CF IDE 4Gb + IDE CDROM Issue

[sweetlilmre]

Hi,

A1200, Blizzard030, 32Mb

I have a 4gb Compact flash card (3.7Gb addressable), plugged into a CF->IDE adapter which in turn is plugged into a CDROM kit I purchased i.e. No buffered IDE adapter.

CF is IDE0 (Master) and CDROM is IDE1 (Slave).

Installation of either WB3.1 or 3.9 works 100%.

However as SOON as I try to add CDROM support I get disk error warnings, removal of the CD0 device from DEVS:DosDrivers (boot with no startup, delete CD0 and reboot) stops these warnings and the OS is fine afterwards.

The warnings occur on both FFS and SFS, with either IDEFix's atapi.device or the OS 3.9 CD driver (SFS gives mismatch blockid's, FFS gives checksum errors).

To test this, I tried installing on a 256MB CF card and all worked 100%.

I have also tested this with the 4Gb card partitioned with a 200Mb primary and 3.5Gb secondary, still no dice.

I assume this has something to do with the size of the CF card. I have googled this to death, trying various things including the setpatch no scsi stuff, removing setpatch calls entirely and about 100 million other things I can't remember... to no avail.

I am starting to wonder if it may be a media problem i.e. crap CF card...

Please... I pulling my hair out here, can anyone help?

-(e)

[sweetlilmre]

Hi,

Err I think I didn't  :boohoo:
Would that be 0x1ef0000? (not sure on the number of zeros)
There seem to be differing suggestions...

(If this is the problem, then you may officially hand me the "N00b of the the month" badge, and if I ever meet you in person, the beers / whatever are on me  :-) )
-(e)

[sweetlilmre]

Hi,

I was using OS3.9 HDToolBox to format and it turns out that MAXTRANSFERS was set to 0x1fe00, MASK to 0x7ffffffe.

The only oddity was the blocksize which defaulted to 1024.
I am reinstalling now with 512 blocksize to see if that makes any difference.

-(e)

[sweetlilmre]

Hi,

MaxTransfer setting didn't work. I am now trying a value of 0xFA00 (64K) to see if that makes any difference.

At this point I am able to blind navigate the OS3.9 install, I think I'm at about install 20 and starting to go slightly mad!

 :-o

-(e)

[sweetlilmre]

Hi

to check if actually the IdeFix scsi.device is correctly installed (it should be v 119.xx)

I'm not using IDEFix if I try to load it via the startup-sequence, it causes a system freeze. I thought I only needed it for buffered IDE / 4-port IDE?

Same failures with SFS (latest 1.273) and FSF.

-(e)

[sweetlilmre]

Hi,

IDEFix is absolutely needed in order to make the CD acessible!

Why? Or rather, what part of IDEfix? The IDEfix binary i.e. SYS:C/IDEfix causes my Amiga to lockup.

While I can understand that a CD driver is necessary (e.g. atapi.device) I have never used the IDEfix program itself. As I mentioned in my initial post, I have the CDRom working with a 256MB CF card, it is just the 4Gb card that presents problems.

Also if I use the OS3.9 driver the CD mounts, but at that point I get drive failure notifications.

-(e)

[sweetlilmre]

Hi,

I haven't read the IDEfix docs, I admit. But IDEfix does indeed kill my machine (the scsi.device patcher that is). In fact if I leave it in startup with a 4Gb card, it seems to kill the filesystem on the card!!!

When you say:

OS3.9 came with his own version of IDEFix97.

I'm sure you are refering to CacheCDFS, which IDEfix upgrades on a default OS3.9 install.

Neither of these option work. I will try your alternative suggestions.

-(e)

[sweetlilmre]

Hi,

After about 6 hours last night I have tried everything I can think of to no avail.

To summarise:

0. I am using an IDE splitter (not buffered) which basically splits the IDE from the Amiga into a 40pin + power connector for the CDROM and a 44pin female connector for the HD. A Cf->IDE adapter is connected to the 44pin female, and the adapter is set to master. See: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=110142877648&ssPageName=STRK:MEWN:IT&ih=001


1. I can use a 4gb card with no problems as long as I don't add any CD drivers (no checksum or other errors occur). The CF card was initialised with 0x0001fe00 as the MaxTransfer value. I have also tried 0x00001fe0, 0x0000ffff and other combinations. No matter what the value, adding a CDROM causes checksum errors (see below)

2. If I try to add a CDROM using either the OS3.9 driver or IDEfix, as SOON as I try to mount the CDROM, checksum errors occur (with IDEfix this would be when I select atapi.device under the FindDevice program).

3. With IDEfix if I load "IDEfix" or "LoadIDE" the Amiga crashes (and on some instances my CF get corrupted).

4. I have tried SetPatch SKIPROMUPDATES "scsi.device" followed by C:LoadIDE START QUIET (as per the OS3.9 guide). I have even tried reversing the order of the commands, nothing works.

5. I have a 3.2Gb HD which works perfectly with the CDROM.

6. I have a 256MB CF card which works perfectly with the CDROM.

So it would seem that loading the CDROM device / driver causes some issue with the IDE interface when using a 4GB CF card.

Any further suggestions?
 
-(e)

[sweetlilmre]

Hi,

I eventually got IDEfix to load (turns out I had the prefs setup incorrectly for a 4 way device, which seemed to cause the crash).

However in order to get IDEfix to patch the scsi.device correctly, I have to use:

C:LoadIDE RESET QUIET
C:SetPatch SKIPROMUPDATES "scsi.device" QUIET

If I have: C:LoadIDE START QUIET, the machine hangs until I reset it, then it loads properly.

I thought that SetPatch was supposed to reset?

I tried C:IDEfix which does not seem to work. The system boots but version scsi.device returns 40.12. Am I doing something wrong here?

SetPatch is version: 44.38, BB1 and BB2 installed.

Despite this, the CDROM still causes checksum errors when I start it.

I am going to try this with a spare 40Gb HD and see what happens.

-(e)

[sweetlilmre]

Hi,

This is insane.

40Gb HD + CDRom + IDEfix works PERFECTLY!

4Gb CF + CDRom + IDEfix doesn't work at all!

Perhaps the CF->IDE adapter is the problem?

Well it seems I'm chatting to myself here So I won't bug anyone about this any more. If I eventually do find a solution I'll post it here.

A big thanks to everyone that helped out, I now have a much better understanding of SFS, IDEfix etc.

-(e)