AspeQt User Manual
version 1.0.0 preview-6
Introduction
AspeQt is a cross-platform, free and open source
Atari 8-bit serial peripheral emulator. The name is an acronym for Atari serial
peripheral emulator for Qt, Qt being the cross-platform application development
framework used by AspeQt.
You can download AspeQt from the
SourceForge project page.
AspeQt emulates various Atari 8-bit peripherals like
disk drives and printers via a SIO2PC cable. If you are familiar with software
like SIO2PC, APE, Atari810, AtariSlO etc., you probably won’t have any problems
getting used to AspeQt.
Even though AspeQt is not fully mature yet, it is easy
to use and, despite its shortcomings, has many features that you may find
useful, the highlights being:
System Requirements
AspeQt currently runs under Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
Other Unix-like operating systems shouldn’t require too
much effort. The absolute minimums aren’t easy to tell but a modern Linux
distribution with Qt 5.2.1 libraries or a Windows XP (or newer) is recommended.
Although AspeQt is reported to run on a Pentium 233
MMX, a modem processor and a decent amount of RAM is strongly recommended for
smooth operation. It runs fine on 64-bit CPUs.
In order to do anything useful with AspeQt, you will
need an Atari 8-bit computer and a SIO2PC cable. SIO2PC cable is an interface
that connects the Atari’s serial bus to the PC’s serial port. Since many newer
PCs lack a real serial port, you may need a UART card, or a high quality Serial-to-USB adapter
(FTDI chip based devices were tested successfully, others
may not work as intended) or a SIO2PC USB interface (instead of serial), If you
opt for the later however, please note that the “AtariMax SIO2PC Universal
Interface USB Edition” is not officially supported as it uses proprietary USB device
drivers.
You can get a RS232 or Serial-to-USB based SIO2PC cable from
Atari8Warez
You don’t need any real Atari disk drives or printers
to use AspeQt.
Installation
On Windows, AspeQt comes with all
the required DLLs in a ZIP file. Just unzip the archive to a folder and run
aspeqt.exe. You may manually create shortcuts on your desktop, start menu and
quick launch bar if you want. Future releases may include an installer but it
doesn’t exist yet.
On Linux, AspeQt comes as a zipped source. You will need Qt
5.2.1 libraries and build tools to compile. After
installing them, please follow the instructions in compile.txt that comes in the
zip file. Pre-built packages of earlier/current versions for popular
Linux distributions may be obtained from
www.atariaxle.de
If you want to use the AtariSlO backend, which is highly recommended if you have a real RS-232 serial port, you will need the AtariSlO package. Please follow the documentation that comes with that package to compile and install it.
Configuration
In order to be able to use AspeQt, you need to
configure it to suit your hardware. When it’s running for the first time, a
dialog will pop up asking you if you wish to open the configuration dialog.
Click “Yes” to open the Options dialog. You can also access this dialog from the
Tools/Options menu item.
On Linux, you have to choose a serial I/O backend
first. If you have installed the AtanSlO package and you have a RS-232 port, the
recommended way is to use the AtariSlO backend. If you have a USB adapter or you
don’t want to use AtariSIO for any other reason, choose the standard serial port
backend. This is also the only available backend on Windows.
Configuring the standard serial port backend
First, enter a port name. On Windows, it should be
something like COM1, COM2 etc. Check the device manager to see which one of them
is installed. On Linux, it should be /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyS1 etc. for RS-232
ports or /dev/ttyUSB0, /dev/ttyUSB1 etc. for USB adapters.
Next, you will have to select a handshaking method.
The handshaking method tells AspeQt which one of the RS-232 pins is connected to
Atari’s command line. There are 3 supported methods: RI, DSR, CTS and NONE. Check your
SIO2PC interface’s documentation to learn which one of them is used for your
cable. Note that NONE (no handshaking) is highly experimental and not
recommanded for day-to-day use, in this mode AspeQt will ignore Atari's command
line (SIO7) and will monitor the COM port's RXD (Atari SIO5) line instead. No
handshaking mode was included to experiment with wireless (bluetooth) serial
interfaces.
The “High speed mode baud rate” combo box selects the
transfer speed to be used for the high speed mode. Some OS /DOS for the Atari
supports higher transfer speeds than the standard 19200 bits per second. Not all
DOS /OS are capable of using 3x speed and some treat 2x as a special case for
XF551 drives, so you may need some experimentation to find the best setting. 1x
option is provided for unreliable connections, like when using a cheap USB
adapter or when running AspeQt under virtualization software and/or on a slow
CPU computer.
