Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: giZmo350 on August 07, 2013, 09:44:19 PM
-
I've tried to get Mechy's PCD-50B SCSI Multicard Reader to work in my A590 about 3 or 4 times with NO success. Today I thought I would give another google search a try (after reading that Mfilos got one working) and BINGO! Finally found the answer - from Mechy himself over at EAB. It was switch 4 on the A590 which enabled parity! Actually, ALL the card slots show up when you scan the unit. Mechy suggested HDToolBox but HDInstallTools on the OS2.1 install disk worked perfect. I created a 1GB partition using max transfer of 0x001FE00 and a 3GB partition and all is great. :D Now on to all the fun software installs!
Couple of questions though...
1. My A590 has always taken FOREVER to boot up. Even with the multi-card reader... about 1.5 minutes. Why is that?
2. Can I utilize the other card slots (different card types) as additional storage/drives simultaniously?
Happy Amigan! :drink:
-
1: What transfer speed are you getting in SysInfo?
2: Yes. With the PCD-60 you can, anyway. Don't recall offhand what the difference between the 50 and 60 was but Mechy's site should tell you. I use a CF card as my primary "drive", and a second card (an old xD card I had laying around) as my backup partition. :)
Side thought: is 2.1 going to correctly support a 3GB partition?
-
1: What transfer speed are you getting in SysInfo?
SysInfo states 1,638,400
I noticed that the A590 HDD light will poll for a very long time and then I'll hear the floppy tick and then the A590 HDD will start reading data and boot shortly therafter. I do have Version 7 ROMS (burned).
-
Hrm. I'm getting about 2,100,000 with mine, but that could be down to the GVP controller being faster than the A590, or the type of card you're using. I was going to ask the obvious question about if you have fast mem but see from your sig that you do.
If it's polling for a long time I'd go back to checking termination. Is the card reader your only device? Do you have the Termination jumper on on the bottom of it?
-
If it's polling for a long time I'd go back to checking termination. Is the card reader your only device? Do you have the Termination jumper on on the bottom of it?
That's a really good thought! NO termination on the PCD-50B. I see a a row of 4 terminations - not sure how to terminate it though.... If I put a jumper on ID0 (looking at the little chart on the unit) it still takes just as long... any thought there?
-
Mine has that same block. ID 0 is to set the SCSI ID. The pair of pins furthest from that is for termination. See attached pic. :)
-
Mine has that same block. ID 0 is to set the SCSI ID. The pair of pins furthest from that is for termination. See attached pic. :)
Well, I tried every combination of ID's (nothing on the top term pins) and that seems to have no effect at all - ID seems to do nothing. I tried (like yours) jumper pins 1 and 4 (ID 0 and term) and still does the same thing. Well, maybe Mechy will see this and have an answer - at least it works! Also, 3GB partition seems to work just fine with OS2.1... I installed a few games from floppy... :razz: Thanks sooo much for you helpfulness Mike! Lemme know if anything else comes to mind...
-
Well, I tried every combination of ID's (nothing on the top term pins) and that seems to have no effect at all - ID seems to do nothing. I tried (like yours) jumper pins 1 and 4 (ID 0 and term) and still does the same thing. Well, maybe Mechy will see this and have an answer - at least it works! Also, 3GB partition seems to work just fine with OS2.1... I installed a few games from floppy... :razz: Thanks sooo much for you helpfulness Mike! Lemme know if anything else comes to mind...
The top 2 pins of the row of jumpers farthest away from the scsi connector end is termination-the 3 sets below are scsi ID.. put a jumper block on those 2 top pins to enable termination,which should be enabled if its the only drive on the A590. You need no other jumpers on the scsi ID pins,which will leave it device #0.
the PCD drives label shows all the settings for ID's/termination right on the drive.
The reason it is taking a long time is the 2091/590 is a slow controller,and although luns work for the most part they aren't handled very intelligently- it takes forever to scan 7 luns per scsi ID of 0-6(so 49 checks approx). A couple ways to possibly fix this are with HDtoolbox.
