Best way to use 160GB hard drive in A1200D?

[Calgor]

What would be the best way to use a EIDE 160GB 44-pin laptop hard drive (to full capacity) in an A1200D?

The only two ways I know of doing so are:
1. FastATA 1200 Mk-III
2. Using SCSI-IDE bridge with 40-44pin adapter on a SCSI accelerator

I have the Blizzard 030 Mk-IV with SCSI kit, so both options should provide around 9-10Mb/s speed.

The problem with the FastATA is I believe it uses proprietary software driver to create partitions of just under 4GB, so I would have about 40 partitions! (I may upgrade the hard drive later too!)

With the Blizzard IV 1230scsi.device, I am not sure if it supports >128/137GB? It is narrow scsi, not wide, so not sure if that causes a problem. The cybppc on the cyberstorm ppc does support. I would as well need a cable that connects to the blizzard scsi kit and converts to the 50-pin scsi format, does anyone know where to get this?

Also, there is the question of where and how to mount the hard drive inside the A1200 case. The FastATA does not let you use the hard drive cradle, so where does the hard drive go so it is stable and without shorting anything??????

For software I will be using OS3.9BB2 and SFS.

[keropi]

for FastATA:
NO. u are not limited to 4GB partitions. it is an option if u use ancient WB to have 4GB partitions. if u use 3.9 u can have them the way u want...

[ancalimon]

I had a PowerFlyer in my A1200 which blew many years ago. I must tell you that while Power Flyer is in action, it uses huge amounts of CPU time (100%?) and I couldn't feel the speed. It's really usefull if all you are going to do is to copy huge files across partions. And no you don't need many partions. Only the boot partion must be in the 4gb barrier. You can have a single partion after that boot partion.

I have a Acard SCSIDE card installed on my 120gb Segate IDE hdd. And it's connected to my CStorm PPC's scsi3 port. When I first tried it, I was really shocked at the speed my system booted. And CPU usage for increadibly low. I could at last watch divx' without frameskipping and still really low CPU usage. And icons loading was much faster, copying was faster everything was faster.

[Zetr0]

you can have >4gb partitions under 3.1 but i would suggest 3.5

[Calgor]

Cool, thanks for the responses so far. Good to know that FastATA does not require 4GB partitions.

Sounds like i would prefer the blizzard scsi kit with an internal cable with a couple of points for CF and hard drive which then connects back to the 25 pin external via an adapter or something, seeing as the 030/50 might be put under pressure with the FastATA. Anyone know where I can get such a cable, or at least an internal converter to the 50pin??? And where+how to mount an internal hard drive?

I could use both, but the FastaATA I have does not fit properly due to the stupid pins below it which are blocked by chips u16-19 on the motherboard. Stupid build quality.

I am already using Acard adapters in my A4000T and they rock for hard drives.

[amigakit.com]

We can make Blizzard 1230 SCSI Kit cables to your requirements.

We stock the SCSI adapters

Website Link:
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...x.php?cPath=27

[Calgor]

So does anyone have any tips on mounting hard drives internally? how to do it? I don't want to use sticky tape!

@amigakit

Will take it up with you via email. Sounds like i will be able to get a blizzard to 50pin cable + 2 points for 2 devices + adapter from internal 50-pin cable to external 25-pin connector (or maybe even external hd50 pin connector!).

[amigakit.com]

OK email us here:

http://contact.amigakit.com

[Calgor]

Guys still haven't worked out how to mount the hard drive internally. Are there some plastic clips or something I could use? How does anyone who uses FastATA 1200 in a desktop case do it???? I don't want the hard drive to short circuit something and it needs to be secure. The Gayle adapter blocks the hard drive cradle as does the fastata for one of the cradle's motherboard slots.

[Calgor]

Anyone? I am going to be installing it tonight.....

[jabsy]

Perhaps mount it in a laptop HDD cradle then some double sided tape??? I'm not too sure where you'd put it, but the newer laptop drives are much thinner than the original 40 or 120MB drives shipped from factory.

I'd have some lappy cradles lying around if you need any.

[Calgor]

Thanks jabsy, didn't know there was such a thing as a laptop hdd cradle? Got a picture?

I sorted it out by attaching some cardboard to the case (to insulate the bottom of the hard drive) and putting the hard drive on top of that, just over the power supply, where ppl usually put the cdrom drive in their mods. Suppose I could have used a flat sheet of metal, but you never know if it would touch something beneath.

FastATA was installed too. Pity computer is crashing at different stages while trying to install WorkBench to the HD. No such luck for me.

[amigakit.com]

We have a few laptop cradles here- we can put one in free with your next order if you wish.

When installing, reduce speed of IDE devices down to PI0 in ata3prefs- then test gradually with greater speeds.

[Calgor]

@amigakit.com

Thanks for the offers and advice!

btw, the problem was not the PIO settings, as I had not even installed the FastATA drivers! Once installed, it seems to work fine with PIO4.

