CF / SD and large drives FAQ

[ShK]

I can see issue here!

If the partition has been done under OS3.5/OS3.9 to max Logical block addressing and the Amiga is started without SetPatch-command there is only a scsi.device 40.12 with its CHS capacity (booted without startup-sequence or from floppy to some HD-utility).

If the partition is written in this situation, it may be corrupted.

[Solo761]

I'm having trouble with Kingston 16GB 266x card. It's not fake, bought in store locally, this one:


I want to use it in my A600 (only ACA620EC as far as expansions go) but so far no luck. At first I couldn't get partitions to show, but after I used plain WB31 and not CWB I finally got that part done.

I tried prepping it completely in WinUAE and on A600 but result is the same. I set partitions up this way

DH0 500MB FFS
DH1 14347MB PFS3 (AIO)

Problem is that first partition works fine on both WinUAE and A600, I can boot fine from it. But second one doesn't. It shows on both, but on real A600 every file on this partition is corrupted. What's odd is that if I plug it back on my PC and use in WinUAE it works OK, the same files that were corrupted now work fine.

I tried prepping it with both HDToolBox from WB31 and HDInstTools 6.9 from aminet but it's the same, although they show different drive geometry (but same end capacity).

I even tried making more partitions like this (I did this on A600 using HDInstTools)

DH0 500 FFS
DH1 4000 PFS3
DH2 4000 PFS3
DH3 6347 PFS3

All formatted fine, then I plugged it into PC, with WinUAE transfered CWB to DH0 as usual and my test file set to DH1, DH2 and DH3. Plugged it back into A600 and it booted fine. Except DH2 and DH3 showed again as NDOS drives, although I formatted them 5 minutes ago on this same Amiga and this time DH2 didn't have corrupted data, it worked fine.

Anyone has an idea what could be the issue here? This is not first 16GB card I set up. I have one Transcend 16GB in my A1200 and it works fine, same partition setup...
I'm using doobrey's scsi.device file, maxtransfer rate is set to 0x1fe00 on all partitions.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Solo761

I'm using doobrey's scsi.device file, maxtransfer rate is set to 0x1fe00 on all partitions.

Please include exact version ("version full scsi.device"). Did you use IDE emulation and 100% matching config in WinUAE?

[Solo761]

scsi.device version is "44.2 (09/10/03)". I used IDE emulation (IDE0, not UAE), config is not 100% matched, but I tried matching it as close as possible, A600 but with ACA620EC, so I loaded default A600 and then changed CPU to 68020, and lastly set fast ram to 8MB. Kickstart is 3.1. No matter what config I use in WinUAE it always works fine, no files are corrupted on DH1, in real A600 files in DH1 are corrupted.

I think it's something to do with CF card, I did it the same with Transcend 16GB and it works flawlessly :/.

[Toni Wilen]

Does 43.45p from Aminet work? It is my reference version, it has minimal amount of patches (to fix real bugs), nothing else is included.

[Solo761]

Thanks, I'll try that as soon as I gather all the parts . I see that's patch only, I have to find vanilla 43.45 scsi.device. There is one in CWB LargeHD folder, but it's prepatched.

[Solo761]

I think it's CF card, it simply doesn't like either IDE or Amiga. I've tried few times more with different scsi.device files and patched scsi.device 43.45 but it didn't help. Even more, if I set emulated Amiga to slower emulated CPU I start getting errors while accessing the drive, they range from PFS3 errors to, I guess workbench, system errors.
Or better said, the longer the drive is connected and used the more errors I get. Previous partitioning was done with emulated 68040 at max emulated speed so even copying few GB was done in few minutes. This time copy-ing took few hours and errors started popping up. Here are few examples:



In the end it wouldn't even boot WB from it. After I reconnected USB CF card reader it worked for a bit again and after a while errors started again. I tested the card in windows in h2testw app and it checks out so I think it's just compatibility issue.

I ordered no name 16GB CF card from ebay. They seem to work fine, I have 4GB one and it works fine too (it's currently in A600), from what I've read they report as fixed disk, not removable one as this kingston does.

[fitzsteve]

Maybe CF is faulty? It could still be a fake even if it came from a store, there are fraudsters everywhere!

Maybe download some flash memory testing tool on the Internet and test the card?

