[comp.sys.atari.st] New ROMs, what works and don't work

uace0@uhnix2.UUCP (08/31/87)

Well, a friend of mine here in town ha just gotten the new ROM direct from Atari
(actually CMOS eproms), so I thought I would try out a few things to see what
would work.

Besides a few unfinished programs (beta versions) of some software, I can say
that everything I have run to date seems OK, but we will find out more as we
use the new ROMs more.

It is strange to see the new Alert boxes come up, they are STRICTLY enforced to
the maximum 30 character per line.  When I used the MAKE facility of Megamax C
I noticed a surprising result.  The Alert that normally says: 'Everything seems
to be up to date.' now says: 'Everything seems to be up to da'  No problem, but
a bit funny.  This is actually 31 characters (maybe Atari can't count - (joke)).

But, the real bummer ame when I tried to run an *OFFICIAL* program from Atari,
namely the latest AHDI.PRG included with the Atari booter.  I had a bad acc
file on drive C, so I thought I would boot up from drive A instead, and delete
the bad file.  Guess again.

When I ran AHDI from the floppy it came up with a message like: 'You are using
an UNOFFICIAL version of TOS.  Data on the HARD disk may be damaged, or may be
incompatible.  Hard disk driver not installed.'

Great!!  Just what I need with my Atari drive, software that doesn't work.
Luckily, the autoboot program for the harddisk doesn't use AHDI, so that works,
but I had to put in the old ROM to boot up and fix the hard disk.  My question
is: 'Why did y'all do this?  Is there a fix?  Or perhaps the eproms we got from
Atari are *BOOTLEG* ?!'  This (in my opinion) is not a very farsighted thing to
do with the software.  I guess Atari never planned on coming out with a newer
version of TOS, huh?  Maybe I can hack this out of the driver.  Or have I just
ruined my harddisk by using this driver (If so, I am upset).

On a lighter note, I just got a version of the MAGIC SAC program that works with
the hard drive, unfortunately Dave didn't give me a readme, so I have to call
him today to figure out how it works.  He said it is great, and I believe him. I
jut can't wait to use it.  Apparently though, Atari hard disk owners are limited
to using only the last partition on the hard disk (not so for others).  I will
find out more and keep y'all posted.

BTW - the guy that wrote SYNFILE for the 8-bit now work with Dave.  Quality
beget Quality.

- Mike


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ftw@datacube.UUCP (09/02/87)

> Well, a friend of mine here in town ha just gotten the new ROM direct from Atari
> (actually CMOS eproms), so I thought I would try out a few things to see what
> would work.

<remainder deleted>

Does this mean that there are NEW ROMS available OFFICIALLY from Atari?
If so, what is the procedure for obtaining them?  Would anyone from Atari
care to comment? (Hello, Neil Harris)

> 
> - Mike
> 
				Farrell T. Woods 

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neil@atari.UUCP (Neil Harris) (09/09/87)

In article <105100013@datacube>, ftw@datacube.UUCP writes:

> Does this mean that there are NEW ROMS available OFFICIALLY from Atari?
> If so, what is the procedure for obtaining them?  Would anyone from Atari
> care to comment?

The new ROMs are at this point only available to developers.  Once we get a
shipment of masked ROMs in, we'll make them available to the service centers
and from there to the general public.

> (Hello, Neil Harris)

Hi there!
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