Problem was fixed by changing either my CDROM driver mountlist, or setting my hard disk partitions to use Host ID 6 instead of 7 (the blizzard scsi kit controller is 7, so maybe this was causing the random crashes). Or maybe by updating FastFileSystem to a newer version on the RDB. Strange.

Anyway, after those changes, have not had a crash!

[Jope]

Well definitely overlapping SCSI ID's will get you in a mess. :-o

Good to hear you got it working..

Even though "higher = higher priority" in SCSI ID's, I always tend to leave the controller at 7 and start numbering my devices from 0.. 0 is the boot drive, followed by any other HD's and then come the rest of the devices.

It's also a good idea to keep a correlation between your ID's and physical devices.. Aids debugging if you have many hard disks, for example.. :-)

[Calgor]

@Jope

Yeah but the devices on the FastATA controller, I don't know what their device id's should be, or what the device id of the FastATA controller should be? They are IDE after all. I should have said that is where the hard disk is.

I think the primary master = 0, primary slave = 1, secondary master = 2, secondary slave = 3, controller = ??? (I have put it to 6 instead of 7 in HDToolBox).

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Calgor

@Jope

Yeah but the devices on the FastATA controller, I don't know what their device id's should be, or what the device id of the FastATA controller should be? They are IDE after all. I should have said that is where the hard disk is.

I think the primary master = 0, primary slave = 1, secondary master = 2, secondary slave = 3, controller = ??? (I have put it to 6 instead of 7 in HDToolBox).

Yes that's how it should go. IDE devices do not have an id for the controller, as the bus is very different to SCSI.. PIO IDE is more like an extension to the CPU's bus instead of a separate storage only bus like SCSI.

Actually, I don't think IDE devices show up "like SCSI" with ID's like that in any other system than the Amiga.

[Calgor]

Originally Posted by Jope

Soo what's all this SCSI talk then:


I don't know. I admit I didn't read all the thread.



Yes that's how it should go. IDE devices do not have an id for the controller normally, as the bus is very different to SCSI.

That's cool, I have both a FastATA MkIII and Blizzard MkIV 030 with SCSI Kit in the one computer.

If IDE does not have an ID for the controller, then what am I supposed to put for the IDE hard disks controller ID in HDToolBox?

[Jope]

I wouldn't touch it at all.

Somehow I'm a bit alarmed that it actually makes a difference what you put there.. Did the documentation for the FastATA mention any special meaning for it?

[Calgor]

The FastATA manual says nothing at all on that. I can only say that I changed the above 3 items and the crashes while installing either WB 3.1 or 3.9 stopped! I don't know which one actually stopped the crashes.

I can't find anywhere on the net where it describes what the importance of the hostid in hdtoolbox is for. Is there a manual for hdtoolbox somewhere?

[Calgor]

Well, anyway seems hostid is not important, something set my partitions to 7, and there are no crashes!

But now i have a new problem, seemingly related to the 160GB drive (installed showing 149GB) being more than 128GB.

I am using The FastATA 1200 MK-III drivers v8.4 in NOSPLIT mode and SFS 1.270 filesystem on OS3.9BB2 (without BB2 ROM update).

All partitions are fine apart from the one partition part of which is over the 128GB boundary. I can see it, format it with SFS, etc. But when I reboot, it become uninitialised every time!!! Anyone know what could be causing this?

Size of this partition is 41GB, but I have 2 50GB partitions which are fine.

[Jope]

Probably you won't be able get it to work at all.. Seems there is no LBA48 support in the drivers.

[Calgor]

Elbox says there is, as does their website. Although, at the moment, it is not working properly! Whenever it is recognised, the data does not get deleted, so I think it at least is not having any overlap errors, I have had no data corruption. I did read someone on a.org have a 160GB drive and they didn't say they had problems.

Elbox have been very responsive in their emails so hopefully it will be resolved soon. Although it is worrying that it is not simple. The CSPPC with SCSI-IDE bridge was easier to setup (as in no extra software as cybppc.device just works). It might be my MAPROM and OS3.9 setup, although it is nothing too exotic for an A1200.

btw, the FastATA delivers 7MB/s in PIO4 and 8MB/s in PIO5 while using a Blizzard Mk-IV. This is the same as Elbox's benchmarks.

If anyone is using >137GB drive with FastATA MK-III let me know!

[Calgor]

Note to self: Check NSDPatch.cfg as per OS3.9 FAQ for scsi.device/2nd.scsi.device.

[mrbob2]

Just a question........What would you fill up a 160gb hard drive with if it was connected to an A1200? lol All my amiga games are 3.6gb......

[AMIGAZ]

Originally Posted by mrbob2

Just a question........What would you fill up a 160gb hard drive with if it was connected to an A1200? lol All my amiga games are 3.6gb......

