Switching from 1.3 to 2.04!!! Im confused!

[Galatran]

dear amiga freakz,

I have been using an A500 with the 1.3 kickstart since the original days.. I never had another amiga model, or upgraded. So i dont know jackshit about anything > 1.3

So, Ive been a few weeks playing with the A1200 and the A500 with the 2.0 roms and Im learning how different it actually is. I would like to read somewhere about the differences but I cant find very much information my dear friends...

I noticed that many commands are not working anymore and that things are a bit different...

So, I had a great plan (sigh..) because I have several A500s now, a few with rom switches, so I thought I should make a master HD with the A590 with 3 partitions, 2 different workbenches (1 and 2) and 1 partition for work.

This way i could move the HD around and plug it to another A500 if needed. I set the 1.3 workbench with a higher boot priority so it automatically loads on A500s without the 2.0 rom and with A500s that have the 2.0 rom I would just get the boot menu with the mouse buttons and load the 2.04 workbench.

so far so good it works with the 2.0 rom... i can choose which WB to load.. but when I reboot with the 1.3 rom switched I get a System Request:
Not a DOS disk in unit 0!

I guess I missed to say that I formatted the HD with the kick 2.0 rom and with WB3.0 loaded from floppy. So I smell something is going on!

So is it true that my WB1.3.3 with 1.3 kick cannot read from this HD ?

Im missing something completely obvious or ?

what else needs to be in mind when switching from 1.3 to 2.04 ? because im so used to the good ol´ workbench... I even prefer the old GUI!

phew, I hope the explanation makes sense and that somebody is still awake!

[zipper]

Originally Posted by Galatran

dear amiga freakz,

So is it true that my WB1.3.3 with 1.3 kick cannot read from this HD ?

Yes, 1.3 doesn't understand anything about 2.0 filesystem (learned it in a similar way over 10 years ago). You need 1.3 FFS for KS 1.3.

[Galatran]

aha!

So there is no way the kickstart 1.3 understands the 2.0 filesystem ?

This is crap, im going back to me ol´ 1.3 WB

[zipper]

You need different partitions, one with 1.3 FFS and one wit 2.x FFS. As 1.3 doesn't you let to choose the boot partition, 1.3 partition must be higher priority than 2.x so 1.3 boots by default. If you want to boot from 2.x, you need to switch to 2.x kickstart and the you can choose the boot HD from early startup menu. Or you can use a script to do that choosing.

[Toni Wilen]

1.3 and 2.0 FFS have identical on-disk structures. You only need to make sure you have 1.3 compatible FastFileSystem in RDB. (FFS is in included in 2.0+ ROMs so they should still work)

Also make sure you don't use International or Directory cache modes (OS3.0+ only)

[Galatran]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

1.3 and 2.0 FFS have identical on-disk structures. You only need to make sure you have 1.3 compatible FastFileSystem in RDB. (FFS is in included in 2.0+ ROMs so they should still work)

Also make sure you don't use International or Directory cache modes (OS3.0+ only)

and How do I make sure that I have a 1.3 compatible FFS ?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Galatran

and How do I make sure that I have a 1.3 compatible FFS ?

Use the one that comes with WB 1.3 disk?
(but incompatible would only crash the Amiga while booting so the problem is most likely either: no filesystem in RDB at all or too big partition(s))

[Galatran]

Originally Posted by zipper

You need different partitions, one with 1.3 FFS and one wit 2.x FFS. As 1.3 doesn't you let to choose the boot partition, 1.3 partition must be higher priority than 2.x so 1.3 boots by default. If you want to boot from 2.x, you need to switch to 2.x kickstart and the you can choose the boot HD from early startup menu. Or you can use a script to do that choosing.

so I need to initialize the partition under 1.3 ... what about the shared partition that both WBs see ? also 1.3 FFS ? is there no other way ?

