Need some help with setting up Trifecta 500 LX emu

[peo]

Hi Toni,

I finally dumped the SCSI disk that was mounted inside my Trifecta (and stuffed away) at the time I made the ROM dumps for you ( http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=98091 )

Not a single bad block on that disk once I got it spinning and recognized by the SCSI adapter (DC-390 in the pc I use for booting TRK and using ddrescue on).

Did however notice something odd going on, probably being because the disk was partitioned with the Trifecta utility. "RDSK" in the dumped image started at the second disk block, not the first.

This made it a) unbootable, and b) other bootable Amiga emu not able to see the third partition at all (DH2, "Data", which is listed as a partition when adding the disk to Amiga Forever and WinUAE).

As for the content I found, most data is probably compressed with some real-time compression library like xpk-something, I have to investigate the setup when it's booting from the Trifecta's system partition). I also suspect I softkicked it into KS 3.1.

So, unfamiliar with the extra-ROM settings, instead of attaching a lot of images with questionable (not described) fields to fill in, I'm asking for some help setting up the configuration to emulate, as close as possible my A500+ which used this controller:

A500+ (KS 2.04), 2MB ChipRAM, VXL-30/RAM-32 (68030, 68882, 8MB FastRAM), Trifecta 500LX (with another 8MB RAM) with Quantum 730S.

I have included the first 5000 blocks of the dumped image for you to examine and hope you have a few spare minutes to take a look and creating the config as above.

/PeO

[Toni Wilen]

Try stripping first 512 bytes from the beginning. It is possible driver simply "hides" the first block. There was some HD controller (early AdIDE?) that did something similar.

If you want to try it in WinUAE: configure some 68020 config (CPU model, speed etc isn't really important). Enable trifecta emulation (expansions -> scsi controllers -> trifecta), change model to LC, select correct ROM (selecting ROM enables it). ROM is visible in drop down if ROM was detected by ROM scanner. Other options (Trifecta jumpers) shouldn't need adjustments.

Mount the HDF normally and then change HD controller to Trifecta.

[peo]

Skipping the first 512 bytes was something I thought of, and just tried.. At least Amiga Forever crashes on me when selecting that file as one of the hardfiles.. Will try with both images in WinUAE;
And just revisited the settings (as I tried to to as you described earlier), just missed some obvious step, putting the expansion rom in the rompath and rescanning roms..
Still not booting, and when restarting WinUAE all my expansion + hd settings are gone (and I remembered to use the save and load buttons on the config page).

I'm probably doing something wrong here, but on the settings for the harddrive image, I can only select ATA-modes, and only "DH0" is filled in the "Device" field.

Edit: found the second of the problems, accidently selected the IDE controller of the Trifecta in the settings for the harddrive, so that's corrected.. still refused to boot (black screen, then after a while to the "insert disk" screen)..

[Toni Wilen]

RDB dump block offsets are correct if empty 512 block at the beginning is included. All the garbage in unused space looks odd but perhaps the drive was not empty when it was mounted to Trifecta originally. Otherwise RDB block looks ok.

Tests:

Mount the HDF normally using UAE controller, enable logging and check what UAE RDB parser finds.

Use trifecta config with -log -scsilog command line parameters to see what trifecta driver attempts to do.

[peo]

RDSK dump claims DH2 block has a checksum error.. Still not a reason for DH0 not to boot.

Where do I set the parameters for the trifecta driver ?

[mark_k]

Originally Posted by peo

Skipping the first 512 bytes was something I thought of, and just tried.. At least Amiga Forever crashes on me when selecting that file as one of the hardfiles..

You might want to report that crash to the Amiga Forever developer.

But yes, it looks like the ICD prep software just puts the RDSK sector in sector 1. That's perfectly legal, it can be in any of sectors 0 to 15.

You could try attaching the config file you're using.

Also, you could try creating a blank HDF of the same size and boot the ICD installer/prep utility in WinUAE, see if you can get it working correctly with the emulated Trifecta+SCSI drive.

[mark_k]

You could try extracting each of the three partitions into separate files, then mount them as non-RDB hardfiles in WinUAE (via uaehf.device, not any emulated hardware controller).

In your complete drive image file:
DH0 starts at byte offset $10000, length $1C98000 bytes
DH1 starts at byte offset $1CA8000, length $1DCD8000 bytes
DH2 starts at byte offset $1F980000, length $C198000 bytes

Use dd or similar to "cut" those regions out into separate files. Set surfaces to 4, sectors to 16 in the WinUAE Add Hardfile window.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by peo

RDSK dump claims DH2 block has a checksum error.. Still not a reason for DH0 not to boot.

I need to check what happens to already detected partitions if later partition fails to mount.

Does it boot to insert disk screen or do you get "Not a dos disk in xxx:"?

Where do I set the parameters for the trifecta driver ?

Do you mean -log? They are winuae command line parameters ("winuae.exe -log -scsiemulog")

[peo]

@mark_k that made DH2 accessible, some work remain to get it bootable from that system disk.. Where did you get the offsets and lengths of the partitions ?

Looks like I had made a dual boot 2.1/3.1 with SKick + xpk compressors to save space on DH1: and DH2:
I found some traces of a DH3 there too (the addbuffers command for that drive in startup-sequence), but it could be the disk I at some point had on the IDE interface of the Trifecta.

[mark_k]

Refer to the devices/hardblocks.i include file.

The RigidDiskBlock is in sector 1 = byte offset $200.
At offset $1C in that is the PartitionList field which contains 5. That means the first PartitionBlock is in sector 5.

Sector 5 is at offset $A00. In the PartitionBlock at offset $80 is a DosEnvec structure.
In each PartitionBlock you have values for Surfaces at offset $8C, BlocksPerTrack at $94, Reserved at $98, LowCyl at $A4, HighCyl at $A8. From those you can work out the byte offset & length of each partition.

[berke]

I have a Trifecta XL (thus with IDE and SCSI) as well and I was trying to format it on a Linux PC (with FS-UAE and a IDE-USB adapter). It didn't work, even though the PC was detecting the partitions properly. In the end I transferred the Trifecta drivers to the A2000 over a serial link, moved the drive back to the Amiga and ran the ICD tools. I was then able to format and use the drive. When I looked at the drive under a PC, I did indeed notice that:

- The first two sectors (a sector here being 512 bytes) contain some kind of proprietary signature.
- The disk starts at sector 2 (0-based) with the RDSK structure first, as expected, but everything from there is byte-swapped (i.e. bytes at even and odd addresses are exchanged). The "swab" option of the Unix "dd" tool can be used to convert that. I used the following Linux commands to extract the disk:

dd if=/dev/sdX skip=2 conv=swab of=disk.raw

where you have to replace /dev/sdX with the path to your device.