Using a Compact Flash card on a600/a1200 PCMCIA

[solarmon]

What is this 'CF boot disk' you are referring to? What are you trying to achieve with this PCMCIA CF card?

What Kickstart are you using on your A600?

[lesta_smsc]

Boot disk I have 2. One is 'COMFY' and the other is CF Rescue.

I want to use PCMCIA for ease of transferring files from PC without having to remove the internal SD card.

I've also tried putting cardpatch and cardreset before LoadWB with no joy.

Do you have a boot disk that is configured correctly?

Kickstart is 2.0 (although I have a 3.1.4 ROM as well which is not presently in use)

[solarmon]

I assume this is what you mean:

Comfy:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=57259

I could not find anything specific about 'CF Rescue'

The 'Comfy' solution seems overly complicated.

Using a PCMCIA CF card as a FAT16/FAT32 'mass storage device' is much simpler. This does not require a 'boot disk'. You just need to get the drivers installed.

You seem to be mixing up the two different solutions as you have stated you installed the CFD and FAT95 drivers.

I initially used these guides to get my PCMCIA CF working as a FAT16/FAT32 mass storage device:

https://exthema.io/2016/11/07/moving-files-around/

https://devdef.blogspot.com/2014/01/...ash-guide.html

I have subsequently created my own summary guide, which you might find useful:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1n0...442vAInpLeDigZ

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by solarmon

You seem to be mixing up the two different solutions as you have stated you installed the CFD and FAT95 drivers.

In your guide you also have both CFD and FAT95...

What I don't understand us if the Amiga can't read the CF to begin with without loading CFD/FAT95, how will the files on the CF matter since they are not visible.

I want to use it as mass storage.

[solarmon]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

In your guide you also have both CFD and FAT95...

What I don't understand us if the Amiga can't read the CF to begin with without loading CFD/FAT95, how will the files on the CF matter since they are not visible.

I want to use it as mass storage.

What I meant was that the Comfy boot disk solution seems to use some other method to use/access the PCMCIA CF card, not the CFD/FAT95 drivers.

You seem to suggest you are using this Comfy boot disk as well as CFD/95 drivers, so there seems to be an overlap there.

As explained in my summary guide, there is a chicken and egg situation of getting the CFD/FAT95 drivers on to your A600/A1200 in the first place. So there needs to be another method to get the CFD/FAT95 drivers on to your A600/A1200, which I have provided some options for in my guide - see the "Getting driver files to Amiga!" page/section. Basically, there are three options - Gotek, CrossDOS or WinUAE.

Since you already mentioned you already have CFD/FAT95 drivers - just make sure it is set up correctly - compare it with the other and my guide. Don't use the 'Comfy' boot disk solution.

[solarmon]

I downloaded 'comfy' to understand the solution.

I was wrong. It looks like the 'boot disk' (comfy.adf/comfy.dms) does include the CFD and FAT95 drivers.

So, in theory it should work if you have a CF card formatted in FAT16/FAT32.

EDIT: What 'comfy' does is it mounts HD0: from the comfy.HDF image file stored in CF0: - i.e the CF card (formatted as FAT16/32). This comfy.hdf file contains various programs/tools to manage ADF files, etc. It is not 'mass storage solution' for using with your internal CF/SD drive.

EDIT: and by default it disables the internal IDE port: "During start-up the internal IDE port is disabled to get rid of that annoying delay. So if you still want access to it comment the first line from the start-up sequence"

[lesta_smsc]

So this is where there is problem. The boot does not pick up anything connected to CF0: and so I cannot load the .HDF file....

I've tried formatting as FAT16/FAT32 and also the original Amiga FS and neither of these are detected.

The PCMCIA to CF adaptor may be the issue but I can't imagine why!

The Amiga knows when the card is connected but it can't do anything with it.

[solarmon]

I will try out the 'Comfy' boot disk solution on my A600 rev 2B with Kickstart 2.0 (37.300) - just need to locate a spare CF card.

[Nightshft]

You dont need Amiga FS on Pcmcia CF-Cards. You will ONLY need Fat.

You could check if none of the pins in the adapter and in the amiga are broken or bent. Thats one of the very few things that can go wrong with the adapter.
Or your Amiga could have a hardware problem with the pcmcia, although I guess that's very rare. Maybe you can try any other pcmcia device or another adapter.

Or you have bad luck with your cards and both are incompatible. Although I had much much less incompatibilities at the pcmcia side, compared to the inner IDE port (and early revision 1.b adapters which literally did cost me dozens of hours to get the IDE CF running).

[lesta_smsc]

I just tested the different file systems just in case it would work with any. I've checked the pins and they all appear straight and present.

Would the SD card (rather than CF) be causing conflict?

