HDDRIVER news are offered as RSS and Atom feeds. In addition the Hddriver News app for Android automatically notifies about news. Information on changes in previous releases are provided in the overview of changes and in the HDDRIVER forum.
November 21, 2024: Streamer emulation for the Atari
With SCSI2Pi 4.0 there is now a streamer emulation for the PiSCSI board, which can also be used by Ataris with HDDRIVER and the Gemar streamer software. Due to a bug in Gemar it is important to run GEMARFIX (FIXES folder in the HDDRIVER full version distribution archive) before Gemar.
October 30, 2024: HDDRIVER 12.50 is available
The main changes in this version
- HDDRIVER: Extended support of GUID Partition Tables (GPT).
- HDDRUTIL: Support for partitioning with a GPT instead of a Master Boot Record (MBR) partition scheme.
- HDDRUTIL: With "Edit Partitions" the GUID of a GPT partition can be changed.
- HDDRUTIL: "Restore Root Sector" has been renamed to "Repair Partition Table" and also repairs the GPT data, based on the GPT backup.
- HDDRUTIL: The compatibility settings for partitioning have been simplified.
- HDDRUTIL: The partition information exported to the clipboard has been extended.
- HDDRUTIL: Just like for Linux and Minix partitions, with "Devices and Partitions" you can also configure separately whether HDDRIVER reserves drive IDs for FAT32 partitions.
- HDDRUTIL: The "Help" buttons in the dialog windows have been removed. Each user of the full version of HDDRIVER 12 has an up to date manual as a PDF, which provides a considerably better help.
- HDDRUTIL: Numerous user interface improvements and optimizations.
Upgrading HDDRIVER 12.0x to HDDRIVER 12.5 is at no charge. There is also an updated demo version.
October 27, 2024: The SCSI Driver testsuite 3.00 is available
The main changes in SDRVTEST.TOS
- The SCSI Driver tests have been extended.
- Additional device properties are displayed.
- The raw data returned by the SCSI commands INQUIRY and MODE SENSE are displayed.
- In addition to mode pages of hard drives and removable media drives, selected mode pages of streamers are displayed. With GEMAR you can use streamers with the Atari, also those emulated by SCSI2Pi 4.0.
August 11, 2024: HDDRIVER 12.06 is available
The main changes since HDDRIVER 11
- Manual: The download of the full version includes the up to date English and German manual as a PDF.
- HDDRIVER: The SCSI emulation for IDE/SATA drives/memory cards supports all mandatory commands of the SBC-4 specification (SCSI Block Commands).
- HDDRIVER: With TT and Falcon SCSI the SCSI Driver supports 32 LUNs (sub-units) according to the SCSI specification. This SCSI Driver extension is backward compatible.
- HDDRIVER: The code for initializing the PMMU of the Afterburner040 was extracted into an external program for the AUTO folder and an HDDRIVER module, resp. The README file in the FIXES/AB040MMU folder provides more information.
- HDDRIVER: AB040FIX (FIXES folder) was renamed to ALTRAMFX. It is required for Falcons with Alternate RAM (Afterburner040, DFB1, CT*) in order to use SCSI peripherals. The README file in the FIXES/ALTRAMFX folder provides more information.
- HDDRIVER: The Medusa Txx hardware is no longer supported. The Hades is not affected.
- HDDRIVER: Fixed a bug in the LBA-48 access mode, which is used with IDE/SATA drives > 128 GiB.
- HDDRIVER/HDDRUTIL: With the standard settings HDDRUTIL now installs HDDRIVER without support for the SCSI Driver target interface. This saves about 3 KiB of memory.
- HDDRIVER/HDDRUTIL: Numerous optimizations.
- HDDRUTIL: The device check uses an improved/optimized query of LUNs and now also detects non-consecutive LUNs.
- HDDRUTIL: The new function "Drive->Clear Data" clears the FATs and the root directory of a partition. This is equivalent to deleting all files, but is much faster.
- HDDRUTIL: "Edit Partitions" supports changing the boot mask bit. Together with an explicit boot preference (TOS or TT SVR4) this mask determines which operating system is booted by default. Only the values $00 (not bootable, $80 (bootable TOS) and $40 (bootable TT SVR4) were specified by Atari.
- HDDRUTIL: When copying sectors the current sector number and the total sector count are displayed.
- HDDRUTIL: The "Device Check" dialog now has a scrollbar.
- HDDRUTIL: The sector test after formatting is now optional.
- HDDRUTIL: The HDDRIVER configuration export also lists the HDDRIVER version and the path of the HDDRIVER file.
- HDDRUTIL: The bus information displays whether a SCSI Driver supports 32 LUNs for a bus.
- HDDRUTIL: Various user interface improvements.
- HDDRUTIL: Depending on the bus features the device check now checks for up to 32 LUNs.
- HDDRUTIL: The function "Test Sectors" was renamed to "Read Test" because there is now also a write test for the data of a medium. This test first reads the sectors and then writes them back. Nevertheless it is recommended to save the data before a write test.
- HDDRUTIL: The list of explicitly displayed partition types in the partitioning dialog has been extended.
- HDDRUTIL: Fixed Windows-compatible partitioning of media that before partitioning were in GPT format.
- HDDRUTIL: Fixed a device check crash when no SCSI Driver was installed.
July 24, 2024: DISKUS 3.99.5 is available
There is an updated version of the DISKUS mass storage tool. DISKUS (German only) is a powerful tool for maintaining mass storage devices (error analysis, data recovery, sector editor and much more).
July 21, 2024: DaynaPort workaround for MegaSTE, new approach
The internal host adapter of the MegaSTE cannot use the DaynaPort emulation of SCSI2Pi, PiSCSI or BlueSCSI together with a bootable emulated hard drive: The DaynaPort drivers expect the DaynaPort uses LUN 0, but LUN 0 is required for a bootable drive. The authors of these drivers (both still active developers for the Atari) are aware of this problem. Only a DaynaPort driver update can cleanly resolve it.
For HDDRIVER there is a beta version of a program for the AUTO folder now, which maps ACSI ID 6 to LUN 6 of ACSI device 0. That way the emulated DaynaPort can use ID 0 LUN 6, but the drivers see the device as ID 6 LUN 0. Users of HDDRIVER 12 who would like to test this beta version please send me an email.