A600 with CF-->IDE and KS37.300?

I've been playing with my A600 recently and wanted to install a CF card, but when I plug everything in but nothing appears when I boot into WB. I've gone through the 'sticky' threads as much as I can and searched for specific terms, but couldn't see anything that matched my problem (or couldn't see the wood for the trees!).

I've tried two CF adaptors (the PCB LED lights up) to no avail. The CF card is a Kingston 4GB 'flower power' one, which I've seen that other people have been able to use. I've plugged the card into my PC and it shows up. I've tried partitioning it to 30MB as I read somewhere that KS37.3 may not support larger drives - not sure how true that may be.

If I go to HD disk tools in WB no drive appears.

I booted to the Boot Menu (two mouse clicks and Ctrl+AA) which shows DF0, CC0 and DF1 - not sure what CC0 is...

I've ordered a PCMCIA CF adaptor and a Sandisk Extreme III 4GB card, but I'm sort of thinking it might be the KS ROM? I'm just reluctant to carry on spending money if I'm barking up the wrong tree!

Thanks

[Retro-Nerd]

You need KS 2.05 rev 37.350 for larger IDE HD support, 37.300 is only safe for smaller drives. I would buy Kickstart 3.1 then.

[Toni Wilen]

I don't think it has been proven that there is anything interesting between 37.300 and 37.350 IDE support. It is just rumours..

[demolition]

A600 can be picky as to which CF cards are supported. Even though other people may have had success with apparently the same Kingston CF card, yours may be a different brand internally just with the same Kingston label applied. Kingston do not make their own cards - they have many sources and will switch around depending on who is cheapest / who can deliver etc.

KS 37.300 should work fine and I have used that version without problems with a 4GB card - only 37.299 does not work with IDE.

Thanks guys. I've done some more digging and testing and I think it may be the KS revision. I, for some reason, remembered I had an 810MB 2.5" drive at the back of my drawer. I plugged it in and it spins up (I know it's working as it showed up on my PC) but still no joy. I downloaded HDInstTools and transferred it to my Cortex drive but that couldn't see it in WB2.1 or WB3.0 :-(

I then partitioned it to 30MB but it still wouldn't show up.

[demolition]

Perhaps the IDE port/controller is damaged somehow?

[Retro-Nerd]

I always use HDToolbox from WB 3.1 for partitioning. Worth a try, had problems with HDinstTools in the past.

Okay, I give up for now! I tried WB3.1 disk tools, but no joy.

I've ordered a KS3.1 Rom, only £14 on eBay.

I'm going to the shops to get some beers and watch the F1 practice sessions - I've wasted far too many hours today!

I'll report back when I get the bits and pieces through the post.

Well, I got all my new bits and pieces, but still no joy :-(

I put the 3.1 40.063 KS and there were some differences. It takes longer to get to the boot screen (I think I read that's to allow a longer spinup time for HDs?) and the Sandisk Extreme III card I got that crashed the computer with KS37.300 no longer does, but still not recognised.

The other thing I noticed that on my WB 2.1 and 3.1 Install disks, there was no entries in the 'Information' properties of HDTools, I manually entered that but no change. I then got another copy of WB 3.1 which had all the information pre-filled, but no change.

After much more research, I had noticed that I'd also been doing all this testing with the top case removed. When I plugged it back in, whether and IDE device was or wasn't connected the 'Disk' light is always on. Could this be indicating that there is indeed a problem with the IDE circuitry?

I then thought I could plug in a PCMCIA card with either of the CF cards I have (I checked that I'd got a compatible 16bit PCMCIA card) but nothing appeared. I hadn't realised that it wasn't that simple!!! However, I've been unable to find an easy to follow how-to guide on getting that setup. I tried for quite sometime to create an .adf in WinUAE, but couldn't work out how to extract things to the right place (I kept running out of space for the virtual floppies) to use or where to put certain files - I think one bit I read said to copy fat95 somewhere, but it wasn't clear which bits (I think also there were so many language files I couldn't work out what was need and what not, plus it wasn't appearing as Amiga icons unless I 'showed all'). Is there an idiots guide anywhere?

I got a copy of the schematics (though I am no electronics expert!) and found that the Gayle chip controls IDE and PCMCIA functions - would this mean that something is wrong here and the PCMCIA adaptor wouldn't work either?

Anyway, I hope someone can help! I'd love to get the machine working fully, but I'm just spending hours without much luck. I do keep on reading about capacitor problems, I'm not sure if this would be the case here. A cursory glance over the board shows it looks okay and I don't think it's ever been opened, but then I guess that's no guarantee if it looks shiny that the capacitors haven't blown.

Thanks.

[idrougge]

You basically only need CF0 in DEVSosdrivers, cfd.device in DEVS: and fat95 in L:.

