A2091 + KS1.3 + WB1.3 Floppy = Frustration

[bozimmerman]

Hello all,

I'm having a strange and frustrating problem.

My Amiga 2000 has a manual kickstart switcher with a 3.1 and 1.3 rom, an A2091 scsi card, a scsi drive with Workbench 3.1 on it, and an inability to boot from floppy whenever the 1.3 rom is activated.

The error I get is "Please insert volume LIBS: into any drive".

I mentioned all the extra hardware because it is ONLY when the 1.3 rom is active, and ONLY when I have the scsi hard drive plugged into the 2091 that I have this problem. Remove the SCSI drive, and it boots fine. If it matters, I think the 2091 is the 4.1 variety with 2mb ram, and none of the 3 option jumpers set.

I really want this all to work because, well, I want it ALL. I want my Amiga 2000 to boot from hard drive and do exciting cutting edge 3.1 stuff sometimes. And sometimes I want it to be a fat Amiga 500 capable of playing those old Floppy Disk games that requires a 1.3 rom.

Any advice is appreciated,
Bo Zimmerman

[thomas]

Does it really say LIBS: or rather LIBS without : ?

Which filesystem (dostype and version) is installed on the harddrive?

Are you sure it boots from floppy? Maybe the harddrive partition has a higher boot priority than the floppy drive.

[bozimmerman]

Originally Posted by thomas

Does it really say LIBS: or rather LIBS without : ?

Which filesystem (dostype and version) is installed on the harddrive?

Are you sure it boots from floppy? Maybe the harddrive partition has a higher boot priority than the floppy drive.

Not sure about the ":", it might be without. OS 3.1/International/FFS is on the hard drive. And I'm, oh, 80% sure it's booting from floppy, just by the listening to the sounds of the floppy drive passing tracks, and the fact that the hard drive light isn't on during all of this.

Do you have a similar setup? Does it seem strange to you? Does Amiga have a boot priority system somewhere?

[thomas]

I don't have such a setup but I have quite some experience with Amiga OS in general. And all your hardware can be emulated by WinUAE, so I could try to reproduce the problem if you give me enough information.

The boot priority of DF0 is fixed to 5. Boot priorities of harddisk partitions can be changed in HDToolbox. The default is 0 which means that it boots from floppy if there is one.

Do you boot from a standard Workbench 1.3 floppy or is it another disk? At which stage of the boot process does it ask for Libs? Which program asks? What happens if you cancel the requester?

How much memory do you have?

[Toni Wilen]

Does the message appear before 1.3 CLI window opens and in ugly and blank 60 character mode screen?

It probably is caused by filesystem.

I don't think FFS INTL works with 1.3. Even if you boot from disk, HD partitions are still automounted = filesystem is loaded from RDB and executed and filesystem probably tries to do something that is not supported under 1.3.

Stupid fix: Remove FFS from RDB, then it won't be loaded (note that partitions still automount under 1.3 but probably in "not a dos disk" state) and it should still work normally under 3.1. FFS is ROM built-in since KS 2.0.

Only "original" FFS (DOS\01, note that not all later WB disk FastFileSystem versions are 1.3 compatible) and PFS3AIO are fully 1.3 compatible.

EDIT: Or did some specific later WB disk L:FastFileSystem work 100% with 1.3?

[bozimmerman]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Does the message appear before 1.3 CLI window opens and in ugly and blank 60 character mode screen?

It probably is caused by filesystem.

I don't think FFS INTL works with 1.3. Even if you boot from disk, HD partitions are still automounted = filesystem is loaded from RDB and executed and filesystem probably tries to do something that is not supported under 1.3.

Stupid fix: Remove FFS from RDB, then it won't be loaded (note that partitions still automount under 1.3 but probably in "not a dos disk" state) and it should still work normally under 3.1. FFS is ROM built-in since KS 2.0.

Only "original" FFS (DOS\01, note that not all later WB disk FastFileSystem versions are 1.3 compatible) and PFS3AIO are fully 1.3 compatible.

EDIT: Or did some specific later WB disk L:FastFileSystem work 100% with 1.3?

You were completely correct. Putting in another hard drive and formatting THAT one regular FFS fixed the problem. However, can I ask how one "removes" International from an existing partition without losing all the data?

[zipper]

Using ReOrg (<4 GB partition only)

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by bozimmerman

You were completely correct. Putting in another hard drive and formatting THAT one regular FFS fixed the problem. However, can I ask how one "removes" International from an existing partition without losing all the data?

It is safe as long as you don't modify partition geometry or size parameters. Filesystems can be modified, boot priority, bootable etc.. options can be safely changed. (Of course removal of needed filesystem will make partitions that use it unusable but nothing gets lost, reinstalling the filesystem will fix it)

Probably easiest solution is to remove current filesystem and replace it with L:FastFileSystem from WB1.3 disk (I think there is some later 2.x/3.x version that is also 1.3 compatible but I don't remember which one) and use normal FFS (DOS\01).

When booting under 1.3: RDB Filesystem gets used. Under 2.0+: ROM built-in FFS gets used automatically because it has higher version number.

btw, don't try to use OFS. Only exception is with old HD controller that refuses to boot from anything else than OFS. Only then make tiny OFS boot partition that mounts other FFS (or other FS) partitions.

Originally Posted by zipper

Using ReOrg (<4 GB partition only)

What?

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

EDIT: Or did some specific later WB disk L:FastFileSystem work 100% with 1.3?

Version 40 of FFS (the one which comes with WB 3.1) does indeed work on Kick 1.3. It shows an unwanted DH0:DOS[C] icon but also an icon for the volume.

The main quirk is that HDToolbox of 3.1 defaults to DOS\3 for partitions but adds FFS as DOS\1. You have to delete and re-add FFS with DOS\3 for it to work in Kick 1.3.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Probably easiest solution is to remove current filesystem and replace it with L:FastFileSystem from WB1.3 disk (I think there is some later 2.x/3.x version that is also 1.3 compatible but I don't remember which one) and use normal FFS (DOS\01).

This does not work, it only makes the partition unreadable. The DOS type of the formatted partition is stored in its first block. Changing the DOS type in the RDB does not change the format of the partition.

One could try to hack the DOS type in the first block and hope that FFS does not get confused.

The safest way to change the file system is always backup / change RDB / format / restore.

[Toni Wilen]

OP: Small note if you use DOS\3 under 1.3 (or any other FS than OFS or "original" FFS), for example C:Info gets confused.

Originally Posted by thomas

This does not work, it only makes the partition unreadable. The DOS type of the formatted partition is stored in its first block. Changing the DOS type in the RDB does not change the format of the partition.

Not the first time I have forgotten this..

[bozimmerman]

Originally Posted by zipper

Using ReOrg (<4 GB partition only)

ReOrg worked great on one of my partitions (a sparsely used scratch partition), but gave an "out of memory" error on my main partition (with all the apps).

Are there any other programs you'd recommend that can also replace the DOS/3 with DOS/1.

- Bo

[Jope]

Backup, format, restore. :-)