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From: neil@atari.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: booting off a hard disk.
Message-ID: <541@atari.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 23-Jan-87 23:37:34 EST
Article-I.D.: atari.541
Posted: Fri Jan 23 23:37:34 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 24-Jan-87 16:09:47 EST
References: <942@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> <517@atari.UUcp> <176@fornax.uucp>
Organization: Atari Corp/Mktg
Lines: 36

In article <176@fornax.uucp>, chapman@fornax.uucp (John Chapman) writes:

> > It is not necessary, but it saves time: The ST checks for a boot sector
> > on your floppy first, then on the hard disk.  If there's a floppy there,
> > it reads the boot sector, notices that it's not executable, and goes
> > right to the hard disk.  Without a floppy, it tries (and retries...)
> > to read with no luck.  This adds about 10 seconds (maybe less) to the
> > boot time.
> > My boot disk is labelled "BOOT DISK," is write-protected, and is utterly blank

> I assume this means Atari hard disks are now being shipped so that they will
> boot up directly without having to load a driver from floppy - if so the
> dealers around here (Vancouver) don't know about it (I went and talked to a
> couple after seeing the above replay from Allan Pratt) - they also seem to
> think the 40 folder limit has been solved by Atari.  ???????

There is a program that we in Atari have been experimenting with that writes
the boot code to the hard drive.  That's what Allan refers to.
Unfortunately, for various and sundry reasons this program is not now in
general distribution, and is not likely to be.  After all, if your hard disk
insists on booting itself, how can you run a program that insists on booting
from floppy?  Netlanders can probably solve this problem, but it is thought
that Joe Average would have more difficulty.

At any rate, the problem appears to be solvable.

Aside from that, we have released no updates to the 40-folder limit.  I
expect this limit to be increased substantially if and when we release a rev
to the TOS ROMs.  However, such a rev is not currently scheduled, although
the TOS changes are being worked on by Atari staffers.

-- 
--->Neil @ Atari    ...{hoptoad, lll-lcc, pyramid, imagen, sun}!atari!neil

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