PCMCIA CARD AND BOOT DISK PROBLEMS- WORKBENCH 3.0

[Pat the Cat]

More likely an A1200 with Workbench 3.0?

Couple pointers, "DF0:" always refers to the first (usually only) floppy disk drive connected, or rather, the disk currently in it.

"sys:" always refers to the disk that the Amiga loaded up from. Which could be a hard drve, or floppy drive if you booted Workbench from the floppy drive.

The snag wth PCMCIA compact flash is - you can't boot from a compact flash card plugged into PCMCIA. It's mostly used to transfer files to hard disk (or another compact flash or even sd card plugged into an adaptor) going to the internal hard disk connector.

The real snag with the A1200 is - PCMCIA cards don't reset properly. You either need to run a program to get them reset and working, or have a Gayle adapter fitted over the Gayle chip.

It might not be your Workbench floppy. It could be the above problem or the floppy drive needs a clean.

Are you trying to transfer files to or from the Amiga?

People like Amigakit or Amigastore will happily sell you compact flash cards preloaded with Workbench, Although they might insist you get Kickstart 3.1 or later to go with it. They might even sell you a set of replacement WB floppies if you ask nicely for 3.0.

3.1 or later is recommended, 3.1.4 is latest, and 3.2 is expected soon (the latter 2 allow hard drive partitions over 2GB in size as well as a ton of bug fixes).

Regading the pic you posted - The first 2 lines of typing copy are legit when typed into shell, the third one isn't. You can copy CF0 just by dragging, or copying and pasting, to the Window where you want it to go. The .info (icon file) will be copied too.

Diskcopy DF0: DF0: should make a complete copy of Workbench if you booted from it.

[Pat the Cat]

Well... you could do some of that with just a floppy and an A1200 with WB3.0.

You are a bit constrained for memory to display animations, but stills of sprites and still art, that's doable. If you can save or convert the stills to IFF format on the PC side, Multiview on Workbench could display them.

As for screens, if you are based in Europe, something with a scart connector should do just fine. Mr steady there does very very good Amiga-scart cables. You could call him the gold plated standard on scart.

Genuine retro CRT monitors cost a bomb. They're only going to get rarer.

You DO have phono out in color on an A1200 if you are based outside Europe. still a fair amount of old CRT TVs (video monitors) and early LCDs can connect there, but you get a fuzzier picture.

I would strongly recommend you fit a hard drive to the A1200 and upgrade it to 3.1 to make the project easier. Then you could more easily use graphic formats other than IFF (PCX or BMP or JPEG). Or run Art Department Professional to convert them, choosing a set pallette of 256 colors.

Or run an Amiga emulator to get the graphics tweaked, and just use the A1200 to display and check them on real hardware. Once you get the adaptor working, you could save your Kick 3.0 ROM with a tool from Aminet to run the emulator with.

The sad part of the A1200 is the Gayle issue. Because you can't get the PCMCIA working properly without a fix from aminet (CCReset) which you can't transfer to the Amiga without having a working compact flash solution.

I was under the impression that I could use the pcmcia card as a sort of hard drive/storage space?

It's a drive, but it can't boot without Workbench having the driver in devs... which if only stored on the compact flash card, can't be read.

You can't boot a system from a compact flash card plugged into the PCMCIA socket on an Amiga for this reason. Chicken and egg situation.

But it's a lot easier transferring files than unplugging a card plugged into the guts of the Amiga (the hard drive connector). That might be your only way to get CCReset and the PCMCIA working.

Unimpressed? Me too. :lol

[Pat the Cat]

The snag is that the copy command is on Workbench, so it looks on Workench (DF0 at the time) and cant' find the file.

If you load Workbench, put the driver disk in, and have a rummage with "show All" option on the overhead menus, you can click and drag the files to the RAM disk.

Then put the Workbench disk back in, and copy the files to where they should go by dragging them from the RAM disk to the right place on Workbench.

People use "show all" a LOT on the Amiga, it reveals files with no icon (no .info file that stores the icon).

You only have 97K free. Might be enough, just about.

[Pat the Cat]

If the drag and drop thing doesn't work out...

To make the copy command available at all times;-

resident c:copy

AmigaDos doesn't care about upper or lower case.

And if replaced the "DF0:" with the name of the disk, like CF0: or "CFO disk:" if there's a space in it, the shell will parse correctly and ask for the right disk when it needs it.

