Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!husc6!rice!titan!bro From: bro@titan.rice.edu (Douglas Monk) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: HARD DISK: HELP OFFERED AND WANTED Summary: fixmap.prg for Atari host adaptor Keywords: ICD-formatter, SECOND DRIVE, 1410 CONTROLLER Message-ID: <1893@kalliope.rice.edu> Date: 18 Sep 88 20:28:10 GMT References: <821@tnoibbc.UUCP> <382@bdt.UUCP> Sender: usenet@rice.edu Reply-To: bro@titan.rice.edu (Douglas Monk) Organization: Rice University, Houston Lines: 34 In article <382@bdt.UUCP> bms@bdt.UUCP writes: > > ... Atari host adapters do not pass back SCSI/SASI status(error) codes > properly. This causes hard disk boot software to install "phantom" drives > on the system. ... > >Vance Chin Berkeley Microsystems > P.O. Box 20119 > Oakland, CA 94620 As a result of this "phantom drive" phenomenon, you can't install ram disks since all the drive letters are spuriously taken. For this reason I wrote a little program that goes in the AUTO folder (after your hard disk driver) that reads a file to determine what YOU want the active drive mask set to. Thus, you set the active drives before running the ram disk program which can then install itself correctly. The only trouble with this scheme is that I have trouble with reset-surviving ram disks, though I am not sure why. Does a warm reset leave the drive bits alone, including the surviving ram disk? If that is the case, all I need to add is a check to see if the program is being run after a cold or a warm reset. The way I currently use it is to set the drive bits every time and use a non-surviving ram disk, so I haven't been motivated to fix it up any more. If there is an interest in the program (which can either be run from desktop, shell, or auto folder, and uses command-line arguments or a file if no arguments are found to LIST current active drives, SET the desired active drives, CLEAR the undesired active drives, print a MESSAGE, and HOLD the resulting printout until a key is pressed) I can post it to the sources and binary lists. If someone can make suggestions on how to deal better with reset-surviving ram disks, I will incorporate those changes first. Suggestions welcome. Thanks, Doug Monk (bro@rice.edu)