APT for IDE+2 Questions

[+Larry]

I had to completely set up my CF card with the IDE+2 HD this AM and ran into a couple of questions since I haven't done this in several years (and with the current version of the APT Toolkit). My desired configuration is 20,000, 256-byte sectors for MyDos.

 

1. Is start is the absolute starting sector number on the device -- CF card in my case? The above number just popped up, so I didn't/couldn't change it. It seems very high on a 2 GB card. Should I have formatted the card on a PC first? And would that have resulted in a lower starting sector number?

 

2. Do we have to double the size if we are using 256-byte sectors? I don't remember exactly how that worked, but we had to double something if using 256-byte sectors previously (IIRC).

 

Thanks,

Larry

 

 

[Roydea6]

Larry,

 

Set FAT32 to NONE during the fdisk program..

[flashjazzcat]

1. Is start is the absolute starting sector number on the device -- CF card in my case? The above number just popped up, so I didn't/couldn't change it. It seems very high on a 2 GB card. Should I have formatted the card on a PC first? And would that have resulted in a lower starting sector number?

'Start' is the absolute starting sector number of the partition. As Roy implies, there appears to be a FAT partition in front of the APT, which would explain the high starting number of the first APT partition. Moreover, the FAT seems appears to occupy almost the entire card. If you do want a FAT32 or FAT16 partition on the card, when initialising the media, make sure to specify the size of the FAT/APT in the corresponding fields of the dialog box.

 

2. Do we have to double the size if we are using 256-byte sectors? I don't remember exactly how that worked, but we had to double something if using 256-byte sectors previously (IIRC).

No. Physical 512 byte sectors are not occupied by multiple 128 or 256 byte logical sectors, so - for example - a 65,535 sector partition will occupy just shy of 32MB of physical space regardless of which of the three logical densities are chosen. You can work in MB units instead of sectors, BTW, via 'View->Megabytes' or by pressing 'M' to toggle between sectors and MB.

[+Larry]

Outstanding! I've made up a whole new 4-GB card, and now I'll go back and reinitialize this smaller one.

 

Thanks, guys!

 

-Larry

 

Edit: I found the card's partitioning was bad. I combined some smaller partitions and ended up with the correct size, then I used APT and set it up correctly for the Atari.