The derpy adventures of RedWarrior...

[RedWarrior]

So, you might remember me from the ongoing saga around trying to get my PCMCIA CF card working on my Amiga 1200.

It's basically a compilation of falling down stairs, hitting my head & stubbing my toes repeatedly- although in Amiga hardware/software terms.

I was described as "Frank Spencer", and someone also described my fumbling saying it "looks like he doesn't know what he's doing"...  Well yes, as a matter of fact I don't.

I don't have a clue what I'm doing. Having to manually enter arcane numbers in fields with weird names is a bit daunting to me. Running anything from a command line gets me at least slightly anxious. Using diskpart, HDTools, HDinsttools and about 3 different text commands on 2 different operating systems to merely format an already obsolete Compact Flash card isn't what I'd call streamlined or user friendly- but that's just me.

Thanks heaps to those who offered assistance, advice, and even derision! ;-) It's a bit embarrassing!

I'm still hoping to one day get my Amigas working, but get the strong impression that this is nowhere near as simple as I imagined it should be. Back in the day I think I edited the occasional start-sequence and felt like I just hacked the matrix.

I'm writing this as a preface to those who might expect me to have a PhD in computer science or work as a programmer or imagine that I should instantly understand what they're talking about when they offer helpful advice... Thank you for helping, but please try to dumb it down a bit for me =)

I got my IDE CF card working eventually... and then there was another mountain to climb. I did get my PCMCIA CF card working eventually... and now there is another mountain to climb... This could go on for a while.

My next posts will be "Why doesn't WHDLoad work like I think it should?" and "why is my A600 refusing to boot after I changed the filesystem to pfs3?" and "how do I make this degrader work?" ...and "why did Commodore do such a lousy job with backwards compatibility? It seems almost spiteful- even inverting the colours on Workbench for no good reason..?"

Not sure if I should quarantine myself to this thread so you know what to expect from me...

Cheers guys. =)

[RedWarrior]

Because different file systems can't read each others files. Isn't this obvious?

After changing file system in HDToolbox you have to format the partition and restore files from a backup.

Nothing is obvious to me here... and all the things I think are obvious turn out to be wrong! =D

Here's the situation with my a600: It was sorta kinda working from the last time I sought assistance here (back around 2004!) - though has been deteriorating. Checksum errors galore and even keyboard errors (which might be hardware)... so since having discovered pfs3 on here recently while working on my A1200 I figured it might help my a600...

So in WinUAE I copied everything off my a600 drivecard... did the 12 steps to formatting the card in pfs3... then copied my data back to the drive/card... and now I get a giant error immediately on boot. Could it be the pfs3 thing doesn't work on an a600? I don't think I changed anything else really...

=)

[RedWarrior]

We truly wanted to help...but you did lead us on a merry chase.

Where are you? If you are local to Sacramento, come to the SACC meetings, we will help!

Consider coming to AmiWest2016 (see sacc.org) Meet lots of us who know enough to get in trouble! (smile)

I'm on the opposite side of the world =)

[RedWarrior]

Error 80000004.

My ram isn't feeling privileged enough or something?

Before I unscrew and remove the CF/drive again, perhaps someone could offer a course of action please? Is pfs3 compatible with an a600? All I did was copy my files off with diskmaster... format with pfs3 & repartition... then copy files back. And now it's being a moody little piece of $%^t...

[RedWarrior]

I reformatted within WINUAE and DH2: was the first available number. They're just drive names though, right? It was a multi-step process of entering Dostypes and all that weird stuff again, but I think I nailed it.... it looked fine in Winuae.

In terms of "re-installing" my old programs- I have no idea what that person is talking about. The beauty of Amiga, in my experience, is you can just copy a bunch of files for a given program, and that's all it needs. (When it works at all, of course)

So, DH2 is my boot partition, with all my old stuff from 25 years ago on it... Workbench 2.2? Definitely not 3.x

The reason I thought I should try a different file system is that last time I was getting a heap of checksum errors popping up...

I don't know what an RDB is, by the way.

I'm pretty confident I installed pfs correctly and formatted properly. It worked for my 1200... eventually.


Can I get a definitive yes or no- is pfs3 compatible with an Amiga 2.x A600?

Cheers guys =)

[RedWarrior]

Ok- I think I found the cause of this- I'm having flashbacks to the awful fever-dreams of trying to format a CF drive for my 1200- no wonder I blacked out and forgot this part because it's really really awful...

