Sandisk Ultra CF as Hardrive?

[Thomas]

Carddisk.device is for the PCMCIA port only. In order to use a CF card as harddrive you need to connect it to the IDE port. The IDE port is accessed through scsi.device.

PrepCard does not do anything with CF cards. It is for SRAM cards only. And it is for PCMCIA only, too.

If you insist in connecting the CF card to the PCMCIA port, you could try to install compactflash.device from Aminet (cfd.lha) and choose this in HDToolbox. But it is not meant to be used this way. And you cannot boot from PCMCIA of course.

[Thomas]

Remember that you can only use the first 4GB of the drive with OS 3.1. HDtoolbox will let you create partitions in the first 8GB, but if you use them, it will do strange things / corrupt / crash / loose all data.

[Thomas]

If both the IDE driver and the file system support large harddrives, you can make partitions as big as you like.

As I said above, the driver of OS 3.1 can only see the first 4GB of the drive. 4GB of the drive, not 4GB partitions!! So on your CF with OS 3.1 you can use dh0, dh1 and dh2. With OS 3.9 you should be able to make an 8GB games partitions without problems.

In any case, do not use full format, always use quick. Never fully format a hard drive, it only produces hot air. Never ever fully format a flash memory storage, it significiantly reduces its live time and does nothing but produce hot air.

[Thomas]

So out of interest why is full format available?

For floppy disks.

There is no format command in SCSI / ATA command set. Format is translated to write for these devices. Full format just writes junk to each and every block of the partition. You can use this before you sell a harddrive which had sensible data on it. But it is of no use for a new drive.

[Thomas]

31,029 * 1,008 * 512 = 16,013,942,784 Bytes

Looks ok to me. You know, HDtoolbox cannot display anything above 2GB correctly, hence the negative number. Nothing to worry about.

[Thomas]

Partitions which you don't touch will remain valid. Only changed partitions need to be formatted.

If you want to change the size of a partition without loosing files, you have to backup all data, change the size, format and then copy back the backup. You can use any backup medium you like which has enough space. Another CF card in the PCMCIA slot is fine.

[Thomas]

Swtich off the Amiga, then hold down both mouse buttons and switch it on again. In the early startup menu click on "boot without startup-sequence". Now enter

cd devs
rename "amigaos rom update" "amigaos rom update.disabled"

wait a few seconds until disk activity is finished, then reboot.

[Thomas]

and have installed again OS3.9.

The AmigaOS ROM Update is a part of OS 3.9. If you installed 3.9 correctly, then the file should be in the Devs directory.

BTW, is AmigaSys supposed to be updated by OS 3.9 at all?  Most of those all-in-one packages are so badly changed compared to original AmigaOS that OS updates don't work any more.

[Thomas]

When will you learn that carddisk.device cannot be used for harddrives?

[Thomas]

carddisk.device is the name of a driver for RAM cards. RAM! It has nothing to do with CompactFlash. Nothing! Why are you so magically pulled towards carddisk.device when you see it? There is also atapi.device which is similarly unrelated. You never selected atapi.device, so why do you always select carddisk.device?

Connect your new CF card to the IDE bus, run HDToolbox, select scsi.device. s c s i . d e v i c e !!!!  If it sees the disk and lets you create partitions on it, then it's compatible, otherwise it's not. That's all.

In order to transfer data from the old CF card to the new one download cfd.lha from Aminet, unpack it and copy compactflash.device to the Devs directory. Connect the old CF card to the PCMCIA bus and run OS3.9's Mounter utility, select compactflash.device (compactflash, not carddisk!!), and mount one or more partitions.

[Thomas]

I cannot tell you if it's compatible or not. Your answers are so confusing. You change your opinion from one post to the other. You didn't stop talking about carddisk.device, so I got the impression that you don't know what you are doing. Then you talked about having created partitions, so it must have worked at some point. Now it's not recognised any more. Maybe it's damaged because you removed and put it back so often. Perhaps it does not sit correctly in its slot. Perhaps it has become too slow. I read at least once that someone experienced the so-called "slow spin-up" problem with a CF card after writing some data to it. Also it's known that CF cards don't work with IDEfix software. You have to apply patches to IDEfix if you use it in conjunction with a CF card.

[Thomas]

The thing is I can't use the internal CD rom without IDEfix.

Why not ? What happens if you install OS 3.9 CD drivers ?

What I'm asking here is if someone could send me a mail with the neccesary Idefix program. It must be version 119.17 (08.12.00).

http://aminet.net/package/driver/media/IDEFix_patches

Read the text and click the link.

[Thomas]

@LordSpunky: Don't hijack other people's threads!

[Thomas]

The only thing that doesn't goes right is that I get a message saying "Please insert volume AOS3.9 in any drive", and it lets me the Retry/Assign/Mount/Deny/Cancel options, but I don't now how to do it.

You don't know how to click on Cancel ?

After clicking Cancel it should tell you which file it is searching from the OS 3.9 CD. Run Prefs/Sound or Prefs/WBPattern or whatever and change the offending setting to a file on your harddrive. It's something you changed after booting from the emergency disk before you started the installation.