Loading ACCs from the boot drive

[uweseimet]

HDDRIVER does not only support selecting the drive to execute AUTO folder programs from. Accessories can also be launched from this drive. Details are provided in the HDDRIVER manual and in the FAQ, but there still appear to be questions.

In order not to interfere with the operating system where not needed (and where it might cause compatibility issues), HDDRIVER let's GEM handle the job of loading accessories. Usually GEM loads ACCs from drive C:, even when you have selected a different boot drive. This means as long as there are ACCs on C: they will be loaded from there, even when the AUTO folder is loaded from somewhere else.
In order to also load ACCs from the boot drive, just do not put ACCs on drive C:. Instead, put them on the same drive(s) you also want to load your AUTO folder from. This means that C: effectively becomes worthless as a boot drive if you would like to boot different sets of ACCs, and it may make sense to make a drive different than C: the default boot drive (see below).

Just as a reminder: There are several ways of how to select the boot drive with HDDRIVER:

- By changing the default boot drive to something else than C: with "Basic Settings/Grundeinstellungen".
- By configuring the default boot drive based on the TT''s/Falcon's SCSI ID with "Boot Parameters/Bootparameter". This can be useful when you use the same drive or memory card with different Ataris that have a SCSI bus and you want a assign a different boot drive to each machine.
- By pressing a key with the respective drive letter or drive digit (remember that depending on the OS C-Z and 1-6 are also valid) during the boot process.

[mikro]

This feature looks quite counter-intuitive to me, to be honest.

If I understand it correctly, if I have C:, D: & E: partitions, each with its own AUTO and ACCs (and possibly own OS), to be able to load ACCs from D: and E: (when I press D or E during the boot) I have to erase all ACCs from C:, i.e. basically I have to loose one of the partitions?

[uweseimet]

Yes, that's how GEM works. As mentioned above HDDRIVER relies on standard GEM behavior to do this job, ensuring maximum compatibility and no dirty work-arounds in HDDRIVER itself.
Since you have many options to configure the boot partition with HDDRIVER, losing one of many partitions is not really an issue.