GEOS download section
Set up another drive
I hope you have more than one disk drive that you can use in GEOS. If not then you will get thoroughly disgusted with GEOS, so you might as well just quit right now. I'm serious, GEOS is no fun with one single 1541. It just isn't big enough to get anything productive done in GEOS all by itself. However, if you have a second 1541, you can do quite a bit. And if you have an REU, you can do even more. Likewise, a 1581 is a HUGE help when it comes to working in GEOS.
To get a second disk drive working we need to run CONFIGURE. I assume you already have GEOS booted up. Take your joystick and use it to move the arrow pointer around the screen. I'm going to call this a mouse pointer even if you're not yet using a mouse. Anyway, move it over the icon that represents the CONFIGURE program. Then hit the fire button twice in rapid succession. You have just double-clicked on the icon. The deskTop recognizes this and will load up CONFIGURE for you and run it. In a few moments, the user interface for CONFIGURE will appear on your screen.
You'll see three areas of the screen that represent the three possible disk drives you can have in GEOS. One of them will already be configured as you can tell. It's quite easy to figure out. You'll see a checkbox indicating the drive type that you are using. The other two empty drive spaces will give you choices to make for configuring one or two more drives. Let's assume you have booted up from device 8 which is known from within GEOS as drive A. You'll see this indicated in the drive A position. Let's also assume you have a second 1541 but it's currently turned off. Go to the drive B area and click on the selection for a 1541 drive. Once you've done that, a dialog box will pop up telling you to turn on the second drive. Turn on the drive and then click on "OK" using your joystick. CONFIGURE will proceed to activate the disk driver for your second drive. You now have both drives A and B available.
You can add a third drive if you have a ram expansion plugged in. The second or third drive can also be configured as a ramdisk rather than a real drive.
Once you've set up the drives the way you'd like, go to the menu at the upper left of the screen and select "save configuration". Once that is completed, select "quit" from the menu and you will exit back to the deskTop.
The next time you want to boot up GEOS, make sure you have both drives turned on and set as device 8 and 9 and CONFIGURE will automatically configure the two drives for you during the bootup time. If you selected a ramdisk and saved the configuration, CONFIGURE will also set up your ramdisk for you during bootup.
NOTE: If you had saved your configuration with a ramdisk as drive B and two real drives as drive A and C, then you would boot up with devices 8 and 10 turned on. There are many different ways to configure your system. You will soon find the setup you like to work with.
Things you should know about disk drives in GEOS
One thing you must know about GEOS is that you do not want to turn the disk drive on or off while GEOS is up and running unless you are instructed to do so by a program such as CONFIGURE. GEOS relies on some code that runs within the disk drive's own memory. Turning the drive off will erase that code and GEOS can lock up when it tries to access the drive.
Also in GEOS 64, there is only room for one disk driver in memory. With an REU, then all three disk drivers can be stored in memory because they are swapped in and out of the REU as needed. Without an REU and with only one disk driver being stored in memory, both drives A and B must be of the same type since they would have to use the same disk driver. In GEOS 128, things are a little easier. There is room for two disk drivers in memory. In order to have a third, then an REU is also needed.
Basically, ram expansion is highly recommended with GEOS.
Now that we've got at least two drives working, let's go do some filecopying in the next step.
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