Accessing FAT32 partition on an APT partitioned drive

[adam242]

I used fjc's FDISK utility to set up a 128mb CF card for my Incognito board. Following his (well-written!) instructions, I initialized the card saying 'yes' to a FAT32 section and using 64mb as the APT. Set up a 65535-sector APT partition, named it, set the drive letter, and closed the disk. After exiting to SDX, I used the FORMAT command to (B)uild directory and the now APT section works brilliantly. I can read, write, etc from SDX.

 

But now the SIDE loader built into Incognito does not recognize a FAT32 partition. I'm not sure how I'd copy anything to the FAT32, either, as my PC now sees the card as unformatted.

 

When I run HDDINFO on the card, it shows the following:

 

Interface:

Device name: Transcend 128M

Bus id: 8.1.1

Sector size: 512 bytes

Sectors: 250368

 

Dynamic mounting: No

Drive mapping: No

ATR mounting: No

 

MBR is present

 

FAT32 start: 170852608

FAT 32 size: 2327

 

APT start: 118816

APT size: 131072

 

Am I doing something wrong, or do I just not understand the capabilities of this?

[flashjazzcat]

Firstly: have you formatted the FAT32 partition on the PC? Windows (or whichever OS) won't be able to do anything with it until a file system has been written to the FAT partition. FDISK doesn't do that for you.

 

However, something looks screwed up there with that partition geometry. Is it at all possible to make a (compressed) binary dump of the whole card so I can have a look at it?

[adam242]

Firstly: have you formatted the FAT32 partition on the PC? Windows (or whichever OS) won't be able to do anything with it until a file system has been written to the FAT partition. FDISK doesn't do that for you.

 

(Slaps head!)

 

Thanks! That did it... formatted the card on my PC, copied a few files (both .xex and .atr) to the FAT32 partition and tried again. Everything works fine from the SIDE loader now. And the APT partition still functions.

 

Really appreciate all the help with this, I hope I'm not trying anyone's patience.

 

Huge 'thank you' to candle and flashjazzcat and anyone else involved with this project. Loving it.

[flashjazzcat]

No probs - glad it worked!

 

Still don't like that FAT start address HDDINFO is giving, so I'd appreciate a look at that card just to track down any bugs.

[adam242]

Just ran HDDINFO again and the start address seems normal now that it's been formatted:

 

FAT32 start: 32

FAT32 size: 118784

 

APT start: 118816

APT size: 131072

 

 

If you'd still like to see the card, I'd be happy to oblige... just tell me how to make a 'compressed binary dump' of it. I'm not sure how to do that.