Questions about ATW800 hdd install

[stormy]

Very cool man! Please keep going, this is so interesting Perhaps you could speak to the folks who run Atari unix.com, like tenox. They have a lot of unix experience at least and could maybe help you.

[Shockwav3]

Any news on that?
I'm currently facing exactly the same issue.

Drive is a NEC D3841 with ~45MB which originally came with the ATW800. It's working as it should, but I can't get partitions beyond ~16MB - whereas X11 requires 30MB of continous disk space. The HeliOSFS seems to be such a can of worms I'm not too keen on opening, unless I absolutely have to (the installation script appears to be broken already).

[Robson]

Any news on that?
I'm currently facing exactly the same issue.

Drive is a NEC D3841 with ~45MB which originally came with the ATW800. It's working as it should, but I can't get partitions beyond ~16MB - whereas X11 requires 30MB of continous disk space. The HeliOSFS seems to be such a can of worms I'm not too keen on opening, unless I absolutely have to (the installation script appears to be broken already).

Getting back to you because you asked but the answer is no or I can't remember . I haven't turned it on for a while, shame on me I know but I'm busy with all sorts of other stuff at the moment. Feel free to add what you have, should push me to look into it again. This piece deserves more use for sure.

[Shockwav3]

Well, currently I'm digging into the HFS, since that might be a possible solution, as HFS supports partition sizes of considerable size (at least various 100s of MB).
So far I have a 7MB GEM-swap partition and a ~35MB "raw"/Helios-Partition. The raw one gets mapped to /rawdisk with a size of ~73000 blocks (that one is set in the host.con steerfile for server.prg). Setting the info in devinfo.src and compiling it with GDI seems to work, issueing a "fs -m raw" also completes without any complains (but has some very little disk activity). Trying to install X afterwards still fails due to a lack of space, so I guess something didn't quite work there yet.
The hdd was formated using MSCSIFMT.prg and uses SCSI.prg as the driver from the "ATW 800 bootdisk" floating around on the internet.

I've tried to verify the partition types using HDDriver - sadly that one won't even find the GEM partition or any SCSI adapters.
There's also another utility called "makedisk.exe" for MSDOS PCs ... which I'd love to give a try BUT the HDD is mounted inside the case in such a fashion that you'd basically have to disassemble the whole ATW800 case (remove ST-IO Board + front which is partially bolted) to get access to it.

[Shockwav3]

Well, I got as far as setting up HFS/rawdisk at least. Since I used the NEC D3841 supplied with this machine (which should be the original drive), installation might be different for you. These are the steps I've taken so far:

- Format the first 71 cylinders as GEM using MSCSIFMT.PRG
- Copy/Install HeliOS onto that partition
- edit your host.con to feature the following option "rawdisk_drive = d"
- Install HeliOSFS using loadpac from within HeliOS
- cd to /helios/etc
- Adapt your devinfo.src (my config is in the 'code'-tag below)
- compile devinfo.src using "gdi devinfo.src devinfo"
- cd to /helios/lib
- initialize the rawdisk "fs -m raw"
- format the rawdisk "fsformat raw"
- run HFS as it's own task "run -d fs raw" - Alternatively: add "run -e /helios/lib/fs -b raw" and "waitfor /00/raw" to etc/initrc

You can change back to your console using CTRL+F1
"ls -l /rawdisk" reflects that there's a file named "0" which is roughly 73500 blocks in size, which should be somewhere around 32MB, "df /raw" also reports ~34MB free - so I guess that's working
/raw should now be available. The X installation script still complains about the lack of space, but I guess that can be fixed by either adapting the installation script on the first floppy or by mapping the rawdisk to /helios.

Code: Select all

fileserver raw				# Host /rawdisk based file system
{
	device		raw		# use discdevice raw
	cachesize	2000		# == 2Mbytes
	volume				# define a volume
	{
		name		raw	# access as /raw/...
		partition	0	# occupies partition 0 of discdevice
	}
}

discdevice raw				# Raw disc device
{
	name		raw.d		# code in /helios/lib
	controller	0		# use /rawdisk/0
	addressing	1		# address by bytes
	partition {			# define partition 0
		drive		0	# partition is on drive 0
		start		72	# starts at cylinder 72
		end			439 # ends at cylinder 439
	}
	drive {				# define drive 0
		id		0	# unused
		type		0	# unused
		sectorsize	512	# > these parameters will be reported
		sectors		25	# > by makedisk (which is run under
		tracks		8	# > MSDOS) fill those values in here
		cylinders	368	# > in place of these numbers
	}
}

EDIT: After changing some paths in the x_wi.ins file on the first X11 install disk, it's no longer complaining about a lack of space (it defaults to /helios, while /raw is the large partition I want to use), let's hope I caught everything so the script can start uncompressing later on.
EDIT2: Uncompressing now https://i.imgur.com/cbvjeJV.jpg
EDIT3: Installation successful, but due to the changed installation path some scripts aren't accessing the right locations ... that'll be a job for tomorrow.
https://i.imgur.com/vDj1Q0D.jpg

[Shockwav3]

Can anyone of you verify/deny that the ATW800 can handle 16MB of RAM? Just tried a few sticks after reading that info online ... sadly those are still getting detected as 4MB.

[Shockwav3]

Well ... I've got things installed and it's no longer complaining about missing files, but this doesn't look too promising ... "Exec format error" and "fatal server bug" without any further info seems like a dead end to me:
https://i.imgur.com/PSpha7U.jpg

Stupid me ... reading "failed" as "loaded" regarding the mousedriver. Making some progress as I type.

[Shockwav3]

Slowly getting there: https://i.imgur.com/VPHOXYi.jpg

Now if only the window manager wasn't failing, that would be great.
EDIT: TWM is working, spawning anything still fails tho (gotta have to read into xauth) - but I guess I'm making a good bit of progress.
"Exec format error" is fixed by copying /raw/lib to /helios/lib
also rename ttyserv.bak -> ttyserv and tpseudo.dbk -> tpseudo.d

EDIT2: I _think_ I got everything running to have a working X enviroment (note xeyes running)
https://i.imgur.com/KWwRuKU.jpg
Now I'll have to wait for my friend to bring me that 30kg monster of a RGsB monitor he has.

[Shockwav3]

https://i.imgur.com/SQxgPxn.jpg

X is working, running under Helios 1.3 in mode2 (640x480x8bpp). Sadly the monitor I have at hand currently isn't syncing correctly

[Shockwav3]

RGsB to VGA adapter is working (Mode2 and Mode0): https://i.imgur.com/8II14H1.jpg

EDIT: Seems like either part of the RAM is dead or the muxing/latching has issues.That's bad
EDIT2: Attempting to downgrade the framebuffer driver in the hopes that this fixes things. If it's a hardware fault, it's not a minor one and the buildup of the boards/layout quite prohibitive when it comes to working with a scope. Doesn't help either that the Video-RAM is not a common type.