Technical information

4.5 PPDRIVER 1.0 Driver Package

This section presents a quick procedure to use PPDRIVER 1.0 hard disk driver package with

UltraSatan or CosmosEx devices.

The PPDRIVER package is a cheap 10€ application developed by P.Putnik that you can buy from

HERE. This driver has limitations compared to HDDRIVER as it has been designed almost exclusively

for Satan, UltraSatan and CosmosEX devices. It provides:

+ Support Multiple TOS/DOS compatible partitions

+ Bootable TOS&DOS Partition (512MB for TOS 1.04)

+ Hot-swap support

+ Easy selection of active C partition during boot

+ Low RAM usage, Good Performance (pure ASM only code)

+ Works on ST, STE, Mega ST, Mega STE, TT with minimum TOS v. : 1.02

+ Ideal for gaming - easy setting, usage, no Timer dependence

+ Directly support FAT16A DOS Partitions (< 32MB) and plain AHDI TOS partitions

+ Maximal support for gamers: driver loadable without XHDI, in top RAM, with HOLE (for old

games, not compatible with higher TOS versions)

4.5.1 Partitioning a drive

Start the Atari in medium or high resolution, insert the PPDRIVER diskette and double click on

PP12U.PRG.

You first need to select the ACSI Id that

contains the CosmosEx device. ACSI 0

is shown by default. Ignore the Master,

Slave buttons that are used for IDE

drives. If the drive is at a different ACSI

Id address use the up and down arrows

to select an Id between 0-7. Tw. IDE is

for people with twisted IDE cable.

Once selected the correct ID click on

the drive’s button (for example ACSI 0),

the disk Vendor and capacity will be

shown. If any the previous partitioning

is displayed for DOS compatible

partitions.

You now have to enter the desired sizes for each partitions starting with partition C. Each time you

enter a value for a partition the free space field is updated. If the sum of all partitions gets bigger than

the available space the free indicator shows NEG and in that case you must decrease some partitions.

C16 is default partition type, which correspond to TOS & DOS compatible FAT16A partition. You can

also create FAT32 partitions, but you will need Magic or Mint to be able to access them on Atari. It is

therefore recommended to leave the type to C16. To change the type you can click the Change type

button or click the type indicator close to the drive letter.

Once you are satisfied with the partition sizes, click the PARTIT. and INIT all button.

Nothing is written on disk until you press the Go on! Button.

Note that Init button here means practically same as “format” in PC terminology.

After partitioning, you may check the result by clicking again the Drive button - it should show the new

partitions as they are set.

Now you can Click EXIT