I am doing this from memory so i may not be overly accurate here- in the hdtoolbox tooltypes you will find and can set these values:
MAX_SCSI_LUN=5 (or 6 of you have a 6 slot reader)
MAX_SCSI_UNIT=1 (this assumes you set the scsi ID to 0 -no jumpers).
save the settings and then run hdtoolbox and save your partitions again so these take effect- i seem to think they are saved in the rdb from memory.
scsi scans from device 0 on up,so finding a drive early may help boot time.
this will give a slight speed up,but if you want access to all the slots,luns will always be slow on the A590. The gvp doesnt suffer from this.
if you want the quickest boot its best to only use the pcmcia slot with cf adapter and turn off luns.
Speeds you will see will vary quite a bit based on scsi controller,cf,sd,sm,etc card used, and filesystem used. FFS is very slow.
The a590 will be good doing 1 to 2MB in speed.
It is doubtful to exceed 4MB/s (although the manufacturer claims 4-5MB/s). i have reached 3.9MB/s using sfs and a transcend class 10 -4GB sd card in the sd slot with the card reader hooked to the cyberstorm MKIII uwscsi(with proper highbyte adapter). No idea why this was slightly faster than the cf slot.
I never recommend using hdinsttools on any amiga drives, this program creates a non standard rdb that is no longer compatible to the C= standard. I spent much time/tech help finding odd troubles users had who bought the scsicard readers because of hdinsttools.
-
It actually does 30 blinks before the drive can boot (at least in my case).
Putting the tooltypes didn't seem to fix the boot delay sadly.
Maybe putting an active terminator on the back of the A590 could be a good idea but I have none atm. I might get one from eBay and if I have any difference I'll report back.
-
It actually does 30 blinks before the drive can boot (at least in my case).
Putting the tooltypes didn't seem to fix the boot delay sadly.
Maybe putting an active terminator on the back of the A590 could be a good idea but I have none atm. I might get one from eBay and if I have any difference I'll report back.
My memory may be fuzzy here, my 590 is buried somewhere and i cant find it atm or i would pull it out and test.
the passive termination is fine on the PCD drive. This is not a problem,and nothing to do with termination,its simply a matter of the 590 being very slow and its poor implimentation of lun scanning.
I had sworn setting the tooltypes and resaving the partitions to the rdb would speed it a bit(it still will not be fast like proper scsi controllers) but again i may be confusing it with another controller..
This slow lun scanning doesn't happen on A3000 scsi,warpengine,cyberstorms,gvp stuff etc.
I do wonder if someone could hack the roms to improve the lun scan. It may just be the hardware can't do it faster. I suspect its just down to a case of a old, slow controller that was not very good to begin with.
-
I never recommend using hdinsttools on any amiga drives, this program creates a non standard rdb that is no longer compatible to the C= standard. I spent much time/tech help finding odd troubles users had who bought the scsicard readers because of hdinsttools.
Continuing with this today... you're absolutely right about HDInstallTools! After the unit's been on for about 20-30 minutes, I get a lot of software error Gurus! I'm going to start over with HDToolBox... and try some other things. Thanks for all the great help!
-
1. deactivate LUN support (sw 2 off) - most probably LUNs work anyway, just not for booting from or auto-mounting
2. put your boot drive on ID 0 or 1 and use HDToolbox to mark it as last drive
3. deactivate long spin-up time (sw 3 off) - if your drive doesn't work without it better replace it anyway
This should start booting within 2 or 3 seconds.
-
HDToolBox worked great for me with mine. If you disable the LUN support, won't you also lose the option to use multiple cards (think it will limit you to just the CF in the PCMCIA slot)?
Have you considered doing the 14MHz hack, @Mechy - think that might speed things up for him any?
There's some info on it here, with links to other threads for additional info:
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=19260
-
I do wonder if someone could hack the roms to improve the lun scan. It may just be the hardware can't do it faster. I suspect its just down to a case of a old, slow controller that was not very good to begin with.
