Nick_B wrote: ↑Wed Dec 06, 2023 9:02 am
Thanks Sophira, I should have said that I did try to load “HD4.HDF” as “Drive :4” using the configuration manager, but I got the same result, so presumably I’m not doing it correctly.
I realise that I could use HostFS as the HDD, but I would also like to learn/understand how to configure IDEDisk4 correctly in v2.0 onwards, so any help to achieve that would be very much appreciated.
Fair enough! In that case, the first thing you'll want to check is that you're using a new enough machine type. In the machine dropdown you'll need to select any machine from the A5000 onwards for the built-in IDE disc to work (with the exception of the "A500 (prototype)" entry). If you want to use an earlier machine, it's still possible to get a hard disc image working but you'll need to do a little more work - specifically, you'll need to use a SCSI (AKA31/AKA32) or ST506 (AKD52) podule, and you'll need to format the drive yourself. If you're using such a machine, let me know and I can guide you through it.
Otherwise, the next thing is to check the image you're using. If you're using the blank 50MB disc image that the instructions suggest downloading, you should be good to carry on as this image is already formatted for use with the built-in IDE disc setting. Otherwise, you'll need to format it yourself in RISC OS (including if you used the "New" button to create your own image in Arculator), and also the process of using a custom disc image will differ depending on the size of the image (images that are 64MB or less are easier to work with; otherwise you'll need to use a podule as above). Again, let me know if that's the case, and I can guide you.
Otherwise, if you're using the downloadable blank 50MB image and you're already using a newer machine, then that's a little odd - it should mostly Just Work, and the blank 50MB disk image that's available to download is already formatted for use with IDE. Just in case, though, here's the correct procedure for attaching the image:
1. Open Arculator, click once on the configuration you want to change, then click the Configure button (the one with the hammer and spanner on it).
2. Go to the second tab with the image of a hard disc on it.
3. Within the upper half (the "Drive :4" section), click the "..." button to open up a file browser.
4. Find the HD4.HDF file you downloaded, and double-click it.
5. It'll ask you to confirm the hard disc parameters of the image. For the downloaded 50MB image, it should have automatically picked the right values, which are:
Sectors: 32
Heads: 8
Cylinders: 795
Size (MB): 49
6. Click OK, and then click OK again to close the configuration window.
7. Double-click on the machine to boot it up.
8. Once booted into the desktop, press F12 and enter these commands (you don't need to worry about upper-case here, entering all lower-case is fine, and you can omit the starting * on each line if you like):
Code: Select all
*Configure IDEDiscs 1
*Configure FileSystem ADFS
*Configure Drive 4
9. Press ENTER again to return to the desktop, then use the menu to hard reset the machine.
10. Upon returning to the desktop, you should see an "IDEDisc4" icon on the icon bar.
Hopefully this post helps - if you have any further questions, or need more guidance, I'm happy to help however I can.
[edit: I meant to type "64MB or less", not "less than 64MB" - sorry! I've fixed that now.]
because (I think) it hasn’t yet received/recorded enough feedback that the associated files are safe, so I switched to v2.1 as a temporary workaround.