HD_Native_128, FD_Native_128 - Copyright 1994 by Creative Micro Designs
installHDNT.128, installFDNT.128 - Copyright 1994 by Maurice Randall
@WHAT'S NEW WITH THESE DRIVERS
These new drivers have been completely rewritten from the ground up. They are designed for GEOS 128 V2.0 and allow access to native mode partitions on the CMD HD and FD drives. They will work with gateWay V2.5 and geoSHELL V2.2. They will not function with the GEOS Desktop. This is a flaw in the Desktop and not with the drivers themselves.
The biggest improvement with these new drivers involves an important fix to keep your machine from locking up under certain circumstances. There are many smaller fixes that will probably go unnoticed. Performance has been somewhat improved also. File corruption under normal use is no longer possible with these new drivers.
In addition, you may now have as many as 2040 files within each directory. This includes 2040 files within each subdirectory. You will still be limited to a smaller file limit from within gateWay, however, by using the browser function, or by viewing by filetype, you might be able to access some of the files that would be out of reach normally. With geoSHELL, you can access any file on the partition. geoSHELL can do this because it doesn't have to load the entire directory into memory. Don't forget that geoSHELL let's you get a directory listing of your subdirectories by using 'dir s'.
@INSTALLING NEW NATIVE DRIVERS
HD_Native_128 and FD_Native_128 are upgraded versions of the native mode disk drivers that were supplied with gateWay 128 V2.5. To use these new drivers, simply follow the installation instructions as outlined in your original gateWay manual. Here's a couple of pointers to help you out if you are having any trouble...
@REPLACING gateWay DRIVERS
* If you are replacing a disk driver for a device that is not the same as the device that you boot from, installation is simple. Just boot up and replace the existing driver on your boot disk with the new one. Be sure that it is positioned properly on the disk as outlined in your manual. After rebooting, the new driver will be in effect.
* If you are replacing the disk driver for your boot disk, installation is a little trickier. On your boot disk is a file called GEOBOOT128. Within this file is your existing disk driver. This file is loaded into memory when you boot up. The object is to install your new driver into this file. You might also have a copy of the original disk driver on your boot disk, HD_Native_128 or FD_Native_128. Replacing either of these files is simple, just delete them and copy your new drivers to the boot disk. However, to replace the copy of the driver that is within GEOBOOT128, you must first boot up from a different device that has the new driver for your regular boot device installed on it. Then you can open the drive that is normally your boot device and run MakeBoot_128 to recreate a new copy of GEOBOOT128. After this, you will be able to boot from your normal boot device.
@FOR geoSHELL USERS
If you are a geoSHELL user and you normally boot from gateWay, then you are all set after doing as outlined above. If you don't use gateWay, you can still use native mode partitions from geoSHELL. The file installHDNT.128 is for the HD and installFDNT.128 is for the FD. Simply follow the same rules as outlined in your geoSHELL manual under the description for the 'learn' command. These two files are similar to the ones that can be created with the learn command. Let's assume that your FD is device 10 when you first boot up but it is not configured into GEOS. After booting, the following command will get your FD online with native partitions in use:
installFDNT.128 c
You can also put this into your boot startup file to make it an automatic thing each time you boot up.
If you own GeoMakeBoot (available from CMD), you can now boot up from a native partition. Just get your HD or FD running first with a native partition activated. Then use GeoMakeBoot to make this a boot partition.
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