PCMCIA slot with cf card - help needed

[spacebiscuit]

Originally Posted by alexh

Wrong version of Workbech installed? You need Workbench 2.0 or better 2.1

Same workbench version using winuae works fine, just kickstart version different to make it work.

[spacebiscuit]

Originally Posted by Jope

It's not enough to just edit it like that, as i noted above.

I guess I need to set the geometry then in the cf0 in dosDrive.

I've read a little and I think this is almost there:



I'm taking the values from here:

• In the cf0 it uses BlocksPerTrack but in the wiki I found it uses SectorsPertrack, so I tried with both.
  
• I guess Blocks Per Cylinder is significant and not sure which key this uses, I guessed and added it to SectorsPerBlock
  
• I also guessed at Surfaces = 8 from Heads?

I think I am getting somewhere, one attempt gave me the CF0:???? icon, the latest attempt with settings as above:



I know the recommendation was to use fat95 but I'm enjoying the challenge and I'm learning a lot along the way, any suggestions?

[supaduper]

Yeah ED only came with WB 3.1

[Jope]

Sectors per block should be 1. You have quite a few unnecessary lines in there, but the rest have correct looking values in there.

You could have just ran

giggledisk compactflash.device unit 0 to ram:

And then filled in the filesystem handler into the dosdriver that it made for you in the ram disk. ;-)

[spacebiscuit]

Presumably I need to download giggledisk.lha, using Winuae with a drive mapped from my pc I did ArcExt to the DH0 drive. Where should it be extracted to in order for the command to work?

When I try to run the giggledisk command as suggested I get wrong number of arguments, CD return code 20.

Sorry for being such a newbie idiot.

[itsmedoofer]

I spent AGES trying to get ffs and pfs3 formatted cards to work, no joy. FAT32 worked straight away though, and in hindsight was the most convenient option, you can just drop the card in the PC and transfer stuff, no messing about with UAE.

[spacebiscuit]

I hear you, just wanted to try this giggledisk option as a last result to ensure my mountfile isn't the cause of the issue. I get that it is convenient to use fat95 but I quite like the idea of using Dopus in the emulator to arcext form mapped drive to the cf.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by spacebiscuit

Presumably I need to download giggledisk.lha, using Winuae with a drive mapped from my pc I did ArcExt to the DH0 drive. Where should it be extracted to in order for the command to work?

Commands are searched from the current directory and c: among a few other places. You can see the entire current search path by running a command called path in your shell.

If you want to install giggledisk permanently, you can copy the executable to c: (and rename it at the same time), since the archive has the executable filenames tagged with a target architecture, which makes the executable names a bit tedious to type every time.

It is a bad idea to extract archives directly to the root of your hard disk, you'll end up with a ton of clutter after a while. Thankfully in this case, as you can see from the aminet package page, the giggledisk archive contains a directory called giggledisk, under which the needed files are extracted, so it doesn't clutter so badly.

Other archives might not have directories inside them, so you will get a ton of files in the root of your drive. Usually it's a good idea to extract to ram: or make a new directory on your hard drive where you extract stuff. Then it's easy to clean up afterwards.

Since you extracted it to the root of dh0, you could run the command without any additional installation steps like so:

dh0:giggledisk/bin/giggledisk_aos68k compactflash.device unit 0 to ram:

Then you would get the resulting dosdriver(s) in ram:

When I try to run the giggledisk command as suggested I get wrong number of arguments, CD return code 20.

Yes, because you are trying to execute a directory called giggledisk. AmigaDOS will automatically attempt to change to a directory with cd when executing a directory name, but cd doesn't take any extra arguments and that's why you're getting that error message. The file is further down the directory tree.

You can explore the contents of your hard disk with dir to list contents and cd to change directories, I hope you are familiar with these.

I'm not sure if/how ArcExt shows what it's doing, but if it doesn't show you what files and directories it has extracted, then I suggest searching for a different archiver tool that helps you understand what new files you actually got when extracting. Or take full control of your destiny and extract from the command line with lha. :-)

Sorry for being such a newbie idiot.

If you don't ask, you won't know. You can deepen your knowledge by reading AmigaDOS manuals, there were many written over the years and many of them start with the basics.

And as you now noticed, people recommended sticking with fat32 formatted cards and the fat95 handler for a reason. It's not difficult to use other filesystems in the end, but it is a bit involved when starting from zero and it is more restricting.

[spacebiscuit]

Great, just as long as you don't mind the newbie questions - didn't want to annoy people. I fairly well versed in unix so a lot is familiar, just trying to get a grasp of the subtle differences and basics.

So I started over, extracted to ram and then tried the command:

ram:giggledisk/bin/giggledisk_aos68k compactflash.device unit 0 to ram:

GiggleDisk unable to read block 15 (size: 0x800)
giggledisk/bin/giggledisk_aos68k failed return code 20

So I guess it is the cf which is incompatible

[alexh]

Originally Posted by spacebiscuit

Same workbench version using winuae works fine, just kickstart version different to make it work.

You really shouldn't use KS2.05 with WB3.1 unless you want issues. I am sure you can find a cheap KS3.1 40.63 being discarded by those upgrading to 3.1.4+

[Jope]

Agreed, 3.1 will not run properly on a v37 ROM, even though stuff appears to work at the first glance. If a ROM upgrade is not feasible currently, then my strong recommendation is to install V38 SW (AmigaOS 2.1)

[spacebiscuit]

I've just ordered a new kickstart ROM - time to up the game

[spacebiscuit]

Am I correct in thinking that when a CF is not compatible it will not work - regardless of the file system in use.

For example my CF works with fat95 so I am assuming that if pfs3aio is not working it is merely config and not hardware which is the issue. For example I can't help thinking that this is 'just' mis-configuration:

[Jope]

The card could be failing, but it could also be incompatible. Difficult to say. fat95 will also show errors if it encounters blocks it can't read. :-)

[spacebiscuit]

Boom!

So I went back to the SanDisk CF (it is only 2gb), I adjusted the Cylinders in the CF0 and low and behold this works in the pcmcia slot using pfs3aio.

Conclusion being that the Kingston 4gb is failing or is in fact an incompatible piece of crap (as reported elsewhere)!

The irony is I know my SanDisk is a fake, I bought it many mnay years ago and it had been a workhouse in my DSLR camera for 10+ years. I only recently learned it was fake, it is exactly as shown here:

https://martybugs.net/articles/fakesandisk.cgi

I wonder how many other users seemingly thought they got their CF working in the PCMCIA slot because they stopped playing with cheap cards and opted for a quality branded SanDisk

Thanks for the tips and suffering my obsession to get this not so ideal solution working.