Frustrating CF card woes

[LieutLaww]

So I have spent the afternoon and evening attempting to setup an 8gb CF card in Winuae for my Amiga 1200. If I set it as ide0 it doesn't show up in hdinst tools or HDtoolbox at all, if i use uae it will show up in hdtoolbox but not HDinstall tools. I had it working at one point where it showed up in both but something seems to have gone weird or I messed something up as it has stopped working.
I have 2 cards both Transcend 8gb both were blank when I started and after numerous attempts and using diskpart to clean them I have for the moment given up in frustration. Does anyone have any idea what I am possibly missing or have messed up ?

[supaduper]

You may have destroyed the blocks for the boot of the device , many writes can do them no good I have a couple of 8 cf cards that now will not work or boot on the Amiga, Also only use HDToolbox and not HDTools it known to have bugs.

[LieutLaww]

Hmmm the thing is Winuae sees both the cards so I am able to add them, but after that nada. I haven't had to diskpart them that much maybe 3 -4 times each max. I have tried HDInstTools and HDToolbox InstTools detected them at one point after that nope yet toolbox finds them every time so I have no idea what's going on :/ Thanks for the reply though.

[supaduper]

Yes you will find that winuae will see them just like my two cf`s but their dead to the Amiga

[LieutLaww]

Not sure what to do other than order a new cf card

[dirkies]

Had the same issue. Card is fine but you need to wipe the mbr and start all over again to make it work. You only have ONE shot in winuae to set it up correctly so it works on real hardware. Not sure why but I had the same issue with my A4000.

[-Acid-]

Partition it in your Amiga, then you can put it back in WinUAE to set the rest up.

[thomas]

If the Add Harddrive box shows the card with its correct size and it can be successfully added without getting an 'E' in the first column, then it will work. It's just a matter of configuring the Amiga software to look at the right place. Buying a new card will not help, you will only get the same result.

Check the tooltypes of the program you use, there should be one which reads either DEVICE=something.device (HDInstTool) or SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=something.device (HDToolbox). Change this to read either scsi.device (IDE controller) or uaehf.device (UAE controller). And remove the brackets around it, if there are some. If you change the controller, you have to change to tooltype, too.

If you use IDE controller, make sure that the chipset/motherboard you configure actually has an IDE controller and that the Kickstart you configure matches the chipset/motherboard, otherwise it won't work.

If WinUAE does not show the right size, after CLEAN in DiskPart enter CREATE PART PRIMARY and DELETE PART. Also check if LIST DISK shows the right size.

[LieutLaww]

Thanks for the replies, @Thomas I have tried all that, the only thing I think I may not have configured properly is the Amiga in winuae, will have to check the settings and try again. @-Acid- the problem with partitioning using the Amiga is as it is an 8gb card I need to use sfs or something similar and no way of adding that on the real amiga, unless it can be changed later ?

[supaduper]

SFS is good but go with Toni`s PFS3aio a much better file system

[LieutLaww]

Ok thanks, I may give that a go on my next attempt, need to see if my settings are correct first as its not picking up the card.

[Toni Wilen]

If device appears normally in add harddrive dialog (you can temporarily use empty hardfile to confirm it isn't hardware problem) but does not appear in hdtoolbox in IDE emulation mode: most common problem is wrong config (no IDE hardware, "Chipset extra" must be correct) or mismatched hardware and KS ROM. (For example A4000 <> A1200)

[LieutLaww]

Thanks Tony, i went back and loaded the basic Amiga 1200 config and started from there, selected KS ROM V3.1 (A1200) rev 40.68 advanced chipset was set to compatible, should i do something else in there instead ? I have a folder that i have things like sfs and pfs3aio so i can install new filesystem as it is an 8gb card but when i select sfs via hdtoolbox or HDinstalTools it shows as cfs and the same if i try pfs3aio is this correct ? I am sure when I tried the first time with sfs it was showing as sfs\00 or something similar. Any and all help everyone has given me so far is apprectiated.

[Toni Wilen]

advanced chipset was set to compatible

Compatible is fine but Chipset panel "Chipset Extra" must be correct ("A1200", not "Generic" or anything else)

CFS is never correct.

[LieutLaww]

Chipset extra is set to A1200. I thought CFS was wrong but not sure why it is coming up as that ? It is rather confusing tbh, but I shall try again and see if I can sort it out.

[thomas]

The identifier cannot be determined by HDToolbox. It only suggests CFS as an example. You have to put the right value in there.

PFS comes with detailed instructions. Read the manual, it explains a lot about partitioning a harddrive. http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/PFS3_53

[LieutLaww]

I think that was the problem the first time round, I have tried again using SFS and remembering to change the proper values but once I reboot the drives do not show up so I have obv done something wrong again.

I have made a breakthrough, got the drives to appear after following the advice from Tony and thomas and following the guide for pfs3, next thing is to get DH0 formatted and get an os installed onto it. Have not done an install of pfs3 as i am using winuae and a pc folder with utils on it to get me going so i have at least made progress !

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by LieutLaww

@-Acid- the problem with partitioning using the Amiga is as it is an 8gb card I need to use sfs or something similar and no way of adding that on the real amiga, unless it can be changed later ?

Yes all you need to in the Amiga is create the partitions to get the RDB written to the card. You can format the partitions and add the file system you want to use back in WinUAE.

When you use read config in HDToolbox it will tell you how many cylinders the card has, divide that by the number of GB's the drive has and then you know how many cylinders = 1gb. You can then easily make the correct sized partitions you want in HD toolbox by altering the total cylinders box of each partition instead of using the slider.

[LieutLaww]

I did indeed use the cylinders to get my first partition to the size i wanted, have finally managed to get the card partitioned and a new filesystem installed from within winuae, but thanks for the help and advice

Update ! drives have been given a format and a basic workbench 3.1 installed ready for later. Thanks again to all who gave advice and tips etc.

[thomas]

Please note that SFS is not the best solution for a 8GB CF card. The boot partition still has to be inside the first 4GB of the drive and other partitions are only accessible if you load a patch for scsi.device.

With PFS (DS or AIO variants) you can use all 8GB without additional patches.