Format a disc on Atari 800XL

[GUNHED]

How long does it take to format a disc with the Atari 800XL? Can you please measure this in seconds? 

[Bryce]

Which format? With which OS? On which external disk drive? With which program?

There are a lot of variables on an XL system?

Bryce.

[GUNHED]

Which format? With which OS? On which external disk drive? With which program?
There are a lot of variables on an XL system?
Bryce.

Yes, this is true. So regular OS, regular drive, regular tool. Sorry I don't know much about it.

And as second test: the most quickest way.

Please let me know which drive parameters do you use: Number of tracks, number of sides (and maybe size in KB).

I would be very grateful for any bit of information. 

[Bryce]

That's the problem. It's not like the CPC scene at all, there were many "regular" drives and "regular" DOS's. ie:

Atari XL Drives: (All original Atari devices from that time)
Atari 810
Atari 1050
Atari XF551

Atari DOS's: (Also all "regular")
DOS 1.0
DOS 2.0S
DOS 2.0D
DOS 2.5
DOS 3.0
DOS 4.0
DOS XE

So you are going to have to decide which regular Drive and which regular DOS you mean.

Bryce.

[GUNHED]

Can you please pick a combination which you have and which makes the smallest effort for you?


If I need to decide: 800XL + 1050 + DOS 4.0 

[Bryce]

I don't have any XL Drive anymore, I was just clarifying the situation I use an SIO2SD (HxC type device for Atari).


Bryce.

[GUNHED]

Oh, cool how long does it take to format on Disc (image) on this one?

[Bryce]

No idea, never tried it.

Bryce.

[GUNHED]

Ok, I give it up. 

[LambdaMikel]

I can try over the weekend.

[GUNHED]

That would be great! 

[GUNHED]

Bump! 


Somebody here who can measure the time to format a disc on an Atari?

[LambdaMikel]

Alright, took a while to get the 1050 from the garage. I only tested 2.0S and 3, since these are the only physical DOS disks I have. I didn't bother connection SIO2SD to boot another DOS, but it seems there is no big difference anyhow. Screenshots attached. 40 seconds.

[LambdaMikel]

I also tried my 810, but failed to format.... hmm. Maybe I need to calibrate it.
AFAIK the different DOSes shouldn't make a difference wrt formatting time, as this is build-in capability of the Atari floppies (firmware). Unlike the CPC floppy drives, these devices are "intelligent" and get a high-level command over SIO which they then execute. Disk initialization is one of these. The 810 and 1050 are not that different in that regard; I notived that the 810 also needed 40 seconds until it reformatted the disc again (probably due to an error). It does that in an endless loop, so something is wrong, but I could tell that it also need 40 seconds.

[LambdaMikel]

Upps, Atari 800 XL was requested.. well I used the 400 which I currently have for sale on Ebay since it was sitting here   
However, there should be no difference at all.


Btw, an idea anybody what the problem with my 810 might be? Endless formatting loop, never finishing... calibration? I tried different disks and DOSes, no difference.


The drive is fine for reading though - it can boot DOS and load games etc. Maybe something is wrong with writing only.

[robcfg]

What kind of disks are you using?


Trying to format a modern high density disk on such old drives is unreliable,

[LambdaMikel]

The Sony 2D shown in the picture. They work fine on the 1050.

[GUNHED]

Thank you very much!!!!!!!! Great to know that it makes absolutely no difference which floppy or DOS or Atari (400 or 800) one does use.   

Just one question: The discs all were 40 Tracks and single-sided, right?

Since these are serial floppies I'm curious how fast they do load and save. But I don't dare to ask for another test.

Thanks again! It helps quite a lot to have this data. 

[LambdaMikel]

Thank you very much!!!!!!!! Great to know that it makes absolutely no difference which floppy or DOS or Atari (400 or 800) one does use.   

Just one question: The discs all were 40 Tracks and single-sided, right?

Since these are serial floppies I'm curious how fast they do load and save. But I don't dare to ask for another test.

Thanks again! It helps quite a lot to have this data. 

Right, 40 tracks, single-sided.


No worries, I can run another test - how about disk copy from 1050 to 810 
I recently bought a new old stock Atari 2.0S DOS (which I used here), and some other software. I will need to make copies of the originals anyway. And that way I can also test if my 810 can at least copy a disk, if it is not able to format.


Here is a good store which has NOS Atari stuff btw, mostly cheaper than Ebay:


http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/

A lot of my Atari stuff is from there (in Sunnyvale, around the corner). This is where I got the new disks from as well.

