Weird CF card behavior with 3.1.4.1 - some apps not loading/failing silently.

[hishamk]

The gist of the issue is that some apps, like Calculator in the Tools directory, do not load. There is an "attempt" as per the message on Workbench, but then nothing happens.

My set up is as follows:

Amiga 3000@25MHz, 2mb+8mb, stock. CF-IDE adapter attached to Acard 7720UW bridge which in turn is attached to the SCSI port. Using a Transcend 133x 4GB card. AmigaOS partition is 1gb, the other 3gb is Work.

I've installed 3.1.4 without any issues as well as the .1 update. The system boots just fine. The only thing is that some apps refuse to run, including Calculator.

The interesting bit is that I've got another setup, an Amiga 1000 w/ a Classic 520 and a SanDisk 8gb card. 3.1.4.1 works perfectly fine on it, including Calculator

I plugged in the 3k's Transcend into the 520 and booted the A1k up. The same behavior happened. The Calculator refuses to show up.

I then copied the Calculator file from the 3k's Transcend onto a floppy disk and rebooted the A1k with it's usual SanDisk 8gb card. The calculator loaded up fine from the floppy disk!

I took that disk back to my Amiga 3000 and plugged back the Transcend as well to boot it up.

Clicking on the Calculator icon on the floppy resulted in nothing, just as if I clicked on it from the Transcend. So no joy there.

I then booted my 3k with the 1k's SanDisk card. Lo and behold, the Calculator on the floppy and on the SanDisk loads up just fine!

So what's going on here?

It seems to not be an issue with the SCSI/drive controllers, since the behavior for the Transcend card happens on both the A1k and A3k.

I've also installed MMULib to see if that had anything to do with it as I was writing this and the same behavior persists.

Also, when attempting to load the Calculator in CLI, nothing happens, no error message, nothing.

[TribbleSmasher]

Sounds like the devilish MaxTransfer problem...

[hishamk]

FWIW I did change MaxTransfer to 0x1fe00 yet the issue persists.

[TribbleSmasher]

Can you run SnoopDos with all DOS functions activated while attempting to run several of those refusing apps?

[hishamk]

Can you run SnoopDos with all DOS functions activated while attempting to run several of those refusing apps?

Interesting, when I run Calculator; SnoopDos reports:

ramlib   Load     mathieeedoubbas.library   FAIL

Moreover, when I tried using SGrab to get a screenshot, it complained that it failed to open mathieeedoubbas.library, version 37.

Hmm, could it have been something corrupted during the install? Would be strange since I didn't get any disk errors.

I do have the the library in LIBS. When I run version on it, it says cannot find version information... The size is 3596 bytes, the same as on the Workbench install disk.

I copied over the one from the Workbench install disk and did a cold reboot. Same thing,

ramlib   Load     mathieeedoubbas.library   FAIL

Could this be an issue related to the fact that the 3k has an FPU and perhaps some install configuration was incorrectly set by the installer script?

[TribbleSmasher]

When i look here in the thread THOR has explained, they fixed something in those math libs so one could assume you should have libs with a higher version number present; so the v37 load should succeed.

Math stuff. Yes, there are new math libraries (again)....

mathieeedoubbas and singbas only changed in so far as they configure the FPU slightly different, namely "extended precision, round to zero". The results of the computation are still the same as the last operation in each call to the math code still implies a rounding to double or single precision, but the advantage of the different rounding mode is that a task can open both libraries simultaneously without a conflict, which was not possible before. ...

Is the lib read protected?

[hishamk]

When i look here in the thread THOR has explained, they fixed something in those math libs so one could assume you should have libs with a higher version number present; so the v37 load should succeed.

Math stuff. Yes, there are new math libraries (again)....

mathieeedoubbas and singbas only changed in so far as they configure the FPU slightly different, namely "extended precision, round to zero". The results of the computation are still the same as the last operation in each call to the math code still implies a rounding to double or single precision, but the advantage of the different rounding mode is that a task can open both libraries simultaneously without a conflict, which was not possible before. ...

Is the lib read protected?

Yup, the bits are set exactly the same as on the working installs (and the 3.1.4 Workbench floppy): RWD.

[hishamk]

So the plot thickens.

I copied over the 68882 version of mathieeedoubbas.library from http://aminet.net/package/util/libs/FMath406.lha. It's version v40.6, the same as that supplied with 3.1.4, but the file size is much smaller (896 vs 3956 bytes - perhaps because it's just compiled for 68882 machines).

Calculator worked just fine.

So, I'm not really sure what's going on here.

[duga]

Try disabling/enable Direct SCSI Transfer in HDToolBox. Perhaps do a backup first.

[kolla]

So, I'm not really sure what's going on here.

Bugs, bugs and more bugs?
I have some 020+888 systems, but none with OS 3.1.4.1, as the hardware in question is not supported.

I suggest you file a bug report with @Gulliver

[hishamk]

I ended up reinstalling on a 2gb SanDisk instead of 4gb Transcend and it's been fine. I'm also using a MaxTransfer of 0x1FE00.

Should you wonder, I've previously used the Transcend with Tom Thul's A1000's IDE adapter and it's always worked fine.

Now on to the 3000's fan. That thing is LOUD!

[hishamk]

As an update, that 2gb SanDiskl resulted in random read/write errors.

I then resorted to using a SCSI2SD and the errors ceased - everything worked fine.

So I left the ACARD AEC-7720UW - IDE to Ultra Wide SCSI bridge in a drawer until such time that I could downgrade it to firmware v3.75 (it had v3.88 when I bought it), as I heard that the newer firmware had issues with the Amiga and v3.75 is the one to use.

Lo and behold, I did finally manage to do the downgrade (involved Win98SE on a crusty old beige box PC and an Adaptec PCI SCSI card - hey, these things are making a retro comeback!).

Now with v3.75 the Acard works flawlessly in the A3000. It's also faster than the SCSI2SD. I'm also using the default MaxTransfer of 0xFFFFFFFF.

Since the ACARD site is a bit wonky and it seems the v3.75 FW will be close to impossible to get soon, I've Dropbox'd it for anyone who may need it. The firmware flashing utility is also in the archive.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sehhcu9uq43fiih/ACARD_375.zip?dl=0