Re: 1) CF Focus 2) Ciderpress

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

John <zzzjoki@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Last night I used FOCUSFORMAT to format and partition a 128k CF drive.
> After 6.01 initialized each partition, they appear as other HD
> partitions.
> 
> 1) However, on a //e I thought I read that if the Focus drive is in
> slot *seven*, one should expect only *two* partitions to appear.
> Instead 7,1  7,2  4,1  4,2 appear. I'm happy. She's a working!
> 
> Is this the expected behavior now? I think Prodos was 2.03 or 2.04.

You must have 2.0.3 - there is no 2.0.4.

In ProDOS-8 2.0.1, Apple added support for the SmartPort firmware
interface, which is supported on most contemporary Apple drive
controllers and a few third-party ones.

If there are any slots which don't contain a disk controller, then their
unit numbers are reallocated to SmartPort firmware devices in other
slots which have more than two logical volumes.

This allows a theoretical maximum of 14 logical volumes spread over all
slots. There are a couple of limitations:

- In a 128K IIe (or any IIc or IIgs), S3D2 is the /RAM volume, so this
isn't available for remapping. I don't recall offhand whether S3D1 is
used, but it probably is.

- If the disk controller in any slot only has one logical volume (e.g. a
"slinky" RAM card) then its D2 will be unused, and cannot be reallocated
to another slot (it might cause compatibility problems with software
that assume the two units are on the same slot).

The SmartPort interface can be used to access up to 127 logical volumes
per slot, and much larger volumes than ProDOS can handle, so ProDOS's
use of it is barely scratching the surface. GS/OS (on the IIgs) can
access many more (and larger) SmartPort devices, if they don't have a
native GS/OS driver.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz