File: WDS_TXT Extracted from UPDATE on November 18, 1994 - Support for using WDS devices while in GPL mode has been completed in a user configurable enviroment. Please read the following notes !! These modifications are for GPL ONLY and REQUIRE GPL V1.5H or above ______________________________________________________________________ A new command has been added to either permit one to use the HFDC as WDS devices under GPL mode, or to continue using it as the recent versions of MDOS (0.97H, 1.21H, 1.23H) with GPL device names as HDS. These modifications do NOT require the use of OLDDSR/ROMPAGE while in GPL mode. Any device with WDS in the DSR (Myarc HFDC, Bud Mill's soon to be SCSI) can be toggled on if the card is at CRU >1200. ONLY devices with CRU dipswitches set to CRU >1200 can operate as WDS If you have a device at CRU >1200 and you want to use it as WDS under GPL mode, you MUST have the following switch set in your AUTOEXEC. The switch will NOT work in a batch file. Usage required in Autoexec TI ON [turns on WDS emulation] TI OFF [default status] Usage not required in Autoexec, but will return status display TI [identifies WDS emulation on] Using the HFDC or other controller card, you presently have 3 CRU addresses you may boot from due to limitations posed by LOAD/SYS and the boot eprom. The following restrictions for usage are described below (CRU's >1000, >1100, >1200). Option CRU >1000 System: HFDC at CRU >1000 and disk controller at CRU >1100 1 TI OFF No support for WDS usage. Full use of the DSK1 emulation, DSK1 directory, and DSK directory emulation are provided. HFDC is accessed as HDS. 2 TI ON Will lockup as no WDS device available and you confused the system upon entry into GPL mode. Modify AUTOEXEC to reflect TI OFF. ========= CRU >1000 System HFDC at CRU >1000, disk controller at CRU >1100, SCSI (or HFDC???) at CRU >1200 3 TI OFF No support for the card at CRU >1200, but the HFDC will respond as HDS. DSK1 emulation, DSK1 subdirectory and DSK emulation will work on the HFDC. Device names will be HDS. 4 TI ON The HFDC at CRU >1000 will respond as HDS and the SCSI (and possibly second HFDC in the system) will respond as WDS. DSK1 emulation, DSK1 subdirectory and DSK emulation will work on the HFDC but will not be accessible on the controller card at CRU >1200. ============ CRU >1100 System HFDC at CRU >1100, no other cards. 5 TI OFF DSK1 emulation, DSK1 subdirectory, and DSK emulation will work on the HFDC. All device names will be HDS. 6 TI ON Will lockup as no WDS device available and you confused the system upon entry into GPL mode. Modify AUTOEXEC to reflect TI OFF. CRU >1100 SYSTEM HFDC at CRU >1100 and a second card at CRU >1200 7 TI OFF DSK1 emulation, DSK1 subdirectory, and DSK emulation will work on the HFDC. All device names will be HDS. 8 TI ON The HFDC at CRU >1100 will respond as HDS and the SCSI (and possibly second HFDC in the system) will respond as WDS. DSK1 emulation, DSK1 subdirectory and DSK emulation will work on the HFDC but will not be accessible on the controller card at CRU >1200. CRU >1100 Disk Controller at CRU >1100 and HFDC/SCSI at CRU >1200 9 TI OFF HFDC will only respond as HDS and will not support DSK1 emulation, DSK1 subdirectory or DSK emulation on the HFDC. 10 TI ON HFDC will respond only as WDS and will not support DSK1 emulation, DSK1 subdirectory or DSK emulation on the HFDC. ______________________________________________________________________ NOW WHAT DOES THIS MEAN !!!!!!!!!!! What this all means is if you use two controller cards (HFDC/Floppy) and select OPTION #10, programs like the V1.50 MDM5, Gentri, HardMaster and other programs using WDS will all work properly with only one restriction caused by a bug of the HFDC DSR. If you use the HFDC at CRU >1200 with TI ON, do not use any GPL based program to Make or Remove directories such as MDM5. Create your directories from MDOS mode. MDOS mode and the DSR do not like one another and will cause MAJOR FILE LOSS problems if you CREATE a DIRECTORY with MDM5 and then try to remove it from MDOS prompt (or vice versa). DON"T DO IT!!!! TI-99/4A people can do it as the one bug did not care about the other bug, but MDOS cares. No other problems are known to exist so that file copying, backups, etc. should all work as before. As of this release, moving the HFDC to CRU >1200 while using TI ON will cause problems with EXEC. Barry Boone will be provided the necessary information so that a new release of EXEC can accomodate these new features of MDOS with the additional GPL >2x support. .........about the programming effort............ The programming effort at this point to add the additional GPL >2x has required over 200 hours of work to implement and test this configuration. It was decided to use the on-board DSR of the HFDC or SCSI (when it becomes available) to minimize the programming effort to complete MDOS. To support a configuration to allow the additional GPL >2x support routines as originally suggested by Myarc, Inc. would require a large size increase in SYSTEM/SYS as GPL mode has limited the ability to access all necessary routines at the proper time. MDOS would have needed minimally another 16K (64 sectors) to handle all the necessary routines just for the HFDC. In this configuration, the GPL mode support for the SCSI is complete. I know this as I have expanded the use of WDS from WDS1...to WDS8. WDS1 and WDS2 have been tested on the HFDC so as long as the SCSI follows the same specs, anything written for the TI-99/4A and SCSI will also run on the Geneve. No work will be attempted on the MDOS support for SCSI until the SCSI DSR is complete. I am hoping to use the onboard SCSI DSR while in MDOS mode to minimize coding efforts. All devices connected to a SCSI controller must respond as WDS. When using the HFDC as WDS in GPL mode, do not EVER call for a file from HDS. Attempting to do so will cause unpredictable results as the operating system is trying to access the HDS device, however it did not know that WDS has changed the parameters by using the DSR. You will probably need to reconfigure My-Word, Telco, Gentri, and MDM5 to respond as using WDS if you choose the TI ON option. If you decide to switch from using WDS to HDS or vice versa, edit your AUTOEXEC file and REBOOT your operating system. A warm boot will not reconfigure your system.