Question for folk who use their Amiga in a language other than English.

[chocsplease]

Hi,

Do you use your Amiga in a language other than English? Greek, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, or something else?

If so I can I ask for a little help?

All I'd like to know is what your Amiga calls its floppy and hard disks, this is the name of the device, and not the volume name that you have given the disk.

You can find out by opening a shell and typing info. This will give the information on the disks you have in your machine.

You'll see something like this -

Mounted disks:
Unit      Size      Used      Free Full Errs   Status   Name
SMBFS0:   280M494895104529088512   2%   0  Read/Write PCbackup
PC0:      Unreadable disk
CF0:      No disk present
RAM:      609K     609       0 100%   0  Read/Write Ram Disk
DH0:       94M  188029    5298  97%   0  Read/Write WB
DF0:      837K       7    1751   0%   0  Read/Write Empty
CC0:      No disk present
DF1:      No disk present
DH1:    -639321K 6867194  242772  97%   0  Read/Write Games
DH2:    -540681K 7142379  164868  98%   0  Read/Write Apps

Volumes available:
PCbackup [Mounted]
Ram Disk [Mounted]
Apps [Mounted]
Games [Mounted]
Empty [Mounted]
WB [Mounted]

The info I am interested in is the stuff in the Unit column. Does your Amiga call its first floppy drive DF0 or something else? Does it call it's cross-dos floppy PC0 or something else?

I hope that you can help.

<and now the reason for this rather odd question>

I am trying to re-write the info command, one of the things I want to fix is the fact that the current one moans it cannot read an Amiga disk in PC0: and a MSDos disk in DF0: To do so I need to check the name of the device and I do not know if the Amiga always calls its floppy drives DF0:,DF1 etc and always calls its cross dos drive PC0: PC1 etc.

I hope that you folks can help, and many thanks in advance.

[daxb]

I`m using Info 39.18 (15.03.00) © 1997-2000 by Stephan Rupprecht with this output (german):

Einheit   Größe Genutzt    Frei Voll Fhlr    Status       Typ   Name
DF0:   Keine Diskette im Laufwerk
DH0:     735,6M   82,9M  652,7M  11%    0 schr.-/lesbar SFS0    System
MS0:   Keine Diskette im Laufwerk
PC0:   Objekt nicht gefunden
RAM:      14,6M      0K   14,6M   0%    0 schr.-/lesbar OFS     Ram

Datenträger
Ram                            [Angemeldet] erstellt: Di 23.05.2017  14:27:45
System                         [Angemeldet] erstellt: Sa  6.12.2008  15:03:43

"Keine Diskette im Laufwerk" = "No disk in drive"
"Objekt nicht gefunden" = "Object not found"

PC0: is CrossDos and MS0: is fat95 floppy. I guess the device name is taken from its DOSDriver name. If this is true name can be anything. At least here I can rename MS0 and PC0 and info shows the renamed name. DF0: should be always DF0:.

With disk inserted it shows this:

Einheit   Größe Genutzt    Frei Voll Fhlr    Status       Typ   Name
DF0:       879K      1K    878K   0%    0 schr.-/lesbar FFS     Leer
MS0:   Keine gültige DOS-Disk
PC0:   Objekt nicht gefunden

"Keine gültige DOS-Disk" = "No valid DOS-Disk" (or similar)

[Amiga1992]

I think the floppy drives are always caleld DFx while a device mounted through a mountlist like a CrossDos drive, can change name to whatever. I can edit the mountlist and rename it to whatever if I wanted to.

Example: my hard drive partition device names are SSD0: and SSD1:

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Italiano (Italy) OS3.9 AFA OS

