grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham Thomas) (05/22/91)
What is the latest version of Atari's own hard disk formatter? I am about to buy a second-hand Atari Megafile 60, and would like to reformat it with up-to-date software. My current hard disk (SH205, same as a Megafile 20, I think) has been formatted with HDX301, which was written in Summer 89. Has there been anything since? Does anyone have strong feelings about whether a different formatter (Supra, ICD, GE-Soft, Claus Brod's driver, etc.) would be better? I will be using the Megafile 60 with an early STE which probably has one of the - how shall I put this? - suboptimal DMA chips. Allegedly, these chips should work fine with Atari's own hard drives, but will probably cause other manufacturers' drives to lose characters in transmission. My STE is under warranty until July, so I intend to soak-test the drive then, if all is not well, send back the STE for chip replacement. According to a recent report, Atari UK are now are now willing to admit there was a problem with some batches of DMA chips and are readily replacing them for free. Cheers, Graham ps. Thanks to all the people in the Southern & Western USA who acknowledged a previous posting. It's reassuring to know that our news feed is sending messages out as it should.
Roger.Sheppard@bbs.actrix.gen.nz (05/23/91)
Get the DMA chip replaced, you could change to a better hard drive at a later date, from what I have read the faulty DMA chips are very unpredictable, some will work with a Atari drive, but otheres not. The dealers here find that there are no good rules for testing for these chips, if it is tested on say a Atari drive in a shop, it could probably fail on a different Atari drive. I would not like to be stuck with a machine that was a bit iffy Note: the ICD booter will only work if you have a ICD host adapter in your system. -- Roger W. Sheppard 85 Donovan Rd, Kapiti New Zealand...
gerloff@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de (Olaf Gerloff) (05/23/91)
In article <5186@syma.sussex.ac.uk>, grahamt@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Graham Thomas) writes: |> |> What is the latest version of Atari's own hard disk formatter? I am |> about to buy a second-hand Atari Megafile 60, and would like to reformat |> it with up-to-date software. My current hard disk (SH205, same as a |> Megafile 20, I think) has been formatted with HDX301, which was written |> in Summer 89. Has there been anything since? Does anyone have strong |> feelings about whether a different formatter (Supra, ICD, GE-Soft, Claus |> Brod's driver, etc.) would be better? |> Hello Graham! The latest version of HDX and AHDI is 4.0. I use it to format my MEGAFILE and it works fine. The difference between 3.01 and 4.0 is, that the driver will support SCSI-DMA on the TT. I copied it from the MEGA STE Harddisk- Utility Disk. The only other driver I know is CBHD from Claus Brod. The driver is good, but it didn't support big GEM and extended partitions in the current version :-( and I want one big partition. Greetings, Olaf -- ****************************************************************************** * Olaf Gerloff * Internet: GERLOFF@tubvm.cs.tu-berlin.de * * Technical University Berlin (FRG)* or gerloff@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de * * Department of Computer Science * BITNET : GERLOFF@DB0TUI11 * * Computerbased Informationsystems * Usenet : ...!mcsun!unido!opal!gerloff * ****************************************************************************** * Impossible things will be executed immediately, * * miracles take a little longer! * ******************************************************************************
Rod.Fulk@therip.FidoNet.Org (Rod Fulk) (05/30/91)
Hello Graham, The early Ste's are all covered on a case to case basis.. Your supposed to call atari if you find out your STe doesnt work with a hard drive for some reason. (Yes, atari USA did say there was a problem but all current STe's should be working just fine. The problem was NOT with JUST the third party drives although they seemed more apt to mess up.) I would suggest making sure your hard drive is very backed up... My bosses computer didnt start trashing files until about a week after he had the computer. He swapped it and it has worked every since. (Atari USA's customer service told me the above policy. I decided to wait until later. Glad I did. I am gonna try getting a new machine pretty soon) * Origin: The R.I.P. (616)235-2313 [HST] (1:228/24)