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From: chapman@fornax.uucp (John Chapman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: booting off a hard disk.
Message-ID: <176@fornax.uucp>
Date: Tue, 20-Jan-87 04:03:12 EST
Article-I.D.: fornax.176
Posted: Tue Jan 20 04:03:12 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 22-Jan-87 02:21:07 EST
References: <942@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> <517@atari.UUcp>
Organization: Computing Science Dept, SFU,  Burnaby, B.C. Canada
Lines: 26

> in article <942@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu>, rstpierr@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu 
> (Pete St.Pierre) says:
> 
> > I was told that even with a hard disk set up... The ST still needs a a disk
> > in the floppy drive to boot.  Is this really the case? It seems to be a bit 
> > of a waste.
> 
> 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
> /----------------------------------------------\
> | Opinions expressed above do not necessarily  |  -- Allan Pratt, Atari Corp.
> | reflect those of Atari Corp. or anyone else. |     ...lll-lcc!atari!apratt
> \----------------------------------------------/


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.  ???????