Yet Another CF Setup Question...

[ifrit05]

OK. Got an ACA1221 for my A1200 and a 4GB SanDisk Ultra (25MB/s) CF Card.

I'm using a Transend USB 3.0 to SD/CF/MS Duo/MS Pro reader to format the 4GB card to use in my A1200 with ClassicWB.

All the guides I followed do not work. I'm running WinUAE 3.0.0 in admin mode and trying to add my card. It's formatted as FAT16 (I also tried unallocated).

When it's formatted in FAT16, it see's the MBR in WinUAE, unallocated says UNK.

The 2 boxes do not fill up with the drive parameters when I try to add it in WinUAE, guides show that people have info in those boxes.

I am using diskpart to clean the drive but it defaults to a logical partition.

I even tried to use it as an IDE device but it doesn't show in HDToolbox. UAE works kinda when I edit the info to display uaehf.device, but it just spits out "Unit is not a disk (type 32)" when I try to read the disk properties.

I know this is probably not the best way to describe my problem but can anyone help me? I'm for sure I tried following all guides.

Would it just be simpler to buy the 3.1 floppies from AmigaKit and format on a real device with the IDE to CF adapter? I really don't want to wait again to set this all up.

[thomas]

In DiskPart try

CLEAN
CREATE PART PRIMARY
DELETE PART

then safely remove the card and plug it in again.


Don't you have any floppies for your real Amiga? Any bootable disk with HDToolbox or HDInstTools should do. Once the card has been prepared, it should be recognised by WinUAE for OS installation, too.

[demolition]

WinUAE sometimes need to run as administrator before you are able to access the card fully.

I put a cropped image of a 4GB CF card into the zone. It contains two PFS3 partitions. Use WinImage to write it onto the card and see how it works after that. It oftens works for me and avoids the hassle of setting up all the details right (maxtransfer etc) since that is already configured if you can accept the existing partition sizes and types. They just need to be formatted before you can use them.

There can be the issue with the last partition if your card is a little smaller than the one I used to create the image on.

[ifrit05]

Originally Posted by thomas

In DiskPart try

CLEAN
CREATE PART PRIMARY
DELETE PART

then safely remove the card and plug it in again.


Don't you have any floppies for your real Amiga? Any bootable disk with HDToolbox or HDInstTools should do. Once the card has been prepared, it should be recognised by WinUAE for OS installation, too.

Still creates a logical after the fact. I do not have any bootable WB disks, and my GoTek has issues booting on my A1200. ("LBA switch failed" something or another, works fine on my A500)

Originally Posted by demolition

WinUAE sometimes need to run as administrator before you are able to access the card fully.

I put a cropped image of a 4GB CF card into the zone. It contains two PFS3 partitions. Use WinImage to write it onto the card and see how it works after that. It oftens works for me and avoids the hassle of setting up all the details right (maxtransfer etc) since that is already configured if you can accept the existing partition sizes and types. They just need to be formatted before you can use them.

There can be the issue with the last partition if your card is a little smaller than the one I used to create the image on.

I am running in admin mode. The vhd has issues with winImage on my end, it cannot read it.

-------

Well I got my USB to IDE adapter out and set up a 500MB partition on an old 2.5 inch drive and transferred over the ClassicWB install. It had no problem detecting the drive parameters so it must be something with my AIO card reader.

On my real Amiga I used my PCMCIA CF adapter and changed the tooltypes to look for compactflash.device and low-and-behold my real Amiga detected the SanDisk card parameters and I formatted it.

Back in WinUAE it now says RDB for the CF card but It still wont show up on the Workbench. :\

Is there any more info I need to share? I don't want to leave any info out.

[thomas]

Make a screenshot of the Add Harddrive window after you've selected the card. Make a screenshot of the harddrives list after you've added the card. In Workbench run this and attach the report here: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.../hddreport.lha

[ifrit05]

OK, got it. Here are the requested pictures and diagnostics.

[thomas]

Well, the first column in the harddrives list says "E" which means "Error". As long as this is there, it won't work.

Please also upload winuaebootlog.txt. Perhaps Toni can see something in it.

[ifrit05]

Oh, I never really questioned why that "E" was there...

Anyways here's my bootlog.

[Toni Wilen]

I don't see anything in old version logs

[ifrit05]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I don't see anything in old version logs

What do you mean? Should I try an older version of WinUAE?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by ifrit05

I am running in admin mode. The vhd has issues with winImage on my end, it cannot read it.

