A600 won't stop using CF card as system memory

[demolition]

Hi,

When I am booting my A600 (w. ACA620) using KS3.1 with a FAT-formatted CF-card in the PCMCIA slot, it adds it as 4 MB system memory for some reason. Obviously that memory won't work, so I have to remove the card every time I want to reboot it, which is annoying. It doesn't happen with KS2.0.

How can I avoid this so it sees the CF card as a disk instead? I tried running Prepcard but it just gives me an error as it can't write anything.

[Arnie]

Prepcard is for S-Ram pcmcia cards to format them as memory or storage. It wont work with CF cards.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Arnie

Prepcard is for S-Ram pcmcia cards to format them as memory or storage. It wont work with CF cards.

Well, the Amiga shouldn't mount the CF card as memory, but it does anyway..

[Photon]

Things to eliminate:
- post your devs:mountlist, something fishy in there?
- FAT drivers installed correctly?
- how do you "mount" it?
- does everything work with ACA jumpered to off / does it work if you change some ACATune settings?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Photon

Things to eliminate:
- post your devs:mountlist, something fishy in there?
- FAT drivers installed correctly?
- how do you "mount" it?
- does everything work with ACA jumpered to off / does it work if you change some ACATune settings?

Since it is mounting it as system memory, it happens in the kickstart before any HDD booting has taken place. In the pre-boot menu the CC0 device is also gone as a boot device since it has been mounted as memory. If I pull out the card and reset, CC0 reappears.

It must be reading something from the card which identifies it as memory instead of a disk?

It would be interesting to try without the ACA620, but so far I only have KS3.1 as a file on the HDD and since it doesn't happen with 2.0, I can't test that.

[Photon]

That's better info!

I see no options in ACATune 1.7 that require > kick 2.0, so it *should* be safe to rule out the ACA. It could some autoconfig issue with/without the ACA on. Acatune has some PCMCIA options, but I don't think PCMCIA slow will help. The PCMCIA reset option when softkicking takes place, maybe.

I have hardware kick 3.1, I could find a PCMCIA CF+card and test, but then again I have ACA630, not 620. So it's unknown how helpful that is.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by Photon

I see no options in ACATune 1.7 that require > kick 2.0, so it *should* be safe to rule out the ACA. It could some autoconfig issue with/without the ACA on. Acatune has some PCMCIA options, but I don't think PCMCIA slow will help. The PCMCIA reset option when softkicking takes place, maybe.

The 'resetpcmcia' option doesn't change anything either. Still comes up as memory on next reboot.

[demolition]

The CF I normally use for the PCMCIA is a plain 256MB Sandisk card, which is too small for HDD usage but big enough for temporary storage.

Tried booting the 600 with a 4GB CF card in the PCMCIA slot and apparently it doesn't like that card and won't boot at all with ks3.1. It will boot with ks2.0 but there is a long delay before it begins to boot.

Maybe the card '4GB Sandisk Ducati Edition' is incompatible with the Amiga in the PCMCIA slot?

[roy bates]

so basicly,your trying to boot your amiga with a 4 gig cf card in a card reader in the pcmcia port?


so whats in the ide port?

or are you booting it up from the ide port and trying to see a 4gig card in the pcmcia port as well.
because ive got to say its getting a bit confusing.



ahh i see what your doing,never mind i think i need another hot drink

[demolition]

Originally Posted by roy bates

so basicly,your trying to boot your amiga with a 4 gig cf card in a card reader in the pcmcia port?
ahh i see what your doing,never mind i think i need another hot drink

I'm trying to get the Amiga to ignore the CF card in the PCMCIA and just boot from the CF card on the IDE connector.

[roy bates]

why dont you just remove the dos driver from devs? you can mount it after it boots.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by roy bates

why dont you just remove the dos driver from devs? you can mount it after it boots.

Read my post above - it's not getting mounted during WB startup, it's mounted pre-boot as system memory. The way I see it, I either need to change something on the CF card/PCMCIA adapter or use a custom KS to avoid this.

[jbenam]

Maybe the 4GB CF card doesn't signal itself as a fixed drive, but as removable memory, which somehow gets allocated as system memory...?

I guess the CF adapter is fine, if it works with a 512MB card. The culprit must be the 4GB card. Do you have another miggy you could try card+adapter on, to see if it still happens?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by jbenam

Maybe the 4GB CF card doesn't signal itself as a fixed drive, but as removable memory, which somehow gets allocated as system memory...?

I guess the CF adapter is fine, if it works with a 512MB card. The culprit must be the 4GB card. Do you have another miggy you could try card+adapter on, to see if it still happens?

With the 256MB card it boots but mounts it as 4 MB system memory, with the 4GB card it won't boot at all.

I normally use the 256MB card for file transfers and it works fine if I insert it post-boot and mount it using cfd and fat95.

I can try it in my other A600 tonight.

[roy bates]

any chance you can post what dosdrivers are in your devs drawer.(all of them)

[demolition]

Originally Posted by roy bates

any chance you can post what dosdrivers are in your devs drawer.(all of them)

Can't see it as relevant since the same thing happens if I boot from an empty bootable floppy without any HDD attached.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by demolition

With the 256MB card it boots but mounts it as 4 MB system memory, with the 4GB card it won't boot at all.

I normally use the 256MB card for file transfers and it works fine if I insert it post-boot and mount it using cfd and fat95.

I can try it in my other A600 tonight.

Wait, so the 256MB boots, but it still gets mounted as a 4MB system memory?

Looks like there's something terribly wrong either with your adapter or your motherboard (funny gayle/mb rev behaviour?).

[demolition]

Originally Posted by jbenam

Wait, so the 256MB boots, but it still gets mounted as a 4MB system memory?

Looks like there's something terribly wrong either with your adapter or your motherboard (funny gayle/mb rev behaviour?).

Seems like I'm not expressing myself properly, causing misunderstandings..

I have the following:
On IDE: 2GB CF
On PCMCIA: 256MB CF (also tried a 4GB CF)

The 2GB card is always attached on the IDE bus. If the 256MB card is connected in PCMCIA it will mount it as system memory when I'm using KS3.1. This doesn't happen with KS2.0.

When the 4GB card is inserted into the PCMCIA, it will boot using KS2.0 after a short delay (maybe trying to boot from CC0?), but with KS3.1 it will never start booting and just halts in the KS.

Only the 2GB card is bootable, the other two are FAT formatted.

[jimbob]

Hi demolition, very strange problem you have there. What I would try next is to dump a file of your real 2.0 kickstart and MapROM it from file instead of the 3.1.

This will tell you if the problem is with the 3.1 file or the process of mapROMing with something present in PCMCIA.

Have you compared your 3.1 file checksum with a list of known ones?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by jimbob

Hi demolition, very strange problem you have there. What I would try next is to dump a file of your real 2.0 kickstart and MapROM it from file instead of the 3.1.

This will tell you if the problem is with the 3.1 file or the process of mapROMing with something present in PCMCIA.

Have you compared your 3.1 file checksum with a list of known ones?

I did try to do '-maprom *' and that works fine, but haven't tried dumping it and loading from disk, although that shouldn't make a difference.

Skick accepts the kick file along with the .rtb and .pat files that it has so I assume that it should be ok?