Installing PFS3AIO on Amiga OS3.2

[Boing-ball]

I used PFS3 in the past on other systems.  I only have FFS partitions under OS3.2 on the current Amiga.  I downloaded PFS3AIO from Aminet but it doesn't include an installer or documentation for install/setup.

Do I just copy the files to L: then add the filesystem in HDToolBox?  What ID should be used?  Any other particulars to be aware of?

Can PSF3AIO be used for boot partitions?

Thanks.

Plenty of topics on this subject in the web.

As a rule I use the following DOS Identifier for PFS which is: 50465303

Good luck.

[Boing-ball]

I use PFS3 and it can be hit and miss with the Max Transfer. Normally OS 3.2 will set this to the max. But have had SD card issues with this setting. I use DOS 0x50465303. But this is on version 19.2.
Now I have been brave and use Tony Willens Version 20.0 BETA which works great! By the way 19.2 (Current public release) doesn’t  use anything past 1024 block size even though HDToolBox will set it. Version 20.0 does and works well, even fixes a tonne of issues I was having with 19.2.

[Boing-ball]

1st post here:

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=115072

[Boing-ball]

Same, never even knew there was a beta. Thought it would have been pusched by now, as its from last year.

Yeah, when I was on there before the bald one spat his dummy out 🤦🏻‍♂️ and got me kicked off. I was in conversation with Toni about it. I think there was another thread somewhere, where people were testing it? I asked Toni when it was to be released properly? All I got was “When it’s ready and it won’t corrupt data”. Been using the Beta release over a year without incident 🤞🏻 Sorts out a lot of issues I had with 19.2 (3.1) current release. Can use it with zip and Jaz drives as well. The 4096 block size works really well 👍🏻

[Boing-ball]

I have a GVP T-REX-II accelerator with SCSI controller.  The system I'm using this card with gvpscsi2.device in an A4000 with OS 3.2.2.1 ROMs.

HDToolBox recognizes the larger drive (18GB Seagate Cheetah). I can set up partitions across the full drive (just using FFS). But it won't format above the 4GB barrier. I get a "seek failure". Partitions below the 4GB barrier will format.

Problems with the T-REX-II and 4GB are mentioned on this page:
https://www.gregdonner.org/gvp4060/solutions.html

I'm not able to burn a replacement ROM for my T-REX-II.

Some suggested that PFS3AIO might be a work-around solution.  I've use it before on other systems.  I set it up with the Cheetah drive.  Partitions below the 4GB barrier are still FFS.  Two partitions above the 4GB barrier are switch PFS3AIO.  After saving and rebooting, the PFS3 partitions do no appear on Workbench at all.  I do have them set to automount in HDToolBox.  I tried with and without SCSI Direct selected.  Is there something else that I need to check?  Do these partitions need to be manually mounted?  If so, how do I create proper mountlists?  Or will PFS3 not solve my problem with the T-REX-II and large drives?

Thanks in advance.

Jaeson

Have had similar issues with other SCSI adapters on the Amiga. Unfortunately you are still tied to the firmware of the Adapter.

[Boing-ball]

What issues were you having with 19.2? Asking as I'm contemplating updating to the beta.

Strange behaviour with booting up using removable media such as Zip and Jaz. Had to use FFS instead.
On HDD side with SD and CF couldn’t utilise 4096K block size. Issues with max transfer and if using higher Buffer sizes would cause media not to boot up, unless I dropped this down to a max transfer of 0x0FFE.

Remember that v 20.0 (3.2) needs the latter version of PFS Doctor. Older versions will corrupt the drive if repairing.
 
 

[Boing-ball]

Is there a way to prioritize which drive controller gets accessed first?  My boot drive is on the IDE bus, a secondary drive is on the GVP T-REX-II SCSI bus.  T-REX-II will apparently ignore new file systems added to the RDB of drives on it's SCSI bus (unless you can update the ROM).  But if the AmigaOS reads the boot drive IDE bus first, then file systems (like PFS3AIO) added to it can be accessible to the GVP SCSI.  I think my A4000 is looking the the GVP SCSI first, so any partitions defined with PFS3AIO are not being recognized.

I can get FFS partitions to work above the 4GB barrier on the GVP SCSI as long as direct SCSI is used.  For some reason I had trouble this first times I was trying this (with direct scsi), but I started over with defaults and this time it worked (with direct SCSI).

Jaeson

The Amiga will always favour the IDE over SCSI. (caveat, Not sure how the A4000T works).
The best way would set the IDE device as Bootable and make sure there is no Bootable on the SCSI drives.
Remember that the boot priority can also play a part. I.e “0” lowest, “4” highest. “5” is reserved for the Floppy drive, therefore why it will always boot a floppy disk first regardless of HDD installed.

[Boing-ball]

@Boing-ball  I am not happy with what you write. That AmigaOS prefers IDE is only by coincidence. The OS will initialize drivers in the order they appear in the resident modules list. In order to build the resident modules list it will first scan the Kickstart ROM for resident tags and then add expansions from the Zorro bus. Hence mainboard periphals will be initialized before third-party expansions.

Each driver on initialization will scan its hardware for partitioned harddrives and read the partition tables. It will add all partitions into a list to be mounted by dos.library and all bootable partitions into a list of boot nodes, ordered by boot priority. It will also read required file systems from the RDB and add them to filesystem.resource if not already present or present with a lower version.

Therefore if a later driver will encounter a third-party file system on one of its partitions it might benefit from an earlier driver which has already loaded this file system.

Only when all drivers have been initialized, dos.library is started, will mount all partitions from the mount list and start booting from the first node in the boot list. This means that the boot priority does not have any influence on whether a partition is mounted or not, it only determines which partition is used for booting.

Also 5 is in no way reserved for the floppy drive, it is only hardcoded. But nothing hinders you to set your partition to 5, too. It just won't boot because the floppy drive is checked first.

Valid boot priorities range from -127 to 127 while -128 means not bootable. You can indeed set your partition to a higher value than 5 to prohibit floppy booting (you can still select the floppy drive in the early startup menu).

I would always recommend to put the boot drive on the fastest hardware which most likely is SCSI. And I also recommend to use the fastest file system for the boot drive. Actually there is no reason to use different file systems. If you chose PFS as your preferred file system, you should use it for all partitions.

In the special case of the T-Rex using a third-party file system is a bit difficult because the T-Rex does not read file systems from its RDB. Therefore you need a harddrive with a PFS partition on another controller which is initialized before the T-Rex. Which is quite easy if you already have a drive on the internal IDE bus.

You only need to keep in mind that the PFS partitons on the T-Rex will stop working if you remove the IDE drive.

I stand corrected.

But from my initial experience using a A1200 and A4000D and having both an IDE and SCSI setups (WarpEngine and Cyberstorm). If I plug into a IDE device and a SCSI device, then always I find the IDE device will always startup first. Unless a Floppy Disk is inserted first.

This is true for when I use a Zip750 as an IDE device with Boot priority = “0” and a SCSI SD card again boot priority = “0”.
Or a IDE SD and a SCSI SD card in both drives. Again IDE SD boots first.