If your serial port supports arbitrary bit rates, you
may check the “Use non-standard” speeds check box and select a POKEY divisor to
be used in high speed mode, the lower the divisor, the higher the speed. Usually
real COM ports and some VCP (Virtual COM Ports) don't support arbitrary
baud rates, FTDI chip based serial-to-USB cables do support arbitrary baud
rates, and are thus the recommanded type of cable for use with AspeQt.
The exact formula for the nominal speed is:
baudRate = clock/ (2*(divisor+7))
Where dock is ~1,773,447 for PAL, and ~1,789,772 for
NTSC, however, it’s not always possible to reach nominal speeds. So, 1x is
divisor 40, 2x is divisor 16 and 3x is divisor 8. Divisor 0 is ~l26kbits/second
and that means approximately 6x.
Please note that very few OS/DOS will be able to
function with such high speeds. Currently the only tested software that can
reach divisor 0 with AspeQt is the
hisio OS patch. As a final warning, some Atari
8-bit computers have capacitors connected to their SIO lines that can interfere
with high speed transfers. In short, speeds beyond 3x are not guaranteed to work
in every case.
Configuring AtariSIO backend
Note: AtariSIO is available under Linux only!
After installing and running the AtariSIO module and
making sure that you have the required permissions, you just need to enter a
device name which should be /dev/atarisio0 under normal circumstances and select
a handshaking method as described above for the standard serial port backend.
Please refer to AtariSIO documentation on how to build and install AtariSIO.
Usage
After making sure that you installed and configured
AspeQt correctly, you can start using it with your Atari. If you used similar
software before, it should be fairly straight forward.
Disk images
Instead of using real disks, AspeQt uses disk images.
These are regular files that contain an image of an Atari disk. There are
several formats, the most common being the .atr format, currently AspeQt only
supports .atr, .xfd, atx (still in development), and .pro formats. Future releases
may provide support
for .scp, .dcm, .di and gzipped (.atz. atr.gz, .xfz and .xfd.gz) formats.
AspeQt emulates 15 disk drives. You have one
slot for each of them, labeled D1 through DO (letter O). D9
through DO are only supported by SpartaDOS X and compatible DOS (see SDX
manual for details on supported disk drive identifiers). You can make
AspeQt to show only the first slot, the first 8 slots, or all 15 slots using
options in DISK and WINDOW menu items.
+ To hide/show drives D9 through DO, use menu item Disk/Hide drives D9-DO
(CTRL+H),
+ To toggle AspeQt mini mode use menu item Window/Toggle Mini Mode (CTRL+M),
in mini mode AspeQt shows only the first drive slot,
+ To toggle shade mode in mini mode use menu item Window/Toggle
shade mode (CTRL+S), in shade mode AspeQt shows a semi-transparent
window which does not completely block the view of underlying UI
objects,
Note that all drives are actually available for use with your Atari in all
AspeQt display modes whether they are visible or not.
You can mount a disk image to an empty drive slot by:
You can see the result of your operation in the log
display which is below the disk slots, if the operation is completed
successfully, your Atari should be able to see the mounted disk image just like
a real disk in a real drive.
You can use the tool buttons and context menu items to
perform other operations like saving the disk image, enabling write protection
for the image, reverting the image to its last saved state, ejecting
(unmounting) the image, creating a new image and so on. You can also swap images
using drag and drop.
Folder Images
Folder images provide a similar function to the
features variously named as “PC mirror’, “Simulated disk”, “Share point” etc. by
other peripheral emulators. This is basically a simulated Atari disk. Instead of
a disk image, you can mount a folder in your PC that contains some Atari files
and Atari will see it as a disk with the same files in it.
Currently, the mounted folder will be seen as a
standard DOS 2.5 disk and it’s sequantial access (Basic NOTE/POINT commands
will not work as expected) and read-only . Folder Images are compatible with
AtariDOS, MyDOS, all versions of Spartados and SpartaDOS X. There may be
issues with other DOS. The folder images are also bootable as of version 0.8.5,
but since the folder image is a simulation of a standard DOS 2.5 disk, you can
only boot into a DOS that is compatible with AtariDOS disk structure. There
are two exceptions to this, first one is SpartaDOS, AspeQt will allow you to
boot into a 3.2f version of SpartaDOS but there are some limitations. AspeQt will
also allow you to boot into the standard version of MyPicoDOS 4.05. See the following
section for for details and limitations:
Folder boot details and limitations:
To boot your Atari with a Folder Image,
first mount a PC folder to disk slot 1 (D1:). Once mounted, right-click on the
Folder name and select Folder Boot Options
from the menu, select the DOS you would like the boot and click
Apply. make sure AspeQt is ready to receive commands from your
Atari and finally turn your Atari ON, selected DOS will be booted. You must
select a DOS boot option if you mounted a Folder Image for the first time and
you want to boot your Atari from that folder whenever the folder is mounted. You
normally only select the DOS option once for each Folder Image. The Folder will
remain bootable with the same DOS between AspeQt sessions.
