PFS3AIO Questions

[manic23]

I am trying to get PFS3AIO on a 4GB CF card, im doing it on a real Amiga A1200.

The issue I am having is that after getting everything done by following this guide to the letter, and restarting the Amiga, I do not see the partitions on the desktop to format them.

I have tried using PFSFormat included here, but as there is no device recognised, that does not work either as it can't see the CF card/HD.

Anyone help me?

[Toni Wilen]

Open shell and type C:Info. Does it list new partitions? What status?

[Retrofan]

I would try booting from the Install disk and running HDTools to change for example the buffers, save it and now if the partition appears, format it before rebooting.

[manic23]

Toni: No the HD volumes do not show up with the info command, just the RAM disk and DF0

Retrofan: what should the buffer size be then? that guide suggested that 150 for DH0 and 250 for DH1 would work, I have DH0 at 250mb and DH1 using the rest of a 4GB card

[Retrofan]

I'm not saying the buffer is a problem, I say to change it just to be possible to save it again.

[Toni Wilen]

Problem is not filesystem if partitions won't appear. Check all hdtoolbox settings, perhaps partition is set to not automount.

[thomas]

Or identifier (DosType) of file system does not match identifier of partition.

[manic23]

Thanks for the help guys, but to be honest I have totally given up on getting PFS3 or even SFS working, nothing I do seems to work, I'm going to stick with trusty old FFS, it's good enough for just playing WHDLoad games, which is what I mainly use my Miggy for anyway, I was just curious to see if it would make my baby faster, but it's just not work the hair pulling

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by manic23

Thanks for the help guys, but to be honest I have totally given up on getting PFS3 or even SFS working, nothing I do seems to work, I'm going to stick with trusty old FFS, it's good enough for just playing WHDLoad games, which is what I mainly use my Miggy for anyway, I was just curious to see if it would make my baby faster, but it's just not work the hair pulling

Perhaps someone in the UK can make it for you. It deserves some effort to install it; your miggy will go much faster than with FFS.

Edit: And thinking now, even Amigakit offers to prepare their Cf's with PFS3 if you tell them so. http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=883

[manic23]

Thank you Retrofan, but that is not an option for me, I don't like having to rely on someone else, I like to understand how to do things myself, so that I can learn and be self sufficient. If I can't do that then I'd rather leave it. Maybe I'll have another go at it soon, but for now my goal is to complete Lemmings and Lemmings 2, that should keep me busy for a while hehe

[demolition]

If you start HDToolbox again, can you see the partitions there?

[manic23]

Originally Posted by demolition

If you start HDToolbox again, can you see the partitions there?

Yes I can, but WB 3.1 does not see them

[Toni Wilen]

Attach hdtoolbox screenshots (one from main partitioning screen, first partition selected and advanced checkbox ticked and one from both filesystem screens). You must be missing some extra setting that is not needed when using built-in FFS.

[demolition]

I put an image in the zone from a partitioned 4GB CF card with PFS3 using all the recommended settings. DH0 is 250MB, DH1 is the rest.
You can use WinImage to write it to a CF card using the function 'Disk->Restore Virtual Hard Disk image on physical drive'.
On my machine WinImage always displays an error message when it reaches the end of the file for some reason (maybe because the file is too small for the destination?) but it works fine anyway.
After this image has been written, two drives should appear on your workbench screen. Format them by executing 'pfsformat device DH0: name Workbench quick' and similar for DH1. Now you should be good to go. If your CF card is smaller than mine, DH1 might not work since it won't fit on your card, but I think they're usually the same size.

[manic23]

demolition, you are a true legend, thank you so much for you help, I will report back...

[manic23]

Just reporting back as promised, your image worked fine thank you mate, on another side note I figured out where I was going wrong with my problem, turned out in the partition page I forgot to type in the identifier number 0x... etc.

I have to be brutally honest though, I cant say that PFS3 is a lot faster on my system, i pretty much just run WHDLoad games so admittedly im not pushing my CF card that hard so maybe if I were to use more hard drive intensive apps etc I would see a difference.

Thanks for all your help.

[demolition]

Good to hear that you got it working. If you preload some big games in WHDLoad, particularly those with many small files, you'll see a big improvement in the loading time, for example Beneath a Steel Sky CD32 version which loads 112 MB from a million files (feels like it). It might take days to load using FFS. I gave up after waiting an hour..

Also copying a bunch of files from CF should be noticably faster, like when moving a bunch of WHDLoad games onto the HDD.

[Scyphe]

Toni, will you be updating PFS3_aio-handler (which currently sits at using PFS/DS3 18.0 according to HDToolBox (while the file contents says 18.3)) to the 18.5 ones?

http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/PFS3_53

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Scyphe

Toni, will you be updating PFS3_aio-handler (which currently sits at using PFS/DS3 18.0 according to HDToolBox (while the file contents says 18.3)) to the 18.5 ones?

PFS3AIO is based on 18.4 open source version (afaik 18.5 sources were lost) + all SVN updates.

[Scyphe]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

PFS3AIO is based on 18.4 open source version (afaik 18.5 sources were lost) + all SVN updates.

Okay. I just tried the muPFS3-020DS (18.5) and noticed no difference. I guess your version is actually containing newer code since you included all the SVN updates. Just trying out various combinations to find the fastest version for my IDE-CF (SanDisk Ultra 4GB 30MB/s) which on my stock A1200 gives 1020-1080KB/s ie. around 1MB/s.

I sold my M-Tec T1230/42MHz accelerator with 4MB Fastram and is waiting for my Blizzard MK-IV 50MHz to show up. Speed was 2MB/s with the old accelerator so it seems disk transfer speed is connected with having Fastram and perhaps a fast 030 (with MMU and FPU).

I'll go back to PFS3_aio-handler. Btw, is it auto-sensing what kind of CPU/system it's using + Identifier (50445303 = PDS3 to get DirectSCSI on A1200 IDE) or is it using a generic 68k driver for all systems whether 68000 or 68060? I gather from the very name of the file (All In One) that it's auto-sensing during the installation of the filesystem in combination with the identifier... ?