MSX drives limit

Expert (120)

23-02-2013, 23:54

Hi all,
On MSX the maximum letter assign to drive is 8 ! So my interpretation is that you can use only 8 drives simultaneously !
Now here are my questions :
Is it possible on Sunrise ATA and MegaSCSI to change the mapped partitions to drives letter without rebooting ?
Does anyone ever patch a msx Bios to overcome this limitation ?

By Manuel

Ascended (19469)

24-02-2013, 14:22

1. Yes.
2. No.

By igal

Master (217)

24-02-2013, 15:23

Hi TheWipeMaster:

1) insert à Big CF (2GO) in the Suncrise Ide.
2) Start FDISK310
3) Write the table ....
4) Active partition...=>
5) 31 Drive are Formated
6) I dont know if all 31 partitions (Drives) work. I havent make tests.

(I have make this strange test for insert [First partition Fat 12,Sector 1 etc..] with [ Second Fat16 Big Partition].
dont work

By TheWhipMaster

Expert (120)

25-02-2013, 18:33

Actually my idea was to have a fat12 as boot and then couples of fat16 2gb partition out of a 21gb drive so I could have all my software in one hardrive ... As I took my sunrise ata-IDE +rs232c with me in India I though I would play with it for once

By konamiman

Paragon (1198)

26-02-2013, 12:00

One of the features I had planned for Nextor was extending the number of available drives. However the code inside the old DiskROMs (including the internal disk drives) assume that the limit is in 8 drives, so that means that (probably amongst other things) these DiskROMs would refuse to initialize if 8 drives or more were already taken at boot time.

By TheWhipMaster

Expert (120)

26-02-2013, 19:42

That s very good information , as this mean that at least the diskrom,fdisk and msx OSes would need to be updated ...
I think I saw at some point a de assemble version of the disk rom , I wonder how hard it will be to remove this limitation ... But then I guess , the effort to make nextor ,basic and fdisk handleing it too is not trivial ...
Damn I wish I was clever enough

By Manuel

Ascended (19469)

26-02-2013, 20:53

konamiman: how about some configurable/switchable thing?