Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!rutgers!att!lzaz!hcj
From: hcj@lzaz.ATT.COM (HC Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Hard drives on ST
Summary: BMS works great with minix
Message-ID: <393@lzaz.ATT.COM>
Date: 30 Jan 89 17:02:14 GMT
References: <961@dlhpedg.co.uk>
Organization: AT&T ISL Lincroft NJ USA
Lines: 39

In article <961@dlhpedg.co.uk>, cpm@datlog.co.uk (Paul Merriman) writes:
> Hi,
> 	I am considering buying a hard disk for my ST and want to use it
> ...
> purchase will be the 32Mb drive  which uses a
> Berkeley Micro Systems (BMS) controller board.
> 
> 	What I want to know is - will this work ok ?
> 
> 	Or, will I have to modify the device driver to get it working and
> if so , can someone send me the diffs ?
> 
I have BMS running with 80 MB drives and 20 MB drives. No problem.
In face BMS seems to have no problems running on MINIX, unlike
the (early) SUPRA, and maybe ICD.
(The problem is that TOS is polled, no interrupts; MINIX is totally
interrupt driven).

BMS does not supply Supra style partitioning software to give more than
4 partitions, but Supra sells it separately.  I know that 4 partitions
of 16 mb each will work.  I have seen references that fsck may have
problems if the size is greater.  I will be posting mods to stwini.c
to read all 12 supra partitions.  Its not dificult.


Also, there is really nothing too magic or limiting about having 
4 partitions.  For example, If you were to create 1 5 meg and 2 1meg 
on a 32 meg disk, you would find that the partition table would
give partition 1 5 megs
partition 2 1 meg
partition 3 1 meg
partition 4 empty.

Just edit the partition table to make the numbers (start,size)
become what you want.

Howard Johnson
ATT-BL
lzaz!hcj