CF / SD and large drives FAQ

[Jope]

Are you sure this is the same block size I'm talking about? Can you post a screenshot of that?

[Hypex]

According to the table OS3.9 scsi.device supports removable and atapi.

I have connected an SD-to-IDE adapter to my A4000 IDE bus. It comes up on scsi.device in HDToolbox and I have a working DOS Driver. To mount FAT volumes.

But it doesn't detect disks being inserted or removed. Nor with DiskChange command. Can this work on scsi.device?

It works with other devices like CD drives fine. But I don't know if the adapter identifies as an atapi device. Nor if it sends disk changes despite having an active LED and a socket with spring designed for hot plugging.

[demolition]

Some SD adapters identify themselves as fixed disks, not removable, so you might want to check that for starters. The adapter may not support hot plugging. Having a spring loaded SD socket doesn't necessarily mean it can be hot plugged.

[RaveGuru]

Originally Posted by Jope

Are you sure this is the same block size I'm talking about? Can you post a screenshot of that?

I was referring to the CHS drive geometry block size. Which one were you referring to?

[thomas]

CHS means Cylinders Heads Sectors. There is no block size in there.

1008 might refer to 16 heads * 63 sectors which is the value for sectors per cylinder.

There are only two values which are referred to as block sizes: the physical sector size which usually is 512 bytes and the logical file system block size which is a multiple of the sector size. So neither of them can be 1008.

[tommywright]

Hi all, I have a SD card 8gb Kingston with 512kb Workbench and two 4gb partitions past that. I've used this card, another 8gb Kingston and a 16gb Sandisk. All of them work fine for a few days and then they start getting Checksum errors and I have to reformat the partition that is having issues. It will last a few days and then the same issues come back. What am I doing wrong? Is there a better SD card to buy? I'm running it on and Amiga 2000 through a GVP SCSI controller with ram expansion.
Thanks for any help!

[thomas]

Sounds like the classical 4GB issue. You should read the very first article in this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=61666

[Hypex]

Originally Posted by demolition

Some SD adapters identify themselves as fixed disks, not removable, so you might want to check that for starters. The adapter may not support hot plugging. Having a spring loaded SD socket doesn't necessarily mean it can be hot plugged.

Thanks. That looks to be the case. I even tested it with a CD driver by imaging the SD card with a CD image in an attempt to fool the driver into thinking it was a removable CD. It mounted it fine but didn't detect any changes. So I suspect it has no removable hardware support.


I'd be interested in any tools that can give me IDE device info.

[Warty]

I want to preface this by saying: everything I know about CF cards I learned from dinking around with them on the Amiga. And it hasn't added up to much. This may be a really dumb question.

Problem: I can't get TWO CF cards working at the same time on A2000.

Setup:

• A2000
• A2091 SCSI card in place (for the RAM), SCSI drive disconnected
• 68030TK with CF card adapter (link)
• CF card adapter I bought on eBay, hooked into same cable as the first CF card adapter
• cards have been initialized and partitioned with rbdtool, then formatted in UAE under 3.1.4 (just using regular Format command), then had files copied onto them from within UAE.

Goal:
Reproduce the set up of the A500+, where there is an Amiga formatted CF card for your main/system stuff, and a second CF card with FAT formatting that you take in and out to exchange data between your Amiga and Mac/PC.

Current results:

• If ONE card is inserted, the system will boot up from it.
• If TWO cards are inserted, the system will fail to recognize either and will display the insert WB disk screen.
• It doesn't seem to matter if it's one Amiga formatted disk and a FAT formatted disk, or 2 Amiga formatted disks.
• I've tried various size cards and combinations: 512MB, 1GB, 4GB, and from multiple manufacturers.
• I've tried having one adapter be master, the other slave; flipped it the other way.
• ONCE or TWICE it has booted up to both disks. But then when I think it's working, it won't work the next reboot.

RDB Setup

rdbtool /dev/disk2 init + info
rdbtool /dev/disk2 add size=24Mib name=WB + add size=40Mib name=MAC0 + fill + info
rdbtool /dev/disk2 change WB bootable=1 pri=0 + info
rdbtool /dev/disk2 fsadd ffs + info (wasn't clear to me if this was necessary, but doesn't seem to make a difference)

[ItsTheSmell]

Does anybody know if PEAK CF cards are incompatible with a1200s? Ive just bought one from eBay and within workbench i'm getting random bad block errors but windows 10 seems ok with it. Its a 1GB CF card.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by ItsTheSmell

Does anybody know if PEAK CF cards are incompatible with a1200s? Ive just bought one from eBay and within workbench i'm getting random bad block errors but windows 10 seems ok with it. Its a 1GB CF card.

I guess many no-name cards simple use whatever was the cheapest possible controller chip + flash combo available when it was manufactured and it can change between production runs.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Warty

I can't get TWO CF cards working at the same time on A2000.

Most common reason seems to be that most CF cards simply can't/don't work properly as a slave IDE device.

[MoonDragn]

Thanks for this. it cleared up some misconceptions I had, especially about the PCMCIA card.

