ICD MIO Save Configuration to D1:

[pixelmischief]

Would anyone be interested in modifying the ICD MIO ROM code to save configuration to D1: instead of requiring an attached SCSI drive at 0,0?  I'd sure be wildly appreciative of it.

[_The Doctor__]

So you want and option to pick hard drive/floppy/ramdisk at D1: to load the MIO config ?

This could be slightly tricky as the MIO default does not have a ramdisk there.

The config from a regular floppy disk is quite a long delay, and requires some form of disk system,xbios, minidos, to do this. That would have to be in the MIO or a cartridge. If in cartridge that solves the DOS issue, So the MIO would have to be delayed and then search for it's config in Floppy, then Ramdisk (if still powered or battery backed up) and then 0,0 respectively acting on the first one found. The polling for the first two could be done during the MIO delay for drive ready spin up.  There were scsi floppy drives BITD but not sure if that's easy to come by today, as an alternative.

@pixelmischief

Lastly there were Floppy based MIO and Black Box utilities that ran from floppy to set them up (configure) in any event. We did this for BBS's etc back in the day, not only configuring everything in them but then copying whatever was needed to the RamDisks in the MIO and computer.

See BBFig and MioConfig etc.

set them up in batchfiles or autoruns. SpartaDos, SpartaDos X, MyDOS

There are several disks for the MIO, BlackBox, and BOTH that have these utililties.

Edited 16 hours ago by _The Doctor__

[Tillek]

The biggest problem I see with this though is that at startup, before the configuration would be loaded from D1:, there is no D1: to speak of yet and the MIO wouldn't necessarily know what the parameters would be for it yet...  Seems like a chicken/egg problem.

 

 

[_The Doctor__]

Currently the MIO with no hard Drive comes up, and the utilities can set up most things, I forget if it can set ramdisk sizes but they can certainly move all drives around, you can fill the ramdisks, and issue a reboot or coldstart once complete.

 

Chicken and egg is over come by polling, the method to determine the floppy boot could be as simple as no config file, move to next device in the list.

 

This only really ever occurs from a fresh MIO power up, since it's all held in place while still on.

 

Saving to the device that was found would have to occur is all

Edited 15 hours ago by _The Doctor__

[+Larry]

The closest thing that I know of is the the utility MIOCFG on the SpartaDos Toolkit (disk).  It allows saving the CFG info to a file.  I remember using it years ago.

 

[Tillek]

3 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Currently the MIO with no hard Drive comes up, and the utilities can set up most things, I forget if it can set ramdisk sizes but they can certainly move all drives around, you can fill the ramdisks, and issue a reboot or coldstart once complete.

 

Chicken and egg is over come by polling, the method to determine the floppy boot could be as simple as no config file, move to next device in the list.

 

This only really ever occurs from a fresh MIO power up, since it's all held in place while still on.

 

Saving to the device that was found would have to occur is all

So before the configuration is loaded, what would tell the MIO that you defined a D1 that was 4mb?  Or 6mb?  Or 16mb?  Doesn't it currently read the partitions from the beginning of 0,0?

 

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what Pixelmischief is saying in that the assumption is that D1: is a floppy?  (I generally set up my MIO that D1: is a hard drive partition that is set to be bootable, especially when I'm using it for a BBS).

 

[Tillek]

3 hours ago, Larry said:

The closest thing that I know of is the the utility MIOCFG on the SpartaDos Toolkit (disk).  It allows saving the CFG info to a file.  I remember using it years ago.

 

Yeah, but I think he's talking about loading the configuration from it and then booting the system (instead of just saving it to the start of SCSI/LUN 0,0)

 

[pixelmischief]

4 hours ago, Larry said:

The closest thing that I know of is the the utility MIOCFG on the SpartaDos Toolkit (disk).  It allows saving the CFG info to a file.  I remember using it years ago.

Oh!  Yes!  This is what I want!  Thanks!  I'll look in that directions.

 

As far as the remainder of the conversation, I wasn't very clear.  I am JUST talking about backup and restore of the configuration.  I have the MIO on a UPS now, but do occasionally want to unplug it to rearrange things and whatnot.

[_The Doctor__]

He stated he wants it to load config and save config to the floppy when no hard drive is present.

He wants it to do it's config from that drive at startup.

 

This is achievable through batch files and software but will take time for DOS and the batch files/software to do. Hence BBFIG and MIOCFG that I mentioned and later Larry.

If it were native config info direct to and from the drive, it would be much faster and efficient.

That would mean the firmware would need a re write utilizing a polling strategy that looks for a file on floppy first, then ramdisk, then hard drive. Since there is a spool up delay present for hard drives, the polling could safely take place during that delay.

 

If he wanted it come from a ramdisk D1: without floppy then D1: would have to be the default config of the MIO, in that case the ramdisk would have to be battery backed up. In that case the config itself could be battery backed up, those instances would be hardware modifications

 The only other choice would be flash config storage, again hardware.

 

We kept our BBS configurations on the drives and backed up on floppy. Dan Knauf and other utilities including those from ICD cover all of this.

Edited 10 hours ago by _The Doctor__

[Tillek]

33 minutes ago, pixelmischief said:

Oh!  Yes!  This is what I want!  Thanks!  I'll look in that directions.

 

As far as the remainder of the conversation, I wasn't very clear.  I am JUST talking about backup and restore of the configuration.  I have the MIO on a UPS now, but do occasionally want to unplug it to rearrange things and whatnot.

Ah... gotcha... sorry for the confusion.

 

I kinda assumed this was partly related to the other conversation related to the difficulties with BlueSCSI and other "emulators" that seemed to have a problem saving the configuration to 0,0.

 

My bad....