The wd33c93 chip was used by a lot of high end hardware, it's very likely that it's a software issue. Whether it's one that can be solved within the confines of AmigaOS is another matter.
-
HDToolBox worked great for me with mine. If you disable the LUN support, won't you also lose the option to use multiple cards (think it will limit you to just the CF in the PCMCIA slot)?
As long as you're using mountlists to mount the other cards I don't think it matters. The LUN scan should only affect the automount and autoboot mechanism; when a mountlist entry is used the controller should be looking at that LUN anyway. I'm not 100% sure (ignoring LUNs just because the scan is deactivated would be braindead though) but it doesn't hurt to try.
Back when I had an A590 I did a lot of hot-plugging and such, so what's been scanned during boot shouldn't really matter.
-
HDToolBox worked great for me with mine. If you disable the LUN support, won't you also lose the option to use multiple cards (think it will limit you to just the CF in the PCMCIA slot)?
Have you considered doing the 14MHz hack, @Mechy - think that might speed things up for him any?
There's some info on it here, with links to other threads for additional info:
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=19260
From memory if you turn off luns you cant get to them period. I would love someone to prove me wrong though :D
These drives are hot swappable,you can change cards on them at will but BE SURE you dont pull it when writing to it or you will probably scramble it.
it is probably best to leave the card with the OS in always and just hot swap another slot. on most other accelerators with scsi the disk change is recognized(it takes a few secs in some case),but on the 590 you may have to issue a DISKCHANGE command.
overclocking the scsi chip should speed things up a bit but i doubt it will be "fast".
The latest WD or AMD scsi chip is a wise addition also,it sometimes fixes some troubles(although slow lun scan is not technically trouble and most likely will not be changed).
I have noticed some 2091/590's have different version of DMAC chips. i wonder if this explains why i see some different behavior between some 2091's? anyone have any thoughts on this?
Using FAT formatted cards:
It seems the guys over at EAB got FAT95 to work on the card reader,I knew this should be possible but never had time to pursue it. the thread is here:
http://eab.abime.net/support-apps/67430-fat95-a590-scsi-cf-using-pcd-50b.html
I used a utility called scsipcmcia.lha many years ago on the pcd-25b,but it does not work on the newer drives. The mountlist on the eab thread should work fine instead(DISKCHANGE command may be needed). the info is in the fat95 docs i believe.
This addition allows you to read fat formatted cards on the scsi card readers like you can on the 600/1200.
Most proper scsi controllers poll the scsi bus every so many seconds and see diskchanges so issuing the DISKCHANGE command should not be needed.
-
1. deactivate LUN support (sw 2 off) - most probably LUNs work anyway, just not for booting from or auto-mounting
2. put your boot drive on ID 0 or 1 and use HDToolbox to mark it as last drive
3. deactivate long spin-up time (sw 3 off) - if your drive doesn't work without it better replace it anyway
This should start booting within 2 or 3 seconds.
I've noticed the delayed startup too. Termination on or off didn't seem to make a diff. Will try this on my A590. Interested in how you guys secured your PCD unit inside the A590. Mine's loose at the moment will have to get some spacers to lift it up so the molex power plug in the PCD hovers above the plug in the A590 CB. That's the only way to close the case.
-
I've noticed the delayed startup too. Termination on or off didn't seem to make a diff. Will try this on my A590. Interested in how you guys secured your PCD unit inside the A590. Mine's loose at the moment will have to get some spacers to lift it up so the molex power plug in the PCD hovers above the plug in the A590 CB. That's the only way to close the case.
There some pics on this thread how i mounted mine originally. the top and front bezel can be popped off of the pcd card readers for a bit more clearance. It is a tight fit and you will need to use it with luns and no pcmcia to cf adapter.
The best thing to do with it may be to put it in a external scsi case so you can have access to it always.
