michael@sunham.germany.sun.com (Michael Joswig (Vertriebsunterstuetzung Hamburg) (08/29/90)
Hello everybody out there!
I own Minix 1.1 for the Atrai ST for over a year now. In the first months,
I didn't had enough memory to do more than "ls, cat" etc. Now that I have
this memory (2.5 meg), I started doing more.
Because I do not (yet) have a hard disk, I made a root-disk containing
the compiler (ack) and most of the bin's. On my Atari (and on all the
other Ataris too) a floppy can be formatted with more than 720kB. I myself
made it 810 kB. When I use a 810 kB formatted Disk and put a 1200kB File-
system on it (with the -t "option"), I considered two Problems:
1) Loading the Ramdisk is very slowly (2 or 3 cups of coffee!)
2) When the Disk contains more than 720kB (remember: 810 is max), loading
stops at 720kB and a nice "panic: disk4" appears on the right side of
the screen. Perhaps there is more text, but my screen ends here!
on the next line I read "push RESET button".
Does anybody had this problem anytime before?
Any suggestions? (except "buy a better computer...")
Have a nice day!
Michael.
PS. As you probably have already noticed, I'm not a native-english. I`m a
student in good old germany, but not an english-student!archer%segin4.segin.fr@relay.prime.com (Vincent Archer) (08/30/90)
michael@sunham.germany.sun.com said: >the compiler (ack) and most of the bin's. On my Atari (and on all the >other Ataris too) a floppy can be formatted with more than 720kB. I myself >made it 810 kB. When I use a 810 kB formatted Disk and put a 1200kB File- >system on it (with the -t "option"), I considered two Problems: The first (and probably only) problem is the >720K. In STMinix 1.1, you CANNOT use non-standard disks (i.e. disks with anything else than 80 tracks, 9 sectors per track). The only choice you've got is to switch 1 side or 2 sides. >1) Loading the Ramdisk is very slowly (2 or 3 cups of coffee!) Strange... >2) When the Disk contains more than 720kB (remember: 810 is max), loading > stops at 720kB and a nice "panic: disk4" appears on the right side of > the screen. Perhaps there is more text, but my screen ends here! > on the next line I read "push RESET button". >Does anybody had this problem anytime before? Yes. As above mentioned, STMinix is very dumb, and says: if I use device 2/0, I'm single sided, 80 tracks 9 sectors, if I use device 2/8, the same with two sides. The kernel WILL never read the boot sector, where it's written that you have 10 sectors and 81 tracks. So it ignores 1 sector out of ten, and when you reach track 80, will stop loading. As a result FS is not very happy, and panics. >Any suggestions? (except "buy a better computer...") No suggestion yet. STMinix 1.5 doesn't behave better in that respect, except that mkfs & format doesn't zero the boot sector. Now, for a future release, there should be an automatic format detection (Frans said, when releasing 1.5, that such a driver was "planned for future study" :-). Once this hit the net, I know a few computer who will be happy, because they have high quality drives and can support 902K disks (82 tracks, 11 sectors!). Vincent Vincent Archer | Email:archer%segin4.segin.fr@relay.prime.com "Wrong thing to say, right thing to do; do as I say, not as I do..."
HBO043%DJUKFA11.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Christoph van Wuellen) (08/30/90)
The 720k format is hard-coded in the driver, so another disk format wont work unless you tell the driver the disk geometry. C.v.W., Bochum/Germany.