User guide
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THE PARTITION UTILITY: SASIXUxx
AN INTRODUCTION
The QUIKSTOR partitioning utility, SASIXUxx, where xx is 15 or 33 depending on the Winchester
unit you have (named SASIXUxx.COM under CP/M and SASIXUxx.ABS under HDOS) was written by Dean
Gibson of UltiMeth Corp. It is a very clever menu driven utility which makes partitioning very
easy and user friendly. You are allowed to set up a maximum of 15 partitions and define these
in any combinations you desire.
Special features were taken into consideration in the programming efforts to make this a very
powerful, yet easy to use utility. Some of the special features of SASIXUxx include:
User friendly menu-driven utility.
Set "standard" partitions for CP/M and HDOS to help the beginner get his system up
without much hassle.
User definable partitions supporting any combination of up to 15 partitions, each
BOOTable if properly set up and SYSGENed.
User settable options such as host adapter port.
Ability to check controller and drive from the partition utility.
Ability to assign an alternate boot track in the event track 0 becomes unreadable.
Support of multiple Winchesters either by chaining off the Xebec controller or daisy
chaining off the computer host adapter.
This utility initializes the BOOT CODE on the hard disk, and writes out the partition table on the
hard disk. This information is stored in a 'partition table', along with the hard disk master boot
program on the boot track (normally track zero). The partition table contains 15 partition
entries numbered 0 to 14; the partition number is only used during booting. Each partition table
entry may be either unused (assigned a category code of zero), or used by a particular operating
system.
After the boot code is written out, you can access the hard disk from any other system drive
both under HDOS and CP/M. Before you use any partition, that partition must be INITialized for HDOS or
FORMATted for CP/M. If you further desire to BOOT off the hard disk, you must also SYSGEN the hard disk
partitions you will want to boot from - more on this latter.
Once the partitions are set up, BOOTing the hard disk will cause a menu to come up, allowing you
to select which partition, 0 to 15, that you want to BOOT from (Note: the default switches must
be set for 15 on the SASI host adapter card in order for the menu to come up and allow you to
choose your partition upon each BOOT - refer to the hardware installation section for your system
within this manual). When you BOOT the hard disk, the drive selects for a very short time and