MyIDE and PC Software?

[Cybernoid]

Hi all,

 

I have a couple of questions about some software I would like to see for the PC....

 

This is what I was thinking would be nice:

 

A software package for Windows that allows you to do a RAW write to an IDE drive or a CompactFlash card/disk. This way you could write ATR images and Data to a disk quickly on a PC, then plug it into your Atari.

 

This is what I know:

(1) You can access the ATA/IDE registers under windows, but are there any software examples out there that I can look at that anyone knows of?

 

(2) You cannot "hot-swap" IDE drives, but there are USB->IDE enclosures.

 

 

Anyway, if anyone has some information or thoughts, please let me know.

I have a PCMCIA spec here somewhere, so I think I will start investigating the CompactFlash writter first....

 

Thanks... -C-

[Goochman]

This would be great..........complete windoze based setup for CF MyIDE connector

[Wrathchild]

I don't think this too possible without some clever remapping algorithm,

most of my 2.5" HD IDE drives have different numbers of sectors, cylinders and heads and so how the data is layed out/extracted would differ between them.

[ndary]

SIO2USB interface already does this.

 

take a USB hard-drive case (with a drive inside ofcurse) write your ATR files to it. then plug the drive to the SIO2USB interface on the ATARI and boot the computer

[Cybernoid]

I don't think this too possible without some clever remapping algorithm,

most of my 2.5" HD IDE drives have different numbers of sectors, cylinders and heads and so how the data is layed out/extracted would differ between them.

 

In the ATA spec, there is already a way to send a command to the HD and then read back parameters from the drive including sectors, cylinders, heads and many others. I have already written something for the Atari that will read these values. Just need to port it to the PC. Not sure if it is clever, but...

[Cybernoid]

SIO2USB interface already does this.

 

take a USB hard-drive case (with a drive inside ofcurse) write your ATR files to it. then plug the drive to the SIO2USB interface on the ATARI and boot the computer

 

Well this is awesome. I did not know that. That is easy!

 

I would like to see something done for the MyIDE, however, many people have this... well okay maybe about 100 people...

[Shawn Jefferson]

I would like to see something done for the MyIDE, however, many people have this... well okay maybe about 100 people...

 

If you do get something like this going, you could make it compatible with my program if you were to put your descriptions of the image slots in the same location as I am doing.

 

My "image table" is kept at the end of the image space. I calculate it like this:

 

image_table_cyl = ((myide_config.cylinders - 0x0100) | 0x00FF);

image_table_cyl -= (myide_config.imagesize_cyl * 2);

 

I am currently using 720 DD sectors of this space to hold image descriptions (7 per sector, which works out to space for over 5000). The image description structure looks like this:

 

typedef struct IMAGEENTRY_T {

  unsigned int slot;      // image slot, from beginning of image space

   char desc[DESC_LEN];     // length is 31, 30 chars plus delimiter  

 unsigned char status;      // bit7=deleted, bits 0-3=disk number  

 unsigned char category;     // category, 0-19 currently   

 unsigned char reserved;

} IMAGEENTRY_T;

[+rdemming]

A software package for Windows that allows you to do a RAW write to an IDE drive or a CompactFlash card/disk.  This way you could write ATR images and Data to a disk quickly on a PC, then plug it into your Atari.

 

I was thinking of this aswell. I've been looking in de Microsoft developer documention for functions to directly access sectors on the harddisk but I couldn't find something. But an article on SysInternals has some pointers to the native API were I believe this kind of functionality lives. There must be some documentation in the "Device Driver Development Kit" (DDK) and Windows NT Installable File System Kit (IFS Kit) which is only available after signing a NDA. See also the Book list.

 

Robert

[krupkaj]

SIO2USB interface already does this.

 

take a USB hard-drive case (with a drive inside ofcurse) write your ATR files to it. then plug the drive to the SIO2USB interface on the ATARI and boot the computer

 

That sounds easy, but wherefrom I can get SIO2USB?