P.S. How can an Amiga forum have such bad taste as to make smilies out of file system paths?

Originally Posted by idrougge

You basically only need CF0 in DEVSosdrivers, cfd.device in DEVS: and fat95 in L:.

P.S. How can an Amiga forum have such bad taste as to make smilies out of file system paths?

What's CF0, where's devs\osdrivers, where do I get cfd.device and what bit of fat95 do I need (i.e. I've got the fat95.lha file, but that's about it and there's lots of stuff in it), and where is L:? - are we talking about copying to the WB3.1 Install disk or Workbench disk itself? If the latter, is there enough space on there?

This is what I was meaning, just some simple idiots guide!!! I spend so much time going through many incomplete guides, or ones that make many assumptions, but none of them match up, so I get stuck again I have tried !!!

[Lemaru]

Originally Posted by demolition

A600 can be picky as to which CF cards are supported.

I found this, moreso after fitting a Furia so switched to SD. However as I prefer being able to access it externally i put my CD adapter back in and brought one one these.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/232079512850

Works a treat with a Sandisk microSD card in an adapter. Bit slower than the CF was but not a great deal

[demolition]

DEVS: is the 'devs' folder on your boot drive and L: is the 'l' folder on the same drive. So if you boot from DF0:, they point to DF0:devs/ and DF0:l/. The CF0 file is contained in cfd.lha and the only file you need from fat95.lha is the one named 'fat95'.

If you run out of space on the WB disk, delete something you don't need like some of the utils.

So these are the source packages you need:
http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/cfd
http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/fat95

From cfd.lha:
cfd/devs/CF0 goes in df0:devs/
cfd/devs/compactflash.device goes in df0:devs/

From fat95.lha:
fat95/l/fat95 goes in df0:l/

When these files are in place, you can type 'mount CF0' and the PCMCIA CF card should become available if it is FAT formatted. Its name will be CF0:.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by demolition

When these files are in place, you can type 'mount CF0' and the PCMCIA CF card should become available if it is FAT formatted. Its name will be CF0:.

Or just doubleclick CF0. Or reboot the Amiga.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Or just doubleclick CF0. Or reboot the Amiga.

To be able to double-click CF0, he'd need to copy CF0.info as well though.
And while a reboot will mount CF0 when installed on a WB floppy (since startup-sequence will mount everything in the DOSDrivers folder), it will not simply auto-mount on all boot disks which does not have this SS.

[Arnie]

Which WB are you using? You need the mount command from WB3 to mount CF0:

Thanks guys, I'll give those things a whirl once I've got my flat in order! Everything is in pieces again at the mo with decorating and the like...

Does anybody have an idea about the 'disk' light always being on? Could it be recoverable to get the hard disk interface to be recognised? The computer will spin a disk up, but just won't appear.

I'm using WB3.1

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by slipgate

I've tried two CF adaptors (the PCB LED lights up) to no avail. The CF card is a Kingston 4GB 'flower power' one, which I've seen that other people have been able to use. I've plugged the card into my PC and it shows up. I've tried partitioning it to 30MB as I read somewhere that KS37.3 may not support larger drives - not sure how true that may be

I'm not sure what you are doing here, but If you are trying to set up th card on the PC to be able to boot on the Amiga then you need to use WinUAE and format/partition the card {Kingston will work well with the Amiga)as FFS (fastfilesystem).

The light continually on could be that the card is unrecognizable to the Amiga, especially if it's formatted as Fat32. Another reason could be that it's set as Slave.

[Cobe]

Could it be that by a chance you plugged the cable the other way around?

I hadn't realised it'd been so long since I last looked at this. I finally got the willpower to try again.

In a nutshell, I am now running with my SanDisk Extreme III 4GB CF with the angled IDE adaptor :-) Though the 'Disk' light is still permanently on for the IDE interface - I'm not sure why that's still doing that.

I stuck in the the IDE 2.5" disk again, it was giving me inconsistent, but at least something, results appearing in HDTools or not (I wasn't getting anything before) so I had a last ditched attempt with the CF via PCMCIA adapter.

Thanks to the initial instructions from Demolition, and after learning more about the Amiga file system and commands, I was able to see the CF via PCMCIA, though it didn't appear immediately. There was nothing to double-click on the desktop after I ran 'mount CF0' so presumed it didn't work. However, simply typing 'CF0:' at the command line magically the CF appeared on the desktop!!!!

After that, I then thought I'd go for the jackpot and try the same card in the IDE adapter and that worked too!!! The only thing I think was different was using WB3.0 as opposed to WB3.1, but I can't be sure.

Anyway, thanks for all your help, especially to Demolition. I've got a 1MB memory upgrade on order and a few more CF cards so I can more easily transfer files across.