PFS3 and gvpscsi.device

[Sinphaltimus]

OK, playing around with PFS3. Here's what I did and what is happening.

First the System:
A500 with 1MB chip ram, no Slow ram, No Fast ram.
GVP A500HD+ with SCSI2Sd adaptor. I have 4 SCSI devices defined but only one in use for this application.
The first SCSI ID 0 is divided into 4 partitions: Workbench, Work, Programs, data. They are all 500MB partitions.
The system runs fine but I wanted to utilize the other defined SCSi partitons so ! thought I would get PFS3 aio working first.

I copied pfs3_aio-handler to a folder on DATA:
I also backed up my entire Workbench: contents into a folder on DATA:

I run HDToolbox from Workbench which is configured tooltype gvpscsi.device .
I clicked the workbench partition and delete it, then create it again and under filesystem i add pfs3 (with the correct dostype and max transfer masks) and i remove FFS.

Then I reboot to workbench floppy, format DH0: (Workbench with PFS3, then I copy all the backed up workbench files back to the workbench volume. Remove the bootable floppy and reboot.

Everything appears great. Boots up without issue.

I make backup drawers on my Workbench volume then backup the other 3 partitions accordingly.

When i run HDToolbox, I get a Red GURU meditation.

If I run HDToolbox that came with these instructions - https://16bitdust.wordpress.com/2015...nuae-and-pfs3/

I get a blinking yellow GURU and recover with left click.

From that same URL I decided to use the loadmodule option and copied the scsi.device to devs. i change the tooltype for HDToolbox both in Workbench and the one I got from that URL to scsi.device. They load without issues but do not see any devices.

So now I'm stuck.

I have DH0 with PFS3 only and cannot get any HDToolbox working in order to complete PFS partitioning and formatting done for the remaining partitions.

I attempted to install PFS 3 using the installer from Aminet and I get an error during the install about some path not found.

Has anyone put PFS3 on their gvpscsi.device?

do I need more than 1MB ram?

Not sure where to go from here.

The main objective is to get the other virtual SCSI IDs working with partitions of considerably greater size. i just figured that while I was at it, I should convert all partitions to PFS.

I could of course reverse the process and get back to FFS on DH0:

Also Note: Workbench HDToolBox crashes to red GURU at a certain point I have never seen before.

Prior to this adventure, it would scan gvpscsi.device and then load. Now (with PFS3 on DH0) it gets through the gvpscsi.device scan then start to scan secondary gvpscsi.device (which never used to happen) and that's where the crash occurs.

[thomas]

When you formatted DH0, did the about window of PFS pop up? This is the best sign that the installation of PFS was successful.

The only occasion I ever saw HDToolbox crash is if the partition block pointers got corrupted. This can happen if the storage used by the partition table including all partitions and file systems and so on grows bigger than the reserved area in the beginning of the harddrive. But with only four partitions and PFS as the only file system this should not happen.

Anyway, please run this program: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.../hddreport.lha
If it does not crash in the same way as HDToolbox does, please attach the report here.

Then you can run this program: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online...oads/tsgui.lha
Select DH0 (Workbench) from the list, then choose "Save RDB to file" from the menu and enter a file name. If saving succeeds, please attach the resulting file here, too.

Finally, in TSGUI select DH0 again, enable the "Full HDD image" checkbox, select a file to save to and click on "Disk -> File". Let it run a few seconds, then cancel it but keep the partial file. It should be a few megabytes only. Zip it and attach it here, too.

[Sinphaltimus]

Originally Posted by thomas

When you formatted DH0, did the about window of PFS pop up? This is the best sign that the installation of PFS was successful.

Yes.

The only occasion I ever saw HDToolbox crash is if the partition block pointers got corrupted. This can happen if the storage used by the partition table including all partitions and file systems and so on grows bigger than the reserved area in the beginning of the harddrive. But with only four partitions and PFS as the only file system this should not happen.

Anyway, please run this program: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.../hddreport.lha
If it does not crash in the same way as HDToolbox does, please attach the report here.

Then you can run this program: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online...oads/tsgui.lha
Select DH0 (Workbench) from the list, then choose "Save RDB to file" from the menu and enter a file name. If saving succeeds, please attach the resulting file here, too.

Finally, in TSGUI select DH0 again, enable the "Full HDD image" checkbox, select a file to save to and click on "Disk -> File". Let it run a few seconds, then cancel it but keep the partial file. It should be a few megabytes only. Zip it and attach it here, too.

Cool, I'll be able to run through these later this afternoon. I'll report back with attachments then.

[Sinphaltimus]

I'm having great difficulty running tsgui.

it doesn't open in WB.

