[comp.sys.atari.st] Spinning disk HD boot

bryan@ihnet.ATT.COM (b. k. delaney) (01/16/88)

When you use AHDI to boot off of a hard disk you should have a floppy disk
in drive A.  The ST will not boot off of this disk unless it has a boot 
sector on it.  With a formated disk in drive A the ST will boot Very quickly
from the hard disk. I usually keep a copy of "SHIP.PRG" on drive A, which
I usually run before I turn off the HD.  Note be sure there are no open
windows to the Hard Disk when you run SHIP.PRG.  As for why the light stays
on, I can only guess it has to do with the fact the ST is trying to read
drive A when no disk is in drive A, and therefore is getting some sort of
read/drive error.

Unlike MS-DOS system The ST looks for a BOOT sector first at the Cartridge 
Port then on Drive A, Drive B then it looks for a Boot sector on DMA Logical
Unit 1 (The Hard Disk), If it finds a boot sector on drive A it boots drive A
and If It Does not Find a boot Sector on Drive A it looks else where until it
finds a Boot Sector.  When you Instal AHDI you are actually installing a Boot
Sector on the Hard disk.

					ihnp4!ihnet!bryan
Bryan DeLaney
					AT&T Bell Laboratories.

landon@apple.UUCP (Landon Dyer) (01/21/88)

In article <593@ihnet.ATT.COM>, bryan@ihnet.ATT.COM (b. k. delaney) writes:
> 
> When you use AHDI to boot off of a hard disk you should have a floppy disk
> in drive A.  The ST will not boot off of this disk unless it has a boot 
> sector on it.  With a formated disk in drive A the ST will boot Very quickly
> from the hard disk. I usually keep a copy of "SHIP.PRG" on drive A, which
> I usually run before I turn off the HD.  Note be sure there are no open
> windows to the Hard Disk when you run SHIP.PRG.  As for why the light stays
> on, I can only guess it has to do with the fact the ST is trying to read
> drive A when no disk is in drive A, and therefore is getting some sort of
> read/drive error.

The vbl routine that does floppy-disk deselection checks if the DMA
chip is in use.  If it's busy, the vbl can't do the deselect.

Also, some drives don't return INDEX pulses unless a disk is inserted.

> Unlike MS-DOS system The ST looks for a BOOT sector first at the Cartridge 
> Port then on Drive A, Drive B then it looks for a Boot sector on DMA Logical
> Unit 1 (The Hard Disk), If it finds a boot sector on drive A it boots drive A
> and If It Does not Find a boot Sector on Drive A it looks else where until it
> finds a Boot Sector.  When you Instal AHDI you are actually installing a Boot
> Sector on the Hard disk.

Not quite.  The startup sequences goes more like:

	<various ways of starting up a cartridge, too baroque to mention here>
	<attempt to boot from drive A>
		(it might load and execute code, then continue, or it could
		 take over the system)
	<attempt to boot from ACSI devices 0..7>
		o the first one "wins", because:
		o non-blitter ROMs have a nasty boot bug that causes the
		  system to lock-up when reading device 1, if device 0
		  exists.  "Fixed" by boot-stopper code written to device
		  0's boot sector that halts booting on the first device
		  with this code.
	<run the AUTO folder on the boot drive>
	<bring up the desktop>

In bootable AHDI, the last two steps are actually performed by the
driver loaded from the hard disk.  I also forget when RAM packages are
executed (just before the AUTO folder, I think) but I know that they
don't happen with AHDI, but they do with the ROM.  Allan?


-Landon
-- 

I speak for me.

koreth@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Steven Grimm) (01/29/88)

In article <173@actisb.UUCP> federico@actisb.UUCP (Federico Heinz) writes:
>Well, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but my Mega just refuses to boot from
>floppy when the hard disk has a boot sector. It doesn't care whether there's
>a diskette on drive A: or whatever.

DCFormat has an option to write a "hard disk override" boot sector to a
floppy.  Usually the floppy boot code essentially passes control over to
the DMA booter.

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tainter@ihlpg.ATT.COM (Tainter) (01/30/88)

In article <173@actisb.UUCP>, federico@actisb.UUCP (Federico Heinz) writes:
> Well, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but my Mega just refuses to boot from
> floppy when the hard disk has a boot sector.
> This was pretty painful when I put a corrupted
> desk accessory on the root directory of this drive: there was no way to boot
> from diskette other than leaving the hard disk off, but then I was unable
> to delete the dreaded accessory that kept trashing the machine every time
> I left the disk on.

> 		Federico             //     //    "In dubio pro libido"

Federico (sic)  and others you may need to know:

If you boot your machine with the HDisk off and then manually run the AHDI
driver you get booted up from an alternative device and still have access to
the harddisk.  This is how you deal with the above problem.

Also, DESKTOP.INFO is written to the boot device.

--j.a.tainter