[Nightshft]

I don't think so, but can't rule it out for sure. You could unplug it and use a Floppy with the drivers installed to boot (if you have one or can write one, also on ebay as "adf transfer kit").

[lesta_smsc]

I have mentioned that I tried the CF boot disks already with no luck.

Something is stopping the card from working... Question is what lol

[solarmon]

So I took a bit of time to figure out how comfy works.

I used the download as given in http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=57259:

http://www.box.net/shared/h98sr5udgn

There is a comfy.adf file which I put on my Gotek and used my Gotek on external DF1 and used X-copy booted on DF0 to make a copy on to physical floppy disk in DF0.

My CF card is just a 256M SanDisk and the adapter is just a no brand/name one:



This CF was already formated as FAT16 and I copied the comfy.hdf file on to the root of it, and put it in to the A600 PCMCIA slot.

When I initially booted the comfy floppy disk I just created, I got the following error:



I thought it was an issue with the comfy.adf to being created a bootable AmigaDOS disk - so I used X-Copy to install an X-Copy bootblock.

However, when I booted it again, I was shown:



I assumed the comfy.adf image had some issue on it and was not created properly, or it somehow got corrupted.

Long story short. I used HxCFloppyEmulator software to create a new ADF image and transferred all the files from comfy.adf to it; copy it to the same floppy disk using the X-Copy method above.

When I booted up this new copy it has the following behaviour:

1. It booted once and then reset.
2. The second boot initially gave a blank screen:



3. After a while it did load in to the comfy workbench:



You can see above, my CF card called 'AMIGA'. When I initially opened it up it just had a 'tmp' directory and inside that was a 'startup-sequence' file.

I took out the CF card and put it in to my Windows laptop. Sure enough, there was a 'tmp' folder created in the root of the CF card.

I copied over a some files (Barbarian+ directory and .lha file) in to this 'tmp' directory and put the card back in to the A600.

As you can see the files appears on the CF card in the Amiga.

Conclusion:
The Comfy solution works, but I had to fix some issues with the supplied ADF. I have not been able to test with an internal IDE->CF/SD setup since I don't have it set up on my A600.

Overall, I don't really see the benefit of this solution over installing CFD/FAT95 directly on to the bootable internal CF/SD drive. It seems overly complicated from my understanding and requirements of needing just a mass storage solution for file transfer.

[Nightshft]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

I have mentioned that I tried the CF boot disks already with no luck.

Yes, but you didn't mention if you disconnected the IDE-SD when booting from Floppy. (Or I overread it)

[lesta_smsc]

Can you put your fixed ADF in the zone? I'll give it a try doing what you did.

I would like to configure the internal SD card for PCMCIA CF use but the reason for bumping this thread was because it does not work in the former.

[lesta_smsc]

Originally Posted by Nightshft

Yes, but you didn't mention if you disconnected the IDE-SD when booting from Floppy. (Or I overread it)

No the internal IDE-SD has not been disconnected because I'm trying to avoid having to go down this route. Technically if it's due to software then not loading any libraries/devices that might be conflicting e.g. by booting from floppy disk rather than HDD, should eliminate the issue but it hasn't so far.

[Nightshft]

Allright, good luck!

[solarmon]

Originally Posted by lesta_smsc

Can you put your fixed ADF in the zone? I'll give it a try doing what you did.

I would like to configure the internal SD card for PCMCIA CF use but the reason for bumping this thread was because it does not work in the former.

Done:

http://eab.abime.net/zone/Comfy_ADF.adf

You might need/want to rename the disk volume name to 'Boot'. Note: The rename has to be done in Workbench. Renaming the ADF file name will not change the volume name.

[lesta_smsc]

@solarmon - thanks for sharing the file. The disk appears to disable the internal IDE so in effect, there is no 'connection' with the SD and so in effect, the A600 is without any internal HDD of any kind.

Unfortunately, I am faced with the same issue: "No disk present in device CF0" where you get the message not a DOS disk in DF0.

I suspect the CF is incompatible with this particular Amiga (although I have seen the same CF on sale with 'kits' on eBay)...

Even on soft-reset the Amiga is without the internal IDE and goes to the purple screen. I have to switch it off from main power for a few seconds and then suffer some error codes and resets before it re-enables the internal IDE.

For reference, my KS is 2.0 (37.300)

[solarmon]

Did you see the comment on the comfy EAB page about the IDE port being disabled by default? You need to edit the startup-sequence:

"During start-up the internal IDE port is disabled to get rid of that annoying delay. So if you still want access to it comment the first line from the start-up sequence"

You need to comment out the 'c:noide' line:

;run <>NIL: c:noide

On the CF, make sure that there is only one partition on it. Could you provide photos of it for reference.