Attaching and reading real SCSI drive on PC/WinUAE

[e5frog]

Seems one of my five SCSI drives has given up, it's a 100MB Quantum ProDrive LPS. Haven't given up on it yet though, it spins up and identifies but I can't read anything from it.
As I don't seem to have any backup I thought it would be best to backup the other four drives (40-120MB each).

So I plugged in the SCSI card in the Windows XP and after som fiddling I managed to get it to show in WinUAE, I wasn't able to do anything more than make a hdf file - which is the exact same data as if I save a binary file of the entire drive in WinHex.

If mounting a bootable drive to the PC SCSI card and it shows up, you can look at the raw data - it's found in WinUAE. How do I get it to boot and run? I read somewhere about RDB compatible SCSI cards but I can't find it again. So you need a special card to be able to do it?

If making a hdf-file and the RDB thingy doesn't work because of an incompatible SCSI card - is it possible to manually type in the layout and make it work?
I had some data written on the disk on a piece of tape but when extracting the Mountlist it has the same information.

So my 120MB bootdrive comes with this Mountlist info:

DH2: Device = hddisk.device
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 3
BlocksPerTrack = 52
FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem
Reserved = 2
LowCyl = 2 ; HighCyl = 1535
Buffers = 17
BufMemType = 0
DosType = 0x444F5301
#
RES2: Device = hddisk.device
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 3
BlocksPerTrack = 52
Reserved = 2
LowCyl = 1 ; HighCyl = 2
Buffers = 1
BufMemType = 0
#


But... that's not all the information requested.
I actually managed to start HDToolBox on a hdf file but then it requested similar data as above but I don't have some of the information. I guess it needs to be the exact same for the files to appear?

So what's the easiest way of being able to boot in WinUAE from a real bootable working SCSI disk? Do I need to get some other SCSI card, is there a compatible list somewhere?
Could I start with a fresh installation and then copy the Mountlist information over to be able to at least copy some files from the hard drives? A binary file of the drive isn't very useful I guess.

Thanks for reading!

[Jope]

If it is from an A2090, it will not have an RDB. You must set it up with an A2090A controller in WinUAE.

[thomas]

No, it's not required to use a special controller.

But:

- do not use HDToolbox. HDToollbox will write to the disk and overwrite/destroy your data.

- you cannot boot from such a disk. I suppose that your A2000 did not boot from this disk, either. You need a boot floppy (ADF) or another bootable HDD (HDF, directory) to boot from. This floppy/hdd also has to contain the mountlist you mentioned above.


Add the HDF to WinUAE using UAE controller and RDB mode.

Boot from the drive with the mountlist.

In the mountlist change hddisk.device to uaehf.device and unit=3 to the number of the HDF in WinUAE's HDD list. The first entry is unit=0, the second unit=1 and so on.

Then try to mount dh2:, should work if you did it right.

[e5frog]

Drives are hooked to an A2090A in the Amiga 2000, can you use a A2090A controller in WinUAE?

The DH2: shown above is the hard drive I boot from in the A2000, it has a RES2 partition and the DH2: partition as can be seen above.

So autobooting in WinUAE from the disk or "Hardfile" that boots on the real machine doesn't work?
At least I know what needs to be done then - thanks!

[mark_k]

Yes WinUAE can emulate an A2090A. It should be able to auto-boot from the image files you created from your drives.

Make sure "RDB mode" is enabled in WinUAE's Hardfile Settings page. RDB mode is actually a misnomer, it should be something like "this HDF is an image of an entire drive, not a single partition, so don't create a fake RDB"

So even though the A2090A doesn't support the RDB spec, you have to enable "RDB mode".

[e5frog]

I can activate the A2090A in Expansions, what controller do I set for the hardfile? Do I need a ROM file for the A2090A as well?

[mark_k]

Yes you need a ROM image for the A2090A. It's in expansion_boot_roms.zip in The Zone. (Or you could dump the ROM from your actual A2090A card. But it's most likely the same version.)

In WinUAE Expansions settings, select SCSI controllers then A2090a (Commodore) then the A2090A ROM.

In Hardfile Settings, select Commodore A2090a and the correct SCSI ID (i.e. same ID as your actual drive is set to).

[e5frog]

I actually dumped the two HI/LO 27256 eproms and the smaller 2764 - but I'd need to assemble them. I think the HI/LO roms contain every second byte...

I needed to do that some other time, but my hexeditor didn't have that function as far as I could tell - I almost wrote a program to handle it (cheat some with C++ at times).
Luckily it does a nice byteswap for when making kickstart roms.

So thanks for the link.
If using a hardfile I can basically use any ID or should I use the same as the drive had?

[mark_k]

Probably best to use the same as the drive had, because the mountlist in the boot partition will refer to that ID (unit).

If you could upload the EPROMs somewhere that would be good, I can check if they're any different from the already-available ones.

