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12 messages in this thread
Ron, I agree with much of what you say. The 2090/a contraversy leaves me
more or less unmoved, as I don't see that it is important at all –
actually, I think they are putting their effert in _Entirely_ the wrong
place. If it were ME doing it, I would have created a disk that had as
initial boot code whatever is required to autoboot – in other words,
whatever is in the roms, you could put as a program in the boot sector (+
however many other sectors it needed at 512 bytes/sector) and the thing
would go straight to the HD without ever doing anything "normal" on the
floppy. I can't imaging that it would take more than one revolution of the
disk ( a track holds a LOT of data ) to get the code into the machine that
it would need to boot. After all – you want the floopy seeking alla time?
No, of course not. You wanna have a disk not inserted? No, of course not.
So, you put this "boot" disk in, and bingo – all problems solved, including
the one of having to put a new ROM in there. But – I can't expect CBM to
think of these things. They're over on BIX sucking up to BYTE.
As for the rest of it, yeah… CBM has made a mess of most everything. I
would have bought a sidecar – IF I could have put memory in it, and an HD.
I understand that you can (sorta, with bugz) share a hard drive, but you
cannot have Amiga memory in it. Just one more way CBM screwed the a1000
owners.
–Ben–
Whoops…remember you don't want un-needed drivers in the OS, so
there will be no HD driver for the system to go look for in your example!
Who said anything about the OS? I'm talking about a disk that simply boots
the HD; In a 500 or a 2000, the exec is already in rom – so you don't need
that on the disk (tho part of it could be there, if needed) you just need
the code to boot the HD. The Amiga already can start reading from a floopy
(and exectuting the code there) just about right away.
I don't see your point – perhaps you could make it clearer to me?
Ben,
Aren't we taking autoboot? If so, then we don't want to read a HD
driver off the boot sectors of a floppy, sice that's the whole idea behind
autoboot (no floppies). And since we don't have the HD driver installed yet,
then we certainly can't read it off the HD itself.
Or am I mixing threads again…I'll go back and read the prior
messages.
Don
No – I'm not talking about an HD driver in the _DOS_ sense. Let's examine
things here for a sec, shall we?
First of all, what is the "autoboot" in terms of resources? Well, AmigaDOS
isn't up yet – KS is in (ROMs, of course) and the KS has just enuf sense to
check for Software on the HD board. If it's there, it get's control, and it
starts the system from the HD. Ok. How much software are we talking here?
Not much! A floppy has about 11k of data/track. Now, if you leave a floppy
in the drive (non-bootable, so the OS won't actually boot from it, and will
go off and try the autoboot as per CBM), how does the OS _know_ that it's
non-bootable? It _reads_ it, of course. An entire track, too – since that's
the ONLY way it can work. (keep this in mind whilst I beat on something
else for a 'mo) If you don't leave a disk in the drive, what happens?
Click, click, click. YECH!
Ok – you don't want to do _that_, obviously. back to the main theme…
<grin – I love this> Now, you have this track of data in memory – 11k of
"stuff". Is 11k enough to send things over to the HD? Sure it is… unless
the programmer is a total klutz. So, it's in memory – it could EASILY be
the code to start the HD; (boot blocks can start anything, anyway – look at
game disks that take over completely). Remember, this isn't AmigaDOS we're
talking about here – it's one track of code, started from the boot block.
Now, there is the code that brings in the HD – just like the ROMs would!
except:
A – no rom change is needed
B – Your disk drive won't click
C – with a change of the disk, the code can be updated
D – And CBM could pay attention to the PROBLEMS that are in the
system, instead of wasting their time on situations that
1) aren't problems, and 2) could be solved by any of the
HD developers, if CBM would simply tell them to.
I refer, of course, to MENUverify (HA!) Mutalexclude on gadgets, the ram
handler, the serial device and it's CRASHING bugs, the
no-multiple-serial-port-standard problem, the no-run-cli-frm-wb problem(s),
they could even (maybe) fix such items as notepad,
Fascinating argument Ben. While Ron (and many others) are wanting to boot
from HD without going to floppy, you want to go back to floppy, requiring
the floppy to be in the drive. Tell you what… why don't we suggest having
something that would allow you to define what drive you wanted to do things
on… something like a script file. It would only require a few lines, and
we'd be off the floppy in no time at all. oops… wai a minute.. I think I
just decribed the startup-sequence.
<continued> or even (I doubt it, it's almost a tradition now, but…) they
might direct their attention to PREFERENCES which is as buggy as any
program can be and still do any work. Perhaps they might direct their
attention to the 80286 board – or perhaps they ought to throw it out for
the 386 that is de riguer in the business world as of many moons ago. Maybe
we could see a 68030 board? Er, sorry, I mean 68020, of course… 4mhz,
probably. Running CPM 68k, I have no doubt.
CBM needs a beating.
As I have pointed out before. <grin>
–Ben–
That's NOT what the user's here have been asking for, they have
been asking for an autoboot with NO floppy. Not only that, it would
require that you use the first track of each and every possible disk you
could ever have in the drive on boot up to have that 'autoboot track'. Now
since DOS says that sectors 2 on are ok to use for other things, how would
you propose installing that full track of data on a disk that I may have
other data on and sectors 2 thru 10 have data in them? BTW, while I
presume that my floppy 'clicks' on the A2000…I never hear it…so I can
leave a floppy out of it and get 0 noise.
YOu get 0 noise – and (at about 1/hz rate of "click" – you get the
equivalent wear as if your Amiga stepped your floppy ALL the way out and
ALL the way back every 3 or four minutes. Nice. The users here ask for
lot's of things, Don – I don't they give a flying fig about whether there
is a disk in the drive or not; I think they just want it to boot FAST! And
it would – actually, I don't think there would be ANY difference in speed
assuming you have a disk in a drive with the REAL autoboot; and if you
don't, I'm really not certain what the Amiga does – does it attempt to read
the disk? Or does it look at a hardware signal? If it looks at a hardware
signal, then the "real" autoboot would be faster than MY proposed method by
about 1 disk revolution. Not much to worry about – and probably impossible
to measure with a stopwatch.
I really thing these people, for the most part (90-99%) really don't give a
damn whether there is a disk in the drive – they just don't want to wait a
minute or more for it to be read, stepped. clicked, clacked, humped,
dumped, pumped, greased, and fried.
They want to turn on the machine, and (instantly, if not sooner) see the HD
light come on and bootup complete.
Anyone – correct me if I'm wrong – do you have some innate need to see the
floppy slot EMPTY? And if so – Why?
I have no inate need for the floppy slot to be empty. In fact, I
have no inate need for autoboot. I'm happy with my startup-sequence that
takes about 5 to 10 seconds to get off the floppy and onto the HD.
Don – nor I. but I would like it to be faster – and this type of autoboot or
the hardware one they implemented will be a LOT faster. It's just too bad that
the way they choose will (again) require a major amount of work from the
developers, revamping of hardware, trade in/up of current hardware.
I don't think anyone cares if there is a floppy in there, as long as it boots
quickly. Your message says exactly that.
–Ben—
Ben, Yup, I was right…we were talking autoboot…or at least you were in
your message to Ron Troy (15162) to which I replied.
You suggested putting the autoboot code in boot sectors on the
disk, I presumed you meant the HD since autoboot implies NO floppy at all.
My reply was that to put the autoboot code on the HD, you'd need the HD
driver in the OS otherwise the system couldn't access it to read the
autoboot code in the first place.