The VHD file is just an image, so there is no 'file format' involved so it should work. You will receive an error message when it is done writing because the image is smaller than the destination, but this can just be ignored. The card should be usable after that.

[ifrit05]

Originally Posted by demolition

The VHD file is just an image, so there is no 'file format' involved so it should work. You will receive an error message when it is done writing because the image is smaller than the destination, but this can just be ignored. The card should be usable after that.

I renamed it to .img and dd'd it from an old Linux laptop with a PCMCIA to CF adapter and it completed successfully. Using the same adapter the Amiga see's the partition details but on WinUAE it's just showing the same errors. I'm really thinking that it's just the USB AIO card reader I have...

Sigh. I might just buy a PATA SSD and be done with it. Gotta find a 4GB one...

------

Well I just ordered one of these with a 44 pin male to male adapter so I can format it and connect it with WinUAE with my USB to IDE adapter.

I really just want to get this machine up and running. :\

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by ifrit05

What do you mean? Should I try an older version of WinUAE?

Use latest version, if still the same, try latest beta and attach winuaebootlog.txt again.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by ifrit05

Sigh. I might just buy a PATA SSD and be done with it. Gotta find a 4GB one...

That might also not be so simple. I bought a 16GB KingSpec 44pin PATA Disk-On-Module looking similar to the one you linked, but I could never get it to work in the Amiga. It would work fine in the PC, but remained invisible to all my Amigas. Some other people who had the same brand and type of SSD used it without problems in their Amigas, so there can apparently be some differences.

I ended up using the SSD in my retro-PC instead.

Regarding your CF troubles, it sounds to me like it is indeed caused by your card reader. Some people had similar trouble which were fixed by using another card reader and/or another USB port (hubs can cause trouble).

[ifrit05]

Well, I decided to fiddle around with this some more, I went ahead and (*gasp!) bent pin 20 (key) up on my CF to IDE adapter and plugged it into the USB to IDE adapter... And it's reading the CF card perfectly.

I'll bend it back and hook it into the Amiga and see if it works.

-----

Yup, everything is working as it should. Thanks for your time and input everyone, guess it really was the stupid USB AIO reader. I should've thought about using the CF to IDE adapter sooner.

[sigma63]

Originally Posted by demolition

I put a cropped image of a 4GB CF card into the zone. It contains two PFS3 partitions. Use WinImage to write it onto the card and see how it works after that.

Hello Demolition, your Image has a suffix of .vhd, but it is not really a .vhd (at least it has not the proper header) so you can't mount/use it in WinUAE!

Is there a way of converting it, i. e. prepend the proper header?

[demolition]

Originally Posted by sigma63

Hello Demolition, your Image has a suffix of .vhd, but it is not really a .vhd (at least it has not the proper header) so you can't mount/use it in WinUAE!

Is there a way of converting it, i. e. prepend the proper header?

You are right - to be a proper VHD file it needs some extra data, although that is a footer, not a header. Since I simply cropped the file that WinImage gave me I also removed the footer, so an .img extension would probably be more appropriate.

If you use WinImage or Linux 'dd' to write the image back to a 4GB CF card, it should still work though (WI will generate an error when it reaches the end of the file which can be ignored). You can then dump the card back to a proper VHD file. I am not sure that adding the footer without appending all 4GB of zeroes would be valid.

[sigma63]

Originally Posted by demolition

You are right - to be a proper VHD file it needs some extra data, although that is a footer, not a header.

OK, not to offend you but to be correct, there is a Footer *and* a Header.
Actually there is a copy of the Footer beeing part of the Header.

So i'm wondering if you only cut off the rest, where is the Header?

The Specs are downloadable from Microsoft and there are some Tools i have to test and playing with.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by sigma63

OK, not to offend you but to be correct, there is a Footer *and* a Header.
Actually there is a copy of the Footer beeing part of the Header.

So i'm wondering if you only cut off the rest, where is the Header?

The Specs are downloadable from Microsoft and there are some Tools i have to test and playing with.

I just looked in the specs from Microsoft: link
For fixed disk image they write:

The space allocated for data is followed by a footer structure. The size of the entire file is the size of the hard disk in the guest operating system plus the size of the footer.

A fixed disk image only contains a footer while a dynamic disk image contains both a header and a footer. This is a fixed disk image.
I also wrote this image to a CF card using Linux 'dd' and it worked fine on the Amiga, so there could not have been a header present. Since the footer is gone, it is not a valid VHD file.

[thomas]

The file size is not divisible by 512, so either it is corrupted at the end or it still has its footer. (Didn't check the contents.)