Re: MiNT VFAT/ZIp drive probes

[tlang@limes.de (Torsten Lang)]

> 
> As I read in the mails that followed this one, it's a known bug, but I was
> just wondering if it had anything to do with the fact that if you set your
> default sector size in the harddisc driver too small (IE smaller than that
> of a single-partition zipdisc), you won't be able to read the disc unless
> you booted up with the disc inserted (in which case the driver will adjust
> itself).
> 
Well, I suppose the ZIP uses 512Bytes/Sector and therefore should work with
nearly every setup. There's another thing to mention: When you don't partition
your media but use them as "big floppy" it may be neccessary to change the
media after booting at least once. I recognised such an effect when setting up
an Milan with an LS-120 drive.
Concerning the mediachange problems: I experienced that it depends on the
driver you use (as far as I know Hushi and HDDriver work at least together
with the MinixFS).
The problem is (Frank, please correct me if I'm wrong) that the MiNT kernel
provides several media change mechanisms: You may ask the BIOS or the filesystem
(if eg. the filesystem doesn't install itself as a BIOS device). So you get
very different results depending on wether you use a Unix shell or a desktop
like Thing. And MiNT and the filesystems are very sensitive concerning the
order in which an application asks for mediachanges (using BIOS and the
other method).
One solution that at least worked for me when using Thing is: Open the drive,
change the media and wait until it's ready and do a forced media change
(<SHIFT>+<ESC>). This method at least works fine for my cd-rom drivers 
(cd-rom.xfs or Spin!).

Regards,
    Torsten Lang