I can boot to shell and open it fine but there is no Save RDB option - when reading the guide it appears as though the RDB option is only for WINUAE.


I can't right HDD image DISK->File because I don't have a location with enough space. It doesn't even start and warns me immediately.

Here's the HDD report (attached) and I do see one error in there:

Errors:
Invalid ID 46534844 in block 2. Expected 50415254 (PART)

I suspect that is the root of my issues and I have no idea how to fix. I don't mind losing data, it's all backed up to another partition.

[thomas]

You're probably suffing from lack of memory. The report shows that only 233 kb are left.

PFS3 uses 150 kb buffers if you keep 30 buffers in HDToolbox. This has been discussed there: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=930160#post930160
So you should change if from 30 to 50 to gain 100 kb back.

However, the report shows that your first SD card which contains DH0 is ok. The problem is with the second card (SCSI ID 1).

As it does not yet have any partitions, it shoudn't harm to delete the faulty partition table. Download and unpack this: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online...ds/killrdb.lha
Open a shell window and enter: killrdb gvpscsi.device 1
Now HDToolbox should no longer crash while reading unit 1 of gvpscsi.device.

In any case you should try to get more RAM for your A500. 1 MB is not much when working with harddrives. And keep the number of partitions small. Each partition eats an additional amount of RAM.

[Sinphaltimus]

Awesome, thanks for all this info. Yeah, I have a Vampire waiting to go into it but there's an issue with the GVP and the Vampire together that causes a reboot loop. Have yet to figure that out which is the main reason I wanted these partitions converted to PFS3 to begin with.

I'm hopeful that after fixing SCSI ID1 I can at least get the other partitions to PFS3. Unfortunately, right now, I'm waiting forever for a ZIP100 disk to DOS format on my Amiga or I'd get right on this. Whenever the format completes (about 24% done after nearly 30 minutes), I'll get on this and report back.

Thank you much for your time and information thomas.

[thomas]

Never do full format on harddrive-like devices. You only need to format floppy disks. On harddrives always use quick format.

Especially avoid full format of flash memory drives. You only wear out the flash cells and the drive won't be able to do proper wear levelling because you did unnecessary write accesses to each and every cell on the drive.

[Sinphaltimus]

Yeah, not full formatting any flash device. It's an Iomega ZIP100 disk. I couldn't format it to MSDOS using Quick format. It kept erroring out saying it's not a dos disk. I had to use Full and now it's chugging along. I need it MSDOS formatted so i can read/Write to it on my PC. I probably should have just formatted on the PC to begin with.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Sinphaltimus

It kept erroring out saying it's not a dos disk.

It will continue to do so when full format is finished. You cannot format a SCSI or IDE disk. All that full format does is to write to each and every block on the disk. There is no formatting going on. After that it will quick format the disk and find the same error as before.

You should find the reason why it says not a DOS disk. Full format will not fix it.

[Sinphaltimus]

You're correct, when it finished, everything happened as you described. I ended up formatting in FAT on my PC.

With that said, killrdb seemed to have worked. But I still have memory issues when dealing with the drives. Things are sort of crashing a lot with SCSI ID 1 fixed (I think it's fixed). I was only able to boot to a shell and type dh0:tools/hdtoolbox gvpscsi - it ran, gave me a popup about disk has changed, need to save to disk, so i did, next reboot I get either red guru reboot of wb tries to load and says DH0A is not a dos disk several times then some program error on DH0 then reboot.

I didn't think of it before I ran out of gas so tomorrow morning I'm going to disable everything I can in early startup (not mount anything except DH0) and see where I'm at.

Will report back then.

I may just pull the SCSI2SD adaptor out and kill SCSI IDs 1,2 & 3. That's probably what I really should have done as soon as you said it was SCSI ID1 with issues. None of the IDs except for 0 have anything on them anyway. They are empty - no partitions.

Goal here is to get all partitions on DH0 to PFS3, then plug in the Vampire.


EDIT: Ok disabled the other SCSI IDs is working, I'm now booting stable again and with 400+KB free. Getting ready to PFS3 the other remaining partitions on DH0:

EDIT1: OK, now I have to give up ion this until I'm ready to install the vampire again.

I was able to delete the WORK partition, recreate it with PFS3, format it with PFS3 and restore the data to it. And now HDToolbox is crashing again. right back to the start of this topic.


EDIT2: Oh, and when I try to change buffers from 30 to 50 in HDToolbox the "Save changes to Drive" button doesn't appear to be working.

Drive status stays on "Changed" and does not revert to "UNCHANGED" no matter how many times i click that button. So the Buffers setting isn't getting updated.

