New CF card with SFS will not boot on A1200

[demolition]

I just received a new CF card which I intended to use in my A1200, a Sandisk Ultra 4GB, which I have partitioned with SFS and installed a ClassicWB. I did all the prep work and installation in WinUAE.

The problem is that while it will boot fine off the CF card in WinUAE with a plain A1200 setup with KS 3.0, it doesn't work on the real A1200. There is only a short flash on the activity LED before the kickstart screen shows. A soft reset does not change anything.

I have a Sandisk Ultra II using FFS which boots fine in the machine. Could this be a problem with my SFS installation or can the Amiga not use the Sandisk Ultra card (I assumed it was one of the compatible ones)?

I used this guide for the SFS installation:
[ Show youtube player ]

[fitzsteve]

What version of cwb? Did you also put sfs in rdb and in l:?

Also what are the specs of you A1200?

[Toni Wilen]

Did you use IDE emulation? UAE HD controller does not have KS 3.0/3.1 restrictions. (It is very important if CF is >4G).

Make also sure your CF is the only mounted drive to guarantee SFS gets loaded from CF instead of some other mounted drive.

Having or not having filesystem in L: has no effect.

[johnim]

hi demolition have a quick look at my guide and see if anything was missed

[Retrofan]

Try with the Install floppy in the Amiga using HDTools to see if it finds the partitions, if it does, save the "changes".

[demolition]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

What version of cwb? Did you also put sfs in rdb and in l:?
Also what are the specs of you A1200?

This version:
http://classicwb.abime.net/classicweb/advsp.htm

If by put in rdb you mean updated the filesystem in hdtoolbox then yes as shown in the picture.
The A1200 has an ACA1232 in it and an IDE-CF adapter, nothing else.

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Did you use IDE emulation? UAE HD controller does not have KS 3.0/3.1 restrictions. (It is very important if CF is >4G).

Make also sure your CF is the only mounted drive to guarantee SFS gets loaded from CF instead of some other mounted drive.

Having or not having filesystem in L: has no effect.

HDD controller is set to IDE0 in WinUAE. Only the CF card is attached to the machine apart from an empty disk drive.

[fitzsteve]

Have you another cf-ide adapter to try? I've seen some cf and adapter combinations not work...

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Try with the Install floppy in the Amiga using HDTools to see if it finds the partitions, if it does, save the "changes".

I just did this - hdtoolbox could see a disk, but the status was 'unknown'. When I defined a new type and read the drive configuration, it had an error and said it was type 7, so I guess maybe that's why it won't work.

Wasn't there some software fix to this issue?

Edit: I found this ATCFWCHG.COM tool which can convert a removable type card into a fixed type, however I think my PC might be too new as it cannot find the CF card on the IDE cable (with adapter for IDE40->IDE44->CF) from a Win98 dos boot disk despite it has been set to IDE mode in BIOS. I probably need an old PC with an integrated IDE controller for this to work.

Edit 2: I managed to get it to work. I used a patched version of HDToolbox which I put on a WB31 install floppy replacing the old one. Now it could see the card, and I had to repartition with SFS, reformat, and then I could take it to WinUAE and copy over my ClassicWB install to the drive. It now seems to work great.

[Retrofan]

I've had this "Type 7" problem with the last 2 Cf I've installed. Don't know if it's because of the fast ata I've got, or perhaps it's the ide adapter (I think so). I tried to "make" that fix to the HDToolBox but I coudn't (it was editing it in Hex and modifying it), so great to have your link now.

Anyway it was enought just changing to PFS3 to get it working.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

I've had this "Type 7" problem with the last 2 Cf I've installed. Don't know if it's because of the fast ata I've got, or perhaps it's the ide adapter (I think so).

From what I can understand, the problem is in the firmware of the CF card (a single byte in the identifier). Many CF cards identifies themselves as a removable drive which is good if it is actually used as a removable drive, but when permanently installed, it should identify as a fixed drive to avoid problems.
Apparently a patched HDToolbox will make it work anyway, and I needed to use a real Amiga instead of WinUAE, so I guess its IDE emulation isn't correct enough in this regard (or accessing a CF card through USB changes something).

The ATCFWCHG.COM tool I found could change this identifier, making a CF card permanently identify as fixed, but only on CF cards using a specific 'Athens' controller, so maybe it did not support my 4 GB card.

