OktaPussy NewYear 1998 Beta release A WORD OF WARNING: This is Beta Software! Use at your own risk! DO ONLY INSTALL DRIVERS, NOT ANYTHING ELSE WITH DRIVEINIT! BEFORE INSTALLING DRIVERS, CHECK THEIR PROPER FUNCTION WITH THE LOADIDE METHOD! OktaPussy is a new set of drivers and support tools for the following Elaborate Bytes, bsc & AlfaData controllers: ALF-III SCSI Oktagon 508 SCSI Oktagon 2008/4008 SCSI TandemAT (IDE-driver, CD-ROMs are supported in IDE-fix '97) AlfaPower (IDE-driver, CD-ROMs are supported in IDE-fix '97) AT-BUS 508 (IDE-driver, CD-ROMs are supported in IDE-fix '97) AT-BUS 2008 (IDE-driver, CD-ROMs are supported in IDE-fix '97) The following controllers are NOT supported yet: AlfaPower plus (CD-ROMs are supported in IDE-fix '97) The following controllers will NEVER be supported. They are simply too old: ALF-I ST-506 ALF-II ST-506 ALF-II SCSI ALF-II SCSI professional Purpose: OktaPussy is an update of the firmware for your controller. The update works WITHOUT changing the ROM on your board! Never pay for a ROM update again! Cool, isn't it? System requirements: OktaPussy requires at least Kickstart 2.04 to work properly. On Kickstart 1.3 machines, it will simply do nothing. Any of the supported controllers is required. The controllers should be controlled by a device named oktagon.device. If your controller uses "scsi.device", it is not supported. A new version of HDInstTools is available in a seperate archive. Installation: There is no installation tool. This software is for the "hard-core" users :-) After unpacking the archive, you will find a folder named "OktaPussy" on your Harddisk. Step 1: Copy the contents of the "Oktapussy/C" directory to "C:". This must be done from the CLI. Step 2: Identify the correct driver in "Oktapussy/Expansion" and copy it your "Sys:Expansion" drawer. If you have different controllers, copy all relevant files. You can simply move the files from Workbench. Putting the wrong driver in "Sys:Expansion" doesn't do anything harmful. It is just a waste of space. :-) AT: AT-BUS 508 AT-BUS 2008 TandemCD AlfaPower ALF3: ALF-III SCSI (with 2 EPROMS on the board) Oktagon: ALF-III SCSI (with 1 EPROM on the board) Oktagon 508 SCSI Oktagon 2008/4008 SCSI How to run the new drivers: There are 4(!!!!) methods to run the drivers. (Probably too much choices for the average user????) It depends on your personal needs which method you prefer. 1. Running from Expansion You have already put your driver to "Sys:Expansion", haven't you? If you boot from a DIFFERENT controller (e.g. the A1200/A4000 internal IDE drive), this is the preferred method. For the new driver to load, you must disable the old one. This can be done in different ways, depending on your controller: ALF-III SCSI (WITH 2 EPROMS): - Set the "Kickstart" Jumper to Kickstart 1.2 Oktagon 508/2008/4008, ALF-III SCSI (WITH 1 EPROM): - Remove the EPROM from the controller or disable the ROM with OktagonPrefs or HDInstTools AT-BUS 508/2008, AlfaPower: - Remove the EPROM from the controller. TandemAT: - Nothing to be done as the controller has no EPROM. 2. Executing the driver program If you intend to use your controller only occasionaly, you can start the driver only when you need to do so. Just move the Driver and its icon to any place you wish (out of "Sys:Expansion"). To start the driver, execute it from the CLI or double-click on its icon. The old driver must be disabled (see above). 3. Making the driver reset resident A cool method for booting from the new driver. The old driver software can still be enabled. The "LoadIDE" program can make the driver reset resident. You can add "LoadIDE SYS:Expansion/ reset quiet" early in your s:startup-sequence. If you are using IDE-fix '97, you are already familiar with the LoadIDE mechanism. To load more than one driver, add the reset command only to the LAST LoadIDE. Example: LoadIDE C:IDEfix quiet ; IDE-fix '97 LoadIDE Sys:Expansion/ALF3 quiet ; ALF3 LoadIDE Sys:Expansion/Oktagon quiet reset ; Oktagon. And do a reboot! By the way, don't be afraid, that your driver will run out of CHIP memory. It won't. It will copy itself over to Fast memory, if possible. 4. Loading the driver out of the Rigid-Disk-Blocks Super cool! Almost no delay on startup! Just like a ROM Update! The old driver software installs the new driver software after a power-up in less than a second! This feature makes ROM-Updates really obsolete (If your ROM does somehow boot your machine)! The "DriveInit" program is used to install or remove drivers to or from RDSK Blocks. To install a driver, type "DriveInit ". Example: DriveInit oktagon.device 0 SYS:Expansion/Oktagon To remove a driver, type "DriveInit ". Example: DriveInit 2nd.scsi.device 0 You MUST install the corresponding driver on the first drive of your controller (Unit 0, or whatever is the lowest unit number). It doesn't have to be your boot drive! It is not neccessary to install the driver on every drive, but it doesn't hurt either. The drivers are clever enough to remain inactive, if you don't have the corresponding controller, so you can safely put them even on removable disks. It is possible, that there is not enough space in your RDSK Blocks to save the driver. DriveInit will return with error 1005. To solve this you can: - Delete FileSystems from the RDSK Blocks - Use the "NoLogin" drivers - they are smaller. - Reinstall your harddisk (deleting all partitions first) with HDInstTools 6.2 or better. You may consider a combination 3. & 4. as the prefect solution: You have installed the driver with option 4. Additionaly, you may add a LoadIDE Sys:Expansion/ in your startup (without a reset). This guarantees, that the driver doesn't have to be reloaded on the next reboot. ANOTHER WORD OF WARNING: DO ONLY INSTALL DRIVERS, NOT ANYTHING ELSE WITH DRIVEINIT! OTHERWISE YOUR MACHINE WILL CRASH OR YOUR DATA MAY BE LOST! DO NOT PACK DRIVERS WITH ANY COMPRESSION TOOL! YOU MACHINE WILL CRASH! IT IS UNWISE TO INSTALL THE WRONG DRIVER! YOU MUST INSTALL THE DRIVER ON THE FIRST HARDDISK! BEFORE INSTALLING DRIVERS, CHECK THEIR PROPER FUNCTION WITH THE LOADIDE METHOD (SEE ABOVE) Important changes: 1. Once the new driver is installed, the device names are different! Device names are now scsi.device, 2nd.scsi.device, 3rd.scsi.device, ... This makes the use of HDToolBox much easier! 2. Removable media WITHOUT RDSK Blocks are treated as "Super Floppies". Owners of IDE-fix '97 and a ZIP or LS-120 drive should know what I mean. Known Bugs: The AutoParkPrefs program doesn't work correctly with the new drivers. Clicking "USE" has no effect. However, the "SAVE" function should work fine. Have fun, Oliver Kastl Elaborate Bytes Munich, 1. January 1998. Happy New Year!