PCMCIA slot with cf card - help needed

[spacebiscuit]

Struggling to find a concise guide on how to use my compact flash via the pcmcia slot as a hard drive.

I believe that I need this:

http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/CFD133

I followed the instructions and copied the compactflash.device to DEVS on my main drive - the file already existed but I over-wrote it (newer)

It then says to mount the drive:

"by double-clicking cfd/devs/CF0"

Using WinUAE I copied the CFD133 folder to my workbench, and executed the CFO in the above path. The stop watch appears and closes, if I execute it a second time I get a message that CF0 is already mounted but I don't see an icon on the desktop.

A couple of things, when I set the compact flash up in HDTools I am sure I named it DH1, does it have to be CF0?

The only other thing I can think of is that I read that fat95 (?) is required. Is that the case, I set my compact flashes cards up to use pfs3aio, not sure if that is significant or not?

Any help appreciated

[Weasel Fierce]

If you do mount cf0: in CLI, does it show up?

I am not sure if you can use it as a hard drive (as in booting etc) but it should show up as a volume.

[Snoopy1234]

I started out years ago with this guide, before the drivers were available on floppy from stores.
https://devdef.blogspot.com/2014/01/...ash-guide.html

[spacebiscuit]

Thanks guys - I am booting a smaller CF plugged into an IDE adapter. The PCMCIA CF is just an extended drive to store games etc.

Trying to work out how to install "fat95". All forum posts I have read say "copy fat95 to sys/L". The fat95 I have downloaded is a lha file, using winUAE mounted to my pc I can browse the folder but what am I copying over, the whole folder or a single file - I don't see any files named just fat95. There is a read me of course, when I try to open that I get "unable to open your tool sys/EditPad".

Just also wondering, how essential is it that I have fat95 installed. As mentioned I have setup my card with pfs3aio on the amiga, isn't fat95 to enable reading of drives setup and formatted on windows?

Thanks.

[supaduper]

it wont work if you formatted the CF to PFS3 aio, you need to format the cf to Fat32 and then it will work

the Fat95 file is below, put it in the :L drawer
fat95.zip

[mfilos]

Originally Posted by supaduper

it wont work if you formatted the CF to PFS3 aio, you need to format the cf to Fat32 and then it will work

the Fat95 file is below, put it in the :L drawer
Attachment 77728

You can use whatever Amiga Filesystem instead of FAT in the CF of choice.
You just need to change the CF0 to use L: pfs3aio instead of L:fat95

[supaduper]

Thanks Mfilos I did not know that

[Jope]

Originally Posted by mfilos

You can use whatever Amiga Filesystem instead of FAT in the CF of choice.
You just need to change the CF0 to use L: pfs3aio instead of L:fat95

You need to have geometry that matches the partition layout of the card in the dosdriver as well, if you use something else than fat95. Fat95 is special in that it parses the PC style MBR partition table itself when mounting.

Amiga native filesystems usually don't have any kind of partition table parsing included. Giggledisk can be used to parse RDB partition tables and it also creates dos drivers for you. It's a command line utility. 3.9/3.2 ship with a GUI based mounter tool, which parses partition tables and mounts partitions on the fly.

[spacebiscuit]

I guess the choice of filesystem to use can be made later. For the moment I am not even seeing an icon on the desktop for the CF. If I understand correctly if the filesystem is not set correctly I should still see the icon albeit unable to read the card.

So far I have copied:

cf0 and cf0.info -> DH0/Devs/DOSDrives
comfactlfash.device -> DH0/Devs

For what is it worth I also have in DH0/L

fat95
fat95.lha
fat95.zip

I double click the cf0 is DOSDrives I get mount error, cf0 already mounted.

As a bare minimum is not enough to see a desktop icon for the pcmcia -> cf drive?

[alexh]

A600/A1200? Kickstart version?

If you are using A1200 with KS < 3.1.4 you might need to add CardReset and CardPatch to your startup.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by spacebiscuit

I guess the choice of filesystem to use can be made later. For the moment I am not even seeing an icon on the desktop for the CF. If I understand correctly if the filesystem is not set correctly I should still see the icon albeit unable to read the card.

So far I have copied:

cf0 and cf0.info -> DH0/Devs/DOSDrives

This will make it mount on boot.

