thewho@elaine22.stanford.edu (Derek Fong) (02/22/91)
After visiting a store and fooling around with SoftPC, I couldn't seem to get a straight answer on how the "hard drives" work. (yes, another clueless comp- uter salesman who is not willing to admit that he knows nothing abou some software). Anyways, my question is this: how do you create larger partitions than the original one that comes with Soft PC. I was able to create a 5 MB "Drive D:"BuBut when I tried to access it, I got a "Non-DOS error." I couldn't seem to format the drive using the normal DOS format command. There must be some trick as to formatting the drive. So my question is, HOW DO YOU DO IT? =) There has got to be some alternative to creating zillions of small 1 MB partit- tions by duplicating the original one. It seems simple enough that you can create one under the Hard Disk Command menu, but then What do you need to do in order to get the thing DOS formatted? Also...another question: how is the performance of the AT/EGA add on. I would be buying it only for the speed upgrade as I only have a black and white SE/30. IS the upgrade worth it? How much faster?Q Does it emulate a 287 also? What kind of 286 performance does one see: 10 mhz, 12 mhz, 16 mhz? Any comments, suggestions, and answers would be greatly appreciated. Please email then to me. Thanks in advance. ----Derek Fong---- fong@cive.stanford.edu thewho@leland.stanford.edu
johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu (Bill Johnston) (02/22/91)
In article <1991Feb22.015227.17611@portia.Stanford.EDU>, thewho@elaine22.stanford.edu (Derek Fong) writes... >After visiting a store and fooling around with SoftPC, I couldn't seem to get >a straight answer on how the "hard drives" work. (yes, another clueless comp- >uter salesman I wouldn't be so tough on the guy. The section of my DOS 3.3 manual that describes how to set up a new hard disk is 19 pages long. The relevant section of the SoftPC manual is 9 pages long, easier to follow, but still takes a few minutes to digest if you are a Mac person used to plug-and-play hardware and single-mouse-click software installations. >Anyways, my question is this: how do you create larger partitions than the >original one that comes with Soft PC. I was able to create a 5 MB "Drive D: >"But when I tried to access it, I got a "Non-DOS error." I couldn't seem to >format the drive using the normal DOS format command. There must be some trick >as to formatting the drive. The disk has to be prepared using the MS-DOS FDISK command. FDISK is a disk partitioning tool that is used to get around the DOS limitation of 32 megabytes per logical volume. After running FDISK, each logical volume on the drive (usually one for SoftPC virtual disks) can be initialized with the DOS FORMAT command. The same thing would have to be done for a new PC drive. >Also...another question: how is the performance of the AT/EGA add on. I would >be buying it only for the speed upgrade as I only have a black and white SE/30. >IS the upgrade worth it? How much faster?Q Does it emulate a 287 also? >What kind of 286 performance does one see: 10 mhz, 12 mhz, 16 mhz? I think that the AT/EGA extension adds considerable value to the package. It IS faster, but more importantly it allows your Mac to emulate several different PC hardware configurations. You can do AT/CGA, AT/EGA, operate with or without 80287 co-processor emulation, and use up to 4 meg of LIM 4.0 expanded memory. This effectively gives you several different PC's in a single package. Switching between emulation modes is much easier than reconfiguring a real PC. The actual performance depends on the clock speed of the Mac, and whether background jobs are running at the same time in another Mac MF partition (Multifinder compatibility is another significant advantage of SoftPC over a real one or a NuBus PC board.). Switching to the PC is simple. For example: C:\> dir Volume in drive C is DOS_HD_C Directory of C:\ COMMAND COM 25276 2-03-88 2:31p DOS <DIR> 10-18-90 9:37p INSIGNIA <DIR> 10-18-90 9:37p Doesn't it make your skin crawl? -- Bill Johnston (johnston@oscar.ccm.udel.edu) -- 38 Chambers St.; Newark, DE 19711; (302)368-1949
CHERGR@lure.latrobe.edu.au (02/26/91)
I fooled around with this as well. The details are vague since it was some time ago, but the answer is another DOS utility which is maybe called fdisk. This allows you to specify the volume setup after the disk has actually been created.