PFS3 setup and configuration

[Peter]

Originally Posted by Cammy

Very cool! I hope you put PFS3 on there instead of FFS, PFS is heaps faster and more flexible than that ancient FFS.

Cammy - do you use PFS3 standard or PFS3ds on your CF Hard Drives?

I am going to attempt some PFS3 installs over the next coming weeks and haven't ever installed or even used it before.

Is the version of PFS3 on Aminet the full version? Is it now free?

Also when you do your swap trick do you copy all your system files to another partition and then make that partition bootable - boot from it, reformat your other partition, copy your files back and then change the boot order again...? (hope that makes sense :-)

Lastly, can you leave your drive settings, like Max Transfer the same as they were with FFS?

Sorry to hijack the thread but I will start another thread once I start my installs and have some speed comparisons.

Thanks for any advice or tips Cammy.

[Cammy]

Hi Peter,

I use PFS3DS (PDS\3) on my A1200s, but for the drive I prepared for my 68000 A600 I used the regular 68000 version of PFS3 (PFS\3). I made a modified Installer disk as well as a 911 Emergency disk to use for preparing and formatting CF cards on real Amigas, and I've uploaded ADFs of them to The Zone for anyone to try out. MaxTransfer should be 0x0001FE00 and buffers should be between 150 and 350, I used 200 for each partition on the 8MB A1200 and 300 on the one with 64MB RAM.

When I swap my systems around I use LHA to make an archive of the drive contents, then extract it to the new drive, this way I can easily backup my system onto a CD or SD card or something. I make uncompressed LHAs so it's much faster to archive and extract. For example if I want to backup DH0: to a file called "Backup.lha" on my SD/CF card, I would type this:

DH0:
Lha -eraxz a CF0:Backup

And when I'm ready to transfer it back to the newly formatted DH0:, I'll do this:

DH0:
Lha -xa x CF0:Backup.lha

All done.

I hope everything goes as smoothly for you as it did for me, good luck!

[Jope]

OS up to 3.1:
PFS3DS + unpatched scsi.device = you can use a cf card up to 8GB
PFS3 + unpatched scsi.device = you can use a cf card up to 4GB

You can use larger cards with a patched scsi.device and the non-ds version of PFS3.

[Peter]

Great stuff Cammy - thanks for the advice... just checking out the ADF 911 disk now and the 3.1 lha file is a real help - lost count on how many times I have installed this from floppy!

Re: PFS3
So... if you have in excess of 64MB Ram on an A1200 could/should you set the buffers to the maximum setting of 350? (What does this actually do?)

Message to MODS - I think it would be good if this thread could split now from post 8 onwards and be set up in a new thread entitled "PFS3 Set Up and Configuration" in the Support section please.

[Jope]

We don't have a plain support section per se, so I chose support.hardware.

[Peter]

Thanks Jope - I will start some installs this week and will post here with my ups and downs and hopefully some speed comparisons with my Blizzard 060 and my Apollo 1260 which is winging it's way back from Stan as we speak!

[jimbob]

I'm also trying this out just now. One stumbling block for me was getting an amiga RDB onto a CF card that had previously been a windows formatted card. I was using Hdinsttools 6.8 which comes in the PFS archive.

I gather this is pretty easy on windows 7 and I had no bother doing this in the past in linux with dd, but it was a bit of a headache in windows XP. I just couldn't get WinUAE to stop complaining about writing to block 0. I tried the -disableharddrivesafetycheck switch but it seemd to make no difference so perhaps I did it wrong. Is there a way to do this in WinUAE?

I ended up using a real amiga to erase the MBR then back to the PC to continue the installation.

[Jope]

WinUAE no longer has the disable switch, you need to erase the partition table with diskpart.

[Peter]

@Cammy or any other PFS3 user... a question....

When you install PFS3 I notice it asks which processor you have - in this A1200 I am configuring I have an 060 so I click 060 - if I use your (Cammy's) install disk to set up and configure an PFS3DS partition will I be using a slower version or is it the same file that is used in the L drive via PFS3 HDTools for all processors to first set things up...?

I'm just worried that I may not be using the best files for an 060 in my install.

