Need some help with Fujitsu 9.1gb SCSI Drive and GVP HC+8 II

[AmigaJohn]

Hello Everyone

My Quantum SCSI drive went out on my A2000 and I have been trying to get another drive I have partitioned and working with it and my GVP HC+8 II Controller.

The drive is a Fujitsu MAB3091SC

On changing HDToolbox to use gvpscsi.device, opening it and reading the configuration, it displays the following:

Cylinders: 7225
Heads: 10
Blocks per Track: 248
Blocks per Cylinder: 2460
Size: 496912K (485 Meg)

I've used this documentation to try to come up with some of the values:

http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COM...rod-manual.pdf

Page 29 says the MAB3091xx has the following:

Formatted capacity/device: 9.1 GB
Unformatted capacity/device: 11.9 GB
Number of disks: 5
Number of heads: 10
Number of cylinders: 8491
Unformatted capacity/track: 85,504 to 126,976

Additionally, on page 45 it says the MAB3091xx has 10 Data Heads, 512 Block Length, and 17,824,700 User Blocks.

I've heard various answers on how to calculate these values and manually input them but I've wasted more time than I'm willing to admit. Can someone help me with the values that I need to use in HDToolbox to see this drive as the full 9.1 GB drive? Also, when I partition, if I use FFS can I use the whole disk as long as I keep the partitions under 4 GB? I've seen very mixed answers on this, and also about what partition type is best.

Thanks so much!
John

[mark_k]

First confirm the actual number of user sectors of your drive using a program like SCSIQuery.

Then factorise that number. You can use pfactor. Choose values for cylinders, surfaces and blocks per track such that multiplying them together gives the total number of sectors. (Or something close to that, if you don't care about not using absolutely every sector of the drive.)

[thomas]

Originally Posted by AmigaJohn

On changing HDToolbox to use gvpscsi.device, opening it and reading the configuration, it displays the following:

Cylinders: 7225
Heads: 10
Blocks per Track: 248
Blocks per Cylinder: 2460
Size: 496912K (485 Meg)

The values look ok. 7225 * 10 * 246 * 512 Bytes = 9,100,032,000 Bytes.

Be aware that everything in AmigaOS overflows at 4 GB. Therefore the displayed size is not correct, it's the remainder of the overflow.

During partitioning you will recognise that the displayed partition size is cut off in the same manner.

If you use a file system which is not aware of the 4 GB limit, your data will be at risk.

Note well that the 4 GB limit applies to the harddrive, not to partitions. Dividing the harddrive into several small partitions does not solve the problem. Only the first 4 GB of the drive is accessible, unless you use a file system with direct SCSI access (like for example PFS3DS or PFS3AIO).

[AmigaJohn]

Getting a bit further, but now I'm in a bind.

I used hdinst.lha from the AmiNet and SFS.lha to format a 2gb partition for DH0. Things were looking pretty good at this point. I used a tutorial I saw on YouTube, but it was for compact flash drives and mine is a SCSI hard drive. I saw a comment in another post how changing MaxTransfer can cause this error specifically in CF drives, but now I can't get in to clear the partition table to start over.

Per the tutorial, I changed MaxTransfer to 0x001FE00

Trying to boot the WB disk and I see

DH0
Program failed (error #80000003).
Wait for disk activity to finish.

I thought I could boot the GVP disk perhaps and clear the partition table, same thing. I also tried removing the boot jumper from my card, booting the GVP disk and doing a binddrivers to see the drive, but I see the same error.

How in the world do I clear the drive so I can start over? What should I do with MaxTransfers setting with a real drive to prevent this, use the defaults?

My A2000 is using a stock 68000 right now. I have a fusion forty accelerator though, but I was hoping to install WB and then install the PnG34 disk and set that back up.

[AmigaJohn]

Nevermind. I ended up going into early boot by holding in both mouse buttons and disabling DH0. For those interested, I just now realized this. Flipped on the fusion forty and presto...

"Note: The SFS file system required a 68020 CPU or higher so will not work on a 68000 based A600, or other 68000 based Amiga system."

Thanks for the insight!

[Jope]

Did you take the old DirectSCSI compatible version of SFS? That would be 1.84. Anything newer will not solve your problem. (oh yeah and you need an 020 cpu too)

Why not use PFS3DS instead.

I had a problem with PFS3AIO and a GVP Series II recently, but the old DS version worked fine.

[dlfrsilver]

yes PFS3 is the way to go.

[AmigaJohn]

You are right Jope. Discovered that partitions I created beyond the 4GB mark weren't able to be seen. I downloaded the newest version of SFS, so I'd need the older version with direct scsi in order for the GVP card to see them?

I'm not exactly stuck on the idea of using SFS. I didn't like the error with my accelerator turned off. If I wanted to play a disk based game with the accelerator turned off, it would be a pain to go into the early startup and disable the hard drive. I'd much rather have a file system that works with or without acceleration.

Sounds like PFS3DS is what I need then?

[AmigaJohn]

I've just downloaded PFS3 from Aminet. Do I actually need to use the installer or can I just use HDInst and choose it as a filesystem? Also, there is a multi-user (mu) version of the filesystem. Which one do I need?

My accelerator is 040, so either PFS3-040ds or msPFS3-040ds? Looks like there is no 68000 ds version, so I'll have to use acceleration.

[Jope]

- don't use the mu version, it's only useful if you have multiuser stuff installed.
- use the installer at first
- use the 000 versions

Ah, the package on aminet seems to be incomplete then, if there is no ds version for 000.. Back when it was still for sale, the installer did install a 000 ds version and the upgrade also patched it to the latest level..

I guess it's ok to share this now that it's been open source for a long time. http://jope.fi/amiga/pfs3r185.lha .. it might be registered with my personal serial number or perhaps I used some warez serial, but who cares, it's not like anyone's going to get any support/upgrades for it these days.

[AmigaJohn]

Because I want to use 68000 sometimes, I'm wondering if this might be best?
http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/pfs3aio

Reason I say that is I don't have a good way to get the filesystem onto my amiga other than disk and this will fit on a disk with HDInst and is built on the latest SVN.

Thanks!

[AmigaJohn]

Success!

I ended up getting pfs3aio from aminet, set it up using HdInst. Filesystem is PFS/3, MaxTransfer is 0xfe00, Buffers set to 300. I have four partitions, DH0: 2gb, DH1: 2gb, DH2: 2gb and DH3: ~2.4gb! The > 4gb barrier has been beat, and pfs3aio works either in 68000 or 68040 operation! My old drive was 2gb total, so this is one extensive upgrade.

I also had to download PFS3_53.lha from aminet for the sole purpose of getting a copy of the pfsformat utility to format the partitions.

Thanks for everyone's help talking me through this. You've been most helpful.

[Jope]

If pfs3aio works for you without errors, then it's fine to use. I seem to remember you mentioning you had a GVP Series II, and I mentioned that pfs3aio bugged out on me with a 4GB disk on a Series II.

Basically if you managed to copy all your files to the HD using pfs3aio without any error requesters, then it's safe to use. ;-)

I rarely bother with pfsformat, sys:system/format has been sufficient. :-)

[AmigaJohn]

"I had a problem with PFS3AIO and a GVP Series II recently, but the old DS version worked fine."

Ha! I had missed that line... my DH2: drive had some write errors today.

[Jope]

You can downgrade to the 18.5 ds version by just downloading the lha from my link and upgrading the filesystem with hdtoolbox. Perhaps the problem will go away.

Worst case, you'll have to format quick dh2: and copy your stuff back on there.