A3000 WB 1.3 won't recognize WORK: (ZuluSCSI)

[Warty]

I have a 3000 with the soft ROMs. The setup I am trying to get working:
WB1.3 boot with WORK: partition
WB2.x boot with 3.2.1 + WORK: partition and AMAX0 and SSHAPE0 partitions.

I had this working before the AmigaOS 3.2.1 update a couple years ago, but something went off and I couldn't boot into WB 1.3 any more. I kind of ignored that until last week. Using SCSI2SD, I tried a few more cards and configurations, but couldn't get much going at all (various weird problems). I got a ZuluSCSI this week, and have had a much easier time. I now have WB1.3 booting ok, and 2.x (3.2.1) also booting ok. In 3.2.1, everything works great. But no matter what I do with that WORK partition, I can't get it show as anything but NDOS in 1.3.

Anybody know what I'm doing wrong here?

Setup:

• 768 "drive" image to hold WB2.x/1.3/work as Device 1
• 512mb drive image to hold AMAX and ShapeShifter partitions as Device 3
• 512mb HFS drive image with a Mac sys 6 image as Device 5 (shouldn't be a factor, but...)
• Device 1 is partitioned into about 12mb for "WB_1.3", about 72mb for WB_2.x, and the rest for WORK:
• On device 1, the modern FFS has been removed, and older version 36.104 loaded, with identifier 0x44F5301 set by hand
• WB_2.x and WB_1.3 both have 512 block size, while WORK has 1024 block size due to its bigger size
• All 3 partitions have same FFS configuration: "Fast File System=Y, International Mode=N, Directory Cache=N, Long Names=N; same mask, MaxTransfer, etc.

I have tried formatting WORK: from the 1.3 side, but that makes it unreadable on the WB 3.2.1 boot.

The system is pretty clean: the only card is an Indivision video-thingie-that-is-not-a-video card.

When I had this working a few years ago, I'm sure I used a smaller partition for WORK. Is there maybe a limit on size of WORK? I know the one the A3000 installer sets up is super small (well, 1990 HD sizes were small!). I have experimented down as far as 384mb without luck...

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Warty

WORK has 1024 block size due to its bigger size

That won't work. FFS V36 does not support larger block sizes.

Actually I would recomment to use PFS3aio for all partitions. Then you have a modern file system with long file names and international language support for both operating systems. And it's much faster, too.

[Warty]

Originally Posted by thomas

That won't work. FFS V36 does not support larger block sizes.

Ah, that may explain why I was using a smaller WORK partition when I set this up years ago (when it worked). I'll go back and make a smaller WORK partition with only stuff I want to be able to reach from WB1.3.

Thanks Thomas!

Originally Posted by thomas

Actually I would recomment to use PFS3aio for all partitions. Then you have a modern file system with long file names and international language support for both operating systems. And it's much faster, too.

I would like to use a modern file system, for all the reasons above, but I "understand" (could be wrong; this info is not super well-documented imho) that the A3000 will only recognize 1.3 and 2.x boots if they are on an old version of the OS (36.x or I have seen but not tried 37.x). I'll give it a shot later today and see what happens.

worst case, I'll make a big apps/etc partition that only 2.x can see with apps, games, dev tools, etc, and put PFS3aio on that.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by Warty

I'll go back and make a smaller WORK partition

I cannot follow your reasoning here. There is no reason to make the partition smaller. Just change block size back to 512.

Originally Posted by Warty

the A3000 will only recognize 1.3 and 2.x boots if they are on an old version of the OS

pfs3aio works on 1.3 as well as on any newer os. That is one reason why it is called "all in one".

[mark_k]

Doesn't FFS 40.1 (on the 3.1 Install disk) work with Kickstart 1.3? You should use that in preference to v36.

Also, I seem to recall the v36 FFS (or maybe v37?) does work with larger than 512 byte blocks, it's just that the fake geometry you use when mounting such a partition has to have a sector size matching the block size. Which is awkward for other partitions when you're using something like HDToolBox (the same fake geometry applies to all partitions on the drive). [So it might in theory be possible to manually mount such a partition with v36 FFS and a tweaked mount file.]

[Warty]

Originally Posted by thomas

I cannot follow your reasoning here. There is no reason to make the partition smaller. Just change block size back to 512.

I have hit errors in the past that say I don't have enough system memory to format a HD when using 512, when it is beyond some size (couldn't say where that boundary would have been). I've definitely read that using 1024, even 4096 size blocks is something people are recommending for larger drives, because of the memory use. We're talking FFS here of course.

FOLLOW-UP: I just rejiggered to use 512 blocks on the WORK: dir, reformatted, copied back, and voila! it works perfectly in WB3.2.1 and WB1.3. (with FFS). Makes me wonder why I had problems formatting before, but there were other issues with my SCSI2SD setup (potentially even some bad cards) so I'm not going to worry about it. Thanks again Thomas!

Originally Posted by thomas

pfs3aio works on 1.3 as well as on any newer os. That is one reason why it is called "all in one".

I haven't been able to get it to work with my A3000. After switching to pfs (including reformatting, copying WB files back, etc.), the boot menu still lets me select "hard drive" as an option for booting 1.3, but having picked it, it will pretty immediately throw up "not a DOS disk" errors and be stopped. Might be reading in the KS.rom first, I can't tell. Like I said, I don't know what exactly the rules are that we need to follow for the A3000 dual boot, but I have definitely seen around the web that it wants a file system with 0x44F5301 as the identifier. Could be the "blind leading the blind", but so far, my experience matches that.

"That is another point about the v1.4 kickstart - the hard disk needs to use a 1.3 or 2.04 era fastfilesystem without caching or international support. It needs to be the non-international FFS version which uses the identifier 0x44F5301. "
https://www.epsilonsworld.com/2019/0...ld-part-1.html

The WB2.x (3.2.1 in my current case) seems fine with pfsaio.

[thomas]

That article does not mention PFS at all. Either it pre-dates pfs3aio or the author did not know about it.

By saying you should use 444f5301 he wants to point out that you may not use 444f5303 (international) or 444f5305 (directory cache) or even 444f5307 (long file names). All that is irrelevant if you use a third-party file system whose identifier is 50465303.

I can assure you that pfs3aio works perfectly on an A3000 with Kick 1.3 and Kick 3.1 - 3.3. I did this many times. If you don't get it to work, please run this program and attach the report here: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.../hddreport.lha

[Warty]

I don't know if the author knew about it or not, but it probably all just stems from a lack of a good (complete, authoritative) A3000 setup doc. I am going to update my personal one with this info, of course.

And you are absolutely right, of course, it works great. I did the install over again, and not sure what I got wrong last time, but it worked like a charm this time. Now, while "luck" seems to be with me, I'm going to try another shot at an AMIX install.

Thanks again!