[e5frog]

No luck here, A2000 will also not boot up from the boot disk any more - I haven't intentionally done any changes to any disk in Windows, nor saved anything when looking at things in HDTool.
I can't mount any of the hardfiles neither through A2090a nor using uaehf.device in MountList and booting from a working installation (that I use on the A600 which is backed up in a Windows folder).

Maybe all the drives are trashed (now - when I started they were all working and computer booted up), don't know. My boot drive stopped spinning instead of loading data, ended up in a Workbench cli window and could do nothing.

Guess I'll try a real drive again using the A2090a method...

Will upload the eprom dumps somewhere soon.

[mark_k]

Assuming you kept the original unaltered image files you created before messing with copies of them in WinUAE, at least all your data will be safe. If you didn't... well, almost all your data is probably still recoverable at least. Just make sure to backup/archive the image files and only work with copies.

I guess it's possible that doing something in HDToolBox caused it to write to the disk/image, overwriting the A2090-type partition info. Could you attach the WinUAE config you're using?

[e5frog]

Trying with one of the seemingly still working disks, former DH6:, a 40MB Quantum ProDrive ELS 42S, it shows up in Windows as not initiated, not allocated, 39MB, name is correct in System. I can check it out in WinHex, so all seems good there.

I did a verify with my former binary backup, it was bit perfect.

So, unless something was somehow automatically written before first backup, the SCSI card is incompatible or the cable is broken - it seems it's OK.
Don't know how to get any files from it though. I can scan through with WinHex and find text I recognize, like the startup sequence or Mountlist.

Can't mount the hdf-file, can't get to the real hard drive... (have yet to try on the real thing what I'm doing in emulation - booting from other software and trying to reach data from the old drives)

I have tried adding the real disk under A2090a, with hddisk.device and proper unit number and also uaehf.device. When in Workbench you should just need to write "mount dh6:" and drive icon should appear, right?
Or have I missed something?

The mount command works without errors but when trying to "dir dh6:" it complains about memory.
I'm not sure how DH3,4,5 and 6 was mounted with the original startup after booting from DH2:

[mark_k]

Can you attach the WinUAE config file you're using?

[e5frog]

Here's the current configuration.

Seems I was missing hddisk.device, so I tracked that down. Didn't help though.

[mark_k]

I had a quick look at your config, and...

Check the Expansions settings page. You have the "Autoboot disabled" box checked which will prevent auto-booting.

Also, Chip RAM is set to 8MB, slow RAM to 1MB. To better match a real A2000 have chip RAM <= 2MB, no slow RAM if chip RAM >512KB. You can add a Zorro II fast RAM board up to 8MB. [That probably won't affect the emulated A2090A, but I think it'd be best to match your actual Amiga config as closely as possible.]

Also, something I forgot about before... hddisk.device unit numbers in the mountlist map to drive SCSI IDs like this (see page 23 of the A2090 manual):
SCSI ID = unit number - 3

That means for your drive with Unit = 3 in the mountlist, you'd set the drive SCSI ID (in WinUAE settings) to 0.

[e5frog]

Yes, I disabled autoboot as I boot from an installation in a PC directory, the real boot disk is bad (just clicks four times and then spin down) so I just want to open the hard drives that still work and copy the files.

Ahh... I was a bit confused with the memory, I have 1MB on board and 8MB on a Z2 card in the real machine.

Good explanation on the SCSI ID:s, corrected MountList.

I don't have much progress though, I can write "mount dh6:" in a CLI window - and it seems OK with that but if I try and do anything - it crashes or hangs or complains about memory missing.

I have placed FastFileSystem in L: and hddisk.device in Devs: Mountlist should be correct.

/* Entry for Quantum ProDrive ELS 42S HDD, works on LPS 42S to */

DH6: Device = hddisk.device
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 1
BlocksPerTrack = 52
FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem
Reserved = 2
LowCyl = 2 ; HighCyl = 1536
Buffers = 10
BufMemType = 0
Dostype = 0x444F5301
#

Maybe it's the SCSI card that messes things up, it's an initio ioi 9100UW, I have an Adaptec card at work, maybe I'll try with that instead.

Does anyone feel like having a look at a drive image and see if it's sane and if it can be used for anything.
I have done hdf file from WinUAE and I also tested a tool called Selfimage recommended on some Amiga page I googled and I also made backup by backup image and copying all data to a file - all these give exactly the same result. Same file size, same information - different suffix on some of them, img, dd, bin, hdf.

Smallest one is 41MB, it's the drive I currently am trying to use in WinUAE.

EDIT:
mount dh6:
dir dh6:

Result:
"
DH6
Program failed (error #80000004).
Wait for disk activity to finish.
"

[Toni Wilen]

Does recovery programs (like disksalv or fixdisk, fixdisk even works under 1.3) find anything if you run it after mounting the partition?

Perhaps A2090 driver is so buggy that it fails to work with "too new" KS/WB versions? Try 1.3

[mark_k]

Originally Posted by e5frog

Good explanation on the SCSI ID:s, corrected MountList.

