MKpart_exe for Q40 & Q60

[duncan]

Hi Derek,

It seems that back in the day the partition table for the Qx0 was a missed opportunity as each partition entry only occupies 12 bytes. The 4 partition table entries sit just 58 bytes from the end of the sector, the remainder of the sector apart from the magic number in the 1st 2 bytes is empty, so there would have been room to have a table of 8 entries if started lower in the sector. It's academic now with the ability to read QXL.WIN files as if they were partitions on a fat32 disk.

MKpart_exe was simple to modify once I had understood the decision logic. It required one branch condition to be changed to accept a final partition of less than the full size of the disk.

Cheers

[Peter]

It's academic now with the ability to read QXL.WIN files as if they were partitions on a fat32 disk.

Not quite, if one is interested in Linux. The FAT32 option also means byteswapping, and PC partition scheme instead of Atari.
While Linux can handle both in principle, I have not been able to get Q60 Linux to run with the corresponding options.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi,

Shoestring Linux can be booted up on a Q60 from a CDROM Disk, which how I used to setup a production Q60.

The Q60 fitted with:

10Gb Hard Drive: Primary Master
CDRW Drive: Secondary Master
Removal Hard Drive: Secondary Slave: FAT32

Atari-fdisk wax used to create:

3 QWA 512Mb Primary Partitions
1 Linux Primary Partition
1 Extended Linux Partition

SMSQ/E used the 3 WIN drives and could boot into Linux into the 4th Primary Partition with a Linux Loader. Where the Loader booted up Shoestring Linux on the Extended Linux Partition. Where the Linux operating system can read and write FAT32 on the Secondary Slave: /dev/hdd

I also usdd use Ethernet to install QWA partitions from a PC Server.

But 20 years on, the QWA partitions, could QWA files, could exist on the hard drive, the Removal Hard Drive with a SD Card formatted to FAT32.

Just need a SMQ/E Ethetnet driver like the Q68...