Partition Manager 1.05

[JonAbbott]

A drive partitioning, initialisation and FileCore/FAT formatter for all Acorn / ROOL versions of RISC OS.

Partition Manager offers Pi boot drive initialisation, with adjustable FAT / FileCore sizes and options to select stable or beta Pi Firmware and stable or nightly RISC OS builds. Optionally it will pre-configure the drive with the current Harddisc4 contents, NetSurf, PackMan, NVMeFS/WiFi drivers and their dependencies.

A smaller lite version is provided below for RISC OS 3.1x machines, with Pi boot drive initialisation removed.

Available below as an attachment for non-networked/pre RiscPC machines, or via PackMan using the source URL detailed at the bottom of this post.

Features

• Supports RISC OS 3.x onward, with no external dependencies
• Supports full-disc unpartitioned FileCore drives, GPT and MBR partition tables and MBR partition tables with an overlayed FileCore drive (Pi)
• Supports drives hosted on the following filesystems:
  • ADFS / ADFS4
  • ATAFS
  • HDFFS
  • IDEFS
  • MassFS
  • NVMeFS
  • SCSIFS
  • SDFS
  • ZIDEFS
• Supports initialising a Pi Boot drive, with selection of either the last stable or latest version of HD4 contents, Pi Firmware and RISC OS version
• Initialisation of partitions as FileCore or FAT16/32
• Supports 512n, 512e and 4Kn drives if the underlying filesystem supports them
• Supports initialisation and modification of partitions on most legacy IDE Podules under RISC OS 3.x
• Supports the following IDEFS based Podules/hardware:
  • A9home
  • APDL
  • Beebug
  • HCCS
  • ICS
  • Risc Developments
  • Simtec
  • STD Unipod
  • Watford IDE
• ST506 initialization (partially tested)
• RISC iX partitions (read-only)

Changes since 1.04

• Added fall-back support for Conner IDE "vendor specific" drive geometry when the IDENTIFY drive geometry isn't valid (fixes Connor CP2124)
• Now skips drives that are CHS addressed but report invalid geometry
• LBA 0-31 are now wiped before writing a new partition table, if the drive doesn't match the requested partition table type
• HCCS LBA 0-31 are now wiped before writing a new partition table, if the drive isn't already HCCS partitioned or is being initialised
• HCCS read/write sectors wasn't passing a valid DiscRec pointer to IDEFS causing some writes to unexpectedly fail
• When formatting a FileCore partition on HCCS, it wasn't setting the DiscRec Heads and Secspertrack to the drive physical values, causing IDEFS to ignore them
• When checking FileCore limits prior to formatting a FileCore partition, it was checking the drive limit, not the partition size limit

Extending
Partition Manager is modular in design, allowing additional filesystem support to be added without altering the main program. Refer to the documentation below for details on internal variables, procedures and functions required to add filesystems, partitions and formats.
EXTENDING.zip


NOTE: On networked RISC OS 3.5+ machines, use the PackMan distribution to receive automatic updates. Add the following URL to the PackMan sources:

Code: Select all

https://www.jaspp.org.uk/packages/release

NOTE: This software is used at your own risk and is provided on a best endeavours basis. Always ensure a backup is taken before modifying partitions on existing drives

Please provide feedback / debug reports in the feedback thread or directly via eMail, contact details can be found in the application help file.

Debug mode
Debug output will be written to !PartMgr.debug/txt by holding ALT when launching.


NOTE: As of 25th May 2024, NVMeFS 0.03 that is currently provided on the ROOL site is missing extensions that Partition Manager relies on to inform NVMeFS that the drive contents have changed following partitioning/formatting. NVMeFS may not be fully supported until the extensions are added and tested - Formatting might fail, or at minimum a physical reboot will be needed immediately after formatting to avoid issues. Creating a Pi Boot drive on NVMeFS will not be possible until this is resolved. RISCOSbits are aware and will hopefully resolve the problem soon.

[IanJeffray]

Wizzo in an A5000 with a 4GB CF, partitioned with ICS's IDEFormat in to four perfectly identical sized 495MB partitions (leaving a hunk of unused space), shows up as three 495MB partitions and one 496MB partition in PM - some odd rounding error somewhere maybe?

[IanJeffray]

Same 4GB IDEFS-Partitioned CF as previously mentioned, with Wizzo *unplugged and ADFS configured to 1 IDEDiscs works fine to read the 1st partition (a technique I've used plenty times and has been discussed on *. as being accepted), but running PM shows "Unallocated 512MB" and "Unusable 3.21GB" and no volumes - so PM doesn't digest discs which ADFS can apparently handle.

[JonAbbott]

running PM shows "Unallocated 512MB" and "Unusable 3.21GB" and no volumes - so PM doesn't digest discs which ADFS can apparently handle.

Could you post a debug/txt from both please, so I can work out where it's going wrong. Thanks.

The "rounding issue" sounds like the last partition might be one of two LBA larger. Certainly seems strange the last would round differently if they're all identical. Four identical sized partitions should all show the same in PM.

EDIT: I thought I might be able to reproduce the "Unallocated 512MB" issue under Arculator, but couldn't - PM showed the partition correctly. I did however notice the debug output for IDEFS triggers an error - I've corrected and updated v1.05 in the OP. You'll need to download PM again to produce the debug/txt for these issues.

[JonAbbott]

running PM shows "Unallocated 512MB" and "Unusable 3.21GB" and no volumes - so PM doesn't digest discs which ADFS can apparently handle.

The "rounding issue" sounds like the last partition might be one of two LBA larger.

To account for volume sizes (<1GB) being slightly short of MB alignments, the size is rounded up. Plugging numbers into it, I've realised its rounding up if its within 1024 LBA, which is too wide of a margin. I'll change the code so its only rounded up if its within 102 LBA .

In your case, the 513MB partition PM is displaying will be between 512.75MB and 512.99MB. !IDEMgr is rounding down, and will have added any spare sectors onto the last partition when the drive was partitioned.

[Nick_B]

I'm trying to run Partition Manager Lite from floppy on my A5000, but part way through "Loading Drivers" progress bar it spits out an error - "No such function/procedure at line 60".

For comparison purposes I also tried an earlier version (1.00), but it produces the same error at line 59.

Running 1.05 in DEBUG mode doesn't seem to shed much light, apart from confirming the following details prior to the error:

OS Version=311
FileCore Version=241
FileSwitch Version=208
ADFS Found

I'm probably doing something daft, but any help would be much appreciated.

PS. Is there a way to display or edit the debug text file so that CR characters are interpreted rather than displayed as [0d] ... ?

Cheers,
Nick

[JonAbbott]

I'm trying to run Partition Manager Lite from floppy on my A5000, but part way through "Loading Drivers" progress bar it spits out an error - "No such function/procedure at line 60".

That means there's something wrong with one of the filenames under !PartMgr.Formats. They should be "FAT" and "FileCore". Filename case is relevant for all files under the Format, FS and Partitions subfolders.

Is there a way to display or edit the debug text file so that CR characters are interpreted rather than displayed as [0d] ... ?

If you're using Edit either press CTRL-F8 or Menu / Edit / CR<>LF

[Nick_B]

That means there's something wrong with one of the filenames under !PartMgr.Formats. They should be "FAT" and "FileCore". Filename case is relevant for all files under the Format, FS and Partitions subfolders.

Thanks, Jon. I’ve just realised it’s because I was using a DOS formatted floppy. Now working via ADFS floppy.

Cheers,
Nick