ACA500 aux 8gb CF?

[rfancella]

Hello all,
Here is my setup: A500 Rev5, Indi ECS, ACA 500 with a working 2gb boot CF and Classic Workbench installed.
I would like to use the 8gb CF that i have setup as my Aux. If I partition the card at 4gb it works great.
If partitioned at 8gb it shows as "CFAUX:NDOS".
Any help would be great.

Thanks,
Ron

[Viserion]

It's 32bit, so 4GB is max. You can access over 4GB with a modded scsi.device, and/or format it in PSF3 for example.

I don't remember if it is possible to bypass that on the ACA, as it is a long time since I last used mine.

It may work if you have a upgraded scsi.device, and format it using psf3, but again I don't remember if it's do able on the ACA.

But boot partition must be under 4GB.

Anyway it's a good practise to have a boot partition between 1-2GB, and use rest to have games and programs on.

Should anything go wrong on the boot partition, reformat it, copy OS, and you are back up running again.

[Toni Wilen]

You probably used filesystem that can't handle >4G drives, for example 3.1 FFS.

ACA500 has full 64-bit capable scsi.device in flash ROM. There is also no boot partition under 4G requirement if both device driver and filesystem is >4G capable.

[Doda]

He does't use 8gb card as a boot and we don't know what filesystem is there so it's really hard to answer something.

[TjLaZer]

Why not just format that fat 32 and use it as is on that slot?

[Viserion]

Read it a bit fast. I first assumed you would replace the 2 GB with 8GB.

[rfancella]

Thank you all for your input.
Yes, I am booting to a 2gb CF using FFS. The AUX card is my chief concern. I did check my DEVS folder and there is no scsi.device to replace with any other. I did find a tut on Classic Workbench and how to enable over 4GB CF. I'll give that a go and see if I can make it work.

Thanks,
Ron

[rfancella]

So,
I updated the scsi.device and it says I already have that version. I will assume it is built into the ACA500. I took an 8gb card and partitioned it into four drives, copied my WB partition to it and it boots just fine in the boot slot. So the bigger card works fine in the Boot slot.
But, when I put an 8gb fat32 formatted CF card into the Aux slot. It still doesn't work. I get CFAUX:NDOS.
Aux is the name of the card, so it does see the card and the name of the card. But will not allow me to do anything with it.
Does anyone know what device the ACA is using for the Aux slot? Or how I can find out?

Thanks,
Ron

[Doda]

The problem doesn't have to be in setting or in some limit (like 2/4GB) but CF card itself can be incompatible and ACA500 can't read it at all. Not every card have to work so if it is possible, try another one. Widely favorite card for this purpose is Sandisk.

[rfancella]

A little update.
The cards are fine. They are all but one Transcend cards.
I partitioned a 16gb one into six partitions and it boots in the Boot slot also.
Also, checked some settings and looks like the device the Aux slot is using is something called aux.scsi and it must be built in because I see nothing in the Devs: folder that would refer to anything like that.
If I do a "version aux.scsi.device" I get back "aux.scsi.device 52.500".
Hmmmm... Wonder if I can add a aux.scsi.device??

Thanks,
Ron

[Doda]

Do you have switch on "IDE driver update" and "AUX CF slot" in ACA500 configuration menu?

[rfancella]

Yes.
The Aux card would not show without.

[Toni Wilen]

It sounds more like built-in FAT filesystem not handling the card/size properly, driver should be fully 64-bit capable.

[rfancella]

Thanks for the reply Tony.
I am kinda thinking the same thing.
Was running the beta firmware for the ACA500, even tried downgrading with the same results.

Thanks,
Ron

[thomas]

What if you format the CFAUX drive on the Amiga? Is it then seen as a disk? And can Windows still read it? (Use quick format, not full format!!)

[rfancella]

Wow, thank you Thomas,
Yes, it is that simple. I figured I didn't need to format it because the 2 GB cards are seen just fine. And figured I could not see it from the PC.
Quick Format the card using IN-FFS and it works just fine on the Amiga side and I can see it just as well from within Windows.

Thanks,
Ron

Originally Posted by thomas

What if you format the CFAUX drive on the Amiga? Is it then seen as a disk? And can Windows still read it? (Use quick format, not full format!!)

[thomas]

What is IN-FFS?

[rfancella]

International Fast File System.
It's FFS with support for international characters in the file names.

Thanks,
Ron

[thomas]

If Windows can read it, then it is formatted with FAT, not FFS. The switches in the Format GUI have no meaning for FAT.

[rfancella]

Agreed. It is in fact Fat32 formatted. But I did format it from the Amiga using IN-FFS. So I am to guess that the ACA500 did some voodoo and formatted it Fat.
F.M. LOL

Thanks,
Ron