I think the unit number was already correct? For an A2090 mount file, Unit = 3 corresponds to drive SCSI ID 0.

Originally Posted by e5frog

I don't have much progress though, I can write "mount dh6:" in a CLI window - and it seems OK with that but if I try and do anything - it crashes or hangs or complains about memory missing.

I have placed FastFileSystem in L: and hddisk.device in Devs: Mountlist should be correct.

Where did you get hdddisk.device from? There's no hddisk.device file on the A2090 install disk. You need to have the HDDisk file and its icon HDDisk.info in the Expansion drawer of your boot disk (i.e. in SYS:Expansion), and run BindDrivers in your startup-sequence. After that you should be able to mount partitions correctly.

Also, if you're using Kickstart 2.0 or later, you could delete the FileSystem= line from the mount files. (Or, make sure the FFS version in L: is not the old WB1.3 one.)

Originally Posted by e5frog

Maybe it's the SCSI card that messes things up, it's an initio ioi 9100UW, I have an Adaptec card at work, maybe I'll try with that instead.

It's almost certainly nothing to do with the PC SCSI card, so I wouldn't mess with that as that aspect is probably working fine.

Originally Posted by e5frog

Does anyone feel like having a look at a drive image and see if it's sane and if it can be used for anything.

I'd be happy to take a look if you want to compress (e.g. with 7-zip) and upload it somewhere. But bear in mind it might contain your personal files/data.

[e5frog]

@Toni Wilen
Disksalv shows the mounted drive, can't do anything with it, I have tried validate - it hangs with the timer clock showing.
Yes, could be an emulation problem, I'll try and update to the latest WinUAE. I think the drives needed to be partitioned in three partitions for the 1.3, I had left method a long time ago after getting KS3.1, from the Mountlist it seems they were all formatted as a single partition. It was probably more than 15 years since I did that, memory is vague for this one time thing.


@mark_k
I recopied the Mountlist from the binary copy of DH2: hard drive - and had forgotten to fix the Unit #.

I found that out reading this page:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthre...2701&styleid=3
I had just changed the name of hddisk from the install disk before that... so there's not actually any hddisk.device file just hddisk in Expansion?
I did try placing hddisk and it's info file in the Expansion folder, binddrivers is in the startup-sequence.

I'm running KS3.1 and I have tried setting things up the same way as on the real thing, using the same MountList etc - not saying it was correct to start with but it worked 3-4 days ago. I started off with the copy I have on the PC from my A600HD installation (it's using a CF card and things were a lot easier than these A2090a SCSI drives).

Don't think there's much personal files/data of interest, lef me know if you find anything juicy. ;-)
I bought a SCSI card reader some time ago, Mechware something, that I planned to use to copy all the hard drives and being able to move files easily from the PC. I think I got lost in the LUN jungle with the different cards using different LUNs and I could only use #0 or something like that which was PCMCIA - so I got an adapter for SD card (well, I had gotten that for the A600 earlier) ... and never got to it or never got it to work, don't recall which. Maybe I had cards over 256MB or perhaps there was the PC-formatting problem...?


I saved the A2090a ROM readouts here, these are raw from the chips, could be written to two 27256 chips if wanting to add autoboot to one of those A2090 with empty sockets:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxu...ew?usp=sharing

It's the same as the shared A2090a.rom if combining them and cutting the interesting piece out. I read yesterday that someone had applied the 256MB patch to these roms and burnt new ones, is that shared or does it need to be redone? I wrote and asked about it, not sure if there has been a reply.

It's just a matter of finding this in the binary, whatever that may be in machine code:

divu.w #8,d1
mulu.w #8,d1 ; truncate to nearest factor of 8

and replace it with this, whatever that may be in machine code:

and.l #fffffff8,d1 ; truncate to nearest factor of 8
nop

Then "Dissect/Bytewise 8-Bit" in WinHex, paste code in and then burn new roms... as the soft fix only works if you have a spiced up A2000 and have the rom copied to memory.


Here's my 40MB DH6: drive 7z to 11MB:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxu...ew?usp=sharing
I'd appreciate directions on how to read files off from it if anyone succeed in doing so. Mountlist has been posted already.

Here's also all the A2090 tools that I found:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxu...ew?usp=sharing

[e5frog]

IT BOOTS IT BOOTS!!!!

WinUAE with A2090a emulation etc booted the DH2: binary backup!!


EDIT:
Adding all the hardfiles - and it looks just like for real!!
Adding FastFileSystem for FileSys doesn't seem necessary works either way, all hardfiles are set as RDB I didn't change SCSI-2.

I'm going to explore a bit and then perhaps upgrade, find a large enough SCSI drive to handle all data and patch that A2090a with the 256MB fix.

There's a A2090-kalalrom that is already patched and is dated later than mine:
http://www.traumstation.ch/hardware/...e/Amiga/A2090/