CF / SD and large drives FAQ

[Jope]

Are you sure this is the same block size I'm talking about? Can you post a screenshot of that?

[Hypex]

According to the table OS3.9 scsi.device supports removable and atapi.

I have connected an SD-to-IDE adapter to my A4000 IDE bus. It comes up on scsi.device in HDToolbox and I have a working DOS Driver. To mount FAT volumes.

But it doesn't detect disks being inserted or removed. Nor with DiskChange command. Can this work on scsi.device?

It works with other devices like CD drives fine. But I don't know if the adapter identifies as an atapi device. Nor if it sends disk changes despite having an active LED and a socket with spring designed for hot plugging.

[demolition]

Some SD adapters identify themselves as fixed disks, not removable, so you might want to check that for starters. The adapter may not support hot plugging. Having a spring loaded SD socket doesn't necessarily mean it can be hot plugged.

[RaveGuru]

Originally Posted by Jope

Are you sure this is the same block size I'm talking about? Can you post a screenshot of that?

I was referring to the CHS drive geometry block size. Which one were you referring to?

[thomas]

CHS means Cylinders Heads Sectors. There is no block size in there.

1008 might refer to 16 heads * 63 sectors which is the value for sectors per cylinder.

There are only two values which are referred to as block sizes: the physical sector size which usually is 512 bytes and the logical file system block size which is a multiple of the sector size. So neither of them can be 1008.

[tommywright]

Hi all, I have a SD card 8gb Kingston with 512kb Workbench and two 4gb partitions past that. I've used this card, another 8gb Kingston and a 16gb Sandisk. All of them work fine for a few days and then they start getting Checksum errors and I have to reformat the partition that is having issues. It will last a few days and then the same issues come back. What am I doing wrong? Is there a better SD card to buy? I'm running it on and Amiga 2000 through a GVP SCSI controller with ram expansion.
Thanks for any help!

[thomas]

Sounds like the classical 4GB issue. You should read the very first article in this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=61666

[Hypex]

Originally Posted by demolition

Some SD adapters identify themselves as fixed disks, not removable, so you might want to check that for starters. The adapter may not support hot plugging. Having a spring loaded SD socket doesn't necessarily mean it can be hot plugged.

Thanks. That looks to be the case. I even tested it with a CD driver by imaging the SD card with a CD image in an attempt to fool the driver into thinking it was a removable CD. It mounted it fine but didn't detect any changes. So I suspect it has no removable hardware support.


I'd be interested in any tools that can give me IDE device info.

[Warty]

I want to preface this by saying: everything I know about CF cards I learned from dinking around with them on the Amiga. And it hasn't added up to much. This may be a really dumb question.

Problem: I can't get TWO CF cards working at the same time on A2000.

Setup:

• A2000
• A2091 SCSI card in place (for the RAM), SCSI drive disconnected
• 68030TK with CF card adapter (link)
• CF card adapter I bought on eBay, hooked into same cable as the first CF card adapter
• cards have been initialized and partitioned with rbdtool, then formatted in UAE under 3.1.4 (just using regular Format command), then had files copied onto them from within UAE.

Goal:
Reproduce the set up of the A500+, where there is an Amiga formatted CF card for your main/system stuff, and a second CF card with FAT formatting that you take in and out to exchange data between your Amiga and Mac/PC.

Current results:

• If ONE card is inserted, the system will boot up from it.
• If TWO cards are inserted, the system will fail to recognize either and will display the insert WB disk screen.
• It doesn't seem to matter if it's one Amiga formatted disk and a FAT formatted disk, or 2 Amiga formatted disks.
• I've tried various size cards and combinations: 512MB, 1GB, 4GB, and from multiple manufacturers.
• I've tried having one adapter be master, the other slave; flipped it the other way.
• ONCE or TWICE it has booted up to both disks. But then when I think it's working, it won't work the next reboot.

RDB Setup

rdbtool /dev/disk2 init + info
rdbtool /dev/disk2 add size=24Mib name=WB + add size=40Mib name=MAC0 + fill + info
rdbtool /dev/disk2 change WB bootable=1 pri=0 + info
rdbtool /dev/disk2 fsadd ffs + info (wasn't clear to me if this was necessary, but doesn't seem to make a difference)

[ItsTheSmell]

Does anybody know if PEAK CF cards are incompatible with a1200s? Ive just bought one from eBay and within workbench i'm getting random bad block errors but windows 10 seems ok with it. Its a 1GB CF card.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by ItsTheSmell

Does anybody know if PEAK CF cards are incompatible with a1200s? Ive just bought one from eBay and within workbench i'm getting random bad block errors but windows 10 seems ok with it. Its a 1GB CF card.

I guess many no-name cards simple use whatever was the cheapest possible controller chip + flash combo available when it was manufactured and it can change between production runs.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Warty

I can't get TWO CF cards working at the same time on A2000.

Most common reason seems to be that most CF cards simply can't/don't work properly as a slave IDE device.