WIN_DRIVE

Syntax

WIN_DRIVE driveno [, unit, disk] or

WIN_DRIVE driveno, unit [,disk] [,partition ](SMSQ/E only) or

WIN_DRIVE driveno, path$(QPC & QXL SMSQ/E only)

Location

ST/QL, SMSQ/E for Atari and QXL / QPC

It is possible not only to have several hard disk units attached to the Atari ST, but each hard disk unit can also have more than one drive in it (for example, you might own a hard disk unit which has both a standard hard disk and a changeable hard disk inside).

The normal chain of events is that each WIN drive would attach itself to the equivalent hard disk unit, for example, WIN1_ would be connected to hard disk unit 0, WIN2_ to hard disk unit 1 and so on. However, so that you may link the WIN drives to specific disks within each unit, the WIN_DRIVE command exists.

WIN_DRIVE takes the WIN drive number supplied by driveno and will attach this to the specified disk which is housed in the specified unit.

Driveno must be in the range 1…8 - this corresponds to the number which will be attached to WIN to refer to the relevant drive (eg. WIN4_). If a unit and disk are not specified, this command will remove the definition attached to the specified driveno.

Unit should be in the range 0…7 and represents the number of the disk drive controller. An internal disk drive controller is normally unit 0, but external controller unit numbers will depend upon the setting of the switches on the back of the box.

If you are running SMSQ/E on the TT and wish to access a SCSI disk controller, then you will need to add 8 to the value of unit.

Disk can be in the range 0…7 and represents the number of the disk drive actually addressed by the given controller. It is however rare in the Atari world to have more than one disk drive per controller and so this value is normally either 0 or 1. The default is 0.

Finally, each disk can be partitioned, so that an area of each disk is set aside for specific uses (eg. for QDOS or for GEM). You therefore need to specify the number of the partition. Default is 0. Although you can configure SMSQ/E to start from a specific drive and partition, it normally looks for a BOOT file in any partition on unit 0 (on the TT it will look at SCSI unit 0 and then ASCI unit 0). If found, WIN1_ will be set to this partition.

In current versions of SMSQ/E WIN2_ will not be linked to anything until you use the WIN_DRIVE command.

Example

Assume that you have two hard disk units plugged into the Atari ST, the first one of which (unit 0) contains a normal hard disk unit (disk 0) and a changeable hard disk unit (disk 1).

On starting the Emulator, WIN1_ would refer to the normal hard disk in unit 0 and WIN2_ would be undefined. You could not therefore access the changeable hard disk from the Emulator. To avoid this, use the commands:

WIN_DRIVE 2,0,1,0
WIN_DRIVE 3,1,0,2

This will link WIN2_ to the changeable hard disk (this is disk number 1 in unit 0, partition 0) and WIN3_ would then point to the hard disk in the second unit (disk 0 in unit 1, partition 2).

NOTE

Disk must be specified unless it is 0. - this means that if three parameters are specified, the third parameter is taken to be the partition number.

QPC / QXL NOTE

From v2.89 of SMSQ/E, WIN_DRIVE is implemented slightly differently on these emulators. For each driveno, you can specify a PC related path for the hard disk (the hard disk under QPC and QXL is implemented as a single file stored on the PC’s hard disks). For example, use:

WIN_DRIVE 2,'D:\qxl.win'

to make win2_ on the QL emulator look use the file qxl.win on the PC’s D: drive. In this way, CD-ROMs and DVD-RAMs can be used on the PC as a hard drive for the QL emulator. Although QPC allows you to have several QL hard disk files on each PC device, QXL only allows one qxl.win file per PC device!!

WARNING 1

You must not make the QDOS WIN drive point to another physical drive if that WIN device has been accessed already. For example, if you wanted to follow the above example, but had just loaded a program from WIN2_ you must not use:

WIN_DRIVE 2,0,1.

WARNING 2

Do not attempt to make two WIN drives point to the same physical drive!

CROSS-REFERENCE

WIN_DRIVE$ returns the parameters already associated with a WIN drive. WIN_FORMAT allows you to format a hard disk.