Using HD with A1060 Sidecar - some pointers please

[B14ck W01f]

I am in the process of setting up a hard drive with my (emulated) sidecar, but I have some questions on how you go about doing this. (There is zero documentation on how to do this in WinUAE).

1. I'm currently using a 10MB hard drive. Does the hard drive image have to be in IMG format rather than HDF? Using IMG results in an 'E' in the details box, so WinUAE only supports the HDF extension.

2. Formatting the hard drive with FDISK results in a "Invalid media or Track 0 bad - disk unusable" before it even starts formatting. So I assume that I need to perform manual geometry?

3. In the manual for the A1060, under the "Installing a hard disk", it tells you to type 'DPFORMAT DRIVE JH0: NAME <drivename>', so I need to set the Device field to JH0: rather than DH0:?

4. What is 8037? Do I need to check this option to access the HD?

[ Show youtube player ]

[Toni Wilen]

There is nothing special in emulation vs real bridgeboard and I don't help with non-winuae specific problems as usual

You need to know exactly how to configure and use the software. It can get quite tricky, it is ancient PC after all.

Does XT IDE Bios _and_ Janus messages appear before PC starts booting? If not, probably wrong IO addresses, there is not much free IO spaces due to janus shared ram.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=76395 probably will help.

HDF extensions makes no difference. (Only exception is floppy extension, if it is "pc-like" extension, like .img, it will be included in PC floppy autodetection)

btw, dpformat most likely is only meant for janus hardfiles, not for real PC harddrives. Do not confuse between them, it has been too common.

EDIT: I checked the video (use turbo floppy next time ), you said fdisk but video shows format attempt? (which can't work without partitioning it first with fdisk)

[B14ck W01f]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

You need to know exactly how to configure and use the software. It can get quite tricky, it is ancient PC after all.

I might need to install the Sidecar software and read the entire A1060 manual as well. I just jumped to the relevant section, which is "Installing a hard disk".

Does XT IDE Bios _and_ Janus messages appear before PC starts booting? If not, probably wrong IO addresses, there is not much free IO spaces due to janus shared ram.

As seen in the video, both of these appear, because I set the XTIDE BIOS HD's ROM Address to 0xEC000 and the bridgeboard's address sector to E0000-EFFFF, then set the appropriate setting in PCPrefs.

btw, dpformat most likely is only meant for janus hardfiles, not for real PC harddrives. Do not confuse between them, it has been too common.

Well, I am attempting to install a HD, but I don't fully understand what Janus is. Is that the software?

EDIT: I checked the video (use turbo floppy next time )

But you only needed to jump to 0:50.

you said fdisk but video shows format attempt? (which can't work without partitioning it first with fdisk)

And that's what I did, which is why I inquired about manual geometry.

[Toni Wilen]

One possible reason can be XT IDE bios version or Janus version, I think there was some problems due to Janus doing something weird (that no "real" PC does)

Janus is driver software name and it also enables Amiga side hardfile support (nothing to do with emulator hardfiles) to appear as PC side harddrive.

My test config still boots fine from XT IDE drive. ("v1.1.5 (11/28/10) XTIDE Universal BIOS (XT)"). Janus handler version 2.71, library version 33.4.