
Readme File for HD Driver 7.51              Last updated  17 April 1998
 
********************************************************************** 
    Please read this document thoroughly,
    It contains some important information.
    You could lose data if you do not pay attention! 
********************************************************************** 


Readme Contents 
---------------
A.  Quick Installation Guide 
B.  Tips 
C.  Important Note for Atari Users with TOS 1.00 or 1.02 

1.  Changes in HD Driver 7.xx 
2.  Changes in HD Driver 6.xx 
3.  Changes in HD Driver 5.xx 
4.  HD Driver and MagiC/MagiCMac 
5.  SCSI Initiator Identification and Bus Arbitration 
6.  IDE Hard Drives 
7.  Zip and Jaz Drives 
8.  PD Drives 
9.  Media with Big Physical Sectors 
10. Upgrades 
11. Thank you. 
 
 
 
Quick Installation Guide 
------------------------
For most situations, but not all. Assuming a new external SCSI Drive, 
a Link 97 or ICD Link and an Atari STF(M) or STe computer. 
NO, this is not replacing the manual. This is intended to give the 
first time user a simple guide to get started. 
 
1. Using DMA to SCSI Adaptor, connect the SCSI drive to your ST. 
2. Terminate the drive. 
3. Insert the HD Driver disk into your floppy drive A: 
4. Power up the hard disk and wait about 15-30 seconds for it to 
   initialise itself. 
5. Power up your ST - booting with the HD Driver floppy, watch the 
   screen for a message giving the name or make of the drive. 
6. Load HDDRUTIL.APP from drive A: 
7. Partition the drive. Only set any TOS compatibility options if 
   you really intend to use your drive with old versions of TOS. 
   About HDDRUTIL will tell you which TOS is fitted in your computer. 
   Make sure to use ALL space available. 
8. Press the RESET button to re-boot. Watch your screen for the name 
   of the drive and available partitions. 
9. Load HDDRUTIL.APP again and install the autoboot driver 
   to allow autobooting from your new drive. 
10.Install the new partition icons on your desktop, using the Atari 
   desktop menu and your ST User Manual, if you do not how, as this is 
   part of the computers operating system, not HD Driver. Then save the 
   Desktop so that the icons can re-appear when you re-boot. 
 
 
 
B. Tips: 
--------
1. Do NOT format a new drive. ALL new drives are already factory 
   formatted. Just partition to give the drive an Atari identity. 
2. Remember, many SCSI 2 drives will only autoboot after an additional 
   reset when you power up. This is normal and has to do with the age 
   of the ST. 



C. Important Note for Atari Users with TOS 1.00 or 1.02
-------------------------------------------------------
If your computer still has TOS 1.00 or 1.02 fitted, you must remember 
to set the appropriate compatibility options when partitioning your 
hard disk. If this is not done, then you will NOT be able to access 
your partitions!

It is not advisable to use TOS 1.00 or 1.02 with hard drives at all. 
As they are the first releases of the Atari TOS Operating System, 
they are known to be riddled with bugs. Although hard drives will 
work with older TOS, TOS 1.04 has been accepted by most programmers 
as a minimum requirement.

TOS 1.04 came with a lot of bug fixes, especially related to hard 
disks. If you still use an older TOS operating system, consider 
upgrading. You may find that most programs will work better.



