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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: beltrixx on February 04, 2016, 05:42:04 PM

Title: Cannot set up an IDE/ATAPI Fujitsu MO drive on my A1200
Post by: beltrixx on February 04, 2016, 05:42:04 PM

Yesterday I was delivered a Fujitsu MO drive (model MCA3064AP) which I purchased on Ebay about a month ago. It's a 640 Mb capacity  IDE/ATAPI MO drive but unfortunately I haven't managed to get it running on my system (yet) :

A1200 Desktop config, Microbotics 1230 XA accel, Elbox Powerflyer ATA controller. The prefs. application for the Powerflyer controller (ATA3Prefs) correctly detects the drive as slave...

I got the mountfiles for the MO drive from : http://aminet.net/docs/help/Amiga_MO_FAQ.lha

and I chose the ones intended for MO floppies formatted on a PC... and, as most of the floppies I own are 230 Mb, I started editing the mountfile for PC230 :

Device & Unit are modified through tooltypes on the icon and other params by editing the mountfile. I have tried all combinations of device : scsi.device, trackdisk.device and unit : 3 and 7 (drive is attached as slave on secondary IDE). I also have changed the fylesystem in the mountfile to show L:\fat95 and L:\CrossDOSFileSystem and have left all other params intact ... but it still does not work. My system doesn't mount the MO floppy...

Any idea of a proper config to get it working would be appreciated ;)

Title: Re: Cannot set up an IDE/ATAPI Fujitsu MO drive on my A1200
Post by: Acill on February 05, 2016, 02:00:03 PM

I have a similar drive I never got working only mine is SCSI. It wasnt a very well adopted technology.

Title: Re: Cannot set up an IDE/ATAPI Fujitsu MO drive on my A1200
Post by: beltrixx on February 05, 2016, 11:21:00 PM

Quote from: Acill;803534

I have a similar drive I never got working only mine  is SCSI. It wasnt a very well adopted technology.

I'm afraid you're right. I've done everything I could imagine to get it working, but seems impossible...:angry::angry:

I've tried to fine tune the mountfile by trying different values for  some of its parameters (device, filesystem, bufmemtype, etc) and also  additional mountfiles, like http://www.g-mb.de/MO.html#pc230  but it still doesn't work. The curious thing here is that  ATA3Prefs  (setup utility for my Elbox Powerflyer controller) recognizes the MO  drive attached to the secondary IDE port as a Fujitsu ATAPI drive, SLAVE  (I assume Unit=3 or Unit=7), PIO5  capable.

Another curious thing : if you push an MO floppy into  the unit, mouse  pointer movement starts to jam and gets slow, very difficult  to  control... and once you eject the floppy, mouse movement is back to  normal again.  ¿¿¿???

I still can't understand why an ATAPI ZIP drive is so easy  to configure  and this Fujitsu drive is simply IMPOSSIBLE; I thought my Elbox  controller could handle any ATAPI device attached to it. It's a   pitty... I'll keep trying for a while, though.

Thanks everybody for your replies.