Warning:
AspeQt will copy the necessary DOS files into the mounted PC Folder
to make it bootable. Do not keep any other DOS files (like dos.sys, dup.sys
etc..) on that folder as they will be erased/replaced.
Note that you don't need to supply any DOS files, AspeQt
distribution supplies the files
necessary to boot your computer. These DOS files are copyright of their
respective owners, Atari8Warez and AspeQt distributes those files with the
understanding that they are either freeware, abandonware or public domain and are widely
available for download through the internet. If you are the copyright holder of
one or more of these files, and believe that distribution of these files
constitutes a breach of your rights please contact
Atari8Warez. We respect
the rights of copyright holders and won't distribute copyrighted work without
the rights holder's consent.
The following DOSes can be booted from a Folder Image:
Atari DOS 2.5 AspeQt Folder images are fully compatible with this DOS, you can boot the DOS and load drivers and binary files (autorun.sys) during the boot process. AspeQt supplies the dos files (dos.sys, dup.sys) and the ramdisk driver (ramdisk.com). You can add your own autorun.sys file by copying the file into the folder $bootata which is located in AspeQt application directory. You can also use DOS 2.0 instead of 2.5 by simply replacing the dos.sys and dup.sys in $bootata folder with the ones from a DOS 2.0 disk.
MyDOS 4.5 This DOS is disk structure compatible with AtariDOS, so everything that's said for AtariDOS 2.5 above is also valid for MyDOS. Boot files folder for MyDOS is $bootmyd
MyPicoDOS 4.05
This game DOS is provided to support Folder Images which hold Atari games.
You can quickly boot and start your games conveniently from a PC Folder.
Only standard version of MyPicoDOS is provided
and supported. When selecting MyPicoDos as your boot DOS there is an
extra option on the menu to disable high
speed SIO code built into this DOS. If checked, this option will
instruct MyPicoDOS to run in normal speed. This may be necessary under
certain configurations. One example is if you are using an Ultimate 1MB
board or a PBI device like IDE Plus 2 on your Atari with high-speed OS enabled. MyPicoDOS used in high-speed
mode will conflict with the high-speed OS on the Atari, so checking this
option and booting and running MyPicoDOS in normal speed will solve this
problem.
AspeQt will also automatically generate a piconame.txt file during
the Folder Image boot process. So if you have game files with long file
names they will be displayed with their full names when MyPicoDOS menu
appears. piconame.txt file will only be created/updated when
you boot, so if you add more game files to your PC folder during your
MyPicoDOS session they will not show with long names until you reboot.
Boot files folder for MyPicoDOS is $bootpic.
it is not recommanded to modify this folder, unlike AtariDOS and MyDOS there
are no customizations you can make for MyPicoDOS.
SpartaDOS 3.2f SpartaDOS is not compatible with AtariDOS. Its disk/file structure and boot scheme is completely different. So this DOS is only partly (and I would say rather crudely) supported. You will be able to boot SpartaDOS version 3.2f from a Folder Image with the following limitations:
To boot SpartaDOS from an AtariDOS structured Folder Image is an impossible task. So AspeQt uses some (not so elegant) tricks to coherce SpartaDOS into booting from an AtariDOS compatible Folder Image by giving it the impression that it's booting from a SpartaDOS formatted disk. Once the boot is completed AspeQt forces SpartaDOS to re-detect the Folder Image as an AtariDOS formatted disk so that it can display and manipulate the files within the folder. The mechanics of this scheme necessarly limits the boot proccess in the following ways:
You can not load drivers or run an autorun.bat file during the boot process
Once booted from, a Folder Image won't be bootable again until you right-click on the Folder Image name, select Folder Boot Options, select SpartaDOS 3.2f f and click Apply. This will reset the Folder Image boot files and will make the folder bootable once again.
You can not modify/delete files in the boot files folder $bootspa
The restrictions and limitations may be lifted in the upcoming versions of AspeQt.
Running Atari executables
Most Atari programs floating around on the internet come as
Atari DOS executables. These files may have .exe, .com, .xex or any other
extension. Instead of messing with disk image software and DOS, you may directly
run these files in your Atari using AspeQt.
