably working all along,
maybe I should I say I finally got my head out.
After Jookies msg I booted up to the utility pgm and
reset all to defaults and started over and checked every
item I could think of on the drop downs
all else went like a breeze

tks to Jookie and Fernecho for their help and support
as well as Uwe, Hddriver is a really great pgm
but it does not compensate for operator error
now to get working on another SDcard
for this thing

tks
cul
az

[MiggyMog]

good suff Jookie.

It's a shame nobody has made a custom firmware to use the unutilised power in the USD. A special folder to put zips in which automatically unzip would be a nice feature

[Jookie]

It's a shame nobody has made a custom firmware to use the unutilised power in the USD. A special folder to put zips in which automatically unzip would be a nice feature

Well, computing power is only part of the things required to do stuff like that, the other is memory, which US doesn't have much of it (only few kB's of internal SRAM)... Anyway, interesting idea of a feature!

[AtariZoll]

I must say that idea of automatic unzip is not realistic . Beside lack of RAM in US, problem is that hard disks work not on file base. TOS is which handles files, and performs simple sector transfers with hard disks. So, to unpack some zip on SD card, you would need first to read it as regular file into ST RAM, and then perform special transfer back to US, where it could process it. After that need to transfer depacked zip content back to ST RAM - so a lot of DMA transfers, which btw. slowdown CPU . All it would be not much faster than unzip with 68000 CPU - even if SD can depack let's say 20x faster .
But main argument against is low price of SD cards. Really no need to store data zipped now.
I recall now how popular was SW called Stacker on PC around 1993 - it was something similar, in purpose to have more data on limited capacity drives. But as drives became cheaper and with more space it simply disappeared.

[Jookie]

I must say that idea of automatic unzip is not realistic . Beside lack of RAM in US, problem is that hard disks work not on file base. TOS is which handles files, and performs simple sector transfers with hard disks.

I would rather say that it's too complicated to be worth to do it in UltraSatan With the special firmware which would understand the FAT on the SD card it could do the unZIPing directly on the card, without first transferring it to ST and then back. But it would be too complicated to do with so little of RAM.

[AtariZoll]

Of course, doing FAT filesystem support in SD firmware is possible way - more in theory, I would say. With little RAM it would be slow. And it is complicated, no doubt.
But it is not enough - you need special TOS extension for this case - what will process ZIP files in special way.

[alexh]

Is it only me who thinks such a feature would have no true practical use though? You just unzip everything before you put it on the SD card. Big SD cards are cheap and your PC has plenty of horse power to batch unzip everything.

IMO the time and investment would be better spent developing something else. Or a cost down.

[Jookie]

IMO the time and investment would be better spent developing something else. Or a cost down.

Well, the cost down could save like 10 Euros of each piece if some other chip(s) would be used. The manufacturing costs are half or even third of the final cost when manufacturing a batch of 100 or more pieces, the rest is taxes, fees, and profit. If someone thinks he can do it with less taxes, fees and profit, well... he can - the schematics, pcb and everything is for free on my web page I think that the cheapest UltraSatan devices were in the first batch which was done by MiKRO and me (60 Euros without the cable), and some people still didn't like the price. I just can't manufacture the devices due to lack of time (I have a 1 year old child now) and because it's a boring thing to do - I like the development phase more (although I miss the money ).

[AtariZoll]

This reminds me on couple times mentioned speed issue. There are pretty big speed differences with diverse SD cards. While tested cards self are very fast.
It is not nice to see that some newer Kingston 4GB card can only about 600 KB/sec . While some other (and older) Kingston can 2x more. There are some speed sensitive programs, like Drone demo, which work not if transfer rate is below some 700 KB/sec . I guess that this is just matter of better firmware, so basically costs only Jookie's time And I hope that you like challenges

[Jookie]

I guess that this is just matter of better firmware, so basically costs only Jookie's time And I hope that you like challenges

My time is the most expensive thing I (don't) have ("...due to lack of time (I have a 1 year old child now)..."). It's just simpler / faster to get a different SD card which can do better.

[GadgetUK164]

Just updated to v1.13 on Lothareks US. All working fine!
One thing I did notice different is it says JOOKIE before Ultrasatan on the detect screen on boot, I guess Lothareks firmware didn't say that as I don't remember seeing it before.

Thanks for the update!

[NikolaL]

Please use only flopy drive for firmware upgrade.