Partition and formatting compact flash

[spacebiscuit]

I'm trying to setup a compact flash for use in my A600. I've followed numerous tutorials and I'm pretty close to just putting a hammer into my vintage hardware so hoping for some advice.

After partitioning my drives when I reset workbench I see DH0:NDOS and DH1:NDOS. When I right click a then go to icons -> format and I see the stop watch icon appear for a second or two and then it disappears and nothing happens.

Here is what I have done

- run diskpart to clean my 4gb flash card
- configured WinUAE with an A600 setup
- add the compact flash as a hard drive with uae controller: UAE:0
- booted into Workbench 3.1 and used HDTools to partition my drives
- added the pfs3 file handler
- set an initial 250mb partition, remainder assigned to second partition
- changed the dos type: 0x50465303
- changed the partitions to use the pfs3 file handler
- changed the partitions max transfer to 0x1fe00

After creation of the partition I eject the compact flash, then re-insert and then re-add the hard drive, this time the drive should shows as RDB which I understand means it is in the Amiga format. However from here I just cannot format the drives - please help.

Thanks.

[Snoopy1234]

tried "read identity" in the WinUAE hard drive settings first? That should register the new file system.

[AmiClassic]

You are already very close
Watch my tutorial: HDTB+PFS3
Note what happens from 4:40 onwards

[spacebiscuit]

Thanks - where can I find PrepareHDD_PFS3.adf - seems that is key for me to proceed. I've tried Googling the filename without much success.

[AmiClassic]

You won't find on net, because I prepared this adf for myself. Here is a link to this: link

[spacebiscuit]

Thanks that worked - wondering why the tutorials do not mention or document the pfs3format program?

[AmiClassic]

Originally Posted by spacebiscuit

Thanks that worked - wondering why the tutorials do not mention or document the pfs3format program?

This is something you have to ask authors of these tutorials. I don't want to offend them, so I won't answer this question

[AC/DC HACKER!]

Originally Posted by AmiClassic

You are already very close
Watch my tutorial: HDTB+PFS3
Note what happens from 4:40 onwards

Heh! That's actually some pretty decent music in your video. It's not Hip-Hop, Techno, or some other horrible sounding stuff. Most How-To stuff I wish they made silent 95% of the time. Not that I look at a lot of How-To videos, but I was curious.


That's interesting, I didn't have to do that for my A4000, I was able to use the Format from Right-Clicking on the Disk Icon. Seems there are more differences about the A600 that I don't know very well, than I thought. I just repeated the steps spacebiscuit except for HDF vs Compact Flash...idea is the same. Yep, it wouldn't format that way. Looks like I'll be making a new floppy for later usage. Or maybe have a look at yours.


Well done, AmiClassic.

[AmiClassic]

This is just an excerpt from a larger tutorial I was creating. Unfortunately 'problems' with AmigaRemix discouraged me temporarily from finishing it.

I know that it is possible to format disk by clicking RMB on disk icon, but I think that if a standard format would have sufficed, pfsformat would not have been created.

[thomas]

pfsformat is not needed to initialize a PFS partition. The only benefit of it is that it can set file name length and deldir size after initialization.

[AmiClassic]

For me personally, this already appeals to use pfsformat instead of system format command.