Forcing boot from hard drive ONLY
Greg Pratt
and the other feeds from the SCSI port on the A2091.
I have implemented a security system which is simple, but will probably
prevent the drives from being broken into by anyone who has contact with
my machine. (The nice thing about the Amiga's obscurity is that no one
can figure out how to do anything with the hardware or the operating
system.) But, booting off of either of the built-in floppy drives would
allow someone to circumvent this modification without much difficulty.
Someone suggested (but did not elaborate upon) that I might be able to
force a boot from only one the hard drives.
Here's the question: How can I force my A2000 to boot from a hard disk,
even if there is a valid (and bootable) disk in one of the floppy
drives? I realize that I could disconnect the floppies altogether :)
but I still use them occasionally.
Thanks muchly in advance...
--
Gregory L. Pratt Rochester Institute of Technology
Lab Consultant, Programmer, Writer, Poet, Philosopher, and Chef-Wannabe
Snail Mail: 42 Colony Manor Drive Rochester, New York 14623-3404 USA
Robert Goodlett
Greg Pratt <glp...@osfmail.isc.rit.edu> wrote:
>I have an Amiga 2000HD with two hard disks. One is on the A2091 card,
>and the other feeds from the SCSI port on the A2091.
>
>I have implemented a security system which is simple, but will probably
>prevent the drives from being broken into by anyone who has contact with
>my machine. (The nice thing about the Amiga's obscurity is that no one
>can figure out how to do anything with the hardware or the operating
>system.) But, booting off of either of the built-in floppy drives would
>allow someone to circumvent this modification without much difficulty.
>Someone suggested (but did not elaborate upon) that I might be able to
>force a boot from only one the hard drives.
>
>Here's the question: How can I force my A2000 to boot from a hard disk,
>even if there is a valid (and bootable) disk in one of the floppy
>drives? I realize that I could disconnect the floppies altogether :)
>but I still use them occasionally.
I'm not a computer guru by any means. And the os I'm somewhat
familiar with is 3.0. With 3.0 if I hold both mouse buttons
down on startup I will get a configuration menu. In this menu
I believe I can change the priority of the drives.
ie. default is - boot from floppy has priority over anything.
You make the hard drive, actualy any particualr partition I think,
have this "boot priority".
This could be dangeraous if you have a problem with your hard drive.
(kinda hard to throw a new/fresh boot hard drive in) :)
John Crookshank
> (The nice thing about the Amiga's obscurity is that no one
Obscurity is usually based on what a person is used to, not on actual
difficulty.
> Here's the question: How can I force my A2000 to boot from a hard disk,
> even if there is a valid (and bootable) disk in one of the floppy
> drives? I realize that I could disconnect the floppies altogether :)
> but I still use them occasionally.
Simply set your hard drive's boot priority to a value of 15 or higher.
It would then have a higher priority than the floppy drive. Of course,
that won't stop anyone from using the "hold down the mouse buttons during
bootup" to get the boot-selector menu and still selecting floppy anyway,
but I'm sure this will be far too obscure for anyone but the most
hard-core Amiga geeks to figure out and bypass your security scheme. ;-)
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>
>Here's the question: How can I force my A2000 to boot from a hard disk,
>even if there is a valid (and bootable) disk in one of the floppy
>drives? I realize that I could disconnect the floppies altogether :)
>but I still use them occasionally.
all that u need to do is change your boot priorities using HD tools
making it a bigger number than the floppy drive! This will mean your HD will
boot even if bootable floppy in the drive. Thing is though to boot from floppy u
need to change the priorities again (pain in the arse!) :-(
Anyone come across a better method?
marty
.@sunderland.ac.uk
Reply-To: Martin....@Sunderland.Ac.UK
X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.91.4
>Simply set your hard drive's boot priority to a value of 15 or higher.
>It would then have a higher priority than the floppy drive. Of course,
>that won't stop anyone from using the "hold down the mouse buttons during
>bootup" to get the boot-selector menu and still selecting floppy anyway,
>but I'm sure this will be far too obscure for anyone but the most
>hard-core Amiga geeks to figure out and bypass your security scheme. ;-)
This only works for DOS disks trying to disable a HD using both
mouse buttons allows u to boot from DOS disks but not NDOS disks so most
games this doesnt work :-(
Marty
Frank J. Beckmann
: I have an Amiga 2000HD with two hard disks. One is on the A2091 card,
: and the other feeds from the SCSI port on the A2091.
:
: I have implemented a security system which is simple, but will probably
: prevent the drives from being broken into by anyone who has contact with
: can figure out how to do anything with the hardware or the operating
: system.) But, booting off of either of the built-in floppy drives would
: allow someone to circumvent this modification without much difficulty.
: Someone suggested (but did not elaborate upon) that I might be able to
: force a boot from only one the hard drives.
: Here's the question: How can I force my A2000 to boot from a hard disk,
: even if there is a valid (and bootable) disk in one of the floppy
: drives? I realize that I could disconnect the floppies altogether :)
: but I still use them occasionally.
Take HDToolbox and set the boot priority of your boot partition to a value
higher than the boot priority of the first floppy drive. But than you even can
select the floppy drive in the boot menu.
Why don't you use muFS (available on aminet)? This is a multiuser filesystem.
--
Have a nice day Frank
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Richard Lavey
> I have an Amiga 2000HD with two hard disks. One is on the A2091 card,
> and the other feeds from the SCSI port on the A2091.
> Here's the question: How can I force my A2000 to boot from a hard disk,
> even if there is a valid (and bootable) disk in one of the floppy
> drives? I realize that I could disconnect the floppies altogether :)
> but I still use them occasionally.
Try changing the Boot priority of the hard disk to something greater than the
floppy drives - that way the hard disk should always boot instead of a
floppy drive. The boot priorities of the drives should be visible in the early
startup control screen, and I presume HDToolbax will allow you to alter the
boot pri.
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Marc 'Nepomuk' Heuler
> Someone suggested (but did not elaborate upon) that I might be able to
> force a boot from only one the hard drives.
Use HDToolBox and raise the boot priority (advanced options) of your boot
drive to 10.
You can, however, still use the boot menu to force boot from DF0:
David Manvell
When turning n the computer, hold both mouse buttons and bring up the
preferences screen. You can disable the floppy drives form there. Not
premanent though.
Dave
Putyt...@Delphi.com
David Crooke
only one mouse button and disable the other, or you could have a bit of software to
feed inputs from the second mouse port into the Exec input stream (there is a PD
utility called "LeftyMouse" or something like that which uses a similar technique
to swap the mouse buttons) and have a mouse which wouldn't allow this action. You'd
need to make it easy to get around if you needed though.
Dave
--
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Rene Laederach
Greg Pratt hacked the keyboard on Sat, 6 May 1995 15:55:56 GMT about `Forcing boot
from hard drive ONLY' in comp.sys.amiga.hardware and wrote:
GP> Here's the question: How can I force my A2000 to boot from a hard disk,
GP> even if there is a valid (and bootable) disk in one of the floppy
GP> drives? I realize that I could disconnect the floppies altogether :)
GP> but I still use them occasionally.
*Very* easy: Remove all disk drives and kill the disk port. Luckily, we all have
ethernet cards. :)
Read you later...
Rene Laederach
__
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Internet: mu...@snoop.alphanet.ch | \__/ Expanding a PC is plug and /pray/
Jean-Michel Kissling
> GP> even if there is a valid (and bootable) disk in one of the floppy
> GP> drives? I realize that I could disconnect the floppies altogether :)
> GP> but I still use them occasionally.
Go into HDToolBox and set the priority of your boot partition to 11 !
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