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Author Topic: DH0: seemingly never leaving Validating status  (Read 1647 times)

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Offline kamigaTopic starter

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DH0: seemingly never leaving Validating status
« on: July 10, 2022, 01:19:14 AM »
I'm attempting to add an HDD to an A500 with kickstart 1.3 and a 512k upgrade. I've got two dataflyer controllers: one SCSI version with a SCSI2SD adapter, and one IDE version with a compact flash adapter. Both exhibit the same problem.

During installation, the dataflyer installation disk correctly identifies the HDD name and disk sizes(2G), and allows for installation. Both installations proceed normally without error. Both, when restarted, boot into the normal workbench CLI(without the floppy, ofc) prompt off of the HDD.

The problem is that neither disks ever leaves "Validating" status as shown by the Workbench INFO tool, or the info command line. This makes the disks not writable and essentially unusable. Trying to copy from the command line throws 213 errors as a result.

I'm using yet a 3rd DataFlyer IDE controller with the same model CF adapter on a different A500. I know this combination of controller, adapter, CF card type is a valid compatible combination. All the jumpers are the same.

Maybe I'm just impatient, but the HDD simply never seem to validate. I've read other posts talking about using DiskSalv4 to execute the validation, but it requires Kickstart 2.0 or better. The older versions of DiskSalv don't support that feature, as far as I can tell.

DataFlyer includes some utilities to check health. The one returns ExpansionRom structures, and that all looks right to me -- matches what I'm seeing in the ROM, on the databus etc. The other utility detects disks, and correct returns the type(SCSI vs IDE), the name(as assigned in SCSI2SD or the Compact Flash ID), the size, number of blocks, etc.

How much time should this process take? Can I see the validator running somewhere? Check the progress of such?

Any other ideas?
 

Offline kamigaTopic starter

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Re: DH0: seemingly never leaving Validating status
« Reply #1 on: July 10, 2022, 03:17:59 AM »
I have a theory that the initial format is running out of memory, crashing, and the dataflyer installer isn't reporting that as such.

I changed the drive sizes to 512GBMB, and lo and behold, everything works fine.

There is a message here https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=73661.msg850413#msg850413 that seems to imply that my 1MB A500 wouldn't have a chance in heck with validating a 2G drive. I'm not sure if that applies to 1.3, and offhand I don't know if a traditional format command (if that's how they do it) validates disks. Or if it's simply the first time that disk is seen it's validated.

Hey @Gulliver  I know you haven't been here in awhile, but would you happen to know?

I'm going to look for a memory monitoring utility and see if I can catch it live. It would be nice there's a utility that reports failed alloc's within the system.

My other system where I have a larger 4G drive and the similar configuration also had about 3G of RAM available....
« Last Edit: July 10, 2022, 03:19:13 AM by kamiga »
 

Offline kamigaTopic starter

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Re: DH0: seemingly never leaving Validating status
« Reply #2 on: July 10, 2022, 06:59:42 PM »
Yeah I've confirmed this both by reducing the size of the drive(which reduces RAM consumption), and by increasing RAM in WinUAE, which has support for this controller.

It's definitely insufficent RAM causing the initial format to fail which causes the drive to get stuck in Validating status.

While the dataflyer installer does not indicate an error happened, you can tell that it errored out by the lack of a "Do you want to install Workbench on Drive DH0:" dialog box being displayed. See attached. If it isn't displayed, then the format failed. Ignore the checkmarks and the happy guy with the thumbs up. It didn't work.

I bumped this A500 from 1MB(512+512) to 2.3MB, with 512k chip, and 1.8MB Slow. It worked fine with a 2GB drive.

Does anyone know of a memory monitor utility that can float on top of an existing application? Or enable a display on WinUAE? Or allow me to launch an application and monitor the RAM consumption/alloc() requests/etc ? The only problem is that perhaps AutoInstall (DF's application) simply calls the format executable. I tried just Amiga-N'ing back to workbench but even force-refreshing via the right mouse button, I don't think I'm fast enough to see the memory alloc and free.