AmigaOS Noob Questions

[reassembler]

Hello,

I recently extracted my A1200 from the loft. It hasn’t been used in over 25 years, but thankfully it still works, and yep I’ll be recapping it at some point

So whilst I’m not an Amiga noob, a lot has changed over this time and I have some questions which I haven't found an answer to.

1/ I am going to install AmigaOS. From the documentation I’ve read it looks like the correct process is to install 3.2 first then the 3.2.x upgrades. Am I OK to program the latest 3.2.2.1 EPROMs? Will they be backwards compatible with the 3.2, or do my EPROMs and OS need to be upgraded in lockstep?

2/ I purchased an SD card IDE adapter.

I am presuming that the maximum card size this adapter can take is 32 Gigs, as it supports SDHC (which go up to 32 gigs). Am I right?

My understanding is that AmigaOS can support partitions beyond 4 Gigs. I am looking to create three partitions:

- Workbench/System (2 gigs)
- WHDLoad Software (16 gigs)
- Music Trackers/MODs. (14 gigs)

Is there any wisdom with regard to partition size and block size in terms of performance?

I've read about FFS vs. PFS. I think I'll stick with FFS due to ongoing support and compatibility. Although feel free to let me know if this isn't sane.

3/ I was considering setting up my hard disk image using WinUAE and then writing it to the SD card. Beyond ensuring the WinUAE emulation configuration matches my real hardware, are there any gotchas I should be aware of?

I did read the HstWB page, but I wasn’t particularly clear what this made easier than simply doing it manually myself. I must be missing something?

Thanks in advance if you can answer some of my questions

[daxb]

Ask the dealer if SDHC Adapter also supports SDXC cards.

Recommended block size with FFS is 4096 bytes for flash drives at least.

[reassembler]

Originally Posted by daxb

Ask the dealer if SDHC Adapter also supports SDXC cards.

Recommended block size with FFS is 4096 bytes for flash drives at least.

Yep, I asked AmigaKit - no response. They delivered promptly, but not so hot on responding to queries.

Thanks for the info on block size.

[patrik]

Keep in mind that even if FFS from 3.2.x can work with large partitions, it is not really made for it and will take a long time to mount and if it needs validating, it will need a lot of ram for it. Increasing the block size will help, but if you don’t need all the space, it will work even better if you simply don’t partition it all.

2GB for workbench/system for example will be way more than you need, you would be hard pressed to fill 200MB.

Also some guaranteed spare space on the flash can help it with wear leveling and garbage collection, depending on how it works internally.

[GWhizz]

You will need to use sfs or pfs3 for that size of drive, ffs only handles up to 4 Gb and does a very poor job of that in my experience the CFs formatted with ffs fail over time

[reassembler]

Ok, that's useful information on PFS3. It's a little confusing that AmigaOS supports larger FFS partitions, but the consensus is not to use them. It would almost be simpler to cap FFS at 4gb in that case, unless there's a use case I've missed.

[Nor Bert]

I see you want to use whdload games.
What processor and how much memory does your Amiga have?

[patrik]

Originally Posted by reassembler

Ok, that's useful information on PFS3. It's a little confusing that AmigaOS supports larger FFS partitions, but the consensus is not to use them. It would almost be simpler to cap FFS at 4gb in that case, unless there's a use case I've missed.

I don't think there is a consensus, many different opinions as usual. FFS can do more than 4GB sure, no need to cap it, I was just telling you that FFS is not very efficient at it.

As said, increasing block size will help with mount time and decrease validation mem requirements. A faster machine will also help with the mount times. To give an example of mount times, a friend with an A600 partitioned a whole 8GB card and used FFS (default block size 512B), it needed 20-30s just to mount the partitions before it actually started booting from S:Startup-Sequence - easy to measure, just boot without startup sequence and see how long time it takes.

He had 8MB fastmem in the machine, so perhaps had enough memory to validate, not sure.

As other poster said, you are better of with PFS3 if you must use the entire 32GB card. Use the PFS3AIO variant from aminet, it has a lot of safety built in, the original one does not.

[reassembler]

Originally Posted by Nor Bert

I see you want to use whdload games.
What processor and how much memory does your Amiga have?

I'll be buying a modern 030 accelerator card, so should have plenty of RAM to play with.

[reassembler]

Originally Posted by patrik

To give an example of mount times, a friend with an A600 partitioned a whole 8GB card and used FFS (default block size 512B), it needed 20-30s just to mount the partitions before it actually started booting from S:Startup-Sequence - easy to measure, just boot without startup sequence and see how long time it takes.

Thanks, that's useful intel and stats. I'll investigate further over the coming weeks as I get my Amiga upgraded. Appreciate the responses.

[reassembler]

Just to close this thread down, for anyone who cares in the future.

All initial setup was done on WINUAE with the 32gig SDHC card in my PC.

1/ I programmed 3.2.2 EPROMs with ehide.device included (as I'd bought a TF1230 accelerator). [Thread]
I upgraded from AmigaOS 3.2 through to 3.2.2.1 iteratively in software.

2/ I used PFS3AIO for the filesystems, 4096 byte block size. I ensured I enabled longer filenames with setfnsize dh0: 107 from the pfs3 Aminet package. This made it easier to extract the WHDLoad stuff, where I was using some long directory names.

3/ For WHDLoad content I just whacked the archives on the correct partition and extracted with a command to recurse all the directories:

list all files sub=.lha lformat="lha x %f%n %f%m/" >ram:script
execute ram:script

where...
%f is the full parent path
%n is the name of the file
%m is the name of the file without the extension (i.e. destination directory)

Then delete the original compressed files:

list all files sub=.lha lformat=”delete %f%n” >ram:delscript
execute ram:delscript

Finally, I installed iGame as a front-end.

4/ I programmed the real EPROMs, installed in the Amiga alongside the TF1230 and hey presto it all worked first time from the SD card.

Probably straightforward to most here, but took a little while to figure things out.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by GWhizz

You will need to use sfs or pfs3 for that size of drive, ffs only handles up to 4 Gb and does a very poor job of that in my experience the CFs formatted with ffs fail over time

Just for completeness it's worth pointing out that FFS has supported larger than 4GB partitions for over 20 years now. >4GB support was added officially in OS 3.5, released in 1999. Any OS version after that (including 3.2 that the OP is intending to use) supports large partitions just fine.