Hope this makes sense... does it?

[jimbob]

Thanks Jope, I know where I am with that now. I have other difficulties now but they are CF related and not a PFS problem. (I think)

Anyway, about the various CPU optimised versions. The PFS docs say go with the lowest processor version that you will ever use the partition with. So I choose basic 68k version for my 600 with ACA so the disk will still work in fallback mode.

Peter

I'm just worried that I may not be using the best files for an 060 in my install

So if your 060 board has a fallback mode you should at least consider the 020 versions of PFS. Anyone comment on the performance boost given by the optimised versions? Maybe it is worth the potential compatibility headache.

[Cammy]

Hi Peter. If you have a 060 you are best to copy the PFS file that is installed by the installer over the top of the one in the floppy disks I made. The versions I put on there are better for 020/030 users and 000 users, but you're best to use the 060 one yourself.

[Peter]

@ Cammy, in the PFS3 install I notice there is a folder called Data/eng/fs - which seems to contain all the different pfs3 processor type files - are these the files that you used Cammy to create your floppy disk?

Do you just take the files you require for your own personal set up and rename them?
For my 1260 set up for example I would just take the PFS3-060 and the PFS3-060ds files and rename them to pfs3 and pfs3ds and use those on my floppy?

I assume that this is all the installer does automatically if you install to hard drive.

I guess the pfsformat (not in this folder) file would be generic.

Sorry if I am being a bit slow on the uptake but any confirmation that this is the right thing to do would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Peter

@ Cammy, in the PFS3 install I notice there is a folder called Data/eng/fs - which seems to contain all the different pfs3 processor type files - are these the files that you used Cammy to create your floppy disk?

In the original commercial distribution these files were not usable. They needed to be registered with your personal serial number. I don't know if it is still the same with the free edition, but to be sure you should run the installer script again and install the processor version you need.

[Peter]

@ thomas - so, bearing in mind I have created my system partition using Cammy's disk, which has the 020/030 pfs3ds file, would it be then ok to just over write the pfs3ds file in system/L with the 060 version of the pfs3ds file - which I can do by either re-installing PFS3 or just using a renamed version (I think the files are usable as there is a license included with the Aminet release.

Or, do you think it best to start from scratch.

[thomas]

You can overwrite every file in L or delete it, it does not matter. The file system code is stored in the RDB of the hard drive using HDToolbox. The file system version you use will not change unless you use HDToolbox to install it. The L directory is a good place to collect different file systems, but they don't need to be stored there.

So yes, run the installer, let it replace the version in L by the 060 version, then run HDtoolbox, go to "partition drive", enable "advanced options", click on "add/update", select PFS3 from the list and click on "upgrade", then select the new 060 version from L and let HDToolbox save it. After a reboot the new code is used (and you could delete the file from L if you wanted to).

[orange]

it might be a good idea to have two or more versions in RDB (if they fit). because you might wanna connect that HDD to '030 Amiga one day.

[Peter]

I know what your saying but I don't intend to use this CF in any other machine other than one with an 060 (fingers crossed) although I can fully appreciate that this might not be everybody's best route.

OK, followed your tip thomas and did just as you wrote - the partitions are now updated to use the pfs3-060ds - I have also updated these files on my copy of Cammy's Install 3.1 disk in case I need them.

I have three partitions all with the same settings of...

Custom file system - pfs3-060ds
Dos Type PDS\3
Mask 0x7ffffffe
max Transfer 0x00ffffff (UPDATE - Now set at 0x0001FE00)

block size 512
buffers 300

I am not expecting great speed from this set up as I am only using the native Amiga IDE (my Fast ATA MK-IV is in another A1200 - testing this next week)

I'll run with this for a bit and post some read write speeds here for interest... which is the best software to use for such a purpose?


Thanks Cammy and thomas!!

[Jope]

I would recommend dropping the max transfer to 0x1fe00 to avoid data corruption.

[johnim]

I would recommend dropping the max transfer to 0x1fe00 to avoid data corruption.

+1

[Peter]

Double checked all three partition Max transfer settings and all three are now set at 0x0001FE00 as Cammy suggested earlier in the thread.