From our good friends in Poland arrived this lovely SpartaDos X cart. Not quite the one I've lusted for all these years but it'll do for sure.

In my closet. You know these things are getting old. So old in fact
that you need a lot of them to ensure you have one working one when
the time comes to play around with them.

Here you have the following:

Atari 8bit: 400, 800, 800, 1200XL, 1200XL, 800XL, 800XL, 65XE, 850,
850, ATR8000, 1050, 1050, 1050, 1050, 810, 810, 810, 810, Rana 1000,
Indus GT, Indus GT, 1030, 1030, 1030, 410, 410, 1020, XF551, XF551,
etc

Atari ST: TT/030, Mega STE, 1040ST, 1040STE, 1040STE, 520ST, SF314,
SF314, SF314, SX212, etc

Commodore: 3000, 500, 500, 500, 1000, 128D, SX-64, 1541, 1541, 1541, 1571, etc

(download)

Click here to download:

Where_8_bits_go_to_retire.zip (1.86 MB)

I think I was suckered in by the computer demonstration center just like the young couple here. The promise of home finance and biorhythms was completely upstaged by Pac Man.

This process requires that you have an internal EEPROM version of the MyIDE OS in your Atari. It will not work otherwise, as SpartaDOS is incompatible with the OS embedded in the MyIDE cart due to memory address overlaps.

If you are using the AtariMax 32 in 1 OS upgrade, select the most recent MyIDE option available, and make sure to select the "e" version which indicates an external MyIDE adapter. In my case I selected "MyIDE 4.3e" which works fine.

Assume you have a blank cart (Link to another doc describing the nasty flash process)

-- Re-init the MyIDE cart

Get the flasher, flash the cart.

35F_flasher_fdisk2_13-aug-08.atr.zip

Boot from the ATR, and follow the instructions. This will reinit the cart with the fdisk utility so you can layout your partition table. There may be an easier way to do this (run the format util from DOS?) but this is how I did it.

Once the flash is complete, reboot the Atari. The MyIDE Flashload screen will appear. Hit 3 for Maxflash and then hit B to load FDISK2 MyIDE.

Assume the hard drive is already configured properly and working (link to another doc describing the HD setup). You must use these settings or you wont be able to format the partition later on. Feel free to substitute drive 2 in the following example for any available drive in your system.

Create a partition for SpartaDOS: Press M, 2, 65535, D
Save your work: Press E, S

-- Format the partition

At this point you have a 16 meg partition created on the flash card. You now need to format it for use with SpartaDOS. The means to do this comes by way of a program by -- called MyFormat, which formats the blank partition for you. The following bootable image contains the software you need to do it.

MyFormat2_1dd08-26.ATR.zip

After the disk boots you should be at a D1: prompt. Type the following command and hit enter:

MYFORMAT

The program asks for you a partition label, which can be anything you like. You are then prompted for a drive number, which should match the drive number you entered when creating your MyIDE partition in the previous steps. In our example, it was drive #2, so enter a 2 here and hit enter. You then are prompted to hit START+SELECT+OPTION.

Once you do that you should notice your screen borders flashing wildly and the LED on your MyIDE cart blinking. After a couple of seconds you should see "Ready! Press Key to Reboot." Hit any key and allow the machine to reboot.

The ATR image should load again and you should be at the D1: prompt. Enter the following commands (hit enter after each line):

COPY X33A.DOS D2:
D2:
D1:BOOT X33A.DOS

If all goes well, you should see a message saying "BOOT-file installed."

-- Swap drive numbers

Reboot the Atari, and at the MyIDE Flashload screen: Press 3, B, C, 1, 1, E, S

This gets you into the FDISK2 program on the cart, reassigns the 16 meg partition to drive 1 from drive 2, and exits. At this point you will need to power off the computer and reboot.

-- See if it worked

Upon reboot, you are once again presented with the MyIDE Flashload screen. This time hit 0. You should see a lot of pretty flashes, and eventually, with any luck, you should arrive at a SpartaDOS 3.3a prompt! Success!

-- Copy the utils

I've included the SpartaDOS 3.3a disk set. Make sure to mount these up and copy over any/all of the commands you'll need.

Spartados 3.3a