Re: Using CiderPress to copy a volume image to a card formatted for Windows...

[David Schmenk <dschmenk@gmail.com>]

On Feb 15, 9:33 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
> fadden wrote:
> > On Feb 14, 6:34 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> >>I'm doing this on a Vista laptop, and it doesn't want to allow
> >>CiderPress to overwrite block 128.
>
> > Interesting... some sort of partition map protection?
>
> > Reformatting the card in a digital camera may or may not be useful.
>
> That's a good point.
>
> Although I've formatted other cards, I didn't try reformatting this
> one in a camera first.
>
> But I don't expect the card to enforce the protection.  I think it
> was Vista that was the policeman.  I know that it takes a dim view
> of any attempt to modify the MBR--perhaps even for a non-bootable
> volume.
>
> -michael
>
> NadaNet 3.1 for Apple II parallel computing!
> Home page:  http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/
>
> "The wastebasket is our most important design
> tool--and it's seriously underused."

It's possible Vista/Win7 is thinks Ciderpress is a virus, attacking
the "system-only" tracks of a disk.

A question concerning the LBA mapping of an SD card on a PC vs the
CFFA would be "are they consistent?"  I'm unfamiliar with how SD cards
"look" to the system compared to a CF card.  Presumably they would
both look like IDE drives, but possibly with additional modes that the
system can put them into for more efficient access.  Since you've been
able to write to physical block 0 on the SD (not the partitioned
logical drive block 0) through CiderPress, you've overcome the first
hurdle (the PRODOS NOT FOUND message).

Another problem could be timing of the SD card vs a CF card - earlier
CFFA cards were less tolerant of certain CF cards.  I know Rich made
some changes over the course of the CFFA, but maybe SD cards are more
like the problem cards.

Since you've made it clear that you have no other storage options on
the Apple II, you can always employ the old school system monitor and
hand assemble some SmartPort code to access certain critical sectors
(like the directory) to see if they are where they are supposed to
be.  If they are, it could suggest a timing issue.  If not, an LBA
translation difference.

Dave...