ADHI. Which version is the latest?

[Mikerochip]

I've built one of the ST mATX boards from Daniel/xAngel which has onboard IDE.

I've got the PPera IDE drivers, but, I was wondering if I could use AHDI instead.

To that end, the latest AHDI I can find is 6.061.

I've also found the BigDOS v8 program, distributed as a patch for AHDI 6.061.
That'll let me access Windows FAT16B type partitions, up to 2GB.

That covers the driver, which does pick up the IDE (CF) HDD attached to the ST, when I run AHDI.
but, how do I partition the drive?

What's the best/latest partition software to use, if I want to use AHDI?
I've seen on some of the AHDI versions I've found, the HDX program, which I assume is too actually partition the drive, but, it doesn't work for this board.
(This board has, I assume, an IDE interface that's the same as the PPera IDE interface at https://atari.8bitchip.info/aidesch.htm )
HDX runs for a while, then crashes with 2 bombs.

Is there, too, some kind of table with all the limitations of each driver/TOS?

I've started making a quick list, but, it's getting unmanageable, quite quickly.

I'm spoiled with the Amigas big HDD compatibility table, on EAB.

[lp]

Far as I know 6.061, you'll even find the source code at https://docs.dev-docs.org/htm/search.php?find=AHDI

[czietz]

There is this guide: http://info-coach.fr/atari/documents/_m ... _Guide.pdf. It does, however, not specifically cover IDE and the particular issues (such as byte swapping) that come with IDE. (And it doesn't cover EmuTOS's built-in hard disk driver, either.)

[Mikerochip]

Yeah, I've been reading it. It actually doesn't cover AHDI at all. (Nor hardware/software byte-swapping, correct)
It says "AHDI is old" and doesn't cover it.
It's also got some out of date/wrong info. (I don't remember exactly what, atm. There's a lot to read!)

And, correct, same goes for EmuTOS. I see it has an autoboot program, to make a drive autobooting for EmuTOS, and it's driver, but, how do I partition it, in the first place. And, is it XHDI compatible? Does it support FAT16A and FAT16B images? Whats it's partition size limits, and disk drive limits! (And, are those dependent on the hardware it's using. I presume so)

So, I'm still no wiser:

How do I partition an IDE drive, for use with AHDI. I'm presuming it's with HDX.prg, and, if so, what's the latest version!?

[czietz]

How do I partition an IDE drive, for use with AHDI. I'm presuming it's with HDX.prg, and, if so, what's the latest version!?

The latest version of HDX is included in the lastest version of the AHDI archive, which is 6.061, as Lonny already pointed out above. I generally use HDDRIVER's HDDRUTIL to partition disks; so please don't ask me how well HDX works with modern IDE devices.

As for EmuTOS: It supports FAT16 partitions up to 2 GB created on the PC, as described here: https://github.com/emutos/emutos/blob/m ... /fat16.txt. Although with IDE you lose some performance if the medium is in PC byte order. To avoid that, you could byte-swap the data on the CF card after partitioning it on the PC; but then you can't easily access the partition from the PC, anymore.

Yes, IDE on the Atari is a bit of a pain; unless you have an IDE interface with Smartswap.

PS: Since you mentioned using ppera's driver in your first post: Afaik that comes with a partitioning utility as well.

[Mikerochip]

Hi czietz! Thanks for the info!

I'm ok, actually using the PPera driver! It works well (so far anyhow!)

I'm trying to build a big compatibility table!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

[frank.lukas]

Use the Google Translator ...
http://www.mbernstein.de/atari/system/hd/ahdi.htm

IDE Device do not Format, partitioning is enough!

[Mikerochip]

Thanks frank. Don't need the translator (sort of!)
But, I get an error saying the disk has been formatted with an earlier version, and refuses to partition
Ah well!

[czietz]

But, I get an error saying the disk has been formatted with an earlier version, and refuses to partition

I think I vaguely remember: After formatting, HDX writes a root sector to the disk and it'll refuse partitioning if it does not find its own root sector. Well, I guess there is a reason people use HDDRIVER.

[Mikerochip]

Yeah!

I've found a disk that had AHDI 6.061, and HDX v5.00, but I've found a later version of HDX, v5.04, and I guess, the real reason for the post was to see if there was a newer version of HDX.

The same thing happens on hAtari, btw, as on my ST, with that error.

[czietz]

I've found a disk that had AHDI 6.061, and HDX v5.00, but I've found a later version of HDX, v5.04, and I guess, the real reason for the post was to see if there was a newer version of HDX.

That's interesting. AHDI 6.06/6.061 was originally already bundled with HDX 5.04, as you can for example read in this old magazine article: https://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1993/11/festplattentreiber. That's why I said that the latest version of HDX was included with AHDI 6.061.

But I just realized that the disk on dev-docs is not the official disk but most likely some user's dump, as it has file dates in the 2000s. Probably, on that disk the user replaced AHDI with the latest version, but not HDX.

[Mikerochip]

Does anyone have the ICD SCSI Tools 6.5.5, or the talked about Beta 7, I wonder?

[Atari030]

http://joo.kie.sk/wp-content/uploads/20 ... dp655a.zip

Its on Jookies page.

[Mikerochip]

http://joo.kie.sk/wp-content/uploads/20 ... dp655a.zip
Its on Jookies page.

Thanks!
Turns out, that's the version I had already, but I'd just labelled the disk as 6.5.2!
I'm an idiot

[neanderthal]

I've found a disk that had AHDI 6.061, and HDX v5.00, but I've found a later version of HDX, v5.04, and I guess, the real reason for the post was to see if there was a newer version of HDX.

That's interesting. AHDI 6.06/6.061 was originally already bundled with HDX 5.04, as you can for example read in this old magazine article: https://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1993/11/festplattentreiber. That's why I said that the latest version of HDX was included with AHDI 6.061.

But I just realized that the disk on dev-docs is not the official disk but most likely some user's dump, as it has file dates in the 2000s. Probably, on that disk the user replaced AHDI with the latest version, but not HDX.

Interesting,have to do a translate of the page if something there. However the thing with what being the latest Atari orginal might be of historical interest. I did some testing with the AHDI sources some years back since had this idea of making the old driver a bit more modern IDE friendly (LBA and what not) since have this drive that neither AHDI/ICDpro or some old HDDRIVER that I have recons But the main point being that I am not that sure what was latest Atari released since the sources have been out a good while I quess? I do have a old T.U.S IDE interface that came with a version of the latest back in later 90:ies. But might have been fixed up from sources just to accomadate the IDE-interface.

Edit: and something that should be fixed up is the wonky way that HDX does stuff..I mean people still burn out flash memories due to the badblock thing it does. Very unneccesary with modern media. i.e doing a write/read cycle on every sector.