So far I've tested 3 CF cards both in the PCMCIA slot and the IDE connector and also on the PC using a card reader. Here are my experiences:

1. LEXAR 4x 128 mb CF : This card could not be read by compactdisk.device. I think the geometry info is not compatible with the driver or it could be caused by something else in the card. The card says usb enabled, not sure what that means (hot plug?). The card worked fine with the IDE controller after us hdtoolbox but when I was installing the Amitcp program I forgot to comment out some lines. After I rebooted the Amiga, the boot partition disappeared and then the remaining partition started getting read errors. Maybe the card itself was just too old (25+ years old)

2. Transcend 133x 2 gb card: This baby was the most compatible card I got out of the bunch. After I couldn't get the LEXAR card to work in the PCMCIA slot I brought this off Amazon. This thing worked right out of the box without any changes in the PCMCIA slot. Later when my Lexar failed I configured this in hdtoolbox with 1 gig partitions each and used it as my hd with no issues.

3. Transcend 133x 8 gb card: I got this because now I was not able to use the PCMCIA card to transfer files to and from my pc, but compactdisk.device refused to recognize it. After reading the info on this thread, I think it was because it was formatted a little differently even though it says fat32 as the file system; but I couldn't get it to work no matter how I reformatted the card. It worked however as a internal ide HD and at first I had problems because I don't have any memory expansions on my A1200 and it froze up when I tried to verify the 4 gb partitions I tried to set up. I ended up setting up four 2gb partitions and it worked fine.

So now I got my HD working and the card slot working again with the 2gb card, I am now looking at setting up another CF as the slave ide drive. I couldn't do it with the original ide 2.5 inch hd either as slave or master but I read that I needed the buffered ide card expansion in order to get it to work.

Hopefully the cf card won't have this issue. I do need to modify one of my old ATX power supplies with the Amiga power plug I just got to handle the extra power with these hardware additions but the 2 cards don't use up that much power do they? Looked this up and looks like some cards can draw as much as 500 mA!!! Looking up the A1200 power usage, it only draws 1.4A on the +5V line. The PSU says it supplies 3A on the 5 volt. That seems like it should be enough.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by MoonDragn

I am now looking at setting up another CF as the slave ide drive. I couldn't do it with the original ide 2.5 inch hd either as slave or master but I read that I needed the buffered ide card expansion in order to get it to work.

Hopefully the cf card won't have this issue.

Read what Toni wrote justy above your post:

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Most common reason seems to be that most CF cards simply can't/don't work properly as a slave IDE device.

Unless you have a buffered interface which can provide a second channel, it is probably unlikely that you will be able to connect two CF cards. But no, providing power for two CF cards are not going to be a problem.

[MoonDragn]

Originally Posted by demolition

Read what Toni wrote justy above your post:



Unless you have a buffered interface which can provide a second channel, it is probably unlikely that you will be able to connect two CF cards. But no, providing power for two CF cards are not going to be a problem.

Unfortunately I never even got to test this. Some how the two drive ribbon fried my Gayle and the CF adapter. I think one of them is still fine and I only fried the one with the rectifier diodes on them but I think the Gayle's IDE pins are toast.

Looks like the A1200 is going back on the shelf until either the Vampire 1200 V2 I preordered is ready or I figure something else out.

[ItsTheSmell]

What would cause that to happen? Pulling too much power through the ide interface?

Is it possible to run a HDD inside an a1200 with a cf reader on the far of the cable round thebackk? If the HDD has a buffer.

[MoonDragn]

Originally Posted by ItsTheSmell

What would cause that to happen? Pulling too much power through the ide interface?

Not sure how the short happened. I think maybe I plugged it in wrong somehow? I had the red side lined up with the motherboard correctly and with the card... This has been a bad week for hardware for me. My regular PC kept shutting off because one of the quick change valves to the water cooling hose on the RTX 2080 ti did not open correctly when I was moving stuff around trying to put in memory expansion. Luckily those things have temperature protection auto shut off.

Originally Posted by ItsTheSmell

Is it possible to run a HDD inside an a1200 with a cf reader on the far of the cable round thebackk? If the HDD has a buffer.

I think you would need a buffer. It didn't work for me when I tried it that way.

I was only going to try it with 2 CF cards because the CF cards have jumpers on them that can set as master and slave and should not need a buffer since the ID should allow the Gayle to read it as two separate drives... Same thing if I had two HDDs of the same model, they can chain off each other without a buffer with a master/slave setting. Theoretically anyway. I suppose you could run into errors without a buffer if you tried to access both drives at the same time.

[Reido]

Hi all,

I've been trying to set up my 8gb Cf card for a while now, with no joy. Here's my set up:

A1200 with Apollo 060, 64mb RAM @ 80mhz. Set up/overclocked by stanchu and running stable. I use ClasssicWB 3.9 with extra modules like RemApollo, HSMaths etc to take full advantage of NovaCoders ports. My 4gb CF cards using this set up works beautifully, just don't have enough space on the card!

I followed this video to set up the 8gb card with PFS3AIO:

[ Show youtube player ]

I then install ClasssicWB as normal with boot disk on real amiga using the system.zip file that I've been using fine with 4gb cards for a few years now. When it's installed and I boot up, I get this message on the screenshot below, and that's it. Any ideas please and thanks?!

[thomas]

Block 2140991 is just above 1GB, so it does not exceed any limit.

I'd suppose you got a fake CF card which is labelled 8GB but has only 1GB. Or is broken in some other way.

[Reido]

Thanks Thomas. Windows recognises it as an 8gb card, as does Workbench when I partition it. I wonder could it be something to do with the ClassicWB set up that I have, or the Apollo maybe... I'll repeat the set up from the start and see if there's any difference!