Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Hello here it is a way to put Rocket Ranger and several other programs you
couldn't put on your hard drive ON your hard drive, and have two or more rad
drives. You will need newzap or another sector editor to make the
multiple rads.  To put Rocket Ranger on your hard drive you will also need
the program Tracker and 1815K of room on your hard drive. Both Tracker &
Newzap are Shareware and available on this BBS.


1. Copy your ramdrive.device to ramdriv2.device (its in the devs directory)
   Note the 'e' in ramdrive is replaced with a '2'

2. Using newzap or another sector editor search for Ramb0 in ramdriv2.device
   and replace the '0' with '2' to Ramb2. Next starting at the beginning
   again search for ramdrive.device and change it to ramdriv2.device.

3. Make a mountlist entry called RAD1 that is 880K long. ie

RAD1:
Device = Ramdrive.device
Unit = 0
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 2
BlocksperTrack = 11
Reserved = 2
Interleave = 0
Lowcyl = 0
Highcyl = 79
#

  then duplicate it and change the name to RAD2: and change the device to
  ramdriv2.device. You can now mount RAD1 and RAD2 and have 2 Rads and this
  technique could be continued for more, but why?

4. If you just wanted multiple Rads stop here.

5. Next you need a copy of tracker copy it to your c directory.  Now you are
   going to copy your copy of Rocket Ranger to the Hard Drive.  To do this
   type "tracker read 0 79 filename' where filename is the complete path
   you want to use. Do this with both of you Rocket Ranger Disks to create
   two DIFFERENT files of length 929,294. Now nename tracker to 
   tracker-rad1 and copy tracker-rad1 to tracker-rad2 (same directory).

6. Newzap tracker-rad1 & search for trackdisk.device starting on the letter
   t change it to 'ramdrive.device' then starting on the next e in HEX type
   '000A20' and save it. The next unchanged character should be 'E' in the
   word Error.

7. Repeat step six with tracker-rad2 & use 'ramdriv2.device' instead, don't
   forget to do the HEX part also.

8. Make a new script file say 'RR' that is as follows: (Note: you may have
   to change the paths for your hard drive.

dh0:c/echo "please wait"
dh0:c/mount rad1:
dh0:c/mount rad2:
dh0:tracker-rad1 write dh0:games-dir/RR/rr1
dh0:c/echo "Half-way there"
dh0:tracker-rad2 write dh0:games-dir/RR/rr2
dh0:c/assign z: rad2:
dh0:c/assign z: rad1:
rad1:rr
dh0:c/endcli >NIL:

9. Reboot and from a cli or shell type 'execute RR' and get ready to play
   Rocket Ranger! Note:You will have to press return twice (can you take
   this out?)

This method can be used to put other programs on your hard drive you
couldn't before.  Also Instead of using Tracker  Warp can be used it makes
the files only 680K but is MUCH slower.  Other programs may also work
besides these two let me know which ones. Lastly from start to finish
it takes me 3 minutes 16 seconds to execute Rocket Ranger if you can
find a faster way i.e. multi-tasking let me know runback doesn't work.

                        Good Luck

                             Mark Frazier

    I got this to work one time, but have never made it work since.
    Haven't put a lot of effort into it since I got the hard drive but
    it worked very nicely when it was working. I used essentially the
    same method outlined in the article you posted.

    I also tried and could not get it to work.  I did not use RAD1 and
    RAD2 as the device names however.  I also set the track number to
    39 instead of 79 on the second rad simply because I only have 2.5
    megs to work with.
    
    I would like to copy the workbench into rad1 and use rad2 for
    program development.
    
    Until I figure out what I'm doing worng I'll continue to code in
    RAM:

    Not being able to use 2 RADs seem to be the norm rather than the
    exception.  I am beginning to believe that using 2 RADs is a myth
    or a hoax.

    Well I finally got it to work.  After patching the driver as instructed
    by .1  I put the following commands into my startup-sequence.
    
    mount rad:
    mount vd0:
    cd vd0:
    diskcopy df0: to rad:
    
    The thing you must do after mounting both rad devices is to set
    default to or copy to each rad device.  When I first tried this
    I mounted both rads then did my diskcopy to rad: When I tried to
    copy something to vd0: i got the message device not found, or something
     like that.  I'm sure the following would also work.
    
    mount rad1:
    mount rad2:
    cd rad1:
    cd rad2:
    
    The devices will not show up until you cd or copy to them.

    I am out of town for a week, and I unable to test reply .5.
    But, as I stated in note 2370.3, the cd command does not allocate
    memory for the RAD.  Therefore, if you're testing ended here, it
    is not sufficient proof that you did get multiple RAD's functioning.
    Please indicate if you were able to load data into BOTH RAD's, and
    then access the loaded data.

    I am using it.  
    
    PS.  When you issue cd rad1: or cd rad2:  the device pops up when
    doing the info command so it seems that memory is allocated when
    doing the cd command.

    This reminds me of the older RAM: disk.  I 'removed' it to install
    VD0: a number of months back, only to discover that it was hiding
    and could be called with any access to it.  As I remember, the
    Workbench icon would mysterious appear out of the void when I
    accidentally did a directory on the supposedly nonexistant RAM:.
    
     

Re: .*

You all are right:  Mounting a device causes the system to add the
device name to its list of legal devices, but it does not cause the
system to actually load the device handler and initialize the device
(not "initialize" in the sense of formatting, but "initialize" in the
sense of prepare for current use).

The first actual access to a device causes its handler to be loaded
and initialized, and causes the rest of the system (particularly
Workbench) see the "a new device have been mounted" message.

If you want a device to be fully set up as soon as you mount it, you
can stick the line "Mount = 1" in your Mountlist entry for the device.
This causes the mount command to perform the first access to the
device for you.

can somebody concicely state what it takes to use 2 RAD disks at the same time
reliably?  I've tried to follow the preceeding directions but can't get it to 
work.  

Thanks for any help!
BobW