1. Changes in HD Driver 7
-------------------------
- Completely new, target-controlled SCSI code.
- New menu entry "Advanced Options" with options that are rarely 
  changed.
- New option >Generic SCSI Driver (SCSIDRV)<. This option activates 
  the generic SCSI interface integrated in HDDRIVER. Drivers for 
  streamers or CD-ROM drives based on this interface don't require 
  SCSIDRV.PRG or SCSI.RAM any more. Please refer to the SCSIDRV 
  interface specification by Steffen Engel for more information. 
  Questions to this interface should be directed to 
  Steffen_Engel@sz2.maus.de. Note that there is no English 
  documentation for this interface. In order for a device to be 
  supported by the HDDRIVER generic SCSI interface, this device has 
  to be added to the HDDRIVER device list using the HDDRUTIL "Device 
  Configuration".
- New option >Support for Phasewriter Drives in Mac Mode<. This 
  option is only of interest for those using a phasewriter drive that 
  is jumpered in the Macintosh compatible mode. This mode is only 
  necessary if your CD-ROM driver doesn't support devices on LUN1. It 
  is recommended to use the PC compatible mode with phasewriter 
  drives and not to activate this option. A side effect of this 
  option: HDDRIVER does not only reserve partition IDs for removable 
  media drives but also for CD-ROM drives.
- A partition's logical sector size can be changed with "Zero 
  Partition".
- Improvements related to the partitioning compatibility options. 
  Special cases are handled depending on the TOS version the 
  partitioning is to be compatible with. For DOS compatible 
  partitions the option >Optimized (SDMS Compatible)< automatically 
  calculates the mapping parameters but can only be used for 
  NCR/Symbios Logic SCSI controllers. Note that it is normal that 
  some sectors remain unused when partitioning DOS compatible.
- With BGDMAON.TOS and BGDMAOFF.TOS you have an additional means to 
  switch MagiC 5 background DMA on or off.
- In the "Error Handling" dialog HDDRCONF.CPX displays the SCSI error 
  number of the last error that occured during a read or write access.
- HDDRIVER supports XHDI 1.30. - HDDRCONF.APP is no longer included 
  in the HDDRIVER distribution. Use HDDRCONF.CPX instead.
- Improvements in DOS compatible partitioning. (7.01) 
- Corrected deleting of partitions bug when deleting partitions 
  without changing sector size. (7.01) 
- With TOS < 1.06 SCSIDRV Interface could not be disabled (7.02) 
- "About Hddrutil" now displays the version number of the active 
  Operating System (TOS or MagiC). (7.03) 
- Bugfixes related to IDE removable drives. (7.04)
- The new version of HDDRCONF.CPX must be used with (7.11)
- >TOS & DOS combined< corrected, because this function did notwork
  correctly on partitions larger than 512 MByte. (7.12)
- SCSIDRV-Interface updated. (7.12) 
- JAZ and ZIP media now can be formatted even if password protected. 
  This is useful if you have forgotten your password. (7.13)
- The generic SCSI driver has been corrected and optimised. (7.13)

These are the English release notes for HDDRIVER 7.50:

- HDDRIVER supports both Milan IDE ports. (7.50)
- HDDRUTIL and HDDRCONF (but not HDDRIVER!) support MagiCMac and MagiCPC
  if CBHD or SCSIDRV are installed on these platforms. (7.50)
- The SCSI driver interface supports ATAPI devices (tested with ATAPI
  CD-ROM drives and SPIN!) and emulates the most important SCSI commands
  for IDE drives. (7.50)
- IDE drives can be formatted. Read the warnings in the HDDRIVER manual
  about formatting IDE drives. (7.50)
- The verify option is now also available for IDE drives. (7.50)
- Completely new dialogs for selecting devices and partitions. (7.50)
- DOS/Windows compatible partitioning is now also possible for media
  with large physical sectors, e. g. MODs with 2048 bytes per sector. (7.50)
- Partition types can also be changed for DOS compatible media. In this
  case the partition types are displayed in hexadecimal format. New types
  should be specified in the same format. (7.50)
- The program EJECT.PRG ejects all media that are handled by the SCSI
  driver. EJECT is typically copied into the MagiC shutdown folder
  (\GEMSYS\MAGIC\STOP). (7.50)
- HDDRUTIL now supports 32 character ZIP/JAZ passwords. (7.51)
- Some corrections in the use of LUN 1. (7.51)


2. Changes in HD Driver v6.x
----------------------------
- HD Driver now supports formatting of all SCSI disks and Atari SH 
  and Megafile disks. With some drives you can alter the physical 
  sector size, which can lead to an increase in the overall formatted 
  capacity. If you leave the interleave value at 0, HD Driver will 
  set the optimum interleave factor for your drive. Ignore existing 
  defect list should be selected when formatting to ignore the old 
  list of bad sectors and create a new one. This is highly 
  recommended if you are changing the physical sector size!
- HD Driver can now automatically perform a physical sector check 
  after formatting a hard disk.
- When partitioning a drive you can now create fully compatible DOS 
  partitions. You will need to know and enter the correct number of 
  heads and sectors per track, according to the specification of the 
  SCSI adapter used on the PC. Note that you need MagiC 5 or Big-DOS 
  to use big DOS compatible partitions with your Atari.
- It is now possible to delete the contents of a single partition.
- "Auto Configuration" will now search for all disks attached to the 
  ASCI and SCSI ports (but not IDE drives) automatically, making 
  swapping disks in an out much easier.
- If you are unfortunate enough to lose data, "Recover Partition" is 
  now able to recreate the root sector. This is only possible if the 
  disk has been partitioned with HD Driver v4 or later. 


