Re: AEHD drive

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Pim Blokland <nipp@nipp.nl> wrote:

>supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) wrote:
>
>> That's correct, but the important thing is that it supports the
>> 1.44MB MFM format.  On the IIGS, you can format a 1.44MB
>> HFS disk that is COMPLETELY compatible with Macs!
>
>Can you also make GS/OS boot disks?

Yes, the BlueDisk card allows booting from connected drives.

>I would have liked to have a spare boot disk with more than 800K on it, 
>for 800K won't hold anything but the bare system itself. And that only 
>if you resort to tricks like throwing away half the "TSx" files. But 
>when I make a 1600K boot disk with the AE drive, the machine will not 
>start up from it.
>I assume that's caused by the fact that without the driver software, the 
>machine thinks that it is a 800K drive. Would such a card (or any UDC 
>type card) help the machine recognize a HD drive as a bootable device?

You are right about the AE driver.  Because the IIGS and the
AE drive defaults to 800k without the driver, you can't boot
1.6MB disks.  But the BlueDisk is different.  You can boot
from 1.44MB ProDOS disks.  You do not need a special
driver.  However, there is a driver that causes GS/OS to poll
the PC drives to detect disk insertions.  The driver is an
option on the BlueDisk, but it can be loaded from the disk
that it is booting.  It does not have to be loaded first.  It does
not even have to be loaded at all.