Hi, guys.
> > What I still remember is that the partition table (on sector 0 of the
> > harddisk, before any partitions) contains sets of 32 bytes of info for
> > each
> > partition. There should be documents available _somewhere_ which detail
> > this, since it's used on every PC...
That's right. The standard partition info for each partition on a
harddisk has 32 bytes, at physical sector 0.
> > The 'old PC' format is exactly the same as PC's without extended
> > partitions. There can be 4 partitions maximum, i.e. 4 times 32 bytes.
Nice. So it's compatible with other systems.
> > The 'old MSX' format was exacly the same format but used up to 8
> > partitions.
> > (It just placed the same 4*32 bytes of information behind (or before?) the
> > 4*32 bytes for the PC partitions because there is room for that.
Behind. Sunrise ATA-IDE uses the same scheme, but up to 31
partitions, since there is room for that in sector 0.
> > I have no
> > idea why all PCs did not just do it like this.)
Because the top of sector 0 contains the MBR (Master Boot Record)
program. It selects the bootable partition and run the bootsector on it.
OS loaders, like LILO, overwrite this piece of code with their code, so
they can select the boot partition.
> > The 'MAK 3.0' format also has room for 8 partitions, but did something
> > different, so it's not compatible with the other format. (Maybe the offset
> > of the area of 8*32 bytes is different from PCs, maybe the order of the
> > data inside the 32 bytes is different from PCs; I don't know...)
Bad... :(
> > The 'Extended' format uses sectors elsewhere on the disk, as does the
> > BERT/HPN format.
> > What they do is: in sector 0 of the harddisk there are 2 * 32 bytes of
> info;
Do you remember if the partition info has the correct partition
type byte (extended partition has type 5, indicating that this entry
points
to another partition info sector, with data about the other partitions
on
disk)?
> > the first holding data about partition 1, the second being a pointer to
> > another sector. In this sector there are 2 * 32 bytes of info; the first
> > holding data about partition 2, the second being a pointer to another
> > sector. In this sector there are 2 * 32 ...(reiterate until you get to
> > partition 32. If I remember correctly that 32 partitions was the maximum -
> > anyway, it's an arbitrary limit.)
> > (I thought that this format was PC compatible.
No, it's not. But it's compatible with MegaSCSI format (assuming
that the partition type byte is set accordingly).
> > So what's the difference between 'Extended' and 'BERT/HPN'? Well, I wanted
> > the Novaxis 'Extended' format to be compatible with the Bert, but I
> screwed
> > up somewhere in NFDISK 1.0 (and those routines also got into the Novaxis
> > interface) because I did the pointers to other sectors as absolute sector
> > numbers, while the BERT had it as a relative offset from the current
> sector.
Yes! That's it! Now I really understand what NOVAXTAB.BAS does! :)
> > - what more do you need to know?
Do you remember how can I check the partition table type (MAK 3.0,
BERT, Extended, Old PC, Old MSX, etc)? Checking the number of entries in
the
partition table?
> > - how did you guys come to this? Are you planning something? What's UZIX?
We come to this because me, Manuel and Eric Boon want UZIX running
on Novaxis.
Our plans is having UZIX running on Novaxis.
UZIX is an UNIX-like operating system for MSX. Take a look at
http://uzix.msx.org.
> > This weekend, I'll try to find NFDISK sources and put them on my
> > homepage...
Thanks a lot. Any other info you have, please, put online.
> > Greetingckxsz, [*]
> > Ro.
> > ([*] which is what I used in my BBS times)
> > (Gert: zie je 1 dec!)
Po^, sacanagem... Nao entendi nada do que voce escreveu... :)))))
Regards,
Adriano Camargo Rodrigues da Cunha ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.adrpage.cjb.net MSX: more fun per less MHz
If Windows is user-friendly, why does its manual has at least 600 pages?
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