CosmosEx – Q&A

CosmosEx – Q&A (questions and answers), status


When the devices will be available?

To see the current status of store (devices available / not available), see this page:

http://atari.sk/cosmosex-3-0/

 


What can be used to power CosmosEx device?

The CosmosEx device can be powered through 4-pin connector, which is inside of your Atari, when you remove the original floppy drive. CosmosEx draws around 0.5A of current when not powering anything through USB, so the original PSU of Atari ST should be able to power it in that case, if it’s in a good shape.

The other option of powering CosmosEx is using an external PSU with mini USB cable, which nowadays is mostly some cell phone charger or something similar. It should output 5V (Thou shalt use one that outputs five, no more, no less ;) ), and at least 2A current rating is recommended, and using one which can output more amps will not hurt the situation. The newer Raspberry Pi 3 requires up to 2 A of power, so powering it from USB phone charger is maybe a better option.


What SCSI cable do I need for Falcon?

You might probably find the right cable on eBay, or external SCSI drive bay, or something similar.

If you would consider making yourself a cable like that, you would need:

  • on Falcon side of cable something like this:

    http://sk.farnell.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=15001&langId=421&urlRequestType=Base&partNumber=1098644&storeId=10174

  • and on CosmosEx side of the cable something like this:

    http://www.vetco.net/catalog/images/PAN-IDS-50NPK-1.jpg

I don’t follow much these things on eBay, so I can’t give you the direct link to that one. Some Falcon users already have cables like that, some have external cases for the SCSI drives and thus cables like that, and SCSI connectors are still available on the net, so I’ve let the users to solve this one.

I was thinking of trying to make that external SCSI cable using that connector above, I got one sample, but I didn’t had the time to do that yet. Maybe asking on www.atari-forum.com would be also an option…


What is the difference between the version with Raspberry Pi and the version without Raspberry Pi?

Most of the functionality is done by Raspberry Pi, so without that it works only as SD card reader (like SatanDisk / UltraSatan).


The device is too complicated, you have to be a rocket scientist to configure it…

Yes, it’s more complicated than a simple hard drive or a floppy drive, it’s more complicated than SatanDisk or UltraSatan… because it does more stuff! It has too many features, and that means that many things can go wrong, or need a specific configuration… If you’re configuring a shared drive between CosmosEx and your PC or Mac, you might have different versions of OS there, and each version of that might behave differently…

Sometimes I have trouble to share stuff between two versions of Windows, and MicroSoft has much more developers than the CosmosEx team ;)
Sometimes you just need to fiddle with the settings a little, sometimes you need to google things until you get it working. I thought that most of the Atari folks are very skilled in computers handling, but with the growing number of customers it reached also people who are not that good with computers, or don’t speak English well and thus can’t google for the solutions, or even can’t google well (or at all)…

The device itself relies on linux and its services (e.g. accessing the shared drives from other computers), and as we probably all know not everything works perfect there, or even the error messages / hints are not so simple… If you might have issues with googling for stuff when configuring the network sharing, that this feature and / or device might not be the best for you… I’m sorry to say that (as it’s not a thing that would boost my sales) but I rather will have a customer who knows there might be issues when configuring network sharing or other stuff and he:

  • either decides to buy the device, because he knows he can figure stuff out,
  • or he knows he has hard time to figure stuff out or don’t have the time and nerves to figure stuff out, and decides to NOT buy the device

What I don’t like is when people over-estimate their computer skills or have expectations that everything will work to 100% without their effort, or they expect that there won’t be any bugs, or any compatibility issues, they get the device, and that’s when the hell starts…

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to bitch about people, I do have understanding for their questions when they are trying to get things going, I try to answer their questions and try to solve their problems through e-mail and through forums, but I can’t solve every case of problems. The devices are tested at my place, with my computers, with my network, but there’s too much of variability, and I can’t cover all the cases of testing, documenting, and so on.


Documentation is missing / More documentation would be nice

I totally agree – there could be a ton of documentation about each use case there is, there could be web pages, video tutorials, blogs, and so on, but I can’t do it – I don’t have any spare time for that while doing other stuff… There’s a wonderful document about CosmosEx by DrCoolZic, it’s called ‘CosmosEx User’s Guide’, you should get it… But it’s too technical for some people, and a simple list of steps for some use-cases would be better for many people. Did you know that YOU (yes YOU!) could make any documentation about it to help others?


The price is high / higher than previously

Yes, this might be… Currently it’s not manufactured and sold by me, so the price and package content is something I don’t control anymore.


Bugs are not fixed / Software + OS compatibility

This device has so many features and it interacts with so much software and hardware and OS, that there are bugs and there always will be bugs. I don’t want to pretend that it will be perfect one day. Things that currently don’t work:

  • TOS 1.00 support
  • MagiC support
  • MiNT support
  • CT60 support

 

What can you do about it?

Help me with the software and bug fixes! This is not a joke, but a serious request! Often I see on YOUR LinkedIn profile, on YOUR FaceBook profile, on YOUR Google+ profile, in YOUR e-mail footer, in YOUR e-mail address that YOU ARE A SOFTWARE DEVELOPER, SOFTWARE ENGINEER, or something related… Instead of JUST complaining about the bugs please DO some actual help and fix something! I know you DON’T HAVE TIME for that, well that’s normal, nobody does, not even me. We all have our personal and professional life, but if you want to see those bugs go, you have to help… Otherwise you leave everything to me, and it takes me longer because most of the time I work alone :-/ Help, please? Pretty please?? Anyone??? Someone????


Who is behind CosmosEx?

Developer of hardware (HW), chips firmware (FW), software (SW): Jookie (Miro Nohaj)
Manufacturing / producing of hardware, testing, orders & payments processing, packaging, sending: cosmosex[@]atari.sk
Bug fixing, adding new features, releasing new versions:

  • mainly Jookie (Miro Nohaj)
  • CE_DD skeleton and some fixes – MiKRO / MSB
  • web interface, code fixes – tIn / absence.
  • code improvements, features – nanard
  • TT compatibility, code fixes – ggn / KUA

 

 

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