Re: [NTLK] Help with ATA hard drive card

From: Paul Guyot (pguyot_at_kallisys.net)
Date: Sat Sep 07 2002 - 23:37:02 PDT


À (At) 23:14 -0700 7/09/02, John Hawksworth-Lutzow écrivait (wrote) :
>I've got the beta ATA Support driver installed and the card is recognized,
>but I can't figure out how to store anything on the card I'd like to be
>able to install packages directly onto the card. Can't wait for the
>finished version of the ATA support and the ability to use all 260MB. I
>couldn't find this in the FAQ, but forgive me if it's there.

You need to define (one of) the stores on the ATA card as the default store.
This operation can be done programmatically by other software.

To do it with ATA Support, open the card slip (tap the card icon in
the extra drawer). You have the list of stores on the ATA card (or No
Partition if there isn't any store). They have an icon on the left
that tells you what kind of partition it is. Newton stores have a
Newton bulb.
The default store has a black icon instead of a white one. I'm pretty
sure you can do it with the menus (actually, I can't try right now,
I'm between two builds). Select the store you want then press the
action button. The store needs to be mounted (the name shall be in
bold instead of light).

Now, you can also do it by tapping the line of the store. A store
slip opens. There is a button with a solid black square that recalls
the hilited icon. Tap it, and the icon will be hilited.

Okay, I'll probably put a check box instead, it might be easier.

BTW, the beta 13 (and previous betas as well) corrupts data somehow.
To be exact, if it happens to create a subobject of 510 bytes, the
last two bytes of the sector are not set to 0 under some conditions
so ATA Support thinks there is another object there. And when it
parses the sector, it throws a -1001001 error (inconsistent sector).
However, I'm not sure you can see that error because there are other
bugs that happen before (I have them fixed since :)

Once this bug has been fixed, I'll probably release beta 14.
This beta will include:
- a fix for the eMate reboot bug. I don't recall what I did yet (did
that at the beginning of August), but it was a conflict with the
system power management system
- a fix for three bugs (including this one) in the store engine
- a new ATA driver

Hopelessly, this release might be stable (I know there are a couple
of NewtonScript bugs left, but unlike bugs in the driver or the store
engine, they can be fixed in 15 minutes). If no data corruption
problem is reported for a week or two, it will become RC1 and you
could start using more than 4 MB.

>Also, I've got a smartmedia card adapter but it isn't recognized by the
>Newton. If I put the adapter in without a smartmedia card in, I don't get
>any messages, but as soon as I put the smartmedia card in, I get the
>"problem with this card" message.

I hope that the new driver will work with that. The old driver only
worked in memory mode in 32 bits or 8 bits with a several problem
with 32 bits: I've been trying and got some results with my CF card
but the PCMCIA controller apparently didn't ask bytes in the good
order and/or timings. This is actually why some cards didn't work
with it (and, as I suspect, some people had the 10606 error on
partitionning). The new driver works in memory, I/O and I/O
contiguous modes but it does 8 bits only (it seems that I won't be
able to do 16 bits transfers anyway because the PCMCIA controller
doesn't behave as the card expects it for those -- 32 bits are
actually 4x8 or 2x16, the PCMCIA bus is a 16 bits bus).

Paul

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