Creating partitions on real HDD from Hatari?

[mrbombermillzy]

Hi all,

Having had my Falcon PSU rejuvenated by Steve, I would like to test the fairly recently recapped mainboard.

However, the FDD connector is borked, so I am having difficulty in testing it out, having no Diag Cart.

It boots to the desktop and I can mess around there ok, but I was wondering if I can (like is possible on WinUAE) pre make a drive which can then be physically transferred to the Atari with autoboot active. (Im using W10 BTW).

Failing that, of course, I could ask some kind soul here if I could send them a CF card to format with some blank partitions for me!

Anyone had this problem crop up before? TIA

[Badwolf]

A hard disc image set up on Hatari to be auto-booted (eg. using HDDriver or AHDI) can be block-level copied to a physical device and booted straight from the ST, yes.

If you have the means to attach your CF Card to the PC (which I assume you do, else this question would be redundant!), then you can even have Hatari access the card directly for setup.

Since you're on Windows I think you'd have to install a bare-bones linux in a VM first but then you can pass that drive through to the VM and tell Hatari to use it as the IDE disc (eg. /dev/sdb). Just make sure you select Byte Swap Off.

I use this in the opposite direction: I have an IDE2SD adapter in the Falcon and can pull the SD card, plug it into the Mac and boot Hatari with my normal Falcon setup (again with Linux in a VM).

BW

[mrbombermillzy]

Thanks for the hints BW.

However, I'm afraid that what I know about Linux would fit on a postage stamp.

Would probably be much simpler if I went for option 2 at this stage.

(Option 3 would be getting the floppy interface fixed!)

I'm grateful for the input though.

[Steve]

It's okay you probably don't need Linux. Just make your partitioned disk image with Hatari, then write it to the CF card using software like Win32DiskImager. I think that should work?

[mrbombermillzy]

That sounds like it might work.

Will give that a go.

Thanks Steve.

[mrbombermillzy]

For future reference, it's quite easy to do this, if you do the following:

1. Get the ready rolled PPera 1/2Gb games HDD drive image archive: https://www.mediafire.com/file/ccu2ueqo ... B.rar/file

2. Write the 1GB ACSI file to your CF/SD/IDE or whatever, destination drive with a disk imaging tool. (I used Win32DiskImager).

3. As this is for Falcon and Falcon doesn't do ACSI, you need to write the minuscule 1GB IDE.img file OVER the original image.

The drive will now be visible and can be R/W from Windows. I put some DSP test software in a folder as an example:

P1040094.JPG (61.7 KiB) Viewed 3872 times

And there you have it! That's probably as easy/clear as I can make it.

Thanks to BW, Steve and PPera.

[Badwolf]

Thanks for the hints BW.

However, I'm afraid that what I know about Linux would fit on a postage stamp.

Would probably be much simpler if I went for option 2 at this stage.

Glad you got it working. Option one was actually the windows one -- just do it to an image and write that image out. As always with these things, it's just easier under posix (eg. linux) systems as you don't need third party software.

BW

[mrbombermillzy]

Glad you got it working.

BW

Thank you.

Alas, this was the first stage of diagnosing what appears to be a faulty SDMA/DSP problem.

This old bird has been ravaged in the past. It had a Blowup board installed when I got it and I don't know what was installed before that (which was obviously ripped out without returning the board to spec) as the Poor DSP had its interrupt line stolen for whatever was fitted previously.

I have had it recapped and a reversal of the blowup board installation has been carried out. Ive also fitted a new DSP, as the old one had broken INT. pin too close to the package to save.

However, there is only the YM sound. DSP and SDMA either cause errors, lock up the machine, bomb out, or are just silent.

I suppose this machine is currently a souped up STFM with a 030 and a Videl. lol

Anyway, looks like Im going to see how busy @Steve is, work-wise.

[mrbombermillzy]

Here's a quick look at what I'm dealing with:

This DSP profiler just completes, with no other messages, so WTF? lol

P1040095.JPG (38.34 KiB) Viewed 3832 times

And here we have the cool looking ACEtracker which is failing to initialise the DSP:

P1040096.JPG (86.05 KiB) Viewed 3832 times

P1040097.JPG (118.21 KiB) Viewed 3832 times

DSP Fun Machine just crashes too, it goes on and on.

[Steve]

@mrbombermillzy That is odd, certainly not a simple clock-patch issue. Would need to look at the DSP soldering & SDMA clock line. If you're gonna do some pictures & trouble shooting perhaps split into a new topic I think.