[Pat the Cat]

If the files are in the right place, then when you double click on the CF0 icon, be it from floppy, RAM or anywhere else, it should put an extra icon on your desk for the compact flash card.

You don't HAVE to put it onto the WB disk.

The point of trying first is to check whether it works without further hassle.

If you can double click on CF0 icon, and then get an directory for CF0;-

DIR CF0:

That means Gayle is happy and you can transfer files to and from the compact flash card you already have.

The link you posted for an internal hard drive and compact flash, oK that would help. It probably won't be 100% functional without the 3.1 Kickstart ROM chips but it should boot to a Workbench at least.

It does raise the resale value of Amigas by fitting them with working hard drive solutions, and what really boosts the value is getting them recapped (much less likely to suffer damage in future).

The extra cost of a hard drive, Vampire or new Kickstart ROMs is more an investment than a luxury. The Vampire probably less so, not every Amiga use needs one.

EDIT:
What probably is not going to work without Kickstart 3.1 is the Datatypes, that is, the sytem to internally convert file formats so the Amiga can read them easily. For instance, loading a GIF file on Deluxe Paint.

Programs like Art Department Pro can convert them internally, so it's not as dire a situation as you might think.

Oh, one extra tip - you can use the jiffy bag the hard drive adaptor came in as insulation. If you keep it in there with the lead poking out to the hard drive adaptor, then it can't touch any other electronics in the Amiga causing damage. More environmentally friendly too.

[Pat the Cat]

What probably is not going to work without Kickstart 3.1 is the Datatypes, that is, the sytem to internally convert file formats so the Amiga can read them easily.

That's not true. Datatypes were introduced with 3.0.

What made me cautious is that not all datatypes are Kickstart 3.0 friendly, for instance;-

https://aminet.net/package/util/dtype/PCX-DT43

Fair enough, there is a Kickstart 3 friendly datatype on aminet for PCX (and BMP, GIF etc).

While on the subject of aminet, I couldn't get your latest upload of MMUILIB to decompress on Linux for some reason. GadgetUK had some issues getting an 030 ROM shadowed a few months back, I was trying to check usage (he can't do .guides I think).

For instance, loading a GIF file on Deluxe Paint.

DPaint does not use datatypes, it cannot load GIF files in any case.

Thank you, I was unaware of DPaint's not using datatypes. I thought they worked across applications invisibly.

[Pat the Cat]

Exactly. RTG generally barfs on 3,0, but can be functional on 3.1

Down to Commodore making ".1" variants the RTG friendly variants. For developers and power uses displaying in 24 bits with graphics cards.

Doesn't really matter with the stated use in this case, native AGA friendly pictures.

[Pat the Cat]

If it is just one partition, yes it's way too big for an Amiga running ROMs from 1992 (Kickstart 3.0).

Max guaranteed partition size is 2GB. You can have more than one partition, The reason is that a lot of old software will scream blue murder if they detect more than 2GB free on a partition when using old Installer software.
 
More on the matter at

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=61666

Your card may not even be compatible with an Amiga. Just try it with one 2GB partition formatted to Fat32 on a PC. 16gb is very likely to be 3.3Volt card, not 5 volt.

More on PCMCIA fitted compact flash;

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=30757

[Pat the Cat]

Absolutely. On an A1200 or A600 with Kickstart 3.1.4 ROMs, or a heavily patched 3.1, it would show as one big disk.

16 GB hard disks didn't exist in 1992. Neither did Compact Flash.

3.1.4 was released in 2018.

Anyway, it's good news really. You do have an Amiga compatible card. It's just partitioned for a 2018 Amiga.

If you partition it again with a PC, to Fat32, one 2 GB partition (or more than one 2GB partition), it should show as a blank disk as per the advert.

EDIT: If you want pointers on how to do that, it would be helpful if you said what Os you are running on the PC side. And the version.

I'm guessing Windows 7. Or maye you are a Mac user, I don't can't tell.

Personally I use Linux, It can mount Amiga hard drive layouts and the Amiga Fast Filesystem. Less faffing around with this sort of nonsense using FAT32.

I'm in a minority there, most people prefer Windows and WinUAE emulator. They have much faster running Amiga programs than I do, although a Raspi 3b is still a mean emulated Amiga.

[Pat the Cat]

DIsk Manager on Windows 10. You have to run it as Admin.