-
I mounted it with some hotglue stick cut :)
You can check on my blog here:
http://www.mfilos.com/2013/06/a500-a590-scsi-controller-mods.html
-
I screwed some standoffs into the bottom of the card reader so that the rear molex connector would clear the board molex connector. It's just sitting in there loose but the A590 cover front screw mounts hold the reader in place.
I also tried using it without the fan but that board gets very hot and I was getting memory errors. If you notice, the only air intake is thru a row of holes in the lower front of the unit to allow air to cool the board. I used the same low profile fan that mfilos did and no overheating problems now with the cover on. But ya, it's a tight fit. I need to take all back apart anyway to do the power mod 'cause that A590 PSU is a pain in the arse.
I also turned off SW3 but it has no effect on boot time.
Using FAT formatted cards is an interesting read and would be ideal for moving large files (like getting the new IndiECS Core file onto the HDD - doesn't fit on a floppy). I'm on a mission to get SuperPlus working!
-
I've got SuperPlus working on mine, I use an external CD drive to transfer large files from my PC to my Amiga. Just one re-writeable disc and I dump stuff on it as needed, and the drive was really cheap since it doesn't need to be anything Amiga-specific, just SCSI. ;)
SuperPlus is pretty awesome, but a bit slow @ 16 colors even with a 68030. Hoping it will be a bit faster on my A2000 when I've got that project finished. ;)
Not sure if it helps but to fit the card reader inside my GVP chassis I removed the faceplate and the top cover, I also removed the internal fan that GVP used and had to clip out a small piece of plastic, drill my own holes for the studs, mod the "game" switch... yeah, it was tricky, I've heard it's easier in the A590. ;) I also stuck a heatsync on top of the large chip in the middle of the card reader as a preventative measure, but it doesn't seem to ever get very warm. The "no PSU mod" works fine since the card reader draws hardly any power.
Here's an older shot of my system (there have been a few mods since this pic was taken), and a quick shot of my A500 running SuperPlus. Lots of real estate! ;-) Normally I use a 654x482 NTSC overscan screen for better performance & less memory usage, however.
Love reading about your build, BTW. It's almost exactly where I was a few months ago, so glad to help out if I can. :)
-
I screwed some standoffs into the bottom of the card reader so that the rear molex connector would clear the board molex connector. It's just sitting in there loose but the A590 cover front screw mounts hold the reader in place.
I also tried using it without the fan but that board gets very hot and I was getting memory errors. If you notice, the only air intake is thru a row of holes in the lower front of the unit to allow air to cool the board. I used the same low profile fan that mfilos did and no overheating problems now with the cover on. But ya, it's a tight fit. I need to take all back apart anyway to do the power mod 'cause that A590 PSU is a pain in the arse.
I also turned off SW3 but it has no effect on boot time.
Using FAT formatted cards is an interesting read and would be ideal for moving large files (like getting the new IndiECS Core file onto the HDD - doesn't fit on a floppy). I'm on a mission to get SuperPlus working!
Yep mine's exactly the same as yours. "Great minds".. I'm going to get some A500 floppy type screw-in/threaded standoffs. I've seen them in neoprene but they have a different thread. Still on the look-out for metal. Same as the ones underneath the A590 drive mount plate actually. It fits fine with the pcmcia reader attached in this way. As you say you just need to clear the power connector plug and you can push it back that extra inch(carefully looping your scsi cable of course.) A590 has lots of headroom. As for heat mine runs quite cool. I'm only using a 4GB CFCard in the PCMCI adaptor. Interested in what card is causing heat?
Finally it would be great if you could get SD/XD card extender adaptors. Where one end is a card shaped plug and the other a socket with 2 screws for mounting. Like those USB headers. Then I could mount an SD socket inconspicuously out the back of the A590. Success would be complete. LOL : http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/SD-card-SD-Card-Extension-Extender-Cable-SDHC-32-gb-Compatible-GPS-TV-/171093916243?pt=AU_Digital_Memory_Card_Readers_Adaptors&hash=item27d5fdfa53
A bit long though. Needs a trim. I've never used the SD reader. will have to try it out. No hot swapping though.