[mark_k]

Yes, I'd recommend h2testw. Connect your CF card to a PC and run h2testw on it (which will overwrite all existing data). If that test passes you can be confident the card capacity is genuine.

[Solo761]

Yup, I did that already, it's mentioned at the end . After all those errors I also suspected. But it checks out fine. Even speed was OK, around 20 MB/s.

[fgh]

There is a new version of compactflash.device out at http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/cfd

v1.28 04/2009 First attempt to make cfd ROMable.
v1.29 11/2009 Added transfer mode autoconfiguration. New "dd" version including speed gauge and performance test.
v1.30 11/2009 Major API rework and optimizations for use in kickstart ROMs.
v1.31 11/2009 Fixed bug in "memory mapped" mode. Further optimizations.
v1.32 11/2009 Added more detailled error messages.

04/2014 Removed "dd" as it is part of "fat95". Finally made this open source.

Cool that it is open source and can be put in ROM..

Anyone care to try with those Kingston cards with the flower image to see if they work now?

[Vicky]

Hello everyone,

I am having a problem with SD cards. I have two Amiga 1200s. The one I am having a problem with has an NTSC motherboard, OS 3.9, an accelerator, a video adapter and a SCSI CD-ROM. The video software is installed. It recognizes a CF card and network card and nothing else in the pcmcia slot. The other one has a PAL board, no CD-ROM and the video software is not installed. I can take an SD card put it in an adapter and put that adapter into the PCMCIA adapter and it sees the SD card. Then, I can take the SD HDD and from the NTSC machine and put it into the PAL machine and everything works. I can swap adapters and everything still works. The machine with the NTSC board won't even booth with the SD card in the adapter.

Is it possible that, even though the PCMCIA slot recognizes network and CF cards, that it is still not workling properly?

Thanks.

[fgh]

So using the same boot device (sd on ide) and same adapters the pcmcia sd card works in one machine but not the other, but pcmcia cf works in both, did I understand correctly?

How does it 'not boot'? I guess it reaches early startup screen? Can you boot without startup-sequence? If yes you could look into where in the startup sequence it fails.

I would try to eliminate differences between the machines one by one, so remove CPU board and cd-rom.
Do they have other differences? Kickstart version?

It could also be psu related, as the active sd adapter draws more than the passive cf adapter, but it should be a very small difference so sounds unlikely.

[Vicky]

You did understand that correctly. The only difference between the motherboards is that one is PAL and the other is NTSC. I'm using a 300W power supply for both of them. Yrs, it reaches early start up screen. Same accelerator, same video card.

[fgh]

Ok, so my two suggestions still apply:

Originally Posted by fgh

Can you boot without startup-sequence? If yes you could look into where in the startup sequence it fails.

I would try to eliminate differences between the machines one by one, so remove CPU board and cd-rom.
Do they have other differences? Kickstart version?

To figure out where in the boot process it fails, you can start by renaming s/user-startup to something else. If it boots then you know where to focus..
IIRC snoopdos can log the boot process as well, but it's more than 15 years since I used it..

You could always update compactflash.device as well, as older versions (v1.21) have made certain setups freeze. I don't expect it to be the cause here, but it's worth trying never the less.

[Vicky]

I will try that and post my results. The compactflash.device file is current.

[eebuckeye]

I am installed OS3.9 with a 16GB card so I believe no special steps are required since >4GB support is included, correct?

Should the max transfer speed still be 0x1FE00 for CF and OS3.9?

[fgh]

That's right. You can type version scsi.device in shell to verify that v43.xx is loaded.
And yes, max transfer size should still be the same.

[paulo_becas]

Originally Posted by eebuckeye

I am installed OS3.9 with a 16GB card so I believe no special steps are required since >4GB support is included, correct?

Should the max transfer speed still be 0x1FE00 for CF and OS3.9?

You have to install scsi.device 43.45, at least, for OS3.9 can see above 8 gb.

To load it you have to use LoadModule, that you can find on aminet, and load the new version of scsi.device on top of your startup sequence.

Check out this two posts from FitzSteve, i had the same issue and i solve it with is help.

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=950077&postcount=10

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=950115&postcount=12

[fgh]

No Paulo, this is completely wrong.
OS3.5/3.9 uses setpatch to update scsi.device to 43.34/35/43 to support up to 128GB.

What Steve is describing is a way to run a custom ROM with the MapROM feature of a turbo board. (And to update specifically to 43.45 as you requested)