Key features: Works on Atari ST, STE, Mega ST, Mega STE, Falcon, TT . With ACSI attached drives, and IDE disks, adapters. Supported are modern medias and devices as Satandisk, UltraSatan, Compact Flash cards via IDE adapters and newer hard disks. Driver is written in 100% Asm, and is very fast, compact - RAM usage is low.
Partitioning: recommended is to make TOS/DOS compatible partitioning. Up to 14 TOS/DOS partitions are supported (it is TOS limit). AHDI partitioning type is supported too. Driver will mount partitions of both type in case of multiple drives (medias) attached. TOS/DOS partitioning allows very simple file transfer with some PC, MAC. Especially in case of Flash cards - then just attach card to PC via some card reader, and can perform copies, deletes with Total Commander or other file tool.
Any partition may be selected to be C after booting by simple key press: then all ACCs, resident SW, Desktop will load from it. It allows very easy and fast switch to desired SW config - no need for diverse complicated and slow boot config SW and similar. Just take care that create enough partitions for all expected enviroments.
Speed: it depends mostly from used adapter and disk (card). In any case, driver will give max possible speed with used HW.
Typical cases: ACSI IF on ST(E), with SCSI disk (via some ACSI-IDE adapter) - up to 1250 KB/sec. With Link2 over 1700KB/sec.
UltraSatan: depending on used SD card type: up to 1200 KB/sec. On TT same.
IDE hard disks and CF cards: up to 1400KB/sec on ST(E).
IDE on Falcon: up to 3200 KB/sec.
Support for special adapters as CATA, ACSI-CF, modded Mega STE internal adapter, twisted IDE - only my drivers offer it.
Even more speed then - CATA : 2MB/sec, ACSI-CF : 2MB/sec. Mega STE mod. overrides 1GB SCSI limit .
Partitioning SW:
Easy to use GUI SW. Fast partitioning, optimised for modern medias - no formatting while (obsolete and no need by modern drives) . First set desired partitioning type, then edit partition sizes, and only after clicking 'Write changes' will perform any changes on drive. Or just format some existing partition - but term. format is just for convinience - actually it is just reinit of partition - deleting all files and directories (called often quick format) .
The price is 10 Euros. You will get for it driver SW (autoboot and runnable variants), partitioning SW (works in low and high res.), support via forum and e-mail . Free updates.
The payment: at moment I can not say how it will go. Looking for best option ...
Limitations, what will work not: minimum is TOS 1.02. Minimum recommended is TOS 1.04 . Partition size limits: 256 MB by TOS 1.02, 512MB by 1.04 and above. Max 14 partitions per drive/card.
Autoboout with IDE works only at TOS 2.06 (but is possible to upgrade older TOS versions for it). On Falcon only IDE is supported. On TT only ACSI. In case of enough interest I can do SCSI driver versions too for Falcon, TT (and it will need 2 different drivers) .
Try before buy: Here may DL prepartitioned hard disk images - diverse sizes, with lot of games. You can try it even without Atari and hard disk - with some emulator as Steem or Hatari. Just read about how to set them properly before trying .
Please contact me via e-mail if interested: petari@8bitchip.info
PP, Sept. 2011.
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