[MiNT] feature report

[Jim DeClercq <jimd@panix.com>]

Preliminarily, I seem to have joined a small group of people who 
have realized that the only way to get a good drive for a TT030 
is to buy an IDE drive and bridge card, and cut a clearance hole 
for the end of the bridge card. For those yet to do this the 
first time, a bead of glue, GOOP or Super Shoe Goo 2, or European 
equivalent, on the top of the IDE connector, to keep it from 
wiggling off, which will kill one expensive bridge card.

I have managed to get MiNT very confused, probably by 
multitasking programs that never heard of this. When the promp 
turns from "easymint" to "Amnesiak" I have lost internet 
functionality, getting connects, but then telnet, ftp, lynx, just 
halt, until I reinstall MiNT with the easymint installer, which 
leaves out a number of files I think I need,  and is a long 
project.

The feature I have found is that when I get MiNT confused, the 
floppy drive and printer port both cease to exist, and it has 
been a long hard lesson that what to do is reinstall MiNT rather 
than tear the machine apart and investigate both ports. That 
accomplishes nothing.

The clue to what is going on comes from a very cold reboot into 
Single TOS, and find that the floppy and printer are still gone.

Something writes, to NVRAM, a machine configuration not including 
a floppy drive or a printer. What is that something?  It would be 
so much easier to reload just one file.

This is with 1.15.12, since I need MiNT and single TOS to make 
Yamaha's last external CD drive and Anodyne's latest software 
write a CD, but since nobody has reported this particular 
feature, it is probably not version specific.

Any suggestions will be received with gratitude.

My next project will be seeing if I can get --nodeps to work from 
a tar file and list. Is this possible?

Jim


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