CF / SD and large drives FAQ

[paulo_becas]

Originally Posted by fgh

Paulo: Which two of the three adapters mentioned in the quote have you tested?

Like you say, using PCMCIA with amiga file systems is not the common thing to do, but it is possible never the less.
There is no size limit in compactflash.device, as it supports TD64 (= up to 16 exabytes)
FAT95 supports TD64 as well, but if you want an amiga file system for a large card you will need PFS, SFS or a newer version of FFS. [more info]

Regarding 4GB being incompatible with use on amiga pcmcia, you might have read about the kingston card with the flower image that many people have and can only get to work on the ide.
This card is not incompatible due to its size, but something else. (cfd driver, amiga pcmcia hardware implementation, or card firmware not up to standard, still not confirmed).
It also seems like some versions of it even works well. [see thread]

I have all the adapters mention above.
I use SFS on my HD CF Cards and FAT on my PCMCIA CF Cards.
Personally i have a few 4 and 8 gb Kingston cards (the flower ones) and i never could get them to work on PCMCIA, i also have a 16Gb transcend card, now that you mentioned i will try to use it on the PCMCIA adaptor.
I also have a Platinum 4 Gb card like this and it is PCMCIA incompatible as well like vesalia says.
I never understood very well all this diferent issues concerning CF cards, it's all very confusing, so, it's important to gather all the users experience we can to minimize this things.

[fgh]

Ok, thanks. Then indeed this one that failed is most probably just a faulty unit.

Yes, there seem to be more cards that do not work with pcmcia than there are cards that do not work on the ide.
But as cfd supports TD64, and several people have 8GB and larger cards working on amiga pcmcia, this must be for other reasons than size.
As mentioned in the initial post and in my previous post regarding the kingston, the reasons for these incompatibilities are not yet understood/documented.

One example that recently came up is that some CF cards (Maxell 2GB) can only use one of the two mandatory pcmcia I/O mode register locations.
This is a bit out of my league, but according to Tony Wilen, this register location is common and works on a PC but is not supported by compactflash.device.
And since both are mandatory, the card is technically "to blame", but still compactflash.device could be written to support both..

Edit: You should make sure to use the latest version of CFD, as compatibility has increased over the years.

[paulo_becas]

Originally Posted by fgh

Edit: You should make sure to use the latest version of CFD, as compatibility has increased over the years.

How can i see what version i have? and where can i get an update?

[fgh]

Type version compactflash.device in shell.
You find it on aminet.

[paulo_becas]

Thank's for the info

[Vot]

Hi has anyone tried a 16gb cf card from patroit in their a1200 psf16g266cf?

Am i likley to have success? I would be using the internal ide and the a1200 is kick3.0.

Any advice on what i should use in terms of idefix or scsi driver and partition type / sizes would be appreciated. I was hoping to do 2gb system the rest as storage if possible.

Sorry just got an a1200 havnt had one since 1994

[fgh]

I haven't tried that particular model, but there is a good chance it should work. (Several other people are running 16GB cards.)
A lot of people seem to recommend Sandisk though.

A thorough guide on large amiga drive support can be found here.
To access more than 8GB you need to patch scsi.device.
IDEFix does this, but I wouldn't use IDEFix unless you are going to use several IDE devices, as IDEfix fails with many CF cards. See original post for more on that.
I'd use scsi.device v43.24 instead.

Use a modern file system (PFS or SFS), and a small boot partition (Cannot see why you need more than a few hundred MB).
Know that amiga OS will show the wrong size and amount of free space of your card several places. This is ok.
And never do a normal amigaOS full format, as it screws things up above 4GB. Always use quick format. (Anything else doesn't make sense with a CF anyway)
Finally, use maxtransfer setting 0x1fe00 for each partition in hdToolbox to avoid file corruption. (The value is store by pressing enter)

Personally I just use 8GB SD cards. (PFS Direct SCSI mode allows 7,8GB without patching scsi.device)

If you haven't found them yet, I'd also have a look at ClassicWB, and KillerGorilla's & Retroplay's game and demo packs

Have fun!

[fgh]

Vot: You're welcome!

[Vot]

Originally Posted by fgh

Vot: You're welcome!

Firstly, thanks fgh for the comprehensive reply

One further question, if i ran wb 3.5 or 3.9 does it handle big hdd sizes properly? And do its format tools work properly and does it report size properl. I thought i read somewhere that one of the newe wb's had native 64 bit support for hdd's. Ofcourse i will need an accelerator card to run them as i think an 030 and more ram was a minimum requirement.

[fgh]

Originally Posted by Vot

...wb 3.5 or 3.9 does it handle big hdd sizes properly? And do its format tools work properly and does it report size properl.

I don't have much experience with os3.5/3.9, but os 3.5 should already support large drives, including fastfilesystem, hdtoolbox and format command.

[orange]

about IDE->CF adapter; I've got one designed to plug into socket, not cable. is it ok to keep it on A4000 IDE port? (or will the weight of adapter+CF card damage IDE port in time)

[fgh]

Never had one of those. Guess it's ok, but I wouldn't do it due to the risk of touching it accidently when working with other things inside the machine.

[fgh]

Updated the main post: Added table with IDE drivers and file systems limitations/compatibility, and made some minor modifications.

[fishyfish]

Ive got a problem that doesnt seem to be covered here. It's been this way for a while, but m only just now starting to want the extra space to use.

I have a 32gig cf card which I prepared using Winuae. Ive patched scsi device and am using pfs3. Now on Winuae this works fine. I can see all partitions, and use them without a problem.
On my amiga though only partitions within the 1st 8gig are properly usable. Other partitions show up, but are uninitialised. Formatting these partitions works and I can then copy and read data from them seemingly without issue. As soon as I reboot (even soft) though all partitions above 8gig become uninitialised again.

If anyone can give me any suggestions Id be greatful. The 8gig I can use properly is becoming a bit too full (and messy) for my liking

[fgh]

Some others did report similar problems recently..
I set up my 16gb card on my 68000 ks37.300 a600 with pfs3ds (ks1.3version) and scsi v44.2 without any issues the other day though.
Did you use the direct scsi version of pfs3? On all partitions or just some? Which dostype?
Which version of scsi.device do you use?

[dJOS]

Probably a stupid question but dose anyone know the best way to change a partition on my 4GB CF Card to FAT without killing the remaining PFS partitions?

Obviously I'll lose anything on the partition I want to change to FAT but that's fine with me.

[Arnie]

Have you tried changing the dostype in hdtoolbox/hdinstall? Usually a requester will pop up warning you if data on the other partitions will be destroyed allowing you to cancel the operation if it does.

[fgh]

Originally Posted by dJOS

Does anyone know the best way to change a partition on my 4GB CF Card to FAT without killing the remaining PFS partitions?

As far as I know FAT needs an MBR, and an MBR needs to be at the beginning of the drive, so you'll have to place your RDB after the MBR.
It might be possible to save the RDB to file and recreate it at an offset, and then create the MBR and FAT partition, but I don't have any experience with this.
Good luck in any case, and may I suggest making a backup first?

[dJOS]

Cheers, a backup is a very good idea!

[Arnie]

I have a dual booting Flash drive, first partition Fat32 and second partition FFS (RDB).

I used Aros to create it. You could try Aros to change the partition to Fat.

No need to install it, just use a live CD.