A600 update! - more help required....

[foob]

no idea.

and as far as using tsgui with a 1gb reized card.. no. same thing. just sticks on attempting to load.


At least now im down to a 5 minute boot time instead of 30 minutes. something at least.


Also, what would be the command to run easyadf from the CLI if it was installed to the root directory? i tried isntalling easyadf from my floppy but it wont let me change the destination path, it just dumps it in the root and thus i cant find a folder/icon to open it with.

[foob]

just to add to the awesome list, my PCs USB CF reader has now decided to die thanks to bent pins.

edit;- if that wasnt enough, it wasnt a bent pin. it was a broken pin which has now not only stuck in my CF card taking that out, but its bent the penis in my PCMCIA adapter. i'm just about ready to give up and sell this thing to be honest.

[demolition]

I found that pins can be straightened out using the tip from a mechanical pencil. The hole at the end fits well with a pin. Just be careful not to break the pin.

When I got my A1200 I found that 3 pins in the PCMCIA port had been bent by the precious owner and two of them were completely flat against the back. Using a pencil I managed to straighten them out without breaking them and there hasn't been a problem with them since.

It's important to be careful when inserting a card and not force it if there's unusual resistance. As you've found out, they are fragile.

Also:

Originally Posted by foob

its bent the penis in my PCMCIA adapter.

I never noticed whether my adapter was male or female..

[hansel75]

Foob, i think your biggest issue atm is lack of ram, i have a spare 1mb chip original expansion card, plus a 2mb ram pcmcia card as well that i am looking at selling soon. This would give you a total of 4mb of ram, 2mb chip and 2mb fast. Both items are used, but are fully working and tested.

With 4mb ram, combined with a ks3.1 chip and an ide adapter with cf card, it makes a great little whdload machine. These items are now spare because i have a new trapdoor card, and a new aca620 setup in my a600.

I am thinking of listing them both together on ebay soon, but i thought if your interested in them we may be able to arrange something.

I did pay a mint for the 2mb pcmcia card, but will sell it for a more reasonable price. The other alternative for you is kippers 4mb internal card, but you really need to up your chip mem to 2mb as well through the trapdoor.

Han.

Edit- I also have a spare ide cf adapter to!

[demolition]

Originally Posted by foob

I guess this means a chipmem upgrade. none on ebay (except one for £60). whoop de doo.

Btw, that £60 price is ridiculous. You can get a brand new chipmem upgrade for €50:
http://www.vesalia.de/e_a604.htm

[hansel75]

Hey guys, i know this is not a marketplace, and if i do decide to sell this spare gear i have i will post a proper thread in the market section.

But i would like to know roughly how much do you think this gear is worth, i am not looking to rip anyone off, just a decent price.

Original 1mb chip mem expansion, a 2mb ram pcmcia card, and a ide/cf adapter, all used and working.!

All that would be needed then would be a KS3.1 chip upgrade, and a CF card to make a decent WHDload machine.

I ask because this would greatly help Foob if he is interested, and might be a good buy for anyone in a similar circumstance when only having a base 1mb A600.!

I really think it's the lack of ram that is causing Foob's issues. Another solution is Kippers 4mb fast cards!

Han.

[DDNI]

I would feel ok paying...

£15 Chip mem expansion
£30 PCMCIA Card - offers a significant speed boost to an A600
£1 CF/IDE adapter. They are all over ebay.

[foob]

Originally Posted by hansel75

Hey guys, i know this is not a marketplace, and if i do decide to sell this spare gear i have i will post a proper thread in the market section.

But i would like to know roughly how much do you think this gear is worth, i am not looking to rip anyone off, just a decent price.

Original 1mb chip mem expansion, a 2mb ram pcmcia card, and a ide/cf adapter, all used and working.!

All that would be needed then would be a KS3.1 chip upgrade, and a CF card to make a decent WHDload machine.

I ask because this would greatly help Foob if he is interested, and might be a good buy for anyone in a similar circumstance when only having a base 1mb A600.!

I really think it's the lack of ram that is causing Foob's issues. Another solution is Kippers 4mb fast cards!

Han.

by all means, let me know when you plan to sell them. Right now... i simply can't afford it. But if i happen to have the cash at the time of sale then by all means try me first.

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by hansel75

I really think it's the lack of ram that is causing Foob's issues. Another solution is Kippers 4mb fast cards!

Han.

That's not the case, I spent around 6-8 hours over 2 days testing all the different scenarios in this thread

I tested with a stock 1mb A600 and an A600 with 2mb Chip & Kipper's 4mb Fast Ram board, with the larger CF's it was still very slow booting the OS from PCMCIA with larger CF cards and accessing the OS in that way. (Booting times of up to 20 mins)

When I used my smaller 1gb CF is was like a rocket, even on the standard A600, even loading Classic Workbench!

All extra Ram will do is let Foob run larger programs, and maybe some WHDLoad Games, he will still experience the same problem if he wants to use these boot Disks and load the OS from PCMCIA.

Whet he needs to do to achieve the goal set out in this thread (boot to workbench and write some ADF's) is:

A) Try a smaller CF (256mb-1gb)

or

B) Upgrade the Rom and install the CF HDD on the internal IDE

Upgrading Ram is a luxury for later

I highly recommend option B!