[Galatran]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Use the one that comes with WB 1.3 disk?
(but incompatible would only crash the Amiga while booting so the problem is most likely either: no filesystem in RDB at all or too big partition(s))

ok ! so how do i put a filesystem in the RDB ????

the partitions are:

hd0: 1,5Gb
hd1: 256Mb
hd2: 256Mb

i thought there is no limit of partitions... its a 2Gb SCSI attached to a A590.

sorry, i never had an HD in my amigatimes.... i was one of those who developed the floppychange muscle.

[whiteb]

Originally Posted by Galatran

ok ! so how do i put a filesystem in the RDB ????

the partitions are:

hd0: 1,5Gb
hd1: 256Mb
hd2: 256Mb

i thought there is no limit of partitions... its a 2Gb SCSI attached to a A590.

sorry, i never had an HD in my amigatimes.... i was one of those who developed the floppychange muscle.

No limit as such, but bear in mind that a portion of your system's ram will be allocated to each partition for "BUFFERS".

The more Partitions you have, the more RAM will get assigned as Buffers for the HDD. (Think of sort of cache).

If you have say 10 partitions, each with 100k of Buffer, there goes 1 MB of RAM.

[Galatran]

Originally Posted by whiteb

No limit as such, but bear in mind that a portion of your system's ram will be allocated to each partition for "BUFFERS".

The more Partitions you have, the more RAM will get assigned as Buffers for the HDD. (Think of sort of cache).

If you have say 10 partitions, each with 100k of Buffer, there goes 1 MB of RAM.

hmmm..... Ok... I hope its not chipram....

[whiteb]

Originally Posted by Galatran

hmmm..... Ok... I hope its not chipram....

From memory, HDD Partition buffers *IS* Chipmem, Its in Mountlists (For Virtual devices) that you can alter the Buffer memory type from Chip to Fast ram, but since the HDD Partitions are set up before actual boot takes place, there is no way to swap the buffers to Fast Ram.

AFAIK, the RDB software (HDToolbox etc) only allow you to set the NUMBER of buffers used for partition.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by whiteb

From memory, HDD Partition buffers *IS* Chipmem, Its in Mountlists (For Virtual devices) that you can alter the Buffer memory type from Chip to Fast ram, but since the HDD Partitions are set up before actual boot takes place, there is no way to swap the buffers to Fast Ram.

Nope. Fast RAM has been initialized long long time ago before it is time to boot.

[cosmicfrog]

Cant` he use a mount list entry to mout the FFS/SFS/PFS from 1.3 it been a long long time since i messed about with 1.3

[whiteb]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Nope. Fast RAM has been initialized long long time ago before it is time to boot.

Okay, I stand corrected, but am I correct though, that the BUFFERS for partitions is taken from Chip and not Fast ? Or is there a way that he can designate the Buffers for HDD partitions to be taken from Fastram ?

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by whiteb

Okay, I stand corrected, but am I correct though, that the BUFFERS for partitions is taken from Chip and not Fast ? Or is there a way that he can designate the Buffers for HDD partitions to be taken from Fastram ?

Fast has always higher priority.

BufMemType selects ram type. (0 = default, highest priority first)
Check AllocMem() autodoc for mem flags, I don't remember them

[Galatran]

ok it was very simple, but nobody told me straight to go to HDtoolbox and add the FFS to the first 1.3 partition ! as simple as that, I was totally confused here!

ok.. now my 1.3 rom boots properly in the old OS like i wanted but somehow clicking the right mouse with the 2.0 rom doesnt show the boot menu right now.. hmm..

anyhow..does somebody now a way around with a little addition to the startup-sequence ?

basically a way to detect the 2.0 rom and then to redirect the boot to the 2.04 workbench ?

is this possible ?

[ppill]

AskVersion

[Doc Mindie]

under 2.0+, you get the "early startup options" when you click and hold BOTH mouse buttons.

So if you ahve 1.3 to boot, it should just start straight off the HD, with 2.0 you should press and hold both mouse buttons untill the early startup screen appears, then select your 2.0 partition as your boot partition, use and use.