hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) (07/25/89)
For 2 years I have auto booted off a hard disk. I have used the Bypass program by Small in Start magazine to save me when the /auto or .acc program went bad and the system wouldnt boot. This program allowed the disk driver (aka AHDI.PRG) to be read in from the floppy, and the hard disk wasn't accessed. Then I could fix the problem. Now, I find it is incompatible with TOS1.4 . Not unexpected! What now? Does anyone have a similar program that works on tos1.4??? (Dave Small, are you listening?) Howard C. Johnson ATT Bell Labs att!lzaz!hcj hcj@lzaz.att.com
apratt@atari.UUCP (Allan Pratt) (07/26/89)
hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) writes: >For 2 years I have auto booted off a hard disk. >I have used the Bypass program by Small in Start magazine to save me >when the /auto or .acc program went bad and the system wouldnt boot. Why did you need that? I'm not quite sure of all the oldest versions, but most Atari hard disk drivers let you avoid booting from the hard disk by holding down the "Alternate" key. You can't do this too soon -- you have to do it after the keyboard's initialized. The procedure is to turn on your machine and wait for the floppy disk's access light to come on (the first time). Then hit the Alternate key and don't let go until you see the Desktop. The hard disk shouldn't have booted. This is a feature of the hard disk driver, not the ROMs, so a hard disk made bootable by something other than HINSTALL may not have this feature. Also, like I said, the very oldest bootable hard disk driver might not have it. ============================================ Opinions expressed above do not necessarily -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp. reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. ...ames!atari!apratt
woodside@ttidca.TTI.COM (George Woodside) (07/27/89)
In article <711@lzaz.ATT.COM> hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) writes: >For 2 years I have auto booted off a hard disk. >I have used the Bypass program by Small in Start magazine to save me >when the /auto or .acc program went bad and the system wouldnt boot. > >This program allowed the disk driver (aka AHDI.PRG) to be read in from the >floppy, and the hard disk wasn't accessed. Then I could fix the problem. > >Now, I find it is incompatible with TOS1.4 . Not unexpected! > >What now? Does anyone have a similar program that works on tos1.4??? Depending upon which software you are running, there are usually hooks in the auto boot code to allow you to prevent an auto boot whenever you want. Check the documentation from the vendor of your driver. The more common ones are holding down a shift key, the Alt key, the Control key, or some combination of them when powering up your system. Most bypass techniques are effective only at power up, not at reset. -- *George R. Woodside - Citicorp/TTI - Santa Monica, CA *Path: ..!{philabs|csun|psivax}!ttidca!woodside
01659@AECLCR.BITNET (Greg Csullog) (08/05/89)
Alan Pratt mentioned holding down the Alt key to force a boot from floppy. When I got stuck in an infinite reboot situation, holding down the Alt key let me boot from floppy alright, however, I could not access the hard disk since the driver never got installed. I got around getting into this trap by always using the STARTUP.PRG batch file processor that let me choose which "auto" codes and accessories to load in. Now, I use REVOLVER's boot manager (it's terrific). But, if you do not have STARTUP or REVOLVER, I have found that all you have to do is boot from floppy, turn on the HD and then run AHDI from floppy and you get access to the HD without a reset. Worked for me, it might work for you!