[hansel75]

No worries guys, i may hold onto them for a bit longer yet anyway.

Sorry if i got of track.

Let us know on your progress Foob, i hope you can at least get it to the stage of writing out some adf's to floppies!

Han.

[Arnie]

@fitzsteve

Just a thought, would partitioning the 4gb CF card, (if at all possible), into two 2gb partitions, then use one partition to boot, and one for work, make it boot faster?

[foob]

Originally Posted by Arnie

@fitzsteve

Just a thought, would partitioning the 4gb CF card, (if at all possible), into two 2gb partitions, then use one partition to boot, and one for work, make it boot faster?

Most likely not, as the last thing i tried with my CF card before it died was to resize it to 1GB (and leave 3GB unallocated space) and boot. It wasnt noticeably faster.

[foob]

Small update for the moment, and finally some good news for once.

my 1GB Transcend CF card came today, and i managed to bend the pins back into place on my PCMCIA adapter and get it working again. Although i don't have a working CF reader for my PC yet due to the snapped pins, i decided to boot into EasyADF anyway and see if it did anything differently than the (now broken) 4GB card.

When booting up, it no longer hung on when attempting to load the CF driver, and seemed to bypass it in normal speed. Also, once it had finished, i now notice CF0 on my desktop, which i have never done before. I couldn't open it, but whatever. It appears that this CF card works fine. I tried to load EasyADF and see if it recognised the card at least, but i didnt have enough memory to run it apparently (even though i booted from floppy, and apparently had around 800k free)

I can't currently write WB to the CF yet as im without the CF adapter for PC... but i suspect that once i do, i should be able to write .adfs using TSGUI rather than EasyADF, and i finally get around to throwing that terrible software in the bin (or at least overwrite the floppy, so at least it may be good for something).

I may compile a new thread/post when all this is done to serve as warning/information to those who will inevitably end up in the same position as myself.


QUICK EDIT; - i managed to get EasyADF to run for once and it appears to now give the error that CF0 is not a DOS disk. So its now recognizing the CF, operating at full speed and i suspect all i really need is a proper format of the CF in FAT16 or something and i can finally start writing floppies. I may not even need to boot from the CF at all. I bought a stack of 30 black 1.44MBs to convert so i can write and play from those for the time being while i consider some proper upgrades.

[hansel75]

Good to hear your making some progress there Foob.

Like you said, you may not even need to boot into a pcmcia WB setup after all, if all your wanting to do for now is copying out adf's to floppies, then simply booting from a floppy with the adf writing utils on it is probably the easiest way to go.

But of course you will still need a working pcmcia cf card to transfer the adf's over!

I went through exactly what you are going through atm about 6 months ago and i know how daunting and disheartening it can all get, i was at the point of almost throwing my A600 out the window, lol, but after i got some good advice from here(thanks Ppil), and through a lot of trial and error, i finally worked it all out and i have to say it was all worth it.

Back then i also ended up buying around 100 new floppy disks and i filled them all with games, it was a lot of fun in a retro kind of way.

Then i saw the light and ended up setting up an ide/cf setup, plus got some more ram etc, and if your able to do that later on then believe me, a ide whdload system makes what was great already, even better!

But you have your base amiga, and that's a nice start to have, you can always expand it when the time/cash is right.

For now, i can't wait to hear some news from you soon that you were able to write out your first adf amiga floppy successfully, and are able to do some serious gaming on your amiga again, it's worth the effort

Han.

[fitzsteve]

Hi Foob,

Glad to hear you're making progress and having more success with the smaller CF card

Once you get your PC Card reader I recommend using ppill's boot disk with his simple hdf, it's really perfect for the A600 for writing ADF's

I've zoned everything you need, just make the boot ADF (with EasyADF or whatever) *See file comfy_a600_modded.zip in the Zone

Then if you boot from the floppy Disk with the HDF file in the root of the CF card it will load up his mini Workbench still being able to access the other files in your CF (the ADF's for example)

It works really nice.

All the best,

Steve.

[clownstyle]

I'm glad your getting somewhere foob. I have been silently following this thread for a while now and for a moment I thought you may have given up!

Stick with it. There is light at the end of the tunnel

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by foob

i should be able to write .adfs using TSGUI rather than EasyADF, and i finally get around to throwing that terrible software in the bin (or at least overwrite the floppy, so at least it may be good for something).

I been thinking about making an alternative like EasyADF but free and working properly. I still do not understand why it asks for Workbench disks.

It's nothing I am deeply interested in though, as I don't use floppies no more, but it seems lots of people need this kind of solution and although everything out there is available to do so, it is usually not as user friendly as it should be and, also, many times not free, which is a shame.

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by Akira

I been thinking about making an alternative like EasyADF but free and working properly. I still do not understand why it asks for Workbench disks.
.

It copies files from C: and Libs: to Ram:

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Arnie

It copies files from C: and Libs: to Ram:

And why can't it include the files like every other software in existence?

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by Akira

And why can't it include the files like every other software in existence?

Probably disk space, there is only 14k left on the disk and the files are 28k archived.