Unità   Taglia   Usati  Liberi Occup Errori Stato             Tipo    Nome
AF0:  nessun disco nell'unità
CD0:  nessun disco nell'unità
CDW:  nessun disco nell'unità
DF0:  nessun disco nell'unità
DF1:  nessun disco nell'unità
DH0:      2.0G    1.7G  276.7M   87%      0 lettura/scrittura SFS0    DH0
DH1:      1.9G    1.7G  175.1M   91%      0 lettura/scrittura SFS0    DH1
DS0:  nessun disco nell'unità
ENV:       56K     48K      8K   86%      0 lettura/scrittura OFS     Env
FILE0:nessun disco nell'unità
FILE1:nessun disco nell'unità
FLAT: tipo richiesta pacchetto sconosciuto
FS0:  nessun disco nell'unità
GAMES:    3.9G    3.3G  659.5M   84%      0 lettura/scrittura SFS0    Games
HF0:  non è un disco DOS
HF1:  non è un disco DOS
MAC0: nessun disco nell'unità
MCD0: nessun disco nell'unità
PC0:  oggetto non trovato
RAD0:     837K      0K    837K    0%      0 lettura/scrittura OFS     RAM_0
RAM:       17K     17K      0K  100%      0 lettura/scrittura OFS     Ram Disk
VD0:     1023K      1K   1022K    0%      0 lettura/scrittura INT-FFS VD-RAM-00

Volumi
DH0                            [Montato] creato Ven, 23-Dic-16  01:26:49
DH1                            [Montato] creato Ven, 23-Dic-16  01:27:17
Games                          [Montato] creato Ven, 23-Dic-16  09:23:23
Ram Disk                       [Montato] creato Mar, Oggi       18:49:30
RAM_0                          [Montato] creato Mar, Oggi       18:51:36
VD-RAM-00                      [Montato] creato Mar, Oggi       18:51:23

[Cylon]

Looks like you didn't install the required locale files for your language settings.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by Cylon

Looks like you didn't install the required locale files for your language settings.

Ok correct i used command INFO standard Workbench 3.9 v43.7 (no localization), downloaded Info which includes locations

[idrougge]

Unit or volume names are never localised.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Unit or volume names are never localised.

Normal ! but wanting as he said Akira si you can also customize, If you look at my volumes you will notice many names that do not exist i invented it as well example: CDW (CD rewritable), MAC0 (HardFile Mac ), MCD0 (MAC CD) etc..

[idrougge]

But they're not localised. They will show up with the same names on my Workbench as on yours.

[chocsplease]

Many thanks for the replies;

Originally Posted by daxb

<snip>
PC0: is CrossDos and MS0: is fat95 floppy. I guess the device name is taken from its DOSDriver name. If this is true name can be anything. At least here I can rename MS0 and PC0 and info shows the renamed name. DF0: should be always DF0:.

With disk inserted it shows this:

Einheit   Größe Genutzt    Frei Voll Fhlr    Status       Typ   Name
DF0:       879K      1K    878K   0%    0 schr.-/lesbar FFS     Leer
MS0:   Keine gültige DOS-Disk
PC0:   Objekt nicht gefunden

"Keine gültige DOS-Disk" = "No valid DOS-Disk" (or similar)

Can I just double check then, your internal floppy is set to read PC and fat95 floppy disks? I confess I thought they were the same thing.

I know that formatting low density msdos disks is a pain on PCs now (thanks Microsoft!) as you have to use the command line and type - format a: /t:80 /n:9 - but doesn't this produce a fat95 disk? Crosdos can read it in any case so I'm a bit confused as to the difference.

Originally Posted by Akira

I think the floppy drives are always caleld DFx while a device mounted through a mountlist like a CrossDos drive, can change name to whatever. I can edit the mountlist and rename it to whatever if I wanted to.

Example: my hard drive partition device names are SSD0: and SSD1:

Yes this is my problem - my code works if people stick to the default but drops into a fail safe message (Unreadable disk) if they have not. I was hoping there might be a way around this - but asking on the c dev forums has suggested not.

