Back to some CF problems ...

[sim085]

Hi,

Today I recieved my AEC 7720 card. I connected everything in my GVP HD8+ (including CF card which had workbench installed on it) and turned my A500+ ... like a charm everything worked fine.

... then I decided to f**k the happy moment!

I decided to copy my WinUAE setup on the CF card. However partitions where of different sizes and therefore I decided to format the CF card back to FAT so that I could partiton again and then re-install Workbench 3.1

The problem is this; HDToolBox is recognising the CF card without any problem. I can partition and change the MaxTransfer value without any problem as well. I then Save the settings and reboot. However on bootup it seems as if nothing happens! In other words the partitions DH0: and DH1: do not appear on desktop!!

I have spent the last three hours on this (format, install, re-format, format to FAT, etc) and nothing seems to want to work!! Just now that things seemed to be going in the right direction.

Anyone has any idea what might I be doing wrong!?

Regards,
Sim085

[sim085]

Ok, I connected the CF card back to the real A500+ and used the GVP Fastprep disk to format the CF card and create two partitions. I must admit that Fastprep is much better then HDToolBox Let me see if I can get Workbench installed now

[sim085]

Can the GVP FaaastPrep tool be used on WinUAE? When I try it I get an error that drive is found. Is this maybe because this tool is meant to only work on real GVP hardware?

[sim085]

FaastPrep works with gvpscsi.device, WinUAE works with uaehf.device
This means that run under WinUAE, FaastPrep cannot find any resource binding to original hardware.
 
I can also agree that FaastPrep is on-pair with HDToolBox, but you obviously missed the HDInstTools which is, IMHO, best choice to solve your issues.

Is this correct:
http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/hdinst

I will try that one and see how it goes This is not part of Workbench right!?

[sim085]

HDInstTools - Aminet.

Thanks, I change the parameter ;Device=scsi.device to 'Device=uaehf.device' However when I start this tool it tells me that no card was found. While with the Old HDToolBox the CF card is at least found!

[sim085]

Given that it was working from within the A500, why not simply use that and have done?

Or at the very least, use it to make the partitions and then use UAE to install the OS...

I was trying to copy the files from my setup on WinUAE to the CF card but obviously things have taken a strange path ...

I am inclined to reformat the CF card with the FaaastPrep tool and install Workbench from real A500+ and then use WinUAE to transfer some other files.

However I still can't understand how to make HDInstTools work from WinUAE!

[sim085]

Hi again to everyone and thank you very much for the replies. I believe at this point this is more of a problem between the CF card and WinUAE rather then between the CF card and my A500+. As of now I managed to get installed Workbench 3.1 on the CF card without even a single problem!!

What is amazing me the most is that when I opened HDToolBox to change the MaxTranfer value I found this set equal to 0x7fffffff and not the one I was doing on WinUAE 0x1fe00! I left it as is and the installation of Workbench went fine.

However when I tried to do the same on WinUAE this morning (i.e. MaxTranfer was set equal to 0x7fffffff) I had checksum errors. I changed it to 0x1fe00 and still had some problems!

I can not understand why the CF card mod seems to work like a charm on the real hardware but not from WinUAE! Note that after the installation I can see workbench and I can boot from the CF card (connected to my laptop with the USB adapter). But I can not transfer a large bulk