High spec Amiga games (cd games) can get as big as several hundred megabytes you know and now we have a nice bittorent client called beehive so now it's not so hard to fill up a big hd

[Calgor]

Still not working. NSDPatch.cfg changes didn't do anything. Does no one else on EAB have a >120GB drive connected to a FastATA 1200 MK-III?

[thomas]

Make sure that NSDPatch keeps away from the FastATA software.

Make sure that the FastATA software is installed and run in startup-sequence.

Make sure that OS3.9's SetPatch keeps away from the FastATA software (i.e. add skipromupdates scsi.device to the SetPatch line).

Try to disable auto-mount for that partition and use OS3.9's Mounter to mount it later. It might be a "feature" of SFS that it checks the partition's availability at boot time but does not try it again after the new drivers have been loaded. Try to install the partition with OS3.9's FFS.

[Calgor]

Originally Posted by thomas

Make sure that NSDPatch keeps away from the FastATA software.

Make sure that the FastATA software is installed and run in startup-sequence.

Make sure that OS3.9's SetPatch keeps away from the FastATA software (i.e. add skipromupdates scsi.device to the SetPatch line).

Try to disable auto-mount for that partition and use OS3.9's Mounter to mount it later. It might be a "feature" of SFS that it checks the partition's availability at boot time but does not try it again after the new drivers have been loaded. Try to install the partition with OS3.9's FFS.

Tried commenting out all scsi.device and 2nd.scsi.device entries in NSDPatch. No difference.

FastATA software is run in startup-sequence. And is loaded - I get the speedup too. Tried it both b4 and after the setpatch command. Before it (as recommended by Elbox), I lose all partitions above 4/8GB. After it, I lose all partitions above 127GB. It is set to resident, interrupts and no split.

Setpatch has been tried with skipping the scsi.device update. No difference.

How do I disable automount for a partition and then mount it later? Yes, it does seem like it could be a mounting problem as sfscheck reports the partition as fine, and I can format it and use it fine until I reboot.

[thomas]

How do I disable automount for a partition and then mount it later?

Run HDToolbox, select the HDD, go to "Partition Drive", select the partition, go to "Change..." and uncheck "Automount this partition". Save changes and reboot.

The Mounter utility is in the Tools drawer.

[Calgor]

Removing automount and mounting manually did not solve the problem. No difference.

However, when I commented out the nsdpatch.cfg entries, repartitioned the problem partitions, and reformatted those new partitions, I had my partition above 127gb remembered on reboot.

Also, the 300mb FFS partition I created above 127GB is remembered.

Now I have a new problem:
- Whenever I format one sfs partition, it makes the other one have errors on sfscheck (it seems to be bad block type on either the start of one partition (block 0) or the end of the other (last block), as if the partitions are overlapping!!!!) -> EDIT: Well, another times it was other block numbers, maybe random. But the newly formatted partition is fine.
- If I try to add back the NSDPatch.cfg entries, my hard drive now has errors while booting.

Does SFS and/or FastATA need the NSDPatch.cfg entries for scsi.device/2nd.scsi.device?

[Calgor]

I would not be remiss in saying I hate the lack of and confusing/contradictory Elbox instructions regarding FastATA3 driver with OS3.9.

They are not clear, nor are they complete.

[Calgor]

To be more exact, the error messages I am getting using sfscheck, depending on the partition over 4/8GB are:

Checking RootBlocks
Incorrect block type at block XXXXX. Expected was 0x53465300 but it was 0x42544d50.

Checking Bitmap at block YYYYY (....)
Incorrect block type at block ZZZZZ. Expected was 0x42544d50 but it was 0x53465300.

SFSCheck also reports the device interface as NSD 64-bit, but I have the NSDPatch.cfg lines commented out, is that a problem? Any partition with the sfscheck errors comes up after reboot as uninitialized.

[Calgor]

Removing all partitions above 4/8GB, then enabling NSDPatch, then repartitioning and reformatting with sfs results in no sfscheck errors as earlier, but partitions become uninitialized on reboot.

[Calgor]

This is now resolved, thanks to Elbox fixing a bug in their drivers. While it was annoying that there was a bug, it was good that they were able to fix the problem. The problem may have been related to the interrupt mode, which may be why others have not reported the exact same problems.

My setup for reference:
- A1200D + Blizzard Mk-IV 030/50 + SCSI Kit + SCSI CDRW
- FastATA Mk-III, beta drivers > 8.4
- 160GB IDE 2.5in drive
- OS3.9BB2 with ROM Update, pretty much vanilla with no patches
- ATA drivers before SetPatch (saved as PIO5, RESIDENT, NOSPLIT, INTERRUPT)
- NSDPatch.cfg entries related to scsi.device and 2nd.scsi.device commented out
- Partitions with MaxTransfer 0x1fe00, Mask 0xfff.........
- SFS 1.276
- FFS 45.13

Speed is 7.5MB/s with interrupt mode, or 8.5MB/s without. Although both modes hog resources.