Safe to insert/remove CF card when system is on?

[Dreedo]

Title says it all really, finally got my WB boot and ADF transfer software with PCMCIA reader and 256MB CF Card (Both Sandisk), but i was wondering whether or not its safe to remove and insert the PCMCIA adapter whilst the system is on?

[FOL]

Yes.

[Dreedo]

Ok thanks. I just have another question.

I boot the WB up using the WB boot i got given, it reads the CF card, (the boot disk is called PCMCIA by the way). I was also given another floppy with transfer software on, called Empty (its not empty he just didnt rename it), unfortunately i cant do anything with it, because when i insert empty and try to run image2disk, it asks me to insert the PCMCIA disk in, and it just loops on and on, insert empty, insert PCMCIA, insert empty, insert PCMCIA ect.

Would it be better to put image2disk on my CF card, and then i don't have to remove the PCMCIA floppy?

[fitzsteve]

Hey Dreedo, grab ADF Blitzer from Aminet, that works very well and you can run it from your CF card

Also, if you ever fit a HDD or CF Hard Drive in the future and install Classic Workbench the included ADF tools that work via Directory Opus are awesome

Steve.

oops just read ADF Blitzer needs more Ram so no good to you - sorry...

Amigakit sell just the EasyADF disk on its own which is also a boot disk and by far the easiest of any of the ADF Tools to use.

[Dreedo]

Yeah the guy was quite useful i bought it off and sent 2 pages of FAQ's with the product, but they mainly refer to users who have a CF-IDE adapter and are using it as a HDD. Not much help for me as a PCMCIA user, i dont want to touch my Miggy's innards until i would actually haev the money to buy a new one if i broke it.

I looked at Classic WB, i would still need a HDD and some more RAM to run it (although i heard brave ones run it on 1mb :P, must be hell).

I'll go back downstairs and download some programs off of Aminet then, thanks.

Mmmm it says ADF Blitzer needs FASTRAM...

Anyone give me a step by step guide on how to transfer a ADF from the CF card onto a floppy, there doesn't seem to be anything anywhere about it, at the moment i can't even get the ADF software to run...

[Dreedo]

Well paying extra for EasyADF is going to be a pain when i can get software for free onto my CF card.

I tried copying Image2Disk onto the CF Card from the floppy, but the program won't boot, it just says 'attempting to load program' at the top for about 0.5 seconds and then disappears.

I unrared the LHA files of TSGUI and another program i've forgotten and put their folders onto my CF card, but they wouldn't show up on the CF card on my Amiga. So i'm not sure if somethings not working right or im doing it wrong...

It appears to be doing it with everything, i put TSGUI onto the CF card, and when i run TSGUI it asks me to insert PCMCIA into the drive, i do and it just says attempting to load for a short time and then sits there and does nothing....

[thomas]

Please boot from your "PCMCIA" floppy disk, select "Execute command" from the menu and enter newshell.

A shell window should open where you enter

cd cf0:
cd tsgui
tsgui

Are there any error messages or something?

Once TSGUI is loaded and shows its GUI it should be safe to remove the PCMCIA floppy from the drive without the need to put it back in later. But there are definitely some libraries which need to be loaded from the boot floppy, so you cannot remove the floppy before you start the program.

[Dreedo]

when using newshell the following happened:

3> cd cf0:
(Nothing happens after typing that
The card is actually calling itself EOS_DIGITAL

So i tried:

3> cd EOS_DIGITAL
object not found

so that didn't go particularly well. :/

Is it similar to DOS where it gives an indication of what directory your in? Like if you type CD CF0:/TSGUI it would say that at the start of each line?

By the way if i just type TSGUI without anything else, the floppy whirrs for about a second and then stops, but doesn't do anything, obviously its reading it as a valid command. The floppy whirring does seem strange as the TSGUI is on the CF card and not a floppy disk.

From what i can work out it appears to recognize CF0: and TSGUI as directories, it just won't boot any programs off my CF card, same as the damned Image2Disk floppy i was given.

[thomas]

Nothing happens after typing that

No message is good message. Just proceed to the next command.

3> cd EOS_DIGITAL
object not found

Device names must be ended with a colon, so try EOS_DIGITAL: instead. If you omit the colon, it tries to find a directory of that name in the current directory.

In AmigaOS a disk can be named by the device name it is in as well as by its volume name. So in your case CF0: is equivalent to EOS_DIGITAL: because the disk named EOS_DIGITAL is inserted in the drive called CF0.

