Date   : Mon, 15 Aug 2005 22:51:56 +0100
From   : "Ian Wolstenholme" <BBCMailingList@...>
Subject: Re: Acorn Winchester question...

The !BOOT file is interesting because it skips the bit where you have to
enter the date and time and goes straight into answering the questions
"Number of drives" (ie. 1) and "Command", (ie. "S" for stations and then
"80") to start up the server.

Did Acorn eventually come up with a version of the FS code to automatically
read the date and time from the RTC instead of having the user (sorry,
network manager!) enter it every time you accidentally press ESCAPE
or BREAK?!! Maybe you have discovered a never-released version of the
Level 3 code!

And I was always given to understand that L2/L3 Econet only supported a
maximum of 40 users per server.  Having 80 programmed into the boot
file seems to be a bit excessive, although this number is accepted on the
version of L3 I have.

Best wishes,



Ian


----- Original Message -----
From: Jules Richardson
To:  bbc-micro@...
Sent: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 19:53:51 +0000
Subject: RE: [BBC-Micro] Acorn Winchester question...

On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 17:52 +0100, Mark Usher wrote:
> Careful,
> 
> If the disk contained a file server, that may be on a different partition
> that held the econet fs. Otherwise, that might be one hard drive worth data
> salvaging. 
> 
> Mark

Hmmm... 

The following's present on the visible bit of the drive:

!BOOT
ReadMe
CAT
WEdit
FS

.. and a directory called 'FORMAT' which contains Defects and SuperForm.

The readme file mentions version 1.42 of the level 3 fileserver code,
and that it's not been through Acorn's full release and test procedure.

The !BOOT file contains the following:

  *KEY 0*RUN FS||M1||MS80||M
  *FX 138,0,128

... but if I set the master to boot from the hard disk all it does is
make lots of horrible noise from the speaker and dumps me back to the
'>' prompt. 

Maybe 'FS' isn't supposed to work with a Master? Or maybe it's looking
for some particular ROM code which isn't present? 

If it does look like it has a fileserver partition on there I suppose
it'd be nice if there was a way of looking at the contents without
setting up a whole Econet! :)

thoughts welcome...

cheers

Jules