MyIDE Experts Part II

[Goochman]

Ok,

 

Due to some dumbness on my part I figured out how to get my HD connected to teh MyIDE cart - the drive is recognized and I was able to partition a drive.

 

Now the hard part - I cannot figure out how to format the drive through the instructions provided........

 

I also dont understand the 'iamge load' option which appears to try and mimic a floppy drive with a HD partition (I think)

 

I want to create a 16 meg partition from which I can load games onto. The guide indicates I should create a partition of 65535 sectors with 'hi' density (256 byte sectors). I did this and the partition was created succesfully. However it appears I need to 'configure' my drive in MyDOS inorder to format this partition (it appears and when I do a dir on it garbage comes up) - No matter what I do I cannot seem to be able to format the drive.

 

Also,

The image load thing confuses me (hold down START+RESET) and then have some joystick interface to load images?? Do I need to make my partitions 720 sectors with 'lo' or 128 byte sectors for these 'images'?

 

Im a bit confused getting the drive properly setup so any advice appreciated.

[Goochman]

Ok,

 

Ive gotten success - turns out one of my drives isnt compatible with the MyIDE interface.

 

This is REALLY COOL and cant wait to load it up.

 

My biggest confusion was using MyDOS since I never used it and didnt understand the 'O' option (combined with the fact that my drive didnt work properly!)

 

Anyhow,

Ive got a 16 meg partition setup and plan to play around more.

 

I understand the 'image load' theory but not exactly how to use the 'joystick' interface for this - any help with that appreciated!

 

If you can grab one of these I would suggest doing so!

 

I am going to see if my Diamond OS cart will work with this - now that would be great! A 'mini-st'

[Civilan]

Hi Goochman,

 

I was cleaning up the basement the other day and re-discovered my old 600XL. I haven't fired her up yet but I have started doing research on the mods an upgrades I can do.

 

I now looking into hooking up an IDE drive to the computer. I've read about the MyIDE and another interface called SIO2IDE.

 

May I ask why you chose the MyIDE way? From what if read thus far we need a modified DOS for run it but I can't judge if this a bad thing. The SIO2IDE can use any DOS but may be slower. What's you thoughts?

 

Thanks.

[Goochman]

I could never find anything on SIO2IDE in terms of buying one and such so when the MyIDE came out fully assembled I jumped on it.

 

Bascially,

MyIDE loads a patch into memory before you boot your DOS disk. From there you should be able to do whatever you'd like. I havent gotten SpartaDos 3.2g to work with it but MyDOS 4.5 works fine with 16meg partitions.

 

The driver stuff for MyIDE is still in its infancy stage but being updated and improved.

 

One interesting option with the MyIDE interface is the ability to load images onto the HD therefore removing the need for floppies. For example, you could have all 4 sides of Ultima IV on the HD and booted like they were in drive 1 (switching when necessary). Depending on the HD it could support over 1000 images on the HD!