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From: louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Hard disk partition standards
Message-ID: <1601@umd5.umd.edu>
Date: Tue, 28-Apr-87 18:15:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: umd5.1601
Posted: Tue Apr 28 18:15:50 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 30-Apr-87 03:18:34 EDT
Sender: nobody@umd5.umd.edu
Reply-To: louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 46
Keywords: SCSI DISKS

I got such a good response with my previous query about SCSI drivers, I'll
throw another one out.   Disk Partitions.  Yup, those things.  Here's the
model I'm working from;  I've got a large disk on my Amiga (I wish!) which
is attached via a SCSI interface to the host.  I'd like to be able to unplug
it, and carry it to my friend's Amiga, plug it in, and have it work.  No
editing of files or hacks in S:STARTUP-SEQUENCE or anything.

The way to do this is to define a standard disk partition table on the
disk which the disk driver reads at initialization time.  Consider that
you might not even have a good idea how many heads and tracks are on the
drive, so this information should probably be there as well.  This will
help out the equivelent of trackdisk.device to know how large the drive is.

Once you know how large the device is, you can now partition it up.  It
still looks like one disk unit, but each partition (DH0, DH1, etc) starts
at a different cyl. offset.  This is already supported in the DOS, so all
you need to do is have the disk driver plug in the appropriate values when
it does a MakeDosNode() (in then expansion.library).

It would be real nice if the partition tables were identical, so I could
more a disk between different manufactures disk systems.

So, how about it?  CBM: whadda you do with your disk system?  If it is
resonable, then there's no reason that other shouldn't follow your lead
with theirs.  If it's not reasonable, then shame on you!  Someone needs to
pick up the ball here before its too late and we end up with N incompatible
systems.

---* start soapbox mode *---

This sort of information might be floating around, available to deveoplers.
I *used* to be a developer, but I guess producing freely redistributable
software (like GFXMEM, menu packages in BROWER, etc) really doesn't count
as much.  I can't afford to plunk down many hundreds of $ to keep up with
EA and such.  I'm just doing it for the fun of it, and I hope that the
Amiga community and CBM benifit from it.  I'm not going to pay for the
privilige, however..  And they didn't even send me a release 1.2 after
testing all of the beta versions..

Seriously, doesn't CBM see any value in supporting those of us that produce
PD-type software?  We can't all be an EA.

---* end soapbox mode *---

Louis A. Mamakos  WA3YMH    Internet: louie@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU
University of Maryland, Computer Science Center - Systems Programming