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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: X-ray on July 25, 2004, 10:14:56 PM
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I have a 3GB Quantum Fireball SCSI here in an external case, and SCSI 2 connectors on my PC and my A4000T. I want to use this drive to shuttle MP3 and picture files between the two computers.
What is the best way to do this? Should I format the drive on the Amiga or the PC (it is currently empty). I have checked it on both systems and both computers can format it to their own file systems, but what is the common format between the two (if any?)
I run XP pro on the PC and 3.1 on the Amiga.
I just thought of something else: assuming I can format it so it can be read on both, I reckon it should be possible to leave the drive connected to both computers (as long as not all three items are switched on at the same time and the drive is switched on at the same time as the relevant computer). I am banking on the live computer treating the off computer's host card the same way it treats the last switched off item in a chain. for example, the same as it handles my Zip Drive when it is off and installed last in the chain. Am I wrong about this?
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Provided the controllers have different IDs you should be able to leave them on at the same time - Siamese used to run a SCSI networking rig between Amiga & PC.
If you use Fat95 on the Amiga you should be able to read the drive from either if formatted in Fat32. I don't think accessing both at the same time would work at all though ;-)
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Thanks, H, but forgive my ignorance, what is Fat95?
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X-Ray,
Fat95 is an filesystem which allows the Amiga to read fat32 formatted Floppy drives or Hard Drives.
It's useful for reading Jazz and Zip Media that has been formatted on a PC.
Fat32 allows you to read files longer than the standard 8.3 file convention on old MS-DOS Disks.
A file transferred for a PC on floppy called longfilename.zip will only be read on the amiga as longfile.zip. (This is assuming you are running WB 2.1 or later and have either PC0: or PC1: configured so you can read PC Disks.)
Cheers
Shaf
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Fat95 is an filesystem which allows the Amiga to read fat32 formatted Floppy drives or Hard Drives.
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I also didn't know about 'Fat95'.
I have a SCSI drive that my A3k SCSI device doesn't
want to reconize.
It sounds like I could format it on my PC to Fat32
and use it in my external SCSI box for a backup drive.
Is this correct??
Is this 'CrossDos??
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X-ray wrote:
I have a 3GB Quantum Fireball SCSI here in an external case, and SCSI 2 connectors on my PC and my A4000T. I want to use this drive to shuttle MP3 and picture files between the two computers.
What is the best way to do this? Should I format the drive on the Amiga or the PC (it is currently empty). I have checked it on both systems and both computers can format it to their own file systems, but what is the common format between the two (if any?)
I run XP pro on the PC and 3.1 on the Amiga.
I just thought of something else: assuming I can format it so it can be read on both, I reckon it should be possible to leave the drive connected to both computers (as long as not all three items are switched on at the same time and the drive is switched on at the same time as the relevant computer). I am banking on the live computer treating the off computer's host card the same way it treats the last switched off item in a chain. for example, the same as it handles my Zip Drive when it is off and installed last in the chain. Am I wrong about this?
You may want the second host to be *on* at the same time, unless you're using external termination. Jumperless on-card termination may not work right unless the card is powered up.
'VFAT' and FAT32 are both ways of getting long filename support with (things called) FAT, and FAT32 has other advantages on large disks; I assume the 'FAT95' package supports both, but you may want to doublecheck that, or at least remember it if it doesn't recognize a partition formatted as FAT32 in Windows. (IIRC, FAT32 wasn't introduced until Win98, but without finding the docs, I expect the package name is a 'misnomer,' and it has long since been updated with that support.)
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@Melott
CrossDos was the old 8.3 Filing System for reading 720K floppies (well, mostly). All storage devices on computers (USB sticks, floppies, CDs, and Harddrives) store their data in an organized manner. Different computer developers came up with different ways to do this. Apple made HFS, Microsoft FAT, Commodore-Amiga FFS, CDROMs originally used the 8.3 ISO-9660, but Apple Macintosh' prefer HFS CDs and Windows' uses Joliet to extend the filenames and Unix uses ?RockRidge?, the purpose of all of those three solutions is to have more than 12 file characters available. The Amiga is capable of reading all of those filing systems in a very easy to manipulate manner. (By the same token there is sofwtare for Windows which allows you to read Macintosh disks and vice versa. But it is less, well, elegant frankly.) Fat95 is this elegance in practice for reading all kinds of Windows formatted diskettes.
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Thanks guys and gals, I'll try Fat95 tonight. I suppose I'll need to format the HD on the PC (Fat32).
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Okay, I managed to format the drive on Windows Xp as a FAT32 drive. It is 3gb, works fine on the PC.
On the Amiga, I have trouble installing FAT95. Maybe its because I've been out of it for a few years. I double-click the install icon and files are copied in the background, but no requester or acknowledgement is shown. I manually copied the C, devs and l files into those directories too just in case. There are no mountlists or dosdrivers for a hard drive, so I've edited a floppy drive mountlist, changing dos type, high and low cylinder, etc and after a reboot I had an ndos icon for the drive. Of course when I quick formatted it, it was readable on the Amiga but not on the PC.