You can either drag and drop a file with .exe, com or
.xex extension into any slot or you can use the menu item “File/Boot Atari
executable” to access this feature. A dialog with the necessary instructions
will pop up and the file will be loaded and run. You can leave the dialog open
to boot from the same executable more than once. A reload button is provided
which will reload the executable into memory. This button is intended for atari
software developers who may be developing on the PC and testing their software
after making changes to it. Reload button will ensure the most recent executable
is loaded from the PC, and as such is mainly a convenience feature for such
developers.
The executable booter has an optional high speed code
which will allow you to load programs a lot faster. You can enable/disable it
with the “Tools/Options/Emulation/Use high speed executable loader” check box.
The high speed code is not able to cope with higher speeds than divisor 3 so
check your configuration before attempting to load a file in this way.
Please note that this feature is not compatible with
every executable and, in practice, it’s not even possible to implement such a
loader. High speed loader has even more issues. So there will always be some
programs that you won’t be able to run with the executable booter but hopefully
the number of the compatibility problems will decrease with future versions of
AspeQt.
Image explorer
Warning: This feature is
constantly under development and may change with each release, so use it with
caution.
As mentioned above, AspeQt uses disk images instead of
real disks. These images may contain Atari files and it’s not always easy to
extract them from an image or to add a file into an image. By clicking the
‘Image properties’ tool button or by using the context menu, you can explore the
files in a mounted disk image.
There are various file systems (ways of putting files
in a disk) used by Atari. AspeQt supports the most common one, the Atari Dos
file system (including the most used variants, like Dos 2.5 and MyDos) fully,
including MyDos style subdirectories. It also has read-only support for
SpartaDos file system. Other file systems (like Dos 3.0) are not supported at
the moment.
By using the tool bar buttons in the image explorer,
you can drag and drop, extract, add, delete Atari files with optional text
conversion. You can also drag and drop files between different images and rename
files by pressing F2 after selecting the name or extension of a file. You can
print a directory of files by clicking on the printer button.
Cassette images
AspeQt can playback cassette images in .cas format.
These are PC files that contain data extracted from an Atari cassette. You can
either drag and drop a file with .cas extension into any slot or you can use the
menu item “File/Playback cassette image” to access this feature. A dialog with
the necessary instructions will pop up and the file will be played back.
The cassette emulator can be configured to ignore the
baud rate that is embedded in the image file in favor of a custom one. This may
speed up the load times but can cause compatibility problems. You can
enable/disable it with the “Tools/Options/Emulation/Use custom baud rate for
cassette emulation” check box. When enabled, you can use the spin box below to
set the custom baud rate. The available values range from 425 through 875 bps.
These values are the lowest and highest speeds that the Atari OS can process.
The normal speed is 600 bps.
The cassette emulation does not support rewinding or
seeking in the images. This may change in the future versions.
Printer output
AspeQt emulates a generic text-only Atari printer. It
only emulates the first printer device, that is “P1:” You can view, save or
print the emulated printer output using the “File/View printer text output”.
Support for ASCII and ATASCII is provided.
Running multiple instances
of AspeQt (Sessions)
AspeQt allows you to save and load your disk sessions, that
is, the order and names of the mounted images and their settings. You can access
this feature from the “File/Open session” and “File/Save session” menu items.
As of version 0.8.2 AspeQt fully implements multi session capability.
This means you can now launch multiple instances of AspeQt using different
session files and have different configurations for each session.
This makes possible serving more than one Atari computer from one PC so long as
you have more than one COM port and SIO2PC cable available. Simply create
different sessions with different settings and save them to a permanent session
file (a file with .aspeqt file extension).
If you plan on serving more than one Atari computer simultaneously, make sure
that the PC is fast enough to handle similtaneous SIO requests as Atari SIO is
very time critical and can fail if the requests are not serviced in a timely
fashion. Experiment with the multi-session capability and verify that it
can be run reliably before you put it on serious use.
The following parameters can be configured for individual sessions (stored
in each session file)
The following configuration parameters are global and apply to all sessions (stored in Windows registry)
The following configuration parameters apply when AspeQt is launched without a session file (stored in Windows registry)
To launch a session, create a shortcut
(Windows) or a
link (Unix/Linux) in a folder with the session file name as a command line argument:
An example of a shortcut for Windows would be:
"C:\Program Files\AspeQt\aspeqt.exe" C:\Program
Files\AspeQt\session.aspeqt
AspeQt client software for the Atari (AspeCl)
AspeQt also implements a client server device ($46) which communicates with the client module AspeCl that runs on the Atari computer. AspeCl is a general purpose client module and incorporates the following functionalities:
AspeCl Usage (command line switches, at least one must be specified)
Aspecl TS | TO | TF | DA | DS | DU | DM | DN
TS
=> Set
Date/Time on
Atari
TO =>
Set Date/Time
on Atari
and turn
TD Line
ON
TF =>
Set Date/Time
on Atari
and turn
TD Line
OFF
DA[d/*] => Toggle Auto-Commit
ON or OFF on a given disk (d)
(where d is 1 to 9 and J to O, following SDX naming conventions) or on all (*)
disks.