For what is it worth I also have in DH0/L

fat95
fat95.lha
fat95.zip

You can remove fat95.lha and fat95.zip from L. You can run

version L:fat95 file full

to make sure that the fat95 file you have copied to L is sane.

Fat95 also comes with an installer program (fat95/english/install_fat95, it has an icon) that you can run after you have unpacked it. It doesn't say much, but it copies the files into the right place.

A handy tip if you aren't already making use of your ram disk: I like to unpack stuff like this to RAM: so I don't have to clean up old installer directories from my hard disk.

I double click the cf0 is DOSDrives I get mount error, cf0 already mounted.

If you have rebooted the machine after copying cf0 to devs:dosdrivers, it will already be mounted.

You can also run the command

info

in a shell to see what devices you already have mounted. Especially check to see what device name your boot partition has. You can see devices (disk drives or partitions) in the left under "Unit" and volumes (a disk inserted into the drive) under "Name" on the right. Of course your hard disk will have a volume permanently inserted into it, but the concept is the same.

Devices can contain volumes or be empty. Your first floppy drive is always DF0: but it can contain a volume "Workbench:" or "My Files:" or whatever. You can address it as DF0: regardless of what is inserted, or the volume name if that particular volume is inserted. If the volume you requested is not inserted, DOS will ask you to insert it into any available drive.

As a bare minimum is not enough to see a desktop icon for the pcmcia -> cf drive?

The desktop icon will show up once you insert a fat32 formatted CF card into the CF slot, given that everything is working correctly. Sometimes it takes a few moments for it to become visible.

[supaduper]

Also it can be very picky with some cf cards, I bought a couple before I found one that will work

[spacebiscuit]

A600 - so I guess kickstart 2.05. I installed Classic WB 68k on my 256mb cf plugged into the ide.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by spacebiscuit

A600 - so I guess kickstart 2.05. I installed Classic WB 68k on my 256mb cf plugged into the ide.

Ok so that should work without cardpatch or cardreset.

[spacebiscuit]

Oh right - so I formatted a Sandisk 2gb card as fat32 and and when I reboot I can access which is awesome. Seems the pcmcia adpater works then and I know I have a compatible card.

Unless it is strongly recommended to use fat95 snd since I already prepared a 4gb card with my games which is using pfs3aio, if I want to use this card I should just edit the cf0 mount file in DOSDrivers to point to: L: pfs3aio ?

Sorry for the totally newbie question, but the mount file is just a config file which I can edit with a text editor? Does the Amiga have an "open-with" type option or do I have to open the editor and then the mount file to edit it.

I'm nearly there I think - thanks!

[alexh]

I always used Fat95 as it makes it much easier to transfer files from the PC. I only ever used the PCMCIA to transfer files to the CF card attached to the IDE interface.

[supaduper]

Yeah use the built in text editor, boot up then from the top menu select execute command and in the box input` Ed \ `and the text editor will open

[Jope]

Originally Posted by spacebiscuit

Unless it is strongly recommended to use fat95 snd since I already prepared a 4gb card with my games which is using pfs3aio, if I want to use this card I should just edit the cf0 mount file in DOSDrivers to point to: L: pfs3aio ?

It's not enough to just edit it like that, as i noted above.

i recommend just sticking with fat32 formatted cards when using them via PCMCIA. That way you have full cross OS interoperability and seamless interchangeability between cards. PFS3 will not be as flexible.

[spacebiscuit]

Using winUAE I edited the cf0 in DosDrive and pointe dit to L: pfs3aio I also updated the dos version on the last line to 0x50465303 as it was set on the card in hdtools.

When I reboot the desktop the cf icon disappears, the card is a Kingston which I think I have read can cause issues.

So I tried the 2gb card which worked with fat95, I re-partitioned it and used the pfs3aio filesystem so that it was set identical to the Kingston. With this card when I reboot I get an icon but: CF0:NDOS

Another issue, when I try to execute "Ed /" in winUAE I have to use kickstart v3, on the real amiga or winUAE running v2.05 (booting of the 256mb cf in both cases) I get the black screen and "recoverable error" when issuing the commnad.

[alexh]

Wrong version of Workbench installed? You need Workbench 2.0 or better 2.1