bryan@cs.utexas.edu (Bryan Bayerdorffer @ Wit's End) (02/09/89)
Email response to my remarks about the Microbotics Hardframe has been such that I've decided to post a slightly embellished version of my standard answer. Here goes: iC's phone # is 214-988-3500. They have an ad on page 131 of the December AmigaWorld, and I think they have one every month, though I don't subscribe. The only thing I have to say about installing the Hardframe/Quantum, or, more generally, the Hardframe and any drive, is to pop in the disk that comes with the Hardframe and click the readme icon before you do any hardware installing. There were no paper instructions with the Hardframe, so I just bolted on the drive, connected the cables, and plugged the whole thing into the bus. THEN I checked out the disk and discovered the documentation. It turns out that I had done everything right, but that might be only because I generally know what I'm doing when it comes to micro hardware. Microbotics really should include a simple little card that says, "The docs are on the floppy disk." Prepping and formatting the drive are very easy--the prep software realizes that you have a Quantum 80S and sets all the defaults accordingly. The only default I changed was to set the Hardframe boot priority at 5 rather than the 0 default, so that the machine would boot from the hard disk even with a floppy inserted. If you play games that require you to boot from a floppy then you won't want to do this. I only buy games that will at least load from a hard disk, so I don't want to have to pop out the disk every time I apply the neck pinch. There really ought to be some boot-time key combination that forces a boot from floppy no matter what all the autoboot devices are saying, e.g. chickenhead-Amiga-f == boot from floppy. Then I could set up my boot priorities the way I like them, and still boot from a floppy if something breaks. As it stands now, I might have to pull the Hardframe out if it starts to have boot problems and I can't alter its boot priority, even though it might still be accessible via a mountlist entry and Mount. If anyone knows of such a key combination, please enlighten me. In addition, the machine should be smart enough to attempt to boot from the next device in the priority queue if, for example, the floppy drive contains a non-bootable disk. Otherwise, this boot priority is not really a priority at all; it's just a selector. Fi this is what's suppoes to happen, then there's something wrong with my Amiga. ______________________________________________________________________________ /_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/_____/ |_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____| _No dark sarcasm in the classroom|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|___ |____Teachers leave the kids alone__|_____|_____|_____|_bryan@cs.utexas.edu___| ___|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|{vertebrae...}!cs.utexas.edu!bryan_|___ |_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright) (02/13/89)
In article <167@mothra.cs.utexas.edu> bryan@cs.utexas.edu writes: >The only default I changed was to set the Hardframe boot priority at 5 >rather than the 0 default, so that the machine would boot from the >hard disk even with a floppy inserted. If you play games that require >you to boot from a floppy then you won't want to do this. I only >buy games that will at least load from a hard disk, so I don't want >to have to pop out the disk every time I apply the neck pinch. I may be totally off-base here, but isn't this wrong? My understanding is that the boot priority will only affect WARM BOOTS, not booting up from a power-on. How can kickstart know, on a cold boot, what priorities you have assigned in your mountlist? So on a cold boot, it would seem that the floppy drive would ALWAYS be looked at first. I don't mind being told I'm wrong, but please tell me WHY I'm wrong.
jdow@gryphon.COM (J. Dow) (02/15/89)
In article <790@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu> jwright@atanasoff.cs.iastate.edu (Jim Wright) writes: >In article <167@mothra.cs.utexas.edu> bryan@cs.utexas.edu writes: >>The only default I changed was to set the Hardframe boot priority at 5 >>rather than the 0 default, so that the machine would boot from the >>hard disk even with a floppy inserted. If you play games that require >>you to boot from a floppy then you won't want to do this. I only >>buy games that will at least load from a hard disk, so I don't want >>to have to pop out the disk every time I apply the neck pinch. > >I may be totally off-base here, but isn't this wrong? My understanding >is that the boot priority will only affect WARM BOOTS, not booting >up from a power-on. How can kickstart know, on a cold boot, what >priorities you have assigned in your mountlist? So on a cold boot, >it would seem that the floppy drive would ALWAYS be looked at first. > >I don't mind being told I'm wrong, but please tell me WHY I'm wrong. The automounting/autobooting process pays no attention at all th mountlists. You rdprep your drive telling it the boot priority. This info is read from the drive during automounting. It is fed to the OS. The OS prioritizes these things and picks the drive with the highest priority and mounts it. As I noted - the mountlist is never read for this operation. (This is why the first cylinder is reserved - all the mountlist stuff and the fastfilesystem executable etc are stored there in a machine readable format.) -- Sometimes a bird in the hand leaves a sticky deposit. Perhaps it were best it remain there in the bush with the other one. {@_@} jdow@bix (where else?) Sometimes the dragon wins. Sometimes jdow@gryphon.CTS.COM the knight. Does the fair maiden ever {backbone}!gryphon!jdow win? Surely both the knight and dragon stink. Maybe the maiden should suicide? Better yet - she should get an Amiga and quit playing with dragons and knights.
sirius@cup.portal.com (Mike Sirius Stilson) (03/03/89)
(Just a little away from the subject of Hardframe...) I set up RAD: with a BootPri of 127, so it will always boot my HD even if a DOS disk in df0:. What I noticed though, is that AmigaDOS reads the DF0: information Boots from RAD: then re-reads df0: And creates another entry for it. (ie, when I type 'Info' I get two DF0: entries. One (the first one done before booting from rad) doesn't update anything (doesn't notice diskchanges, even if I 'diskchange df0:') The second one works fine. Just a little half-wierdness I thought I'd mention. Mike 'Sirius' Stilson Sirius Software sirius@well.UUCP or ...portal!cup.portal.com!sirius