> Yes, now you can install UZIX on your harddisk, you can use UZIX
> in your harddisk, and you can select which operating system your MSX will
> boot.*
Well, I tried to install the new UZIX with its UZLO in my hard disk and I
must say that altough I finally succeeded to do it, I had some nasty
problems. I'll tell you about them with detail, I hope my experience will be
useful to make the next version as improved as possible.
First I'll tell you my MSX configuration. I have a MSX Turbo-R ST internally
expanded to 512K, and with an external mapper of 4M in slot 2-1 (yep, I have
a slot expander, a CIEL one, quite good!). I have a Mega-SCSI which has a
hard disk with 7 partitions and a CD-ROM connected. ESE-RAM is connected to
drive A so it is the boot drive, drives B to E are connected to hard disk and
drive F is connected to CD-ROM (which I use via MSXCDEX).
I copied and unpacked UZIX installation files on directory E:\UZIXINST, where
drive E: was connected to partition 6. I decided to install UZIX on partition
3, which was connected to drive D:.
So I ran INSTALL.BAT and followed all the steps according to the installation
guide, leaving all the advanced settings in its default state. No problem
until here; filesystem was created and all files were installed (I choosed to
install also advanced applications and network support although I have not
network access) successfully.
Then it was time to install UZLO. I selected the following options:
Drive where UZIX was installed from: E
Uzix partition number: 3
Boot drive: A
Is A: a ESE-RAM drive? Yes
MegaSCSI drive where UZIX will boot from: D
...and installation finished, also without problems apparently. But when I
tried to move around I did some unpleasant discoverings. I talk about them
now.
1) Partition table of partition 3 was smashed
As you probably know, there is a standard partitionning system for hard disks
which is OS-independent. On physical sector 0 of the disk there is space for
a table with up to 4 entries with informartion about the disk partitions:
physical starting sector and size. MS-DOS expanded this system by the use of
extended partitions: disk partition 1 is normal, but partition 2 is actually
the start of a table of "extended partitions". This allows to have an
unlimited number of partitions on the disk, where logical sector 0 of each
one contains information about the partition size and a pointer to the next
partition; thus building a "chained list" of partitions. There is detailed
information about this on any advanced MS-DOS book.
Based on this system I programmed some time ago my own partition selector for
Mega-SCSI, PS.COM (available in my home page). It reads the partitions
"chain" (as I explained, each partition points to the next one) in order to
find the desired partition. It is then slower than CP.COM, but it does not
need the MEGASCSI.TBL file, so it works with any well partitionned disk even
if it is not a MegaSCSI one.
So when running PL.COM, my partition listing utility, on my hard disk, I
obtained something like this:
Partition listing for Mega-SCSI
By Nestor Soriano (Konami Man), 1998
Listing partitions for device with ID 6 controlled by Mega-SCSI in slot 1
Device name: WDS-3200 !J, manufactured by IBM
Par. num. Type First sector Size
-------- ---- ------------ ----
1 MS(X)-DOS, FAT12 #000014 32644KB
2 MS(X)-DOS extended
2-1 MS(X)-DOS, FAT12 #00FF1C 32644KB
2-2 MS(X)-DOS, FAT12 (some data here)
2-3 MS(X)-DOS, FAT12 (some data here)
2-4 MS(X)-DOS, FAT12 (some data here)
2-5 MS(X)-DOS, FAT12 (some data here)
2-6 MS(X)-DOS, FAT12 (some data here)
3 --- UNUSED ENTRY ---
4 --- UNUSED ENTRY ---
I though then that after UZIX installation the only change would be on the
"Type" field information for partition 2-2 (that is, partition 3). But it
wasn't. Now the information shown by PL.COM is as follows:
Partition listing for Mega-SCSI
By Nestor Soriano (Konami Man), 1998
Listing partitions for device with ID 6 controlled by Mega-SCSI in slot 1
Device name: WDS-3200 !J, manufactured by IBM
Par. num. Type First sector Size
-------- ---- ------------ ----
1 MS(X)-DOS, FAT12 #000014 32644KB
2 MS(X)-DOS extended
2-1 MS(X)-DOS, FAT12 #00FF1C 32644KB
2-2 -- Unknown (byte #48) -- #4E1E44 4138KB
3 --- UNUSED ENTRY ---
4 --- UNUSED ENTRY ---
so as you can see, I can't access partitions 4, 5, 6 and 7 with PS.COM; I'm
forced to use CP.COM as in the old times (luckily, all partitions apart from
the UZIX one still unchanged). This is because UZIX installer screwed up the
partition information on logical sector 0 of partition 3.
So here is my suggestion: would it be possible to maintain the partitionning
information on sector 0 of the UZIX partition when installing it?
2) "Not a DOS disk" error when botting UZIX
When I finally decided to reset my MSX to check if UZIX really was working, I
find myself in front of a "Not a DOS disk on drive D:" error when UZIX was
trying to load itself. After aborting I jumped to MSX-DOS, and when
resetting, even UZLO was lost and the disk error appeared directly. Luckily I
had saved the ESE-RAM contents on a floppy before installing UZIX, so I could
boot from it and restore the original ESE-RAM to boot MSX-DOS again.
Then I executed INSTUZLO and I selected the same options as when I installed
it first time, but this time, in the question
MegaSCSI drive where UZIX will boot from:
I selected E instead of D. I reset and UZIX started to load.
So here seems to be another failure: if MegaSCSI drive to boot UZIX is
previously selected with the UZIX partition itself, UZIX can' boot.
3) Can't boot with external mapper
When UZIX started to load, I saw a message like this:
Memory mapper found on slot 2-1
and after this, computer hangs. If I remove the external mapper, UZIX boots
successfully.
So, the third failure: UZIX seems to not work correctly with external mappers
on Turbo-R, same as many DOS 1 programs. Maybe it is enough to modify the
contents of system variables &HF341 to &HF344 to solve this, as in some of
the mentioned DOS 1 programs.
Well, I hope this boring message has actually some utility for you. Now I'll
try to play a little with uzix itself, and start to getting habitued to
CP.COM again. 8-)
*** XX MSX USERS MEETING IN BARCELONA: DECEMBER 8th 2001 ***
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konami Man - AKA Nestor Soriano (^^)v
http://www.konamiman.com - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ#: 18281450
"Celebrating the imprudences must be unfailingly consequent with it said,
not for the fact in itself, but for some that another onomatopoeia to the use"
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