News

SCSI2Pi is the highly versatile SCSI/SASI emulation for the PiSCSI board, with a SCSI-to-USB bridge, professional streamer support and numerous tools for initiator mode. SCSI2Pi benefits from running on a full-fledged Linux. Specially configured SD cards or filesystems are not required. Drive images are simply copied to the Pi via the network. You control SCSI2Pi with the SCSI Control App, a web interface, or on the command line. Atari computers are especially well supported with the SCSI2Pi Client Tools.

The download area of the HDDRIVER website has been updated. Download links that were previously scattered across various pages have now been consolidated into a single page. The download area includes numerous free tools (mostly Open Source) and important specifications.

The main changes in this version

• HDDRUTIL: A potential bug in HDDRUTIL 13.00 when copying a large number of sectors in one go (via the device window) has been fixed.
• HDDRUTIL: The integrated test suite has been extended.

The upgrade to HDDRIVER 13 is free for anyone who has purchased HDDRIVER 12 (full version or upgrade) since April.

Thank you to all the beta testers who invested a lot of time. HDDRIVER 13 has also been tested on not officially supported hardware, especially CT*, DFB1 and Raven. On these platforms, HDDRIVER sets benchmarks for transfer rates, so that you get even more enjoyment out of your fast processor and fast RAM. With IDE and CTPCI, 12.8 MiB/s have been measured; with DFB1, 4.8 MiB/s; with a Raven, 6.6 MiB/s.
Thanks to ETOS_FIX, many new (and old) features, including the ramdisk and fast data transfers, can also be used with EmuTOS.

The main changes in this version

• HDDRIVER: A next-generation ramdisk has been integrated. This ramdisk is a fully functional SCSI drive and supports the XHDI and SCSI Driver standards that are essential for the Atari. It can be up to 255 MiB in size, and is configurable in 1 MiB increments.
• HDDRIVER: Support for 32-bit DMA for faster SCSI transfers with the Suska-IV board with SCSI/DMA core. The availability of 32-bit DMA is detected automatically.
• HDDRIVER: Accelerated ACSI/SCSI transfers if, because of hardware limitations, data cannot be transferred directly to/from a memory address (STs and Falcons with Alternate-RAM, TTs with Alternate-RAM and ACSI devices), but must be copied via a buffer (_FRB).
• HDDRIVER: Further improved automatic IDE port detection, especially on not officially supported hardware.
• HDDRIVER: Improvements to the SCSI Driver, e.g. regarding the SCSI emulation for IDE drives.
• HDDRIVER: The module interface has proven its worth, so modules are now always executed, and not just optionally.
• HDDRIVER/HDDRUTIL: Extensive code review with numerous optimizations. HDDRIVER 13 is the most compact HDDRIVER in over 25 years: 25% smaller than HDDRIVER 7.93 and, despite a significantly wider range of functions, is only half the size of, for example, ICDBOOT or CBHD.
• HDDRUTIL: Initializing partitions has been improved further. Just as when partitioning, the TOS compatibility can now be set. Furthermore, entering the number of sectors per cluster and bytes per sector is now optional, which simplifies usage.
• HDDRUTIL: When splitting a medium into partitions, you can enter a maximum partition size. The default value is just below the maximum partition size of the current operating system, which simplifies creating partitions with maximum size.
• HDDRUTIL: When partitioning with a GPT scheme, the partitions are automatically aligned to 8 sector boundaries. This provides optimal performance and less wear, especially with memory cards, SSDs and modern hard drives.
• HDDRUTIL: The GPT partition editor provides for editing the GPT attributes as well as the start sector and the sector count. 64-bit sector numbers are supported, so that partition tables for other platforms and large media can also be edited.
• HDDRUTIL: GPT partition entries can be added, removed, moved or sorted by their start sectors. This makes it possible to subsequently modify a partition layout without data loss on the unaffected partitions. The manual provides further information.
• HDDRUTIL: The GPT partition editor detects duplicate partition names and duplicate partition GUIDs.
• HDDRUTIL: When partitioning with a GPT, partitions for different platforms, such as TOS, Windows, macOS or Linux, can be created on the same medium. As before, HDDRUTIL automatically creates FAT16/FAT32 file systems for TOS and Windows partitions.
• HDDRUTIL: Improved support for gaps (placeholders) in a GPT.
• HDDRUTIL: The partition table can be exported to a text file instead of the clipboard, and additional data are exported.
• HDDRUTIL: In the preferences, you can specify whether MBR or GPT is the default for the compatibility settings during partitioning.
• HDDRUTIL: With "Test Device/Driver" you can test devices and drivers for compatibility with important Atari standards without having to download the test suite separately. The tests are identical to those in the test suite and are open source.
• HDDRUTIL: "Unlock after Reset" and "Unpark after Reset" have been combined into a single option.
• HDDRUTIL: Numerous improvements to support for media > 2 TiB.
• HDDRUTIL: Numerous user interface improvements.

The updated manual (PDF in the download archive of the full version) covers all changes. There is also a new demo version.

There is a new version of the free mass storage tool DISKUS. DISKUS is the Swiss Army knife for working with floppy disks, hard drives, and memory cards. Thanks to SCSI Driver support, it can access any mass storage device (ACSI, SCSI, IDE/SATA/ATAPI, USB, ...). With the SCSI Driver for Hatari and ARAnyM, you can even directly access mass storage devices connected to a Linux PC. The manual contains many tips for recovering lost data.

HDDRIVER is also the ideal driver for MiNT and therefore once again serves as the basis for the updated FreeMiNT OS Distro 26.2. This distribution is a drive image with an extensive software collection, which boots a snapshot of MiNT with the HDDRIVER demo version. For a full-fledged MiNT environment, simply replace the demo version with the full version.