nforce 4 sata + esdi_506

[javispedro]

Did you know you can use NT 4's ATAPI.SYS (NT's standard IDE driver) in 9x?

According to some random source on the Internet (the DDK ), you can just copy ATAPI.SYS to Windows\System\Iosubsys\Atapi.mpd [sic] and then replace the registry references to esdi_506.pdr with "atapi.mpd". It should "just work".

It does.

However, when I tried with the SATA port I have my HDDs on, all my expectations were destroyed. It fails at exactly the same point. Two different codebases and they both hang.

It works fine for PATA and my SATA CD drive though, which is not a surprise (ESDI_506 does that too, although only If I disable the APIC).

Atapi.mpd also brings in some "nice" new bugs, like being limited to 8GB HDDs (until NT4 SP4 I believe), not supporting DMA at all (until NT4 SP2), not supporting LBA48, detecting every "missing"/"empty" port as being always my primary IDE port (so I have four drive letters for the SAME CD unit), etc.

At least, the full source code for some years old version of it is available on the NT4 DDK.

It may be an easier project than porting the whole of UniATA (which has orders of magnitude more code and uses a completely different layout that, while cleaner, is not "the MS way" and as such may not be as portable).

Do not ever try Win2k's ATAPI.sys; it does not even link with scsiport.

Edited December 14, 2008 by javispedro

[dencorso]

What about ATAPI.SYS from NT4SP6? Did you try it? NT4SP6 is still available, and there's a download link for it at MDGx's...

[javispedro]

What about ATAPI.SYS from NT4SP6? Did you try it? NT4SP6 is still available, and there's a download link for it at MDGx's...

Just tried it, no luck. AFAIK no changes from SP4.

Edited December 22, 2008 by javispedro