[LambdaMikel]

Thank you very much!!!!!!!! Great to know that it makes absolutely no difference which floppy or DOS or Atari (400 or 800) one does use.   

Well, at least my partial understanding of how things work on the Atari and limited testing with 4 combinations does seem to imply that, but don't take that for granted, I am far more knowledgable about CPC stuff than Atari stuff    Other are welcome to chime in to correct me.

[LambdaMikel]

OK, I duplicated DOS 2.0S from 810 to 1050 using a 16 KB Atari 400.

That took ~ 1'25. I believe in 2.0S, a disk has 720 sectors of 128 bytes. Hence, it copied 720 - 535 = 185 sectors = 23680 bytes in 85 seconds; that means ~ 278.6 bytes per second.

Next, I duplicated DOS 3 = 48 BLOCKS of 1024 bytes =49 152 bytes. That took 2'56 = 176 seconds, hence, ~ 279.3 bytes per second.

Next, I tried this with an 48k Atari 400 - the duplication strategy is different then. It is able to load the first 38 block into memory, and then flushes it all to the second disk. Duplication of DOS 3 took 2'54 seconds, a minimal gain from the different strategy.

Next, I booted Encounter on the Atari 400 48k, using 810 and 1050 - both ~ 50 seconds, zero to no difference. 

[GUNHED]

No worries, I can run another test - how about disk copy from 1050 to 810 
I recently bought a new old stock Atari 2.0S DOS (which I used here), and some other software. I will need to make copies of the originals anyway. And that way I can also test if my 810 can at least copy a disk, if it is not able to format.

Yes, to copy a complete disc would be great. Also to copy / load / save a file of 40 KB (or just some size which can be handled easy). 

Looks like the Atari beats the C64 by far. 


EDIT: Oh, you did already!!! Great!!! 

[LambdaMikel]

It would be good to figure out from the Encounter ATR image how many bytes are being loaded in 50 seconds. DOS 2.0S / 3 didn't give me any hint on this, and this was the only physical game disk I had available.


I could at some point copy some ATRs from SIO2SD to the 1050 or 810.


Formatting speed says nothing about SIO speed btw - as I said, this is done autonomously by the disk drives. In fact, you can start the formatting process, and then pull the SIO cable, and the disk drive just continues doing it 


Also, given that the copying took almost the same time on 16 KB via 48 KB Atari 400, eventhough it used a different strategy, seems to suggest that SIO is smart enough to not get bogged down by "read and write" on the same bus. The 48 KB Atari 400 read the first 38 Blocks or so into memory, before it started writing, and overall, sequential read / write took about the same time as parallel (interleaved) read / write for the 2 floppies.


Figuring out how many bytes Encounter has would clarify if this ~ 280 bytes per second for reading / writing is a reliable estimate.

[LambdaMikel]

I guess you need a sector or block editor or the like for ATR images for Windows / Mac / ... in order to figure that out.
Anybody has any suggestions for such a tool?

[LambdaMikel]

Looks like the Atari beats the C64 by far. 

Great explanation as to what happened with the C64 piece of .... goodness   


Source:
https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=52439

Unfortunately, close to the release date of the Vic20, a timing bug bug was discovered in the 6522 chip shift register. (a framing error could occur when the clocks between 6522 chips were not synchronised - this would cause the serial buss to lock up). ?Greg Berlin? at Commodore had to change the serial<>parallel routines to be "bit-banged" by the 6502 processor instead - a slow, clumsy method. However slow it was, it worked, and with the VIC20's tiny 5K RAM, speed was not particularly critical.

and

The C64, with it's 64K RAM was a different proposition, and a new, improved general IO chip, the 6526 was deployed. The 6526 had a fully functional shift register, and so the circuit board for the C64 was wired to take advantage of this - the shift register pin wired in tandem to the data pin of the C64. Murphy took control, and a minor rework of the board at the board manufacturers (to accommodate a screw hole, I believe) accidentally discarded the high-speed wire - dooming the C64's serial buss to dreadful slow speed once more. Worse still, the new VICII chip periodically interrupted the 6510 processor doing the disk drive communication, thus generating "jitter" into the timing. This meant that the serial bus was slowed down EVEN MORE to make it reliable again. As a result, the 1541 was never upgraded to use the new, working 6526 chips - That had to wait for the 1571, and the Commodore 128, which had "Burst Mode", and a fully working pair of 6526's.