A1200 Help in adding partition

[Rob_hawk]

Hi,

I’m very new here and would really appreciate some help. I have recently acquired a superb A1200 that has been refurbished by RetroPassion in the UK. To say I’m happy with the machine would be an understatement. I’ve waited many years to be able to own an A1200 once again.

The machine has an intermal 16GB CF card as its hard drive and this is where my question comesfrom. As it stands there are 3 partitions on the drive (images below) and it’s running OS 3.2 as you’ll see from the images as well.

I was hoping to add a new partition of 2GB (or more) so using a couple of books I’d acquired I’d opened up HDtools expecting to see my CF hard disk there and be able to click partition however when I open HDtools it does not display or find the device - all options are greyed out. In Format I can see the various drives but for some reason not in HDtools. Clearly this is a new user issue!

What am I doing wrong? How can I add a new partition to my CF HD?

All help is great appreciated.

Regards

Rob

[Rob_hawk]

Hi,

I’d still really value some help with my questions below. Have I not provided enough info?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Regards

Rob

[thomas]

Open icon information of HDToolbox, find the tooltype which reads SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=scsi.device and change scsi.device to the name of your harddrive driver. And remove the brackets around it if there are any.

You should find the name of the driver in the manual of your harddisk controller.

[Rob_hawk]

Originally Posted by thomas

Open icon information of HDToolbox, find the tooltype which reads SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=scsi.device and change scsi.device to the name of your harddrive driver. And remove the brackets around it if there are any.

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for the help.

So some success I have added the compactflash.device as this is the driver installed for my CF Card. When I then run the HDToolBox initially it still does not find the drive.

However if I change the first entry to IDE_DEVICE_NAME to IDE (see image number 5 attached) and then run the tool the drive now appears BUT it’s the wrong type and I am nervous about changing. I have attached some updated pictures that I hope will help. Are there other changes that I need to make to the HDTools Icon (Image 5) so that it’s set-up correctly for IDE? Or does this need to stay as SCSI as it’s my main internal drive?

Look forward to your reply and I really appreciate your help.

Rob

[thomas]

compactflash.device is for the PCMCIA port. It cannot be used with HDToolbox.

Your internal drive is on scsi.device. You should shoot the person who put uaehf.device there and saved it to disk.

There is no such thing like IDE_DEVICE_NAME. All harddrives are accessed as SCSI and even the IDE driver is called scsi.device for compatibility.

SCSI_DEVICE_NAME is the name of the parameter. It must be given like that, everything else is ignored. The only thing which may change is the value of this parameter. Default should be scsi.device. As I said you should shoot the person who changed it permanently.

[Rob_hawk]

Originally Posted by thomas

SCSI_DEVICE_NAME is the name of the parameter. It must be given like that, everything else is ignored. The only thing which may change is the value of this parameter. Default should be scsi.device. As I said you should shoot the person who changed it permanently.

Hi Thomas

Thanks again for the fast reply.

So should I change it to scsi.device? Or is it not possible for me to change this now that uaehf.device has been used?

I’m on a learning curve here so keen to get this right.

Look forward to news.

Rob

[crazyc]

If I read this right just go back to Thomas' first post and make the line read
SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=scsi.device

remember to save it.

HDToolbox should then see your drive - this just tells it which device controller to look at. Presumably the drive was setup in WINUAE on a pc and they didnt bother to reset this for a real amiga.

[Rob_hawk]

Originally Posted by crazyc

If I read this right just go back to Thomas' first post and make the line read
SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=scsi.device

remember to save it.

HDToolbox should then see your drive - this just tells it which device controller to look at. Presumably the drive was setup in WINUAE on a pc and they didnt bother to reset this for a real amiga.

Thanks for your help.

It was supplied like this so hopefully I can resolve! Quick question re changing

SCSI_DEVICE_NAME=scsi.device

When I make this change I’m guessing there should be a scsi.device driver in the DEVS folder? When I check mine it’s not there like. Is it okay to copy once across?

**UPDATE** - Okay so I just changed to scsi.device and saved. Now when I run HDToolBox it finds the drive and I can see my 3 current partitions that were set up Excellent news!

So one outstanding question is do I need to copy an A1200 specific scsi.devices file to the DEVS drawer? I’m guessing not given it’s working but wanted to check for completeness!

Help with this hugely appreciated.

Rob

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Rob_hawk

So one outstanding question is do I need to copy an A1200 specific scsi.devices file to the DEVS drawer?

This is a question you should be able to answer yourself: scsi.device is the harddisk driver. It is needed to read the harddrive, to read the Devs folder. So what use should a file in the Devs folder be if it was needed before it is possible to read that folder?

Scsi.device is in ROM. It has to be available before anything can be read from harddisk.

[Rob_hawk]

Originally Posted by thomas

This is a question you should be able to answer yourself: scsi.device is the harddisk driver. It is needed to read the harddrive, to read the Devs folder. So what use should a file in the Devs folder be if it was needed before it is possible to read that folder?

Scsi.device is in ROM. It has to be available before anything can be read from harddisk.

That indeed is a very fair comment!

The only reason I asked was that I noticed on a separate build that I have on FS-UAE (this one I built myself from the 3.2 CD direct as opposed to the one supplied and installed by RetroPAssion on my physical machine) there was an A1200 folder in DEVS that contained a scsi-device driver file and I as I’m very new to the Amiga I asked myself why this was present and not on my physical machine.

Now I’m confident that things are working as they should thanks to yours and other help here today. I’ve learned some new things along the way which after all is one of the main reasons I purchased a new A1200 after 30 years. I’m sure I’ll have more questions over time but for now I can’t thank you enough for your time and support today.

Thanks to both of you that have helped me. Have a good week.

Rob

[crazyc]

Good luck with your setup mate,
I would recommend taking a backup image of the card before messing around with partitions etc.
One of many lessons learned the hard way.....

[Rob_hawk]

Originally Posted by crazyc

Good luck with your setup mate,
I would recommend taking a backup image of the card before messing around with partitions etc.
One of many lessons learned the hard way.....

Good plan!

I’ve just worked out how to do that using terminal and dd on my MacBook and have successfully backed up by CF HD and now have that running in FS-UAE.

Cheers

Rob

[Rob_hawk]

Originally Posted by Boing-Ball

Did RetroPassionUK NOT help you? Glad you got it sorted….

RetroPassion have been excellent. My machine and the help I have received has been really good. I thought this was one that I probably needed to sort out myself and also it was a great opportunity to get a little involved in this great forum.

Likewise glad it is resolved now - I’ve learned a fair bit!

[Rob_hawk]

Originally Posted by Boing-Ball

Fair enough.. Only way to learn…

Thanks. It’s been great having an Amiga back after all these years and there’s a lot to learn so it’s really pleasing that this forum is helpful and lively.