The Sinclair QL Forum

I have just recently come across an old Atari Stacy that still works - even if the LCD display is quite a bit tired - and thought I'll try and run SMSQ/E on it.

That works nicely (even if only in monochrome). I used to have an extended MODE 4 emulator in a Mega ST4 and that triggered happy memories... I managed to create a QLWA partition on the hard drive and now the Atari-QL has ample space. Access to QDOS-formatted floppies also works like a charm.

What I have, however, not managed is giving access from SMSQ/E to Atari-native hard disk partitions. The manual says, however,

In addition, SMSQ/E comes with inbuilt drivers to recognise TOS harddisk partitions, DOS floppy disks, and TOS floppy disks (DD and HD).

I found an old QL-Toady article where Jochen Merz described his Atari setup. He seems to simply chant a magic "WIN_DRIVE" onto a GEM partition and, apparently, has access to that Atari drive. That does, however, not work for me. I ploughed a bit through the SMSQ/E sources, could find there is actually a definition for GEM and BIG GEM partition IDs in the keys file, but those seem never to be used anywhere in code.

As I apparently can't find any code that accesses Atari-native file systems (I really did not search exhausively, though), I am a bit at loss here. Could it be Atari hard disk partition support has been removed from SMSQ/E at some point in time? Or is this just a big misunderstanding (I don't really think Jochen would have described his setup that never could have worked....(?) Or am I doing something silly?

Fond memories indeed
Its so long ago now I cant remember any details, but here are a couple of lines from my original boot file for my Atari system: Perhaps that gives a clue..?

Hello
it was not so easy
win_drive 1,0,0,0
boils down to
1 = win1_
0 = Atari Hard Disk ASCSI 0 to 7
SCSI 8 to 14
0 = LUN Logical Unit Number
0 = First Parition on the Disk

Greetings from Switzerland
Markus

Thank you all!

Hmmm. I think I have now tried all possible permutations of Adapters, LUNs and partitions. Can't get it to work.

My disk has four partitions, C: to E: are of type BGM created with HDDRIVER, the fourth one is of type QWA and hosts the QXL file system (which works perfectly when I mount it with WIN_DRIVE 1, 0, 0, 3)

I would assume WIN_DRIVE 2,0,0,2 should, for example mount GEM E:, but when I do that, a dir win2_ simply comes back with "not found". Apparently, something is too modern for SMSQ/E when I use HDDRIVER.

tofro wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 5:34 pm I found an old QL-Toady article [...]

Typo or intention?

tofro wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 5:34 pm As I apparently can't find any code that accesses Atari-native file systems (I really did not search exhausively, though), I am a bit at loss here.

Isn't Atari-native is the same as FAT16 except slight differences? Maybe there simply is no separate code?

Did you try a max. partition size of 16 MB?

Peter wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 10:39 pm

tofro wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 5:34 pm I found an old QL-Toady article [...]

Typo or intention?

That was, of course, intentional

Peter wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 10:39 pm

tofro wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 5:34 pm As I apparently can't find any code that accesses Atari-native file systems (I really did not search exhausively, though), I am a bit at loss here.

Isn't Atari-native is the same as FAT16 except slight differences? Maybe there simply is no separate code?

Did you try a max. partition size of 16 MB?

The SMSQ/E Manual says it can access "GEM" (that is, "old-style" FAT 16 max. 16MB) and ST "Big GEM" (big cluster size FAT 16), max 256MB) partitions. I have the latter.

Peter wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 10:39 pm

tofro wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 5:34 pm I found an old QL-Toady article [...]

Typo or intention?

Hi Peter,

many years ago, I spelt QL Today incorrectly as QL Toady. Dilwyn, bless him, picked up on it and from then on, the magazine was known -- at least to us -- as QL Toady!

I was pleased to see it live on in @Tofro's post.


Cheers,
Norm.

tofro, I partitioned my Atari and Qx0 hard disks with fdisk (I think). Perhaps thats the difference.

Peter wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 10:39 pm Typo or intention?

tofro wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 5:34 pm As I apparently can't find any code that accesses Atari-native file systems (I really did not search exhausively, though), I am a bit at loss here.

Isn't Atari-native is the same as FAT16 except slight differences? Maybe there simply is no separate code?

Did you try a max. partition size of 16 MB?

Peter, you were actually right. Even if the documentations claims SMSQ/E would mout "BGM" partitions (that can have a maximum size of 256MB), that doesn't seem to be the case, at least not on my system. I re-partitioned my SD card to use some smaller "GEM" partitions with 16MB and that now seems to work, even on an external ACSI harddisk (I wasn't keen on re-formatting the internal one).

tofro wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2024 1:56 pm I re-partitioned my SD card to use some smaller "GEM" partitions with 16MB and that now seems to work, even on an external ACSI harddisk

16 MB was a lot back in those days