  
3. Changes in HD Driver v5.x 
----------------------------
- If you have an ICD (or compatible) host adapter, you can now create 
  partitions greater than 1GB on drives connected to the ASCI port. 
- The hardware password protection available in Iomega Zip drives is 
  now supported. 
- HD Driver now does a Parity Check with TT and Falcon hard disks 
  connected to the SCSI port, to ensure greater data security. 
- Fast timing on the ASCI port is now (optionally) available. With 
  most drives this will lead an increased data transfer speed. 
  However, depending on your drive, system and software, this could 
  lead to a slow-down. We suggest that you experiment with this 
  option to see if it is appropriate for you. 
- When booting, you may now press the Escape key to force HD Driver 
  to use only the minimum required memory for the FAT, data and 
  folder buffers - in other words, it will ignore the settings you 
  have made with HDDRUTIL. This is very useful if you need to plug 
  your current hard disk into a system with a lot less memory 
  available.
- MEDIACHG simulates a media change for all devices with changeable 
  media - removable drives, etc. This should only be required if your 
  drive has a firmware error which does not report media changes 
  correctly. 
- Partition assignment enables you to fix the ID of device and the 
  first partition to use in the device. You can now set up your drive 
  IDs in a very flexible fashion. Duplicate partition IDs are dealt 
  with automatically. 
- CAF_FIX fixes a problem with the hardware of the Falcon which is 
  most apparent when using Cubase Audio. It decreases the length of 
  time before a SCSI Timeout Error, which is often triggered 
  incorrectly when sending a lot of data across the SCSI bus. We 
  recommend that you only run CAF_FIX just before using Cubase Audio 
  and re-boot afterwards - and then, only if you have problems with 
  the system already. 
- HD Driver can now boot from PD (Phasewriter Drives). It will, of 
  course, not boot if a CD-ROM is inserted! 
- READ/WRITE MULTIPLE can now be used for more than one IDE drive. 
- If you hold down the Alternate key when loading HDDRUTIL, HDDRCONF, 
  IDCHECK or AUTOPARK the programs will use the German language 
  instead of English. 



4. HD Driver and MagiC/MagiCMac 
-------------------------------
Since version 4 of MagiC (UK) this very powerful operating system has 
enabled users to use Background DMA mode (with HD Driver). This can 
improve the multitasking dramatically but should only be used if all 
of the devices in your SCSI chain use background DMA mode. This 
includes the drivers for your hard drive, CD-ROM drive, tape 
streamer, scanner, SLM Laser printer, etc. - anything on the SCSI and 
ACSI (DMA) port. Otherwise, you must switch Background DMA off.

MetaDOS and the drivers for the SLM604 and SLM805 are two drivers 
which do not support Background DMA. Turn Background DMA off if you 
use these drivers. Much of the trouble with Background DMA comes when 
booting. Fortunately there is a handy trick which can be used to make 
things much more fluid. Simply edit your MAGX.INF file to remove the 
#_TSL line. This switches off pre-emptive multi-tasking when you 
boot. Then, if you have the TSLICE CPX set up properly (to use pre-
emptive multitasking) it will switch back on when you make it to the 
desktop.

You should also read the notes in the MagiC README about Blitters. 
This can help smooth background DMA with a lot of Atari computers 
which have a Blitter. Recent versions of MagiC have also included a 
program called WBDAEMON, which enables write caching to speed up disk 
writes. We urge you to think carefully before enabling write caching, 
as a system crash or power cut can be disastrous - in a worst case 
scenario you could lose every piece of data on your hard disk!

Read-ahead caching, as featured in HD Driver, is absolutely safe and 
should be used by everyone. MagiCMac users should be aware that HD 
Driver is not designed for their operating system. However, if you 
use a hard disk driver which is a) designed for MagiCMac and b) XHDI 
compatible (like CBHD for MagiCMac) then some features of HDDRUTIL 
can be used - especially DOS compatible partitioning.



5. SCSI Initiator Identification and Bus Arbitration 
----------------------------------------------------
HD Driver supports SCSI Initiator Identification and Bus Arbitration 
on the TT and Falcon computers. Each computer attached to the chain 
must have its own SCSI ID, which must always be higher than that of 
any peripherals.

Bus Arbitration has many advantages over normal SCSI operation:

a) Some disks (eg Quantum Empire, Quantum Fireball) will only work 
with Initiator Identification. So, they can only work with Falcons 
and TTs and driver software, like HD Driver, which supports it or 
with the LINK 96/97. You should, however, note that there is no way 
to boot from such devices, you will always need to boot from a 
different device.

b) You may connect more than one computer to the same hard disk. 
However, you need to note that the compatibility is only at driver 
level - there is no protection in the operating system (or systems) 
to protect against simultaneous writing to the same file or FAT. 
Therefore you should not give write access to the same partition for 
different computers. Doing otherwise can lead to data loss.

c) Some removable devices only report the media change correctly if 
Initiator Identification is switched on.
 


