A590 with Pcd-50b scsi card reader

[mech]

Hello all

I found a interesting thing about the commodore A590 hard drive for the A500 while making it work with the pcd-50b SCSI card readers i sell that may well help others trying to get devices working..

The saga goes, i'm working with a guy i sold a card reader to,and he can't seem to get it to work on his 590 correctly. So i dig my 500 and 590 back out to figure out how i did it a year ago. I set the dip switches to 1=on,2=on,3=off,4=off. I test it and i have the same problems he had. I can get it to work with the PCMCIA to cf adapter,but no other LUNS, and the LUN scan seems wired when the 590 checks.
With the pcmcia adapter and cf the pcd50B interferes with the cover studs and won't fit into the 590 right.

After some head scratching, and knowing the 590 is a 2091 basically, I start chip swapping between the fully working 2091 and the 590..
same problem..

I think ok,there must be a problem on the 590. The symptoms it was having seemed a bit like parity was broken so i start there.
On the 2091,the luns enable jumper goes to pin 6 on the 7401 chip..but its missing on the 590..

Ok,i get the soldering iron out and solder in a jumper.I am checking continuity with the multimeter and accidentally hit the pin on dip switch 4 of the 590.. BEEP! hmm wtf!? According to the 590 manual and everything online this #4 dip switch on the 590 is "RESERVED".

I desolder the jumper realizing that some engineer or some manual writer goofed..

Dip switch #4 on the 590 ENABLES PARITY! the manual is wrong.
Dip switch 2 has nothing to do with it as far as i can tell(it just enables luns).

So i flip the switch,install the pcd 50B and lo and behold all luns are working properly now! This works on his revision6 A590 and my revision 7 A590..It is a good idea to use rev. 7.0 roms .

This allows the use of a CF in the CF slot without the pcmcia adapter,and the pcd-50B scsi card reader fits inside the 590(when you remove the fan).

Just a side note,the A590 electronics do not run hot. The PCD50B does not run hot. so with this combo,convection cooling without a fan works perfectly and is safe.

Knowing dip switch 4 is parity may help those of you trying to use some cdroms and changers that require parity.

Installing it in the 590:

Some pictures of the install: the hardware is 4-40 us threads. I used the original 4 standoffs on the bottom,2 had to be used with nuts to hold them to the plate. I added 4 new standoffs to the scsi card reader,only 2 of these will match up with the holes in the plate(the bottom studs screw into these 2).This is enough to keep the pcd50b in there though.Power cable and scsi cables work as is. Its tight but it all fits fine.I hope the pictures make more sense:

[mech]

Here are a few pictures of the screens when setting stuff up. i was using quite a few different cards to test,but using the CF slot only makes sense(unless you leave the top off and use other cards to transfer files to the 590). The procedure to get the cf formatted and partitioned is same as any hard drive.This is using Amiga 3.1 roms and Workbench 3.1
this will all work roughly the same under 2.x also.

First thing to do make sure dip switches 1,2,and 4 are set to ON for the A590.
Insert a CF card into the pcd50b scsi card reader CF slot.Boot up with a 3.1 install disk.
We must modify the icon info for your HDtoolbox,Just click it once and go to the top of the workbench menu's and select information. We must turn lun scanning on and such.See the picture and make yours look the same.Save it.

Next:
Start HDtoolbox and it should then scan the 590 for cards inserted.. this is slow on a 68000 machine,so be patient.

Select the cf card in the list(should be address 0,LUN 1) and select "change Drive type"

Hit the "read configuration" and it will find the CF size.select OK

Back at the main screen,you can now partition it. Here you can add whatever filesystem you want or just use FFS. I recommend SFS
or PFS, its way better and supports longer filenames,not to mention its faster.
Be sure to hit return on any max transfer settings you might change.

After you are done,save changes to drive.

Reboot and you should see the CF on workbench,Simply use Quick format from the workbench menu and the drive is ready to have whatever OS installed on it.

This is just a quick and dirty guide but hopefully someone gets some use from it.

-Mech-

[mfilos]

Awesome thread there Mech mate.
I'm sure it will help 590 users out there testing your awesome unit!

[mech]

Originally Posted by mfilos

Awesome thread there Mech mate.
I'm sure it will help 590 users out there testing your awesome unit!

thanks mfilos! I am trying to find the time to write small tutorials for other scsi controllers but i never seem to have the time.

mech

[lurch]

Thought I'd give this a go I have a 7.1 revision with 7.0 ROM's, it's a no go :-(

Will not boot off anything but the PCMCIA adapter, will keep bashing away at it but it's not looking good :-(

[mojorific]

I've been trying to get this working as well. I purchased this unit from your site, but i'm running workbench 1.3 (not 3.1).

HDinstTools does not see this unit at all. I've tested it with an SD card, and with a compact flash.

I have a PCMCIA to CF adapter coming, because that is the only other thing I haven't tried yet.

