Henry S. Courbis of GSE-Reactive.com, has announced an updated setup utility for the ///SHH Systeme Microdrive controller. The software is available here.
The update corrects an issue that has allowed Windows to potentially corrupt CF cards without the users knowledge. All users of the MicroDrive series of Controllers are urged to download the new software and run the Setup utility again. All that’s needed is to select ‘W’ twice to rewrite the corrected partition information to your CF card. Once written, reboot and you’re done!
It seems that for some time now users of the MicroDrive series Controllers have been having an issue when inserting their CF cards in Windows based computers. Most users have reported that when they insert their CF card in to their PC based CF Card Reader Windows will automatically open a window displaying what appears to be corrupted data. Even if this window didn’t appear, Windows would tend to think that the CF card might contain data related to the PC and allow users to access it directly without any warnings. Of course ProDOS is not directly accessible through Windows, hence CiderPress, and trying to write anything directly to the card would ultimately render the CF card corrupted and unusable on your Apple.
Most Windows XP systems are set by default with ‘Auto Insert’ enabled. Auto Insert is the feature that when a user inserts a piece of media (CD, Floppy, CF Card, etc.) it will automatically open a window, prompt you for an action of what to do or start a program. Windows likes to keep track of things, sometimes too well. If a user inserted their CF card and a window opened, Windows would sometimes write a ‘tracking’ file (DESKTOP.INI) back to the CF card when the window was closed or the user used the Windows USB utility ‘Safely Remove Hardware’. Unlike what most people think, this is not Bill Gates’s last attempt to destroy ProDOS once and for all but a way to help Windows identify and track what the media has been used for. It also holds settings like how you prefer to have the media’s contents displayed. As mentioned above, any attempt to write data to the card without using CiderPress will ultimately render the CF card corrupted and unusable on your Apple.
Some users have also been using the Windows USB utility ‘Safely Remove Hardware’. This is probably the worst thing a user can do as Windows will almost undoubtedly try and write to the CF card when used. We recommend NEVER using this utility when using ProDOS formatted CF media on your PC.
The reason Windows thinks it’s dealing with media that might be PC related is due to the fact that the MicroDrive Setup utility wasn’t totally erasing Block 0 where some of the DOS format resides, the last 255 bytes of Block 0 to be exact. Windows would then ‘see’ this last little piece of DOS format and think the CF card might contain PC related data and in doing so start to treat the CF card as a PC storage device.
The updated MicroDrive Setup utility will now zero the final 255 bytes of Block 0 on the CF card. This will prevent Windows from mistaking the ProDOS formatted CF card as being DOS formatted. You can verify this by looking in CiderPress or Windows. As a Logical Drive CiderPress will show the card as ‘Removable – Format Not Recognized’. ***We always recommend using Physical Device rather then Logical when using CiderPress.*** If you try and open the CF card in Windows it will now report ‘Card Not Formatted. Format?’. Although it’s still possible to destroy your CF card with Windows, it’s now at least much harder to inadvertently do so.
Mr. Lange, Mr. Garber and myself would like to personally thank Mr. Fadden of FaddenSoft.com for helping us find and identify this issue. Any corrections or comments to this notice are always welcome. If anyone is having issues downloading the updates please feel free to contact me directly.