Re: Apple II slot assignments

[nathan@cco.caltech.edu (Nathan Mates)]

In article <44.48573139.Logic.IS@logicbbs.org>,  <Jim.Low@logicbbs.org> wrote:
>On the GS/OS desktop, it appears the order is: boot disk, hard disks in
>order of SCSI number (highest first) then partition, 3.5" floppies,
>network volumes, then RAMdisks.  I have a memory card in slot 6, so am
>not using the 5.25" drives.  I don't know what order they would appear.

   The order is as follows: boot partition/device, then drivers as
listed in */SYSTEM/DRIVERS (* is your boot disk). Partitioned and
linked devices (scsi, mainly) is in the format the driver chose, which
would be as you identified above. This can split devices up in a
weirdish manner, but it's consistent. 

   For example, if my RAMFAST.DRIVER is first in that folder, all
partitions of it come first; if my SWATTERDISK driver is first
followed by RAMFAST.DRIVER, it's boot partition, all swatdisks, then
rest of hard drive partitions.

   Thus, you can tweak things around by sorting the contents of that
folder with a program like ProSEL-8 or -16, or by manually copying
everything out and then back in the order you want. (Or, create a
"DRIVERS2" directory, copy stuff over in order, and rename DRIVERS2 to
DRIVERS) But, this applies to separate device drivers, not devices
within them, like scsi.

 
>Within ProDOS 8, I can't see any logical order the devices appear mapped
>to specific slots,drives.  Not all the devices appear -- only 13 of them
>(14 if you count the 64k RAM mapped to S3,D2).  Some I can understand:
>the RAM card in slot 6 appears as S6,D1.  The two partions of the HD with
>SCSI card in slot 2 appear as S2,D1 and D2.  When I boot from /RAM5 then
>that volume appears as S5,d1.  But then the two 3.5" drives appear as
>S5,D2 and S4,D1.  Logic in that?  What is the "formula" for the system
>deciding which volumes are assigned to specific slots in ProDOS 8?

   It depends. If you've got a RamFAST SCSI card, you can manually
assign partitions to various slots on your own. The boot partition is
required to be in Slot N, drive 1, where N is where your scsi card is.
The rest can be shoved around. Since you don't mention this
capability, you've either forgotten about it, or didn't read the
manual that closely for features of the ramfast.

   Likewise with 3.5 and ramdisks, the boot disk is required to be in
drive 1 of a slot. That's why your ramdisk gets moved around if it's
the boot disk. Since the ramdisk gets interfaced the same way as a
3.5" disk (the 'smartport' interface), it shows up in S5,D1 when
booting off it. There is further a limit of 2 drives per slot, so the
second 3.5" would either disappear or be moved to some other slot.


>Of course, not all of my two dozen volumes can be accessed from within
>ProDOS 8.  Is there any way, through software, I can force certain
>volumes to appear in place of some others that appear by default?  Or am
>I looking at physically disconnecting some volumes to access others?

   With a RamFAST, as I detailed above, it's easy to move partitions
around slots, but that requires a reboot between changes. As to moving
network drives around, I'm not sure on any algorithm to do so, but
then again, I've almost never done any networking in ProDOS 8. Someone
else might be able to help.

   Disabling devices is a pain without disconnecting them. The 64K
ramdisk in S3,D2 can be killed with software, or you might be able to
patch the PRODOS file to to make it never show up and thus get an
extra slot. Killing a nonexistant second 5.25" disk automatically
would be pretty much impossible without setting slot 6 to 'Your card'
and knocking both offline. Same with 3.5s and /RAM5, unless you did
some major surgery on PRODOS 8.

Nathan Mates
-- 
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/      <*>
# And he said to them, "To you has been given the secret of the
# Kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in 
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