Does anyone have any idea how I can mount this 3gb Quantum Fireball SCSI so that it is readable on XP and Amiga 3.1?
Edit: I have now formatted the drive again on the PC, this time simply as FAT.
On the Amiga: I'm back to the NDOS icon now but I'm not going to quick format it because I think my problem is that I must change my Amiga dosdriver settings/mountlist to match the drive. But nonetheless I have no clue what to do.
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Hum,
strange, fat32 should work...
my useless suggestion is to download Winuae for the PC...
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@Melott
CrossDOS does not recognize long filenames. FAT95 recognizes long filenames. It can be downloaded off the Aminet.
@Blobrana
You are correct WinUAE can recognize Amiga FFS formatted Hard drives hooked up to a PC.
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Isn't there a 2GB limit on SCSI drives...
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There is a 2GB Partition (4Gig Disk) limit on the old FFS. Does Not Apply to any other filing system (except maybe OFS?).
Unless of course the SCSI controller doesn't support large disks. I believe for example, the builtin IDE of the 600s often supported only disks under a gigabyte?
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Doesn't CrossDOS v7 support long filenames?
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Doesn't CrossDOS v7 support long filenames?
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The 2091 controller with pre-7.0 firmware only supports 1GB drives. (for example)
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Yes, the later versions of CrossDOS supports long filenames.. but I've had other problems with it... and plan to switch to FAT95.
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jeffimix wrote:
Unless of course the SCSI controller doesn't support large disks. I believe for example, the builtin IDE of the 600s often supported only disks under a gigabyte?
There's a lot of miss-information out there regarding the A600 KS2.05 IDE. I have a 2G HD in my v37.300 and have had a 4G in there also. This Kickstart was reported to only accept drives under 40MB, which is incorrect.
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FAT95 by default only adds the MS0/MS1 (PC floppy) devices. Read the readme.too file for information on how to add a HD. There are sample mountlists in the archive (fat95mountlist and examples) that you can use as a base.
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Okay, I solved it (sort of):
Firstly, there was no way I could get Fat95 to recognise any type of FAT format I could do with WinXP. I changed clusters, I changed partitions I did it all and no luck. The thing was not recogniseable on the Amiga.
In my previous post, you'll recall I left it at the NDOS situation, waiting to see if any tips would surface. Well, I gave up and decided to format the thing and repartition it to Amiga. I went into the file type of the drive, changed it to L:fat95 and made three partitions and saved changes. Only one icon appeared, so I formatted that. It took a long time. Funny thing is after the format I had a single 3gb partition, not three 1gb partitions like I wanted. I copied files onto it, switched off the Amiga and plugged the drive into the PC. Success! There were all the files, visible on PC. I then copied MP3s from the PC onto the SCSI and connected it back to the Amiga. Yes! There they were, in their original PC filenames, long. Trouble is they won't play directly in that long file name, but the files are fine because they play when renamed shorter (25 characters maximum to be precise)
I need help working out how to get them to be useable without renaming. Other issues:
1) I can leave the drive connected to both PC and Amiga, when they are both switched on, provided the PC was booted with the HD powered up.
2) If the drive and Amiga are switched on first, then the PC booted after, if there is a SCSI rescan from the PC side (even if the drive is not being accessed by the Amiga)YOU WILL SUFFER THE MOST TERRIBLE CONSEQUENCES ON ALL YOUR DRIVES ON THE AMIGA SCSI chain. I spent 4 hours last night trying to revalidate and undelete and repair my data on the Amiga side because of this. It was no joke. It was guru city.
3) Safest sequence: scsi on, PC on, wait for PC boot complete, then Amiga on. The drive can then be seen by both computers simultaneously, but not accessed simultaneously. I tried that and the PC folder window did the classic freeze and 'not respond' act.
4) I gotta redo this sometime because I don't fancy pushing my luck with a 3gb partition on the Amiga 3.1.
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Childrens' version:
One day Amy and Percy went on a picnic. They took a small basket with them, with cookies inside. Percy held the left handle and Amy held the right handle. They got hungry and Amy and Percy decided to reach for a cookie at the same time by chance. Feeling Amy's hand already in the basket, Percy backed off and silently sulked at not being able to get at the cookies. Amy remarked that the cookie was too big to bite and Percy suggested that she break a bit off the end first.
When they got home, they set the basket down on the table. Amy let go her handle and Percy thought he would draw the basket over to himself so he could peek inside and see how many cookies Amy had taken. In his usual clumsy manner, he tipped the basket over and it landed on Amy's foot and she did not speak to Percy for 4 hours.
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That reminds me.... doesn't Windows XP use that NT filing system by default? Mine doesn't, but I installed over ME.
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Yep, XP uses NTFS by default, but even if you don't get FAT or FAT32 as an option via the Disk Manager, you can still format a drive as FAT32 via a command prompt, using the format command:
Format /FS:FAT32 (or FAT)
just like you can still format HD floppies that are HD, as 720k by using the format command:
format a: /t:80 /n:9
or format a: /f:720
(Don't forget to put a piece of opaque tape over the relavant hole on the disk)