Help with CF on an Amiga 2000?

Hello, I'm a new user to this forum. I've been following the CF work being done in this community and would like to try to get it going on my old Amiga 2000.

I pulled it out of storage over the weekend and was able to get it to boot (barely). It has a 50mb hard drive connected to a Trumpcard controller. I'm anxious to get the contents of the hard drive copied since it seems to suffer from stiction (haven't thought about that in a while!) and it already reports read/write errors.

So I have a few questions. I've gathered that I'll need a SCSI->IDE and a IDE->CF adapter. My current SCSI cable only has connectors for one drive, so I'll need one that can connect to multiple drives. Do they still exist? Resolved: Yes, they can be gotten cheaply off ebay

I assume that the HD in my Amiga currently is terminated, as long as I put it at the end of the chain will I need to worry about termination? Resolved: Just make sure the device in the middle is not terminated

This is all assuming the Trumpcard can support multiple SCSI devices, any reason to suspect it doesn't? Resolved: It does

How do I figure out the max size CF I can get? I'm running my Amiga exactly how it went into storage in the 90's. No updated firmware or anything, but I'll do that if necessary. Resolved: I faked an 80MB hard drive on a 128MB SD. Plenty of space so who cares

I have more questions, but this post is already too long. Can anyone help me get started?

ETA:

This is resolved, so I'll sum up what I learned.

- The most important thing to remember is that FFS is an option in the right-click menu.. it never appears anywhere in the checklist and TCUtils assumes you want OFS. While you're enabling that, also check Quick Format.. ignore the warning about low-level formatting. None of that is needed for SCSI2SD

- SCSI2SD works perfectly with my IVS TrumpCard 2000. I have the early version, not the pro. It works fine.

- I enabled SCSI2, attention, and parity. ymmv

- Make sure that the number of sectors configured in SCSI2SD is more than the fake drive you configure on your Amiga, they don't need to match. I altered the geometry manually but I suspect it's not needed either (you can test it by doing a non-destructive REVERSE read test. It'll fail immediately if you put the wrong sector count in)

- TCUtils will want to write what it learns about your drive to devs/mountlist on the floppy. If there is another drive defined there it will fail, so clear out the device you're trying to create before starting

- TCUtils uses the file IVS_SCSI.drives to lookup the geometry for the drive you're trying to create. It would be a simple matter of entering a new drive geometry to get it to use more of your SD since the drives it supports are quite old (and small). You could get clever here... enter your make and model into SCSI2SD, then have it automatically find it here. This may seem like a roundabout way to solve this issue, but the early TCUtils do not allow you to enter drive geometry manually.. it's set up to recognize certain hard drives and only those. Ah when times were simpler!

[duga]

Get an Zorro II IDE card like Buddha or IDE4 Z2.

[ajk]

I am not familiar with the Trumpcard specifically, but if it is a SCSI controller would it not make better sense to get a SCSI to CompactFlash (or SD) adapter rather than having IDE in between? Google for "SCSI2SD" and "AztecMonster" to get started. The maximum drive size for such a setup will be more than enough

If the old drive is dying, you could perhaps set up a serial link and transfer all important files off it before doing anything else. Or even make backups on floppies, if it's only a 50 meg drive.

Originally Posted by duga

Get an Zorro II IDE card like Buddha or IDE4 Z2.

Like this?

http://amigakit.amiga.store/catalog/...oducts_id=1318

Am I reading this right? You just plug that in and boot up? Sounds too good to be true

Originally Posted by ajk

Google for "SCSI2SD" and "AztecMonster" to get started.

Looks like it's out of production?

[ajk]

At least the SCSI2SD is available in many variations and shops:

https://amigakit.amiga.store/catalog...oducts_id=1264
http://store.inertialcomputing.com/category-s/100.htm

But if you don't want to stick with your existing SCSI board, the Buddha is a nice alternative for sure.

[idrougge]

The Buddha doesn't really like CF cards, although this is fixable with an inofficial flash update.

Go for the SCSI2SD, unless you have a really bad SCSI card like the A2090.

The AztecMonster is faster, but is not compatible with Commodore's first-party SCSI cards.

I think I am going to go with a SCSI2SD, I was hoping someone would recognize the Trumpcard and tell me something about it... I can't remember much

[emufan]

resource.cx lists some advert, which states you can connect upto 7 scsi drives chained together.

[dalek]

Check your 50MB Hard Drive PCB area - there will probably be 2-3 termination resistor packs installed right near where the cable plugs in. The drive is probably set as scsi id 0.

If you get a SCSI2SD card, set it up with a different scsi ID and set it up as terminated and on the last physical connector of your new cable (yes, you will need a new one with at least one more connector).

So the simple rules are, make sure there is a device plugged in on the last physical connector of the cable (the end) that has termination. Any devices in the middle must not have terminators.

If you can't see the resistor packs on the drive, you can do it the other way around - put the hard disk at the end of the cable and set the scsi2sd without termination (v6 via software, v5 remove 2 resistor packs).

Hope that helps.

Thanks for all the help! I ordered a SCSI2SD v5 today.

That site that had the old advertisements for the Trumpcard also had a manual! It's hiding a few sections down. Funny thing is: when I saw the cover I had major deja-vu... that book is in a box somewhere in my garage

Fun project! It was crazy seeing all my college .c files.. some college papers too. This Amiga was a big part of that stage in my life. I really hope I can get it reliable again.

[idrougge]

The Trumpcard is a no-nonsense SCSI controller. Not the fastest in the world, but at least not some 80s abomination.

OK guys, thanks for all the help. I did pick up a SCSI2SD and got it working in my old Amiga 2000. I spent the weekend getting it formatted, all my stuff copied, and even got it autobooting. I'm having one consistent problem though:

Once I reboot and it boots into my SD, I get a "Key out of range" error while it tries to validate (-1 usually, always a negative number). I've tried three different SD cards of various sizes, and I've tried formatting them a couple different ways. I always get this error.

Letting it sit doesn't seem to make the error go away. I tried dinking with the settings in SCSI2SD to no avail. Any idea what could cause this? Maybe something SCSI2SD is sending?

BTW: I am using WB 1.3 and the TrumpCard utils I have is an older version. I don't recall off the top of my head the version number but I know it's older than the one available on the site mentioned above.

ETA: I'm seeing in a thread on another board that Michael McMaster recommends matching SCSI2SD's geometry to that used in the Amiga. I assumed this was not a requirement as long as the total sectors was less. I'll be trying this next, but I'd still love to hear from anyone else using SCSI2SD on their Amiga.

I think I figured out what is wrong.

TCUtils will modify the mountlist. When I inspect it, it has FastFileSystem commented out, and is missing a couple entries I think are needed (GlobVec). DosType is also wrong. If I edit these and mount, I can format the SD and mount it repeatedly. Yay!

Now the problem: TCUtils will not write that info to the autoboot section of the SD. I'm sure that it is writing the non-FFS information that it originally wanted to put in the mountlist.

When I let TCutils write the autoboot, I reboot and I immediately get "not a dos disk."

Reboot to my floppy and mount it manually, all is good again.

Is there any way to manually edit the mount info in the autoboot sectors in WB 1.3?

Nevermind! I figured it out! There was an option up in the menu to turn FFS on. Turned it on, wrote the autoboot, and all is good.