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

Italiano (Italy) OS3.9 AFA OS

Unità   Taglia   Usati  Liberi Occup Errori Stato             Tipo    Nome
AF0:  nessun disco nell'unità
CD0:  nessun disco nell'unità
CDW:  nessun disco nell'unità
DF0:  nessun disco nell'unità
DF1:  nessun disco nell'unità
DH0:      2.0G    1.7G  276.7M   87%      0 lettura/scrittura SFS0    DH0
DH1:      1.9G    1.7G  175.1M   91%      0 lettura/scrittura SFS0    DH1
DS0:  nessun disco nell'unità
ENV:       56K     48K      8K   86%      0 lettura/scrittura OFS     Env
FILE0:nessun disco nell'unità
FILE1:nessun disco nell'unità
FLAT: tipo richiesta pacchetto sconosciuto
FS0:  nessun disco nell'unità
GAMES:    3.9G    3.3G  659.5M   84%      0 lettura/scrittura SFS0    Games
HF0:  non è un disco DOS
HF1:  non è un disco DOS
MAC0: nessun disco nell'unità
MCD0: nessun disco nell'unità
PC0:  oggetto non trovato
RAD0:     837K      0K    837K    0%      0 lettura/scrittura OFS     RAM_0
RAM:       17K     17K      0K  100%      0 lettura/scrittura OFS     Ram Disk
VD0:     1023K      1K   1022K    0%      0 lettura/scrittura INT-FFS VD-RAM-00

Volumi
DH0                            [Montato] creato Ven, 23-Dic-16  01:26:49
DH1                            [Montato] creato Ven, 23-Dic-16  01:27:17
Games                          [Montato] creato Ven, 23-Dic-16  09:23:23
Ram Disk                       [Montato] creato Mar, Oggi       18:49:30
RAM_0                          [Montato] creato Mar, Oggi       18:51:36
VD-RAM-00                      [Montato] creato Mar, Oggi       18:51:23

Ouch - that is a *lot* of disks!

To check though.

1. Are you using an Amiga, or winuae (or similar)
2. If an actual Amiga, do you have high density floppy disk drives in it?
3. What are HF0 and HF1? Are they your floppy drives or something else?

I ask because low density Mac disks used a variable spindle speed to get 800K and cannot be read on a standard disk drive without extra hardware - which of course you might have.

Many thanks for the help, and I hope that you'll be able to answer my additional queries.

[daxb]

Originally Posted by chocsplease

Can I just double check then, your internal floppy is set to read PC and fat95 floppy disks? I confess I thought they were the same thing.

There exists several different filesystems for floppies (AFS, PFS, other custom fs wich gives >900kb in size for example and things like diskimage.device): PC0 is L:CrossDOSFileSystem from OS3 and MS0 is L:fat95 from Torsten Jager (Aminet). That should be the default driver names but you can rename them as already mentioned. I just mount both (from Storage/DOSDrivers/) before Info command. Else Info would only show DF0.

[idrougge]

If you have a Catweasel with multidisk.device, you can very well have a dozen unit names on a single physical drive.

[chocsplease]

Originally Posted by idrougge

If you have a Catweasel with multidisk.device, you can very well have a dozen unit names on a single physical drive.

Sadly the Catweasel appears to be discontinued, its out of stock at Amiga Kit and Vesalia actually say its discontinued.

However the issue I have does not really relate to the number of paired names per floppy drive, but the fact that users can change those names to whatever they like most of the time (can't change DF0: ) and the system does not offer a nice way of working out is the disk drive is a floppy or hard disk. So I will have to hard code for the default names and drop into a failsafe - unknown format or some other message. This is only to try and prevent the info command from displaying Unreadable disk in DF0: if a pc disc is in PC0: - Its a nice to have but not essential.

[thomas]

You could go with the drive size:

880K or 1760K -> Amiga floppy
720K or 1440K -> PC floppy
972K or 1944K -> DiskSpare floppy

[chocsplease]

Originally Posted by thomas

You could go with the drive size:

880K or 1760K -> Amiga floppy
720K or 1440K -> PC floppy
972K or 1944K -> DiskSpare floppy

Hi Thomas,

Many thanks for the suggestion, annoyingly I have a feeling it doesn't work in the following case:

The Amiga has 2 Floppy drives, DF0: and DF1: , the user has mounted PC0: as a different name, say WIN: and there is an 880K Amiga disk in DF0:

When Info is run it will check DF0: and find the Amiga disk, all OK. However when it checks WIN: it won't be able to read the disk - the system will return Bad Disk - and as it cannot read the disk it can't read the size (I checked this both id_BytesPerBlock and id_NumBlocksUsed are zero). Since it does not know if WIN: is a floppy disk, hard disk, compact flash card in a CF to PCMCIA converter, CD or something else it cannot pair with one of the floppy disks even though it knows the unit number.

