VA2000 SD Card Formatting Issue

[madgrizzle]

Has anyone with a VA2000 successfully formatted a SD card?  I followed the instructions, mounted the drive, and then issued:

Format drive sd0: name "sdcard" quick

and it comes back with:

Initializing disk...
Format Failure: seek failure

The only difference between my mountlist and the one in the instructions is that I used:

FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem

Interestingly enough, I get the same result W/O a SD card installed, so it suggests it isn't detecting the card.

Thanks.

John

[madgrizzle]

pfs, which I don't have.  I get a different response if I don't do a quick format.. something like "formatting sector 0 / 1000" (something like that) and it doesn't seem to move to sector 1.  I read somewhere that you should always use quick format for sd cards.

I haven't gotten a response from the developer so I am wondering if my format syntax is good.

[madgrizzle]

I first tried a 32 GB card and when it didn't work, I figured the problem might be the card size.  So I ordered a 4 GB card and got the same results.

My file is identical to the one you posted, except FileType=L:FastFileSystem since I don't have pfs.  I first tried Surfaces = 4 but that didn't work so I tried Surfaces = 1 and it still doesn't work.  I assumed from the instructions it was for a 1 GB SD card (the arrow said to adjust surfaces to the number of GB you want to use).

Will try your suggestion.

[madgrizzle]

No luck, but I did get an "*" instead of a seek failure.  I left it there over an hour and still all I had was a "*".  Then power glitched at the house and the Amiga rebooted.  I wonder if the format command is locking up after the "*" is on the screen.  I issued the command again but got the seek failure the second time.  I find that a number of programs crash (e.g., screenmode) whenever I exit them.  Some other programs don't even run without crashing.  So I'm not sure if its something with my install rather than the sd card port.  I posted an issue on GitHub.. maybe will get a response.  I wish there was a way to check to see if the SD card is recognized as being inserted by the VA2000.

[madgrizzle]

Thanks, I'll try it out this weekend.  If the CD drive and OS3.9 CD converge upon my house via USPS today, then I'll try it using pfs this weekend (right now, its a pain to get things onto the Amiga 2000.  I don't have room in my "office" to have both the Amiga and the old XP computer with floppy out at the same time.)

[madgrizzle]

Thanks for the insight, I'll try creating a mount file for it.  I have been using the latest version (v.1.6 released June 21).

I thought the same about using HDToolbox to do a partition, but the drive doesn't appear there.  I've never used it before so maybe I'm not running the program correctly (because my drive connected to the GVP Combo doesn't appear there either.. I just assumed GVP had its own program for it.. I got this Amiga used with HD many years ago so I never had to do any HD work).

[madgrizzle]

Yes, it's on my list of things to install now that I have a working CDROM drive in the Amiga (the old XP computer I had with a floppy quit on me.. makes transferring files to the Amiga extraordinarily difficult).