[Toni Wilen]

I think I can guess the problem. It has nothing to do with "Type 7" (ROM IDE device won't care about removable bit)

It most likely is geometry difference. IDE ROM driver drive uses IDE device's reported Cylinder, Sectors and Head values multiplied. Windows (and probably any other OS) ignores CHS values (CHS is obsolete stuff) and uses real size (number of blocks).

Geometry reported by CF card and geometry used by UAE are most likely different and this time UAE geometry is slightly larger. SFS or driver sees bad access when SFS attempts to read last block of partition (SFS superblock) and refuses to mount. Geometry is only used for disk size.

This is difficult problem to solve because Windows won't allow to read low level ide identify device reply that Amiga IDE driver uses. (This geometry usage was noticed in PFS3 testing thread only month or so ago)

New hdtoolbox probably uses better method to detect drive size and/or lets some free space at the end of disk.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I think I can guess the problem. It has nothing to do with "Type 7" (ROM IDE device won't care about removable bit)

It most likely is geometry difference. IDE ROM driver drive uses IDE device's reported Cylinder, Sectors and Head values multiplied. Windows (and probably any other OS) ignores CHS values (CHS is obsolete stuff) and uses real size (number of blocks).

Geometry reported by CF card and geometry used by UAE are most likely different and this time UAE geometry is slightly larger. SFS or driver sees bad access when SFS attempts to read last block of partition (SFS superblock) and refuses to mount. Geometry is only used for disk size.

This is difficult problem to solve because Windows won't allow to read low level ide identify device reply that Amiga IDE driver uses. (This geometry usage was noticed in PFS3 testing thread only month or so ago)

That seems like a reasonable explanation, but then I am thinking if there is a difference in the way UAE sees the geometry depending on whether the device reports as removable or fixed drive to Windows? I have another Sandisk 4GB card which I prepared through WinUAE and it works fine on the Amiga, but it is also of the fixed type.

[Retrofan]

I don't think the problem is the Cf , as long as I tried with two brands; Trascend, but also Sandisk Ultra, that I've installed without problems in about 4 ones. I do think it can be my new multicard reader.

[Toni Wilen]

It seems all CF in IDE mode (not sure about IDE drives) always have Heads=16 and Sectors=63, Cylinders=<total blocks>/(H*S).

-> I'll modify WinUAE to use this calculation method when mounting real harddrive in IDE mode. Should improve this "compatibility" problem.

(I don't want to change geometry of regular harddrives to prevent possible compatibility problems)

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

It seems all CF in IDE mode (not sure about IDE drives) always have Heads=16 and Sectors=63, Cylinders=<total blocks>/(H*S).

Yes, I can see that CHS is different, even if I use the patched HDToolbox under WinUAE.

With my troublesome 4GB card I get 7751/16/63 on the Amiga and 31004/4/63 under WinUAE when I read the drive configuration. It would probably work if I wrote 7751/16/63 into HDToolbox manually if I wanted to prep the card in WinUAE.

[jimmer78]

I have the same issue...I prepped a 8GB CF card in WinUAE and used SFS. But when I put in my A1200 it will not boot from the CF IDE.

I do not have a copy of workbench on floppy so what should I do? I know this card will work in the A1200 as when I bought the Amiga it came with it and was working, but I wanted to install from scratch OS3.9 bloodwych.

So can anyone help?

Cheers.

[kipper2k]

I have had success with problem CF cards not being recognised by cloning the image of a good CF card onto the problem card ln a PC using ghost or other cloning tools. Once cloned you can boot from it, delete etc and set it up

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

I have had success with problem CF cards not being recognised by cloning the image of a good CF card onto the problem card ln a PC using ghost or other cloning tools. Once cloned you can boot from it, delete etc and set it up

That's interesting, I have a 4gb CF here that's never worked, I'm going to try to clone a good image to it

@Jimmer, did you remember to put the bootable 'tick' for DH0? (it's an easy mistake as it's not pre filled on CWB OS3.9) and I've done that a few times

[demolition]

In my experience the most problems comes from the detection of the drive parameters (maybe just CHS?). CF cards which I couldn't to work, worked fine if I cloned a good image to it (which had been prepared on another card). Actually, just cloning the first % of the image was enough to prepare the new card and then I was much more likely to play along nicely with HDToolbox in WinUAE.

Most of these problems was solved though, simply by running WinUAE as admin.

[fitzsteve]

I agree a lot of problems can be much more technical but always when trouble shooting start with the simple things first