Frustratingly things work the other way around - If the disk in DF0: is a PC disk then info will fail to read DF0: and report Bad Disk, but here we know its DF0 so when info reads WIN: and finds a 720K disk (I refuse to believe that anyone would have a hard drive 720K in size!) we can check the unit number (0) and pair WIN: with DF0:. Thus when we come to print the data we can print DF0: - PC Disk.

Thus is so annoying, it all comes down to not knowing the type of disk drive.

[thomas]

I didn't say disk size but drive size. Get the DosList entry of the drive -> FileSysStartupMsg -> Environ -> (HighCyl - LowCyl + 1) * Heads * SectorsPerTrack * SectorSize

You also get the original DosType this way which gives you another hint about the drive type.

You can use the dol_Task field to match the volume DosList to the drive (device) DosList entry.

[chocsplease]

Hi Thomas,

Many thanks for the reply.

Originally Posted by thomas

I didn't say disk size but drive size.

Opps sorry, my mistake.

Originally Posted by thomas

Get the DosList entry of the drive -> FileSysStartupMsg -> Environ -> (HighCyl - LowCyl + 1) * Heads * SectorsPerTrack * SectorSize

You also get the original DosType this way which gives you another hint about the drive type.

You can use the dol_Task field to match the volume DosList to the drive (device) DosList entry.

I'm having a bit of difficulty getting all the info - the closest structure I can find is in filehander.h http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD.../node05FD.html which has the below.

struct DosEnvec {    
ULONG de_TableSize;         /* Size of Environment vector */     
ULONG de_SizeBlock;         /* in longwords: Physical disk block size */     ULONG de_SecOrg;         /* not used; must be 0 */     
ULONG de_Surfaces;         /* # of heads (surfaces). drive specific */
ULONG de_SectorPerBlock; /* N de_SizeBlock sectors per logical block */ 
ULONG de_BlocksPerTrack; /* blocks per track. drive specific */     
ULONG de_Reserved;         /* DOS reserved blocks at start of partition. */
ULONG de_PreAlloc;         /* DOS reserved blocks at end of partition */ 
ULONG de_Interleave;     /* usually 0 */     
ULONG de_LowCyl;         /* starting cylinder. typically 0 */    
ULONG de_HighCyl;         /* max cylinder. drive specific */     
ULONG de_NumBuffers;     /* Initial # DOS of buffers.  */     
ULONG de_BufMemType;     /* type of mem to allocate for buffers */
ULONG de_MaxTransfer;    /* Max number of bytes to transfer at a time */
ULONG de_Mask;         /* Address Mask to block out certain memory */
LONG  de_BootPri;         /* Boot priority for autoboot */     
ULONG de_DosType;         /* ASCII (HEX) string showing filesystem type;
                                     * 0X444F5300 is old filesystem,                   
                                      * 0X444F5301 is fast file system */     
ULONG de_Baud;         /* Baud rate for serial handler */     
ULONG de_Control;         /* Control word for handler/filesystem */
ULONG de_BootBlocks;     /* Number of blocks containing boot code */
};

And matches my gcc's filehandler.h.

Thing is I cannot figure out how to use this info to get the size, I was hoping for the number of blocks, or failing that the number of tracks.

Trying (de_HighCyl - de_LowCyl +1) * de_surfaces * (de_BlocksPerTrack * de_SizeBlock) isn't giving the expected answers - but then I am not sure how big a long word is on the Amiga in bytes.

So at the moment I'm a bit stuck.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by chocsplease

I am not sure how big a long word is on the Amiga in bytes.

Really? Try sizeof(LONG).

Here is a complete example:

[chocsplease]

Originally Posted by thomas

Really? Try sizeof(LONG).

Here is a complete example:

Hi Thomas,

Many thanks for the help. Its been over 20 years since I wrote any code, and I've never written anything for the Amiga.

Anyway your example has helped greatly, thought there is lots of it I just can't get my head around I understand enough to be able to modify my code to fix the issue. Thanks again.