Any suggestions? I know my A590 works just fine with a SCSI drive, so i'm running out of ideas.

[mech]

Originally Posted by lurch

Thought I'd give this a go I have a 7.1 revision with 7.0 ROM's, it's a no go :-(

Will not boot off anything but the PCMCIA adapter, will keep bashing away at it but it's not looking good :-(

Did you set the dip switches on the 590 to turn scsi LUNS on? it sounds like this is the trouble. turn on 1,2 & 4 switches.
Once you do that you should be able to move the cf to the cf slot and it should boot from it if its setup correctly and bootable.

If you ever need help from something you purchase from me please email me direct. Time is short and i dont get around to the forums as much as i want to these days. I will always be happy to walk you through setup.

Mech

[mech]

Originally Posted by mojorific

I've been trying to get this working as well. I purchased this unit from your site, but i'm running workbench 1.3 (not 3.1).

HDinstTools does not see this unit at all. I've tested it with an SD card, and with a compact flash.

I have a PCMCIA to CF adapter coming, because that is the only other thing I haven't tried yet.

Any suggestions? I know my A590 works just fine with a SCSI drive, so i'm running out of ideas.

1>Make sure Dip switches 1,2&4 are on. 4 is marked as reserved but this actually enables parity which the pcd-50b needs-if its missing errors and problems will happen.

2>Use the pcmcia slot with the cf adapter to set the card up initially.
I dont recommend hdinsttools at all.Use hdtoolbox .

3>Use only 1 drive on the scsi chain and set it to device 0 and be sure termination is correct.Revision 4 of the western digital scsi chip in most A590's has bugs and sometimes will not behave with 2 drives on the chain.I do stock a 33c93a replacement to fix this,but if using 1 drive it should not be a problem.That being said your milege may vary.

4>Did you set the "device" in icon info on hdtoolbox to see "scsi.device" ?

If the above is correct,you should be able to partition and format the card and install the OS.
Afterward just move it to the cf slot and it should boot as normal.

[mojorific]

Well, finding and using a copy of Workbench 1.3 with HDToolbox is harder than it looks!

I found a copy of A590setup.dms, converted it, and have gotten it to run, but running info on HDToolbox shows no settings (no device=scsi.device, etc).

When I run HDToolbox is says 'Driver not installed' and fails to even look for the drive.

Any ideas? This is the a590 setup disk. Not sure if this is set up different than the Workbench 3.1 version. I tried to run that version on a disk, but it freezes when running on Kickstart 1.3 and I think it is incompatible.

[mojorific]

Making some more progress. I received the PCMCIA to CF adapter and have tried 2 different cards in it (a 512MB Sandisk and the 2GB Transcend).

I have gotten the a590 setup disk with HDToolbox to scan for scsi devices, and now it says 'No drives attached to the system'. So now the scsi drivers and HdToolbox are working fine at least. I also tried the same thing with HDInstTools and it also does not detect any devices either.

It seems like it is now detecting the card reader, but not anything inserted into it.

Pins are set with 1,2,4 on. The A590 flickers a bunch on start up trying to detect a bootable HD (because pin 1 is set to on).

When I turn on the A590 the lights on the front of the PCD-50B light up and then turn off. Further reads by the A590 (trying to boot or using HDToolbox show no lights coming on for the unit).

Is it possible my unit is defective?

[mech]

I have already replied in email on this,but its worth noting here for the benefit of other users.

thought of a couple more things.

can you version scsi.device from the cli and tell me what you get with the pcd powered up and the cf in the pcmcia to cf adapter?

It is possible the pcd-50B is bad,but not likely since i flash them to the latest v1.28 read/write firmware and check them before they go out the door. It possible of course one could of failed after this for some unknown reason. That being said these drives are extremely reliable and should outlast us with proper care. of the 650+ PCD-50B's sold i have had only one return so far as defective(the other few were cases of people feeding 12v to them 5v side and frying them or jamming a card in improperly and smashing some pins inside,or they simply could not understand scsi jumper settings and termination now matter how hard i tried to explain it).

lets hope your trouble is a case of old 590 roms or old WD scsi chip that sometimes has problems or some such.

Originally Posted by mojorific

Making some more progress. I received the PCMCIA to CF adapter and have tried 2 different cards in it (a 512MB Sandisk and the 2GB Transcend).

I have gotten the a590 setup disk with HDToolbox to scan for scsi devices, and now it says 'No drives attached to the system'. So now the scsi drivers and HdToolbox are working fine at least. I also tried the same thing with HDInstTools and it also does not detect any devices either.

It seems like it is now detecting the card reader, but not anything inserted into it.

Pins are set with 1,2,4 on. The A590 flickers a bunch on start up trying to detect a bootable HD (because pin 1 is set to on).

When I turn on the A590 the lights on the front of the PCD-50B light up and then turn off. Further reads by the A590 (trying to boot or using HDToolbox show no lights coming on for the unit).

Is it possible my unit is defective?