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Re: [MiNT] BigDOS again



Hi!

On Wed, Nov 10, 1999 at 10:24:09PM +0200, Martin-Eric Racine wrote:
> The only thing we clarified there is that even MiNT wasn't able
> to access the resulting partition, which you refused to beleive.

Well, as you haven't then the list about this (as it would be a bug, if
Big-DOS accepts the partition, but MiNT with a correct NEWFATFS line(!)
doesn't), I simply assumed you managed to get it to work, then.

Remember, it's not of any help if you keep telling "MiNT still needs
Big-DOS" (especially in public forums) just because for some reasons it
doesn't work for you. It works for quite a lot people, so I'd rather
suggest to track down what's going wrong for you. But it's simply not
true that Big-DOS is still necessary; if it is for your setup, then
something's wrong with either your setup or MiNT itself.

> Uwe Seimet confirmed that, without BigDOS, the partition (and any
> partitions following it) simply won't show up in SingleTOS

I won't be accessible (Getbpb() returns NULL), that's a big difference.
The drive letter is of course reserved, as Big-DOS wouldn't find it,
either, if it weren't.

> nor will it (and the following) be found at bootup if the TOS version
> doesn't support that partition size.

No, they will all be found, but simply not accessible. And of course
even less will following partitions disappear. And Uwe just confirmed
that, so I guess you got him quite wrong.

Imagine the following partition layout on a harddisk:

1. 15 megs, GEM
2. 1023 megs, BGM
3. 127 megs, BGM
4. 511 megs, BGM

(All partitions have a FAT filesystem)

Your Atari has TOS 1.04, i.e. the built-in GEMDOS can handle partitions
up to a maximum of 256 megabytes. If HDDRIVER would behave as you said,
and you'd boot into TOS, you'd only have

C: 15 megs

But in fact you get

C: 15 megs
D: not accessible (GEMDOS error -46)
E: 127 megs
F: not accessible (GEMDOS error -46)

(Check _drvbits to see that the bits for D: and F: /are/ set)

When you now boot MagiC, or install Big-DOS, you get:

C: 15 megs
D: 1023 megs
E: 127 megs
F: 511 megs

See that it wouldn't make any sense if HDDRIVER wouldn't recognize the
partitions, i.e. install a drive letter, even with TOS? You'd get
different drives D: and F: otherwise, and that's not the case. Even
more, how should Big-DOS work if HDDRIVER hadn't installed a drive
letter already? It would have to re-map drive letters, which it doesn't.


Ciao

Thomas


-- 
Thomas Binder (Gryf @ IRCNet)  gryf@hrzpub.tu-darmstadt.de
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