Toggling auto-commit switch to ON will commit all pending changes to the affected
disk image and all future changes will be comitted automatically. If the toggle is set ON on a newly created and mounted
disk image (mounted locally by AspeQt), operator intervention will be
required from the AspeQt
side to assign a permanent file name to the image file before it's saved to PC
hard disk.
DS[dd]
=> Swap
disks, where
dd represents
the drive
numbers to
be swapped
(i.e DS1J
will swap
disks 1
and 10)
DU[d/*] =>
Unmount disk(s).
Will either
unmount a
single disk
[d], or
all disks
[*]. Unmount will
not unmount
disks that
have changes
until the
changes are
commited. Disks set
to "auto-commit"
in AspeQt
will be
unmounted immediately as the
changes to
these images
are commited
automatically as they occur. So if there are pending changes for a disk
when you want to unmount it remotely, first issue a DA remote command to the
same disk to toggle auto-commit. Once auto-commit is toggled ON any pending
changes will be commited to disk. You can then issue the DU command to unmount
that disk remotely.
DM[fname.ext] =>
Mount an
existing disk
image command will mount
a supported
disk image
file (.atr, .atx, etc) into the first
available disk
slot. Command will return the used disk slot number to the Atari. It is
important to note that AspeQt needs to know where the disk image file
resides on PC. AspeQt will look for the disk image file in the
"Last Folder Image Directory". A Folder Image
is a window into one of the PC directories where your Atari files may reside.
This Folder Image does not need to be currently mounted to AspeQt but must have
been mounted at least once before so that AspeQt knows the name of this
directory. If a Folder Image has never been mounted,
AspeQt will display an error message indicating that it does not know where to
find the remotely requested disk image file.
DN[fname.ext].[1/2/3/4/5/6] =>
Create and
mount a
new disk
image. Will create
a new
disk image with the given
name, and
mount it. The
disk image
will be
created in
the "Last Folder Image Directory"
used by
AspeQt and be mounted on the first available disk slot. Command will
return the used slot number to the Atari. It is important to note that
AspeQt needs to know where the disk image file will reside on PC. AspeQt will
save the disk image file in the "Last Folder Image
Directory". A Folder Image is a window into one of the PC directories
where your Atari files may reside. This Folder Image does not need to be
currently mounted to AspeQt but must have been mounted at least once before so
that AspeQt knows the name of this directory. If a
Folder Image has never been mounted, AspeQt will display an error message
indicating that it does not know where to save the remotely created disk image
file.
The Disk
Image can be created in the following capacities:
1 -
Standard Single
Density (90KB)
2 -
Standard Enhanced
density (130KB)
3 -
Standard Double
Density (180KB)
4 -
Double sided,
double density (360KB)
5 -
Double density
Harddisk (256 bytes/sec, 65535 sectors, 16MB)
6 - Quad density Harddisk (512 bytes/sec, 65535 sectors, 32MB)
Example: ASPECL DNmyhd.atr.6 => will
create and mount a
quad density harddisk
.atr image
with the
name myhd
And here's an example of invoking
AspeCl with
multiple command
line switches:
ASPECL TF
DS18 DMBASICXE.ATR
=> will
set the
date/time and
turn TD
line OFF,
will swap
disks 1-8,
and will
mount basicxe.atr disk image to the
first available disk slot, returning back the slot number to Atari.
AspeCl compatibility
AspeCl is currently a command line based client which is fully compatible with and runs only under SpartaDos (v2.5 and up) and SpartaDos X versions. A seperate menu driven client for menu based DOS (like AtariDOS and MyDos versions) will be available in the future. Some of the functionality in AspeCl also depend on the underlying DOSes capabilities. For example setting the Date/Time from the PC is a DOS dependent feature as it requires specific Date/Time drivers from the DOS. Other functionality like mounting/unmounting/swapping disk or folder images are DOS independent and therefore are available under different DOSes.
Apetime
AspeQt as of v0.8.5 no longer supports
ApeTime (Date/Time downloader utility) from the AtariMax APE package.
The support code has been removed from the source. Please use AspeCl for Date/Time download and other remote functionality.
Original AspeQt code up to version 0.6 Copyright (2010), Fatih Aygün
Updates since version 0.6 Copyright (2012), Ray Ataergin (www.atari8warez.com)