Is there an idiot's guide to HD configuration?

[VW]

I got a hold of an old ST hard drive from a friend of mine and am having a lot of trouble configuring it. I downloaded some AHDIs from various places but am still having no luck. When I boot an AHDI disk it says there is a quantum something or other attached which I take as a good sign. When I install an icon for it and save to desktop everything seems to go well except when I then click the icon it says the drive doesn't exist. Undaunted I save the desktop and reboot only to find the icon is gone and I am back where I started. Any help anyone could give would be appreciated, I have a 520STFM if it matters. Also I have noticed that if the hard drive is connected but the power to it is off, I can't read any floppy disks anymore, is that normal?

[krupkaj]

it looks like the harddisk is not partitioned or even formatted properly. You can do it with HDX tool which is in AHDI package. After partitioning you can install AHDI to harddrive with HINSTALL tool and then you can boot from harddisk.

[VW]

Doh, it looks like I have some serious problems with this thing, whenever I try to format it or partition it with HDX, I get an error that says to please check connections and retry. I'm guessing that it's really well connected since I could select the drive ID OK at the first screen after I select format. I guess I'll have to take it apart to see if there's anything obviously wrong or is this an error that can be worked around?

[Gunstar]

I waited to respond to this thread because I wanted to check some things out since I've been in a similiar situation to yours. I originally had my HD working, but I was having some issues, so I was in the process of re-initilizing and formatting my HD, becuase I thought I'd initialized it originally with the wrong step pulse rate, since some things saved and loaded to and from the HD worked, and some things didn't. I was getting a lot of TOS error #35, IIRC. Most notibly was that I couldn't get Neodesk 3 to boot from the HD, but I could boot it from floppy and then use my HD normally for most things. At the same time I had upgraded from TOS 1.0 to 1.04 or Rainbow TOS released with the STE's. I, by the way, have a 1040STf which *should* be the same as your 520STFM, just minus the RF modulator which is what the "M" stands for...the "F" is for the internal floppy. So, why is any of this important to you? And where am I at now? Firstly, I get many of the same results as you. I too, cannot use my disk drive when the HD is attaached, but not turned on, so this seems like it may be a normal thing, BUT, this was not the case when I had TOS 1.0 installed, I could leave the HD attached and powered down and use my floppy just fine. It was when I upgraded to TOS 1.4 that I started having the same symptom as you. So, I'm guessing, that even though you have a 520STFM that comes standard with TOS 1.0 (did they ever come standard with 1.02 or 1.04?), that your ST must have also been upgraded beyond 1.0. When you select "desktop info" is the Atari Fuji black or rainbow? Secondly, I too, was having the problem of my HD inti program allowing me to select the HD, but it will not initialize or format the disk, and keeps coming back with a "failed to format." As well as the disappearing icon and "drive does not exist" stuff. But I did find out that I never actually did anything to my HD when attempting to re-initialize and format it. While messing with it this weekend, I was able to boot-up with my HD normally, it seems, or at least back to the way it was. I used a back-up bootload disk I had, which gets the HD rolling since TOS 1.0 does not automatically look for a HD. like 1.04 does. I didn't think I could use the old stuff anymore with 1.04, but even though 1.04 detects the HD, it seems that I still need my bootstrapping disk for the HD too. Though I am still stuck with the problem of not being able to get NEOdesk 3 and some other things to boot or load from the HD. I've also been having trouble with a second external floppy drive, which I had thought would be no trouble at atll, but I'll start a new thread for that topic.

 

Anyway, I'm still trying to master the ST HD after about a year now myself. My set-up was a "kit" though, that came with the interface board, HD control board and the init&formatting software&instructions, and I attached my own standard MFM (old school) Seagate HD to the set-up. The kit's manual had a list of compatible HD's, so I went by it when looking for one to buy online, it was a big list though. With my software, that came with the kit, previous to running the HD init&format program, I had to load an HDINIT.DAT file into a text ediitor, and edit it with parameters for my Seagate HD, then save it into ASCII under .DAT again, and then use the main program to initialize, partition and format my HD. You may have to do something similiar if the HD utilities that you are using have .dat files with parameter information that is needed for your particular HD. you mentioned a Quatum drive? I got on the internet and found the specifications for my Seagate drive after soem extensive Google searching. You may find you have to do a similiar search and edits to successfully get your HD up and running, unless you happen to have a boot disk that came with it in which case you may have to do nothing but use the bootdisk.

Edited July 5, 2005 by Gunstar

[krupkaj]

One question for you both. Which harddrive do you have? Atari Megafile or some 3rd party?

 

And one other thing the AHDI is not bad but it is obsolete. There is HDDriver which is commercial, but I think it worth the money.

[VW]

Thanks for the info, here are some answers to people's questions for me. My Atari Fuji symbol is the rainbow, what TOS version does this mean I have? Also I definitely have a 3rd party drive, it says Plus Impulse on the front of the cover. I took it apart and it appears that the quantum drive is a SCSI, also there is a bay for another drive to be added. Does anyone have links to good hard drive software to try out, ADHD was the only one I found plus my friend of course lost the disk that came with it. I'd like to try HDDriver but I'm too poor.

[krupkaj]

Rainbow Fuji means you have TOS v.1.4.

 

Maybe you can try HDDriver demo for format and partittioning and then install AHDI.

 

There is also free SCSI driver called CBHD. But I am not usure it contains format and partition utility.

[VW]

Just my luck, I downloaded the HDDriver demo and ran HDDriver.prg just fine but when I ran the HINSTALL app after that like the README said I ran out of memory, I guess I'll have to wait until I get a hold of a 1040ST before I can look into this any further. Thanks for all the advice though, hopefully it will all work out in the end.

[VW]

One more question that may be off topic, but I notice that the HDDRiver app is about 227K, since even a 520ST has 512K, why am I running out of memory? TOS is on ROM so where is all this memory going?

[Gunstar]

I was having the EXACT same problem while attempting to reformat my HD (running out of memory). It kept going through and marketing nearly the entire HD as "bad sectors" and then running out of memory and not finishing the job. And I have a 1MB ST. Anyway, I grew weary of getting my HD working, even with the new software, which I couldn't seem to find an actual INITILIZATION process PRIOR to formatting the drive, which is what I really think it needed, and no options to manually select my number of heads, cylinders, etc. as well. I finally just discontected my old HD setup, to be looked at again sometime in the future, and I purchased a new (to me) 30MB Supradrive off of E-bay, which works perfectly (plug and play, no init/format needed) and is already partitioned into 3 10MB sections. So, problem solved, by giving up and getting an entirely new drive for the time being. I just wanted to USE the HD and not mess with it anymore. Now I can finally start copying my software library (the stuff that can be loaded from HD anyway) to the Supradrive and actually start enjoying my ST&HD rather than screwing around trying to get it to work properly all the time. I'm looking forward to successfully installing NEOdesk 3 and my Cyberstudio collection onto the HD for practical use. Finally!

[krupkaj]

One more question that may be off topic, but I notice that the HDDRiver app is about 227K, since even a 520ST has 512K, why am I running out of memory?  TOS is on ROM so where is all this memory going?

888812[/snapback]

It depend on programs in your auto folder and accessories.

 

There are also some memory areas which are not user accessible (videomemory for example)

 

You can shrink memory which hddriver use. Just play with values in Settings->General Options in HDDRUTIL. You can decrease both cashes and additional folders. For 520ST 100 additional folders should be enough. Do not use program folderxxx in AUTO together with hddriver.