Max disk size for GVP Impact A500 HD8+ Series II

[dkovacs]

Hi;

Does anyone know the max disk size on the GVP Impact A500 HD8+ Series II? The Amiga 500+ I am using it on has Kickstart/Workbench 2.04. Would a 1GB drive be too big?

Dan

[Secret Vampire]

Shouldn't be a problem, it's the same as the A2000 version, which I've used with 2GB disks.

[Olecranon]

Im using an adapted 4GB, 7200RM, SCA80 SCSI drive with my A2000 HC+8 series II card and have no issues. The A500 version should also be fine.

[alexh]

I think it depends which ROM version you have. Without a Guru ROM I dont think you have 64-bit support and so 4 gig is probably the limit.

http://babel.org/amiga/

[musashi5150]

Having trouble with the HC+8 in my A2000. I got a 3gb Quantum Fireball to replace the original 52mb Quantum drive (which still works great btw).

I jumpered the drive to SCSI ID 6 and the controller has 4mb fastram installed. The EEPROM appears to have GVP 4.5 written on it.

I've tried using all the GVP prep tools (FaaastPrep/ExpertPrep) various different versions and all have the same problem: They show the drive as having a size of 0MB and I cannot manually adjust anything (heads, sectors etc). So I cannot prep or do anything.

I wondered if 3gb would be too big for it to handle, but after reading around on EAB it seems some people have success with HUGE drives

Does anyone have any ideas? Is maybe the drive knackered?

[a_petri]

Originally Posted by musashi5150

I've tried using all the GVP prep tools (FaaastPrep/ExpertPrep) various different versions and all have the same problem: They show the drive as having a size of 0MB and I cannot manually adjust anything (heads, sectors etc). So I cannot prep or do anything.

If I were you, I would avoid using FaaastPrep. It is very old, rather buggy (at least my version on the GForce Combo 030 install diskette definitely was) and it wants to do everything itself automagically.

Try HDInstTool instead (downloadable from Aminet). Just change the DEVICE= tooltype to "gvpscsi.device" and it should work perfectly.

[musashi5150]

Thanks for the help - I'd never seen this program before. Changed the tooltype, but still couldn't get the drive setup

Tried HDToolBox from the 3.1 Install disk with the gvpscsi.device tooltype and got a bit further. I was able to manually config all the cylinders, heads, sectors etc. But it still wouldn't let me write the changes back to the drive: "Error 45". Whatever that means.

I think I'll just try to get another drive...

[Zetr0]

can you prep a drive on a PC under WinUAE?

[musashi5150]

Good suggestion, but my PC doesn't have a SCSI card. I can prep my 52mb Quantum no problems.... so I think it must be the drive.

[amiganer]

what"s the biggest HD i could youse with an Amiga OS 3.9 System?

[alexh]

It depends on the hardware drivers and the file system.

[jurgen36]

I fitted a 9.5 Gbyte drive into the GVP unit. I used its installer disk and it split the drive into 3 almost equal partitions and installed the OS3.1 on the HD0 section. To check for possible data loss I filled the HD1 and HD2 partition with a lot of big files until they were completely filled up. The A500 still booted ok from the HD0 drive, no data loss or overwriting at all. I then formated the HD1 and also the HD2 partition. All went smooth. It still booted without any problems from drive HD0. No data loss at all. I am now fitting a 40Gbyte drive and will do the same test. Apparently the 4 Gbyte limit only applies to each partition not to the drive itself. Maybe somebody can give me some feedback.
Best regards
Jurgen

[alexh]

It depends on the ROM version and the filesystem.

The 10-byte SCSI commands (which the hardware must be using) can support drives upto 2TiB.

I dont know the full details but I *think* there are several ways the filesystem accesses block devices through the hardware drivers.

trackdisk(32/64)
HD_SCSICMD (SCSI direct?)
NSD (New Style devices)

The file system inquirers which one of these it wants to use, and the device driver (ROM) reveals which ones it supports.

Which version of which filesystem are you using? What is the version of the ROM in your GVP unit?

If you ever find out the subtleties to all this I'd be interested to know. Ralph Babel is your best source of information.

[jurgen36]

I do not know the Rom version of the GVP module, it is not an original rom but an eprom without any information. The KS is 3.1, The WB is also 3.1. Memory in the GVP is 8 Mbytes plus 1 Mbyte in the A500. I did try the 40Gbyte drive, split it up into 10 partitions and filled all of them up, again no data loss. So I still wonder what the limit of this A500-HD8+ modules is. Never mind I do not believe that I ever fill it up. Incidentally I used the GVP installer floppy for the installations and let them proceed on a fully automatic install. It seems to work quite well.
Best regards from Perth down under.

[TheCorfiot]

Originally Posted by musashi5150

Having trouble with the HC+8 in my A2000. I got a 3gb Quantum Fireball to replace the original 52mb Quantum drive (which still works great btw).

I jumpered the drive to SCSI ID 6 and the controller has 4mb fastram installed. The EEPROM appears to have GVP 4.5 written on it.

I've tried using all the GVP prep tools (FaaastPrep/ExpertPrep) various different versions and all have the same problem: They show the drive as having a size of 0MB and I cannot manually adjust anything (heads, sectors etc). So I cannot prep or do anything.

I wondered if 3gb would be too big for it to handle, but after reading around on EAB it seems some people have success with HUGE drives

Does anyone have any ideas? Is maybe the drive knackered?

Have you Got Bus termination "ON" on the Drive, that caught me out, also when Expertprep is run, Bind Drivers then cycle the SCSI ID back and forth until the right ID is selected, can also try jumpering your HD to ID=0.

My HD8 works perfect with a 2.1GB HD (ROM ver 4.15)

[alexh]

Originally Posted by jurgen36

I do not know the Rom version of the GVP module, it is not an original rom but an eprom without any information.

Open a CLI window and type

version gvpscsi.device

And post back what it says.

[jurgen36]

The eprom version is 4.13. I fitted one 250 Mbyte zip drive to the back connector of the Gvp8 unit. Works very well indeed. I have the feeling that it is actually faster as the hard drive. Set one of the zip floppies up as a boot drive and disabled the 9 Gbyte hard drive. Boots cleanly from the zip drive. No problems at all. Formated and installed the Iomega zip drive with the GVP8 software. So I begin to wonder if I really need a hard drive at all. I bought the 250 Mbyte zip drive together with 25 250 Mbyte floppies for 35 dollars. That is about what you pay for a hard drive. And the floppies would be more flexibel.
Regards

[jurgen36]

I did run some further tests in regards to speed. I found that the Zip drives actually outperform the hard drive in speed. A normal hard drive boot up takes about 14 to 16 seconds. A boot up from the zip drive takes 4 seconds. Why this is so I would not even try to answer. I would have expected the hard drive a 15000 Rpm scsi 9 Gbyte drive to be much faster as the zip. May be some of the knowledgeable gentleman on this forum can advise in this regard. It goes against all common sense. Incidentally I have 2 250 Mbyte zip drives connected to the back of the GVP module, they use ID 5 and 6,the hard disk uses ID 2, the second zip drive has the termination enabled.
So may be some body can explain the mystery.
Best regards

[thomas]

The HDD probably needs 10 or 12 seconds to reach its 15000 rpm while the ZIP drive reaches its rotation speed almost at once.

[jurgen36]

Yes you are probably correct. I thought something similar, during normal large file transfer the hard drive is faster, not really by that much but noticeable. So the best would be to boot up from the zip drive and then continue with the hard drives. Actually I do believe the GVP interface might not be very good using modern high speed scsi drives. Never mind it works quite reliable.
Regards.