Something about getting the configuration of the drive- I can barely remember how I even did this part for my 1200. This seems to be a shortcoming of WinUAE (if not the Amiga universe) - if the drive configuration is important- it seems I can't actually read it from WinUAE because instead of reading the actual card, it's reading the config of the CARD READER instead. (image attached)

Now, I'm not sure if this still applies under FFS- I'm not sure how I did this for the 1200... but MAYBE I can format back to FFS- copy HDTools to the CF... then (hopefully boot) on the a600... then run HDTools (assuming it boots) - then get the drive configuration applied... then remove the CF card and do the whole pfs3 format under Winuae again.... and then copy my stuff back, and then hopefully get a starting point on my a600. so fun.

Makes sense? If anyone has an easier route- please chime in! =)

[RedWarrior]

Yep that did it. It boots when it's formatted as standard FFS... then I have to run HDToolbox ON the system itself, make it load the right drive configuration... then save changes and reboot, then remove the CF card and put it back on the Winuae system, then load HDtoolbox again and install pfs3 (getting the dostype and buffers set correctly) (and the Maxtransfer settings) as a filesystem for both drives, then open a command line and run pfsformat...
Now just holding my breath before i can try copying my data back... all to get to the same starting point I was at 10 years ago... =)

I could make a youtube video: "Formatting a CF card for Amiga in 27 easy steps"

[RedWarrior]

..aaaaaaaaaand we're back to the exact same boot failure as before. Woohoo.


and then it looked like I had the buffer size and MaxTransfer setting wrong... changed them... no difference in boot error...

at this point I'm beginning to understand why these machines get thrown in dumpsters....

[RedWarrior]

No offence, but you're not really understanding what you're doing. You won't listen to me. I asked you earlier about the size of your CF card, its partitions and your scsi.device (which is important because you're not using OS3.9) and also the rdb and pfs version but you chose to ignore it, and suprise suprise you're back to square one.

Why don't you setup the CF hard drive on your Amiga? This will be the simplest method for you. Once setup you can then put the card into WinUAE and copy your files over.
You'll need a floppy disk to store pfs onto, and you'll need the Extra's disk (provided with all Amigas). Boot from your Workbench disk, insert your Extras disk, load HDToolbox, read the drive config, save it. Partition your drive, install pfs onto the rdb from your pfs floppy, save changes, job done.

Depending on the size of your partitions you may need to replace the 1991 scsi.device (which is stored in Kickstart ROM) with a more modern version (actually, if direct scsi is used you can use hard drives up to 8GB with that old scsi.device). This would be in the form of a resident module, or if you were fanatical you could create a ROM yourself with this already in it. Infact I believe you can purchase updated roms to make it even simpler for you.

I eventually got it working. It was the drive configuration again- for some reason it didn't save the settings and I had to type them in again under WinUAE from that photo I posted. Of course now the CF PCMCIA card isn't working, (Error 80000004 - Suspend/Reboot?) as soon as I try to mount cf0:.

I'm losing sight of why I even wanted to revive these machines... I don't think I'm ever gonna play lemmings again...

To answer your question: Why don't I setup the drives on my Amiga - I wonder if you've tried doing that without a working floppy drive? Or with a keyboard that won't let you use the letter P, the right Amiga button, or the Enter key?

I'm amazed you guys have floppy drives that still work after all these years. I have a lot of machines, and none of them have reliable floppy drives...

I'd love to one day see some cool Amiga demos on native hardware etc, but I"ve been trying on and off for 10 years and am getting nowhere.

[RedWarrior]

My mouse buttons work ok, and if you press Ctrl+M it's the same as Enter. I'm hoping (wishing) that my 600 can just be a games machine. I can't type p, o, or enter... the u and . sometimes work... these machines were NOT designed to be opened... all the plastic is so brittle, bits fall off every time I open the poor thing.

I don't suppose there is such a thing as a pre-prepared hardfile for Winuae that has WHDLoad, X-bench & a bunch of games/demos setup ready to go? That would be awesome.

Otherwise I need to figure out a lot of stuff to do with degrading & running the 1.3 ROM, and somehow running old floppies under that environment from the HDD... and I think I'll probably give up before I get to the end of that one... =D

[RedWarrior]

Occasionally preloaded CF cards filled with games pop up on eBay, but since this is (technically) software piracy, they tend to get yanked pretty fast. Still, you might get lucky.

IMHO a replacement keyboard and floppy drive would be a better investment of your money, however. :p

The zeal you guys have in defending abandonware from copying isn't really seen in any other fan-club... I can't understand the logic.