barry@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Barry Lay) (12/22/89)
I have the following problem. I have a Mega 4 ST with a dead internal disk drive. Fortunately, my hard disk autoboots, so I am not out of business, but I occasionally like to play a game which has to boot from a floppy disk (Falcon). Is there a way to get the Atari to think that an external drive is drive A? I tried installing the external drive in the place for the internal one, but it just spun and didn't boot. The connectors look the same for both, but the small connector (power?) had to be plugged in the other way around because the indexing slot was in a different place on the external drive. Since the light came on I presume that it was getting power ok. So, does anybody have any ideas for what to do while waiting for the drive to be fixed? If someone has figured out how to get Falcon to run from a hard disk, that would be nice, too. Barry
wallace@oldtmr.dec.com (Ray Wallace) (12/23/89)
In article <1989Dec21.201152.4270@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca>, barry@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Barry Lay) writes... >(Falcon). Is there a way to get the Atari to think that an external drive is >drive A? I tried installing the external drive in the place for the internal Disconnect the cable from the internal drive and then swapp the "drive select A" and "drive select B" wires on either the floppy round connector on the back of the ST or on the round floppy connector going into the external drive. You can get the signal names and pin numbers from the back of the users manual which came with the ST. If know what your doing enough to swap the wires in the right place then you can do it without having to disconect the internal drive. If you leave the internal drive connected and swap the lines in the wrong place then you'll end up with both drives "driving" the ST at the same time. Ray --- Ray Wallace (INTERNET,UUCP) wallace@oldtmr.enet.dec.com (UUCP) ...!decwrl!oldtmr.enet!wallace (INTERNET) wallace%oldtmr.enet@decwrl.dec.com ---
hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu) (12/23/89)
In article <1989Dec21.201152.4270@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> barry@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Barry Lay) writes: >I have the following problem. I have a Mega 4 ST with a dead internal disk >drive. Fortunately, my hard disk autoboots, so I am not out of business, >but I occasionally like to play a game which has to boot from a floppy disk >(Falcon). Is there a way to get the Atari to think that an external drive is > Too bad about your floppy drive... >So, does anybody have any ideas for what to do while waiting for the drive >to be fixed? If someone has figured out how to get Falcon to run from a >hard disk, that would be nice, too. > >Barry All you need to do to run Falcon off your hard drive is to copy the floppies. It runs with no trouble, as long as you run the startup program from your AUTO folder. (Can't have *anything* else in memory. Kind of a drag, sometimes, coldboots are inconvenient...) Actually, it's not *quite* that simple, if you want a convenient setup. Falcon doesn't specify any directory pathnames when it looks for its data files, so all necessary files must be located in the default (or "current working") directory. When programs run from the AUTO folder, the default directory is the root directory of the boot device/partition. Obviously you don't want to clutter the root directory of your hard drive with a lot of junk, you'd like to have the Falcon files stored in a subdirectory. (Like, D:\games\falcon, as an arbitrary example... }-) The solution I use is two-part. First, Falcon *must* be started from an AUTO-boot. So, I have two AUTO folders on my hard drive. I have to rename the one I want to use to "AUTO", then reboot, to get things going. I stick all the Falcon files in a subdirectory. In my Falcon AUTO folder, I have a 3 line program that calls Dsetdrv() and Dsetpath() to set the default path to my Falcon directory, then Pexec()s FALCON.PRG. This works for Falcon 1.0, 1.1, and Operation Counterstrike. I keep Falcon 1.1 and Operation Counterstrike in d:\games\falcon nowadays, and select which to start with the AUTO program. Falcon takes about 3 seconds to load on my Mega 4. It's quite nice, not having to deal with inserting additional floppies & such to play a game... Also, you don't need the code-wheel when you boot from the hard drive. (I hated the damn thing anyway!) Last note - I have a sneaking suspicion, if I grabbed TopDown and installed it, I wouldn't have to worry about loading Falcon from the AUTO folder. The Falcon loader program is non-relocatable, which is why you can't have much else in memory when it starts up. It also won't run with the ICD boot code, because they try to use the same memory space. -- -=- PrayerMail: Send 100Mbits to holyghost@father.son[127.0.0.1] and You Too can have a Personal Electronic Relationship with God!