by Shawn Jefferson (sjefferson@shaw.ca)

Last Update: January 15, 2006

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Overview *

2. How do I use it? *

3. Disclaimer *

The MyIDE hard drive interface, by Mr. Atari (Sijmen Schouten) is an excellent and inexpensive way to connect a hard drive to your Atari 8-bit computer. The existing tools only allowed disk images to be copied one at a time to the image space.

The MyIDE Image Batcher program allows you to copy multiple disk images to image space in one batch process. It integrates fully with the MyIDE built-in image routine and the MyIDE Image Manager.

Atari XL/XE.

MyIDE Hardware by Mr. Atari

MyIDE OS (software patch or EPROM-OS) version 3.5F/4.x

Image space enabled

You must have the MyIDE OS installed (either the software OS patch, or a replacement MyIDE EPROM OS) and image space must be enabled. Run the program from a DOS of your choice that works with the MyIDE drivers (MyDOS works very well). You will be informed if the MyIDE drivers/OS is not loaded or if image space has not yet been enabled, and the program will exit.

The MyIDE Config screen is laid out with the title and version number at the very top. At the bottom of the screen you should see a status line that shows the type of interface, internal or external, the type of MyIDE OS, SoftOS or RomOS and a small menu on the right.

The main menu actions (on the bottom right side of the status line):

[A]bout: displays some vanity text and thanks.

U[t]ility: drive information.

[Q]uit: quits the Image Manager program.

Batch Settings (in the grey area):

Start [i]mage: image to start loading into.

Batch [d]rive: drive to load ATR files from.

RETURN: starts the batch process.

Pressing [i] will allow you to type in the image slot you wish to start loading images into. If you are using MyIDE Image Manager with this hard drive setup, the start image will automatically be filled in for you with the next available image slot. Otherwise, you will have to type in which image slot you want to use. Be careful, since you will overwrite existing images if you enter the wrong value here.

Important! If you are using MyIDE Image Manager and you have sorted your images and you also want to enter your own value into the Start image field, there is a possibility of corrupting the image table. In this particular case, you should sort your images by slot first. This only applies if all of these conditions are true: using Image Manager, sorted your images and entering your own value into Start image.

Pressing [D] allows you to select the disk drive that ATR image files will be loaded from. This should contain an Atari-format drive that has at least one ATR file in the root directory. This drive can be a real floppy, hard drive partition or a virtual drive. At the time of this writing, both Atarisio/Atariserver’s virtual drive function and APE for Windows’ PC-MIRROR both work with MyIDE Image Batcher. Since the files are being read from an Atari file-system, there is a limitation of 64 files maximum (63 on APE for Windows, since it uses one directory entry for the UP directory.) APE for DOS does not work at this time. Another limitation is that all filename limitations apply. A filename cannot have special characters such as apostrophe’s or exclamation marks, etc. The program will refuse to read these files and may not read any more ATRs from this drive. Rename the offending ATR file and start again.

If you are running MyIDE Image Manager on your hard drive setup, you will also see some additional settings. Just under the number of partitions display, you will see a display of what cylinder the image table is at, as well as a [C]ategory option. Each press of [C] will cycle through the categories you have configured in MyIDE Image Manager. Your categories can also be edited from the Utility menu of MyIDE Image Batcher. All images copied to image space as part of this batch process will be assigned the category shown here.

Pressing the RETURN key will start the image copy process. You will notice a progress bar displayed at the bottom of the screen. First all the ATR files that exist on the Batch drive are counted. Then each ATR is read and copied into the corresponding image slot, starting at the image slot you specified as the Start image. The progress bar shows the progress for each ATR disk image. A line above the display bar shows the number of ATR files to go, plus the information about the ATR file currently being copied to image space. Any error messages that don’t require the image copy to be stopped will be displayed below the progress bar.

The description of the images will be assigned their 8.3 filename, both in the MyIDE built-in image routine and the MyIDE Image Manager image table (if that software is being used.) You can then rename these later to more descriptive names if you so desire.

Pressing [T] from the image manager will bring you to the utility screen. Here you will see information on the geometry of the hard drive (cylinders, heads and sectors), as well as the image space settings. If you are using MyIDE Image Manager you will also see the image table cylinder and number of images currently loaded to your hard drive.

Pressing [E] from this screen will allow you to edit image categories. See the MyIDE Image Manager documentation for details about categories and how they work.

This program is provided as-is and any damage to your data, your computer or your mental health is completely your own responsibility, and in no way will the author of the software be held liable.