Part I:
Hey wbrejnia,
It looks like you're still fishing in muddy waters. I'll try to answer your questions and clear some things up:
Original by wbrejnia:
#432 wbrejnia
Low Level FORMAT WORKED - I have a C: drive - Partitioned, and now fomatted with DOS installed
...
#433 wbrejnia
C: Drive Scans done. (READ/WRITE) tests come back 100% clean. - Rebooted Amiga-PC without Floppy, but still wants Floppy for boot ??
What now -
what did you reboot?
The 68k Amiga or the 8088 PC bridgeboard?
- In case you meant you "rebooted the Amiga without floppy", there must be a Amiga-formatted, bootable harddisk with AmigaOS installed on it - otherwise it could not have booted.
- In case you meant you "rebooted the PC without floppy", you should have just a black screen with the "C:\"-prompt and a flashing cursor next to it. How is it indicated that it still wants the floppy disk for booting?
Or did you mean you just TRIED to reboot?
Original by wbrejnia:
#434 wbrejnia
COULD THIS WORK? (If so, then Super!)
If I can jumper the WD controller to work side by side with the ISA/IDE-CF-Adapter, then I could possibly have a D: drive that is Compact Flash Driven.
This would make SW install's a breeze since I could Write to C-Flash and pop in whatever I need into the D: drive.
So the ISA/IDE adapter doesn't have to work as a recognized C: drive.
I'm hoping the Bridgeboard recognizes the ISA/IDE Adapter (AFTER getting the C: Drive into Bridgeboard BIOS/DOS)
I cannot answer this - I have no experience with using CF cards on 8088 PCs.
Original by Raffaele:
#435 Raffaele
Amiga Kickstart 1.2 can't boot from Hard Disks... Only Kickstart 1.3 and above machines can.
With KS 1.2 you need a "HD-Boot" floppy disk. This must contain the necessary Amiga files to mount the harddrive and to move the system/control over to it (e.g. with the command "movesys dh0:").
What this "HD-Boot" floppy disk does is a "minimum boot", so to say.
The "full boot" into Workbench is then done from the harddrive.
Original by wbrejnia:
#437 wbrejnia
BTW. I wrote many posts ago, that I read that a Low Level Format would only refresh the tracks on the disk and not wipe out the contents.
NOT TRUE AT ALL (at least for the WD BIOS LL Formatter).
I just checked the Drive after the LL Format, and even the Amiga Paritition which I didn't FORMAT Logically, is nothing but "00 00 00 00 00 00 00"
AFAIK, a "low level format" always deletes all data and all partitions on a physical harddrive ("physical" means the entire drive hardware - not just one or more partitions on it).
You cannot "low level" your physical Kalok MFM/RLL drive and hope a possibly existing Amiga-partition (a "logical" drive) on it remains untouched.
Original by wbrejnia:
#439 wbrejnia
Basically I tried to follow the steps in the Bridgeboard and I got to the point where I FORMAT the AMIGA PARTION [on the RLL drive] from the AMIGA-OS.
Ah - your drive is no longer formatted in MFM format?
How many mB more does it have now as RLL formatted drive?
Original by wbrejnia:
#439 wbrejnia
The command is "FORMAT DRIVE JH0: NAME "AmigaOS"
It comes back with an error message:
format failed -
cannot find handler
** WHAT DOES THAT MEAN **
As far as I understood from your postings you just "low levelled" your MFM/RLL drive as one bootable partition with "fdisk", formatted it with M$-Dos 6.2 and installed M$-Dos 6.2, right?
In this case the drive is formatted with the FAT PC-filesystem.
If you now want to have an Amiga-partition on it, the Amiga-partition has to be formatted with an Amiga-filesystem like FFS (FastFileSystem), SFS (SmartFileSystem), PFS3 (ProfessionalFileSystem, commercial).
The file system is stored in the "L"-directory of your boot disk and needs to be written to your harddrive when formatting it with HD Toolbox. Thomas Rapp has a good instruction on his homepage:
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de/bighdd/index.html B.T.W. - Thomas is our expert when it comes to harddrive problems.
Original by wbrejnia:
I have these clues as to what could be wrong (since NOT working properly):
- The RLL Hardisk C: partition doesn't boot (DOS). It should.
Errrmmmm - didn't you say a bit further up that you booted from it?
Ah - I see - in that statement you did not make clear what you were talking about - the PC-side or the Amiga-side...
Original by wbrejnia:
-----> The disk is good (100%). Partitioned Active. Formatted with the /S switch.
Fine.
And the subsequent installation of M$-Dos was successful?
Original by wbrejnia:
- The Awrite / Aread commands on PC side (to copy from/to Amiga Side) don't work (last time I tested)
- Did you open "PCDisk" on the Workbench before using the Awrite / Aread commands on PC side?
As the English manual says (page 64) :rtfm: :
"[i]Note: You must open PCDisk first before using ARead or A Write, or an
error message will appear on the screen. If this happens, return to the
Workbench window and double-click on the PCDisk icon. A window
does not appear when PCDisk is opened, but the icon changes color.)[/i]"
- Did you use the correct format of the "ARead"-command /the options?
As given in the English manual (page 64):
"[i]Aread Amiga-filespec PC-filespec [/b] [/nc] [/cr][/i]"
Did you use the correct notations for "Amiga-filespec" and "PC-filespec" (see manual)?
- Did you get an error message upon the "ARead"-failure? What did it say?
As the English manual says (page 66):
"[i]If ARead fails for any reason, an error code will be returned at the DOS
error level. You can use the error return in . BAT files to detect and
handle any error that might occur.[/i]"
- Did you use the correct format of the "ARead"-command /the options?
As given in the English manual (page 67):
"[i]AWrite PC-filespec Amiga-filespec [/b] [/nc] [/cr] for single file transfers
or
A Write PC-wild-card Amiga-Directory-Spec [/b] [/nc] [/cr] for multiple file transfers[/i]"
Did you use the correct notations for "PC-filespec" and "Amiga-filespec" (see manual)?
- Did you get an error message upon the "ARead"-failure? What did it say?
As the English manual says (page 66):
"[i]If A Write fails for any reason an error code will be returned at the DOS
error level. You can use the error return in . BAT files to detect and
handle any error that might occur.[/i]"
Original by wbrejnia:
- I noticed that the DJMOUNT command on my newest disk, and the OLD OLD working DISK is different file size. (both work, newer one takes longer to run)
If I have several versions of a file, I tend to use the latest one.
Original by wbrejnia:
*** Mystery CLUE **. I checked out the TWO original Working Workbench disks. They are fine except for few read errors.
This is alarming.It could very well be that one or more of these "few read errors" are responsible for non-working things.
I would definitely try to fix those errors with "DiskSalv4" from
http://aminet.net/search?query=disksalv.
Also download the archive "DiskSalv4Guide.lha" (manual) from there.
"DiskSalv" tries to read the bad disk despite it's errors and to write the salvaged stuff to a new, empty disk.
After that you should check in how far your already existing "working copies" (created from the damaged "TWO original Working Workbench disks") are affected by the read errors and - if necessary - re-create them.
Original by wbrejnia:
*** But as soon as I put them into the Drive after Amiga Cold Boot the system Crashes, Software error
Apparently due to those read errors.
There could be other reasons for that as well, but salve your bad disks first and try again with the new ones without read errors.
NOTE:
When I wanted to submit my answer, the system told me:
"The text that you have entered is too long (15580 characters). Please shorten it to 10000 characters long."
So, this is the end of Part I - to be continued in Part II...