6. IDE Hard Drives 
------------------
Several IDE drives (eg some devices in the WD Caviar range) do not 
send the hard disk driver valid information about the formatting of 
the disk. In this case you need to enter the data by hand.

Other devices need to be initialised before the first access using a 
special program available from the manufacturer (but probably not for 
the Atari!).

HD Driver offers a possible way around this problem: After starting 
up HDDRUTIL, select the IDE Parameters option. Insert the correct 
values into the dialog (should be in the hardware information for 
your particular IDE drive) and exit the dialog with Modify Driver. 
Then install HD Driver as normal.

If this still does not allow your drive to boot you must use the 
corresponding option in the IDE Parameters dialog to create a boot 
floppy. This disk must then be in your drive every time you boot the 
computer.

Please note: You should try every other possibility before using the 
IDE Parameters, the number of IDE disks which require setting up in 
this way is very, very rare. 



7. Zip and Jaz Drives 
---------------------
With the Zip/Jaz Disk dialog you can use the password write 
protection feature of Iomega Zip and Jaz drives. It is also possible 
to set up pure write protection (with no password). There are two 
invisible text lines in the dialog into which you enter your 
password. As security against typos you must enter the same password 
into each line.

The password parameter may also be changed, on-the-fly, in the 
HDDRCONF CPX. Click on Change to alter the password information for 
your drive. Please note: there is no way to find out a Zip/Jaz 
drive's password if you have forgotten it. The only way you can use 
the disk again is to format it - which, naturally, will obliterate 
all of the data. Please take care of your passwords! 



8. PD Drives 
------------
Phasewriter Drives are devices which can use combined media, special 
read/writable disks and standard CD-ROM disks. Every time you insert 
a new disk the drive informs the operating system (and HD Driver) 
that there has been a media change, and of the type of media that is 
now mounted in the drive. The media change can cause problems with 
Atari systems. You should read the following carefully if you're 
lucky enough to own such a drive.

PD Drives can work in two different modes, Mac Compatible and PC 
Compatible. In the former the PD Drives takes up one SCSI ID and one 
Logical Unit Number (LUN0). This can cause problems detecting a media 
change, because both your hard disk driver and CD-ROM driver are set 
to use the same device! With the advent of XHDI spec. 1.26 it will be 
possible to get around this problem - as long as both your hard disk 
driver and CD-ROM driver are XHDI 1.26. compatible.

HD Driver will be made XHDI 1.26 compatible as soon as the 
specification is finalised. Those XHDI 1.26 compatible functions 
needed for PD drives are already present in HD Driver 6.0.

In PC Compatible mode the drive still uses a single SCSI ID, but the 
PD media is used on LUN0 and CD-ROM disks are addressed using LUN1. 
In this mode there are no problems with media changes, but you will 
require a CD-ROM driver which can address CD-ROM devices on LUN1 and 
set it up accordingly. 



9. Media with Big Physical Sectors 
----------------------------------
Some types of device, especially MO drives have a physical sector 
size of more than 512 bytes. These are >hard-sectors<, in that you 
cannot change the physical size by formatting. They require a hard 
disk driver that supports physical sector sizes of 512 bytes or more, 
HD Driver 6.0 supports such sizes.

On the TT and Falcon you can use these devices with no limitations - 
apart from the unability to boot from such media.

On the Atari ST you will require a fully ICD compatible host adapter 
or the LINK 97. HD Driver will display the physical sector size in 
the Partitioning dialog box. 



10. Upgrades 
------------
HD Driver is constantly being updated to cope with new types of drive 
media and to add more and more functions of use to Atari owners. 

Minor revision upgrades are free if sent by email. You can also send 
your original disk for updating for which we will make a œ5 handling 
charge. Major revisions (from v3/4, v5/6 to v7) attract a new licence 
fee.

You can upgrade to the latest version of HD Driver at any time by 
sending your original disk, the manual and a Stamped & Self Addressed 
Envelope to us at System Solutions (address below). We will do our 
best to keep you informed, through the Atari press, mailshots and our 
Web site (www.system-solutions.co.uk/cafe) about future upgrades.

Postal address for upgrades:
System Solutions, 119 Arthur Road, Windsor SL4 1RU, United Kingdom. 



11. Thank You. 
--------------
Uwe Seimet and System Solutions would like to thank all owners of HD 
Driver for making it such a success. Your comments and suggestions 
have lead to a wide range of improvements in the package.

We would like to especially thank the small army of beta-testers who 
have, without exception, acted above and beyond the call of duty to 
provide us with regular feedback on bug reports, new features, etc. 

Special thanks to Rainer Seitel for the excellent help with DOS 
compatible partitioning. 

Thank you, and happy driving!