Youtube videos on using it,

Make sure you select the right disk to partition and Format to FAT32.

Always use quick format option with Compact Flash.

Debian Linux, you can just use Gparted to partition and format, Do all the installs with an Amiga, then something like;-

mount -t affs /dev/sdc0 /mnt                      <- In a Debian Linux terminal, probably need sudo at the front

To mount the drive and use it with file managers etc. Easy to copy and paste. No need for FAT32. Even Microsoft stopped allowing it for installing their own operating systems. Although formatting and using usb, compact flash and sd card is stil OK on Windows in FAT32.

Anyway, have fun with it. At least having 2 CF flash cards, you can use the PCMCIA as a sandbox to learn with.

4gb partitions are OK if you can at least half fill them with downloads. With experience you'll be able to partioin with the Amiga, copy all the Workbench files over the 16G disk, swap them over, and boot once from floppy to make the 16gB first partition bootable. Then just use the smaller disk for transfers.

It's advisable to have as few partitions as possible unless you expand the Amiga's RAM memory. Doing that also incresaes hard drive access speed very noticeably.

[Pat the Cat]

Oh come on! Don't tell such misleading rubbish!!!

You can have large harddrives with Kick 1.3 if you use the right software.

The poster doesn't have doesn't have Kick 1.3

compactflash.device and fat95 are the right software to use 16 GB and even larger drives on Kick >= 2.0.

Maybe so, but the poster cannot currently acesss Aminet from the Amiga, nor any other "Right software".

We can't all fly Tomas, most of us learn to crawl first. And if you can't help, please do not post hostile, nasty comments. Anger isn't going to help this person. Or you.

I hear you mention you didn't feel welcome at Amiga,org. Maybe your mouth wrote a cheque that couldn't be cashed? I go a tar update straight after I downloaded, so prolly a problem at my end with that MMULib download.

Anyway Wraith, if the card still can't be accessed with just one 2GB partition, it's not going to work at all. Definite wrong un, send it back... although at that price, I'd have been tempted to buy it.

And play with Linux, you can probably download a ubuntu Iso and put it onto a usn stick. Most of them let you just use it prior to an install, so you cam keep your Windows and try Linux by booting from the usb stick. Makes sense if you're getting a Linux unit to see just what you'll be playing with.

[Pat the Cat]

From Aminet;--

* should read disks up to 4G (more with direct SCSI option)

https://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/msd95v16

FAT32 file system handler cannot access partitions over 4 gb without upgrading scsi.device. Only way to do that for Wraith is to plug in 3.1.4 ROMs to the A1200 unless he changes the partition size, then he could maybe upgrade scsi.device. Another chicken and egg situation.

I love your stuff, why be angry at me?

FAT95 handler has same issue with pcmcia compact flash-

* up to 4 GBytes of partition size for FAT16
* large harddisk support via TD64 or direct SCSI

https://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/fat95

[Pat the Cat]

<shrug> If a filesystem handler's author says it won't work with big partitions, I'm inclined to believe them.

Yes, it certainly is trying to DIR CF0: from the shell. If it won't work there it won't work anywhere else.

HDToolbox, maybe. Cardinfo... I never got much sensible out of the Commodore one. The Aminet one, yes.

[Pat the Cat]

Thomas, you really are being a an adhominen abusive pompous yob.

Grow up. When was the last time you took an 1992 A1200 and tried to get files into it? Nothing but a WB 3 disk?

I don't use FAT95 because I don't have to. I don't use Windows. Nobody has to.

I'm trying to help somebody here, you're just blowing steam for effect.

The way I do it, using Linux, I can put downloads straight onto a card, then plug it directly into the Amiga. Boot from that with Amiga FFs, no more copying required.

It would take quite a while for an A1200 to copy 16gb from one compact flash card to another even if it did work.

Anyway Wraith, Thomas is quite right to suggest trying the compact flash on your laptop at least.

One other point is that CF is hot swappable, so unplugging and plugging in the card is OK. If not your Gayle definitely could do with a fixer plugged into it. Causes a lot of aggravation with A1200 PCMCIA. There are software workaround too they might well be included in that hard drive with IDE adapter if you want to persist with the whole idea.

[Pat the Cat]

It boils down to whether compactflash.device is using it's own TD64 friendly IDE access to the compact flash card over PCMCIA, or whether it's just rerouting the inbuilt versions. Which aren't TD64 on a Kickstart 3.0 machine.