dkhusema@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Dirk Husemann) (08/07/89)
01659@AECLCR.BITNET (Greg Csullog) writes: >Alan Pratt mentioned holding down the Alt key to force a boot from floppy. ... >But, if you do not have STARTUP or REVOLVER, I have found that all you >have to do is boot from floppy, turn on the HD and then run AHDI from >floppy and you get access to the HD without a reset. Worked for me, it >might work for you! This might not be of much help for you (outside of West Germany), but there exists another harddisk driver for the Atari ST, called CBHD. It is really great: - Up to 12 (twelve) partitions - \AUTO\, ACC's, and DESKTOP.INF can be read from *ANY* partition, e.g. I have one partition setup for using my DTP program with the SLM804, and another partition setup for using the DTP program for Postscript output. Yet another partition will be used to start MINIX from my harddisk. To do all this you can press the key coressponding to the partition you want to 'boot' from (In reality the booting is done from the partition I marked as bootable using the software accompanying the CBHD driver, only the \AUTO\ folder, the ACC's, and DEKSTOP.INF are read from the specified partition). - Partitions can be set to read-only - Any Partition can be the boot partition - Partitions can be left out during boot time by pressing the SHIFT key - The ALT key trick works also - You can park the heads of the harddisk by using an ACC - The same ACC allows you to get statistics from the HD + Set Partitions to read-only + Simulate a media-change to GEMDOS + Increase the number of folders correctly (I read that the AHDI tries to do this also, but doesn't even know of Blitter TOS, so you had to use the FOLDRxxx.PRG) - CBHD is also able to recognize a second harddisk connected to a controller (which AHDI can't - as far as I know ...) All this - and a lot more of really excellent stuff - is contained in a floppy which is available with the book SCHEIBENKLEISTER II by Claus Brod, Anton Stepper, published by MAXON in West Germany. Price: DM 79.00 (US$ 35.00). As far as I know it isn't available in English (yet?). But - provided your German is good enough this book is an absolute must for all trying to understand floppy disk, harddisks, CD-ROM, ... ---------------------- Smile, tomorrow will be worse! ------------------ X.400: <S=dkhusema;OU=informatik;P=uni-erlangen;A=dbp;C=de> RFC822: dkhusema@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de RFC822: dkhusema@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.dbp.de [BETTER!FASTER!] UUCP: {pyramid,unido}!fauern!immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de!dkhusema Home: Dirk Husemann, Aufsess-Str. 19, D-8520 Erlangen, West Germany Busi- University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Computer Science Dep., ness: IMMD IV, Martensstr. 1, D-8520 Erlangen, West Germany Phone: (Home) +49 9131 302036, (Business) +49 9131 857908 -- Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here! -- ------------------- My opinions are mine, mine, mine -------------------
alderaan@tubopal.UUCP (Thomas Cervera) (08/08/89)
By the way, why does TOS look for a floppy disk to boot FIRST, even if a hard disk is connected & on line ? Wouldn't it be better to boot from the floppy disk _only_when_the_Alternate_key_is_pressed_ ? Doing that you could get rid of this real frustrating wait period if no disk is in the drive. -- Thomas Cervera | UUCP: alderaan@tubopal.UUCP SysMan RKOpdp (RSTS/E) | alderaan%tubopal.UUCP@TUB.BITNET (saves $$$) D-1000 Berlin 30 | ...!pyramid!unido!tub!opal!alderaan Motzstrasze 14 | BITNET: alderaan%tub@DB0TUI11.BITNET
ast@cs.exeter.ac.uk (Andrew Stratton) (08/09/89)
In article <667@opal.tubopal.UUCP> alderaan@tubopal.UUCP (Thomas Cervera) writes: > > By the way, why does TOS look for a floppy disk to boot FIRST, even if a >hard disk is connected & on line ? Wouldn't it be better to boot from the >floppy disk _only_when_the_Alternate_key_is_pressed_ ? Doing that you could >get rid of this real frustrating wait period if no disk is in the drive. I have two (possibly useful) things to say about this. 1. The disk drive atkes less time if a warm reset is used. 2. If no attempt is made to access the disk drive, then the system won't know that there is one available, and will disallow acces to Dsik Drive A. Check this if you want, but that is the expreince I have had with TOS 1.0 Yours Andy.S
hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) (08/09/89)
In article <667@opal.tubopal.UUCP>, alderaan@tubopal.UUCP (Thomas Cervera) writes: > > By the way, why does TOS look for a floppy disk to boot FIRST, even if a > hard disk is connected & on line ? Wouldn't it be better to boot from the > floppy disk _only_when_the_Alternate_key_is_pressed_ ? Doing that you could > get rid of this real frustrating wait period if no disk is in the drive. > The reason is that if the Hard disk goes bad in any way, you can get controll through the floppy. A bootable floppy can be inserted any time there is a real problem. The ALT key handles most logical errors (like bad .prg in /auto and bad .acc programs) but not all hardware errors. Such as if the Hard disk sector 0 reads into the wrong area, or forgets to stop reading. Anyway, It is always best to give the user a choice, and boot floppy first is the way to do that. Howard C. Johnson ATT Bell Labs att!lzaz!hcj hcj@lzaz.att.com