Technical information
© Jean Louis-Guérin – V1.2a – September 2014 Page 18 / 69
Chapter 4. Atari Hard Disk Drivers Packages
This chapter provides a quick guide of several Atari hard disk drivers usage. It is primarily written for
users of CosmosEX, UltraSatan, and Satan devices. If you want to use these drivers with other
hardware or need more advance options you should refer to the original documentation.
For each driver we provide detailed procedures to:
Partition and initialize a drive,
Install the hard disk driver, and
Eventually configure the installed hard disk driver.
4.1 Hardware Configurations Tested
Due to the fact that I have access to a limited set of hardware, and a limited time, I have performed the
tests with the following Atari Computers and Devices:
Atari 1040 ST with US TOS 1.04 and 4 MB of RAM
Atari 520 STE with French TOS 1.62 and 4 MB of RAM
Satan Device, UltraSatan Device, and CosmosEx Device
4.2 Information on Removable Drive
In order to support removable media a hard disk driver needs specific features described by AHDI.
4.2.1 Disk Change Support
When the removable media is changed, the driver must recognize this the next time the drive is
accessed and the drive must be logged again. If the new media has more partitions than the previous
one, these should be added after the currently logged partitions.
4.2.2 Specification of the Maximum Logical Sector Size
In most of the drivers you have to specify a maximum logical sector size. At boot time, the driver will
use this number to allocate internal read and write buffers. This is especially important when you need
to switch media on a removable drive (e.g. on an UltraSatan), and the media are partitioned differently.
For example, suppose that you boot up the system and the size of the biggest logical sector on all the
logical drives plugged in is 2048 bytes. Later, you need something from a removable media that has
partitions whose logical sectors are 4096 bytes big (call it removable media A). If the maximum logical
sector size has been set to 2048, you cannot access the partitions on removable media A whose
logical sectors are 4096 bytes big, because the driver buffers are not big enough for its logical sectors.
4.2.3 Number of Partitions on a Card
With drivers that support removable media, usually you can specify the number of drive letters to be
reserved for each unit. This number will only be used if the unit supports a removable media.
This is useful when you need to switch media on a removable drive (e.g. on an UltraSatan), and the
medias are partitioned differently. At boot time, the driver will use this number, or the number of logical
drives on a removable drive, whichever is bigger, and assign that number of drive letters to that
particular unit. For example, suppose that you boot with a media that has two partitions on it (call it
media A) in the drive. Later, you need something from another media that has four partitions on it (call
it media B). If the reserved number of drive letters for this removable drive has not been set to be
greater than two, you cannot access the last two partitions on media B, because only two drive letters
were reserved for this removable drive.
4.3 Things to check before you start
4.3.1 Satan device
Satan device has limited ICD command support and no HxSD card support. Therefore most driver will
only support 1GB media except PPDRIVER that correctly detects cards up to 2GB.
4.3.2 UltraSatan device
Due to incompatibilities with the SCSI standard in old UltraSatan firmware versions HDDRIVER and
PPDRIVER only supports UltraSatan firmware versions 1.13 or newer. It is therefore recommended
that UltraSatan users flash their device to the latest firmware.