Is it similar to DOS where it gives an indication of what directory your in?

Yes, enter

prompt "%s> "

to change the command prompt so that it shows the current directory.

You can also print the current directory by entering cd without arguments.

The floppy whirring does seem strange as the TSGUI is on the CF card and not a floppy disk.

Enter

path

to get a list of directories which are searched for commands. Only after it cannot be found in all these directories, the "invalid command" message is issued. You will see that the last directory is always "C:" which is assigned to the C directory of the boot floppy disk. Hence it always checks the boot floppy before it gives up.

In AmigaDOS you can also enter the name of a directory as a command. In this case the same happens as if you entered cd directory.

So what happened for you when you entered tsgui is that first the CD command is loaded from floppy disk, then cd tsgui is executed. No message appears because the current directory was successfully changed to cf0:tsgui (you were in cf0: and changed to tsgui).

[Dreedo]

righto, so basically everything is running perfectly fine apart from the fact that nothing is booting up for some unknown reason? lol

I entered 'path' into commands, and the only directory listed is C, it just says:

Current Directory
C

That's all, is that bad?

After using the 'dir' command to make sure i was changing directory, i did find that i had put the TSGUI executable in CF0:/TSGUI/TSGUI/

Would that affect it?

After entering the directory that TSGUI was located, i typed 'TSGUI' as before they floppy whirred but didnt do anything, from then on everytime i entered TSGUI nothing happened, the floppy didnt whirr or anything.

[thomas]

What about tsgui, did you get it to run?

[Dreedo]

I edited post after you had refreshed page by the looks.

As i said, upon entering TSGUI command in Newshell, it whirrs the floppy and does nothing, the same applies to trying to open Image2Disk on the floppy he sent me, it whirrs for a second and then nothing.

I even tried opening Image2Disk using the conventional Workbench that doesnt have CF support and it just does nothing also, i must be doing something wrong. Whenever i try to run Image2Disk on my conventional workbench, it asks me to insert WB2.0 back into DF0:, when i do that, the popup box disappears and it just sits there, attempting to open Image2Disk again brings up a popup asking me to insert the Image2Disk floppy, and the process starts all over again.

[thomas]

Please try this version of TSGUI: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online...oads/tsgui.lha

The version on Aminet needs mathieeedoubbas.library and silently quits when it's missing.

[Dreedo]

Ok using PS3 at the moment, will boot up PC and download and try it out.

Thanks for all your help so far.

Now we're getting somewhere, it says something about stack sizes, it needs 8000 i have 4096.

[Dreedo]

Ok seems pretty much sorted.

Heres the situation now:

I can now get onto TSGUI with no problem, i select what ADF i want to write to a blank disk, i insert the blank disk, i click the File -> Disk button, it begins the writing process, when it hits 100% it asks me to insert the PCMCIA (boot disk) back into the drive, it begins that ticking noise you get when it searches for a disk in the drive, upon inserting the PCMCIA disk, nothing happens, the ticking stops, which makes me believe the Amiga can detect theres a disk in the drive, but the prompt box asking me to insert PCMCIA doesn't disappear, pressing the Retry button does nothing, it just re-appears, my only option is to press cancel, which then renders the disk i was writing to a 'NDOS' disk, which means i lost all the data i just wrote to it, as the only way i can use it is to format it again.

Any help?

Thanks.

[thomas]

Buy another floppy drive? Just joking. But this would solve your problem

Well, I cannot reproduce the NDOS thing. Yes, it asks for the boot disk for some unknown reason, but neither if I cancel the requester immediately nor if I first insert the boot disk and then cancel the requester, the written disk becomes NDOS. For me the written disk is usable.

Did you try the ADF in WinUAE? Perhaps it *is* NDOS?

[Dreedo]

No i haven't, i'll try it out in a second.

Is it possible that its the floppy causing this problem?

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Dreedo

Is it possible that its the floppy causing this problem?

The floppy driver should recognise if data is not written correctly. You could check both the "format while write" and the "verify" boxes in TSGUI. Then TSGUI does the verify explicitely.

[Dreedo]

It appears the ADF files are indeed NDOS, running WB in WinUAE fails to recognize them also.

So any games that are NDOS cannot be copied from ADF to floppy?

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Dreedo

So any games that are NDOS cannot be copied from ADF to floppy?

They can. NDOS only means that AmigaDOS cannot read it. But you can still boot from the disk if it has a valid boot block. Just press Ctrl-A-A with the disk in the drive.