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From: carlos@io.UUCP (Carlos Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Close Call (Supra hard drive)
Message-ID: <342@io.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Jul-87 11:54:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: io.342
Posted: Wed Jul 22 11:54:11 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jul-87 05:49:23 EDT
References: <1385@crash.CTS.COM> <2124@cbmvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: carlos@zapp.UUCP (Carlos Smith)
Organization: Interleaf, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 33
Summary: Supramount command

Dave Haynie had mentioned his suspicion of the "Supramount" command. It so
happens that I recently spoke with a tech support guy at Supra, and asked
him about it. He said that the supramount command uses the information in
the mountlist along with a file called Supra.0 in the devs: directory to
mount the drive. All that is in Supra.0 is partioning information for the
drive. He said that if one were to examine the information in Supra.0 and
use it to build the additional partitions in the mountlist, that one could
then just use the normal mount command. 

I examined this file, and sure enough, it seemed to mostly be low cylinder 
and high cylinder numbers for the partitions. Then looking at the mountlist
information, it appeared obvious how to explicitly define separate partitions
for the hard disk using this information. I will try this next time I 
repartition the disk, and see if it really works this way.

I guess they do this because they have a nice utility that you can run at
disk configuration time that lets you easily define partitions using
gadgets for the number and size of partitions. The mountlist contains only
information for the dh0: device. I figure that rather than mucking around with
the mountlist when you set up partitions, or making the user do it, they set
up this file and let the supramount command to do it "magically". They also 
say that this set up causes no problems with the new, hard-disk optimized
file system which they say they have been testing.

Anyway, I am quite happy with the Supra. I run it daisy-chained with a CLtd
Amega board and have never had problems (the AMega is inboard of the Supra
controller). It's also nice to have a clock-calendar built in (though I have
had the date trashed by particularly violent crashes - copper going crazy,
weird sounds from the audio, etc.).
-- 
			Carlos Smith
			uucp:...!harvard!umb!ileaf!carlos
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