Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!apple!bionet!agate!ucbvax!CORY.BERKELEY.EDU!dillon
From: dillon@CORY.BERKELEY.EDU (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Upgrading to 1.3 (was Re: CBM's "blessing")
Message-ID: <8810052225.AA04169@cory.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 5 Oct 88 22:25:19 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 34

Marco Papa 'Doc' writes:
>>FFS you don't need 1.3 ROMs.  To use an autoboot device, you NEED 1.3 ROMs.
>>

Barry Hales writes:
>There is only one point I am confused on.  Do you need the 1.3 ROMS to boot
>a FFS Workbench disk?  Or is this considered an autoboot device.  I am
>getting a hard disk, so I will want the ability to boot from it.  To do that
>I understand I need the 1.3 ROMS.  But will I need the ROMS to boot a FFS
>disk in DF0:?  Sorry if this is a repeat, but I have never heard this
>question answered on the net.  

	The changes to the 1.3 ROMS only add autoboot support.  Since the
FastFileSystem is not in rom, the system only has access to the old filesystem,
and thus even though autoboot was added in 1.3 you still need to boot from
the old filesystem.  The FastFileSystem will be placed in ROM for 1.4

	But this is not a problem.. simply make the very first partition
on the hard disk (like, maybe 3 or 4 cyls) under the old filesystem, and but
the other N partitions under the FastFileSystem.  I myself boot from floppy
under the OldFileSystem (i.e. normal boot) and it mounts all my HD partitions
under the FastFileSystem.  I don't mind so much booting from floppy because I
just leave it in 100% of the time... I haven't used my floppies for much after
I got my HD.

	Needless to say, you cannot cold-boot under the FFS with 1.3 for
floppies either.  Frankly, *nobody* should use the FFS for floppies until
it's supported officially (i.e., they use that nice 16 byte tag field for
a checksum).  Currently, using the FFS on floppies is dangerous because
disk errors that would have otherwised been caught might be missed due to the
lack of a checksum in data blocks.  And while some high school hackers amoung
us might not care all that much, it isn't a smart thing to do in general.

					-Matt