EDIT3: OK, it's definitely a low ram issue. What I have to do it go in to early startup, disable all devices except DH0, boot without startup sequence then run hdtoolbox from the shell. This is all working. I have one more partition to change over to PFS3 and this task will be completed with buffers set to 50 in HDtoolbox.

I cannot thank you enough for your help, guidance and utilities. But I'll try. Thank you. With this topic I have learned a lot and will not soon forget any of it. No better help than the transfer of knowledge and helping people learn to become smarter. So thanks again.

[Sinphaltimus]

Wow, OK now that I have completed this, my system is almost unusable with only about 20k ram free. Yes I set all 4 PFS4 partitions to 50 buffers which free'd up a lot for me. It's OK tho',I really do not plan to use this system as is. I just want to see if changing everything over to PFS3 will stop the system reboot loop I get when plugging in my Vampire board. If the system will boot off scsi now, then I have now worries, if not, I'll probably have to sell off the GVP controller in order to soften the blow. I really just wanted it for the ZIP drive and CD-Rom connectivity - I would have reformatted everything on it just to use as additional storage, possibly a backup to the CF Card the Vampire will run from. It'll hurt to lose those things if I can't get it figured out.

More about THAT issue here:

http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com...d865974b458025

one thing I am going to try is the ApolloOS before I give up the GVP controller. Perhaps it will work with that installed.

http://apolloos.weebly.com/

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Sinphaltimus

From that same URL I decided to use the loadmodule option and copied the scsi.device to devs. i change the tooltype for HDToolbox both in Workbench and the one I got from that URL to scsi.device. They load without issues but do not see any devices.

The GVP doesn't use scsi.device, so there's absolutely no point in including it in the system.

[Sinphaltimus]

I'm going to need it loaded to use the CF Card when I plug in the Vampire.

[Sinphaltimus]

So I reinstalled my vampire, still no go, only this time I think I foudn the problem.

PreVampire, my GVP boot drive is SCSI ID 1.

Without GVP and booting to Vampire CF, I see my CF card is also SCSI ID 1.

I'm willing to bet my GVP and Vampire IDE are having a LUN conflict.

I'm hopeful that these things can be changed on the Vampire easily. Of I'm going to have to swap out chips again with the board and figure out how to change the LUN on the GVP SCSI.

Anyway, i won't derail my own topic any further, this topic can be closed as I've reach my goal for it. Anyone wanting to follow along the rest of the saga can do so here - http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com...2&p=2367#p2367

[mark_k]

The CF connected to Vampire IDE isn't SCSI, so there's no problem/clash with the GVP drive.

[Sinphaltimus]

Originally Posted by mark_k

The CF connected to Vampire IDE isn't SCSI, so there's no problem/clash with the GVP drive.

With only the Vampire connected and CF, in early startup menu it is listed as SCSI-0. Not the CF card (I think CF0 or SD0 or something like that) but the partitions DH0 and UDH0. those are the 2 partitions I have on the CF card with DH0 being the bootable system and UDH0 not yet formatted. My GVP boot drive is also SCSI-0.

[mark_k]

Right, but the CF is IDE, accessed via scsi.device (which is just named like that for backward compatibility, it controls IDE drives). The GVP SCSI chain is completely separate and uses gvpscsi.device. I guess some conflict might be possible if you have partitions named DH0 on both the CF and SCSI drive, but there's no SCSI ID/LUN clash problem.

[Sinphaltimus]

Ah, OK. Well, I think that's going to be a tough fix without losing data. Can a partition be renamed without formatting it? Like if I wanted to rename the CF card DH0 to CFDH0? Or would that mess things up in the WB install?

Thanks you BTw for clarifying that. I know little of these things and am fishing for a solution.

[Sinphaltimus]

UPDATE: OK, I changed the partition name and the volume name from DH0/Workbench to CFDH0/CF-Workbench and the system works fine.

But that didn't resolve the issue.

Problem is, the system reboots before it even gets to early startup menu.

With GVP connected:

Power on system and immediately press and hold both mouse buttons.
All lights come on, I get the vampire board ready sound jingle.
SCSI2SD access light comes on for a fraction of a second then goes dark, Amiga power light goes out then blinks 6 times and reboots. Rinse and repeat.

I guess Hijacked my own topic by bringing up the vampire gvp issue. That's OK, I don't have an issue with it.

[Sinphaltimus]

#Team-Apollo to the rescue - I must have had a typo in my mountlist - SD card now full functional. I'm ecstatic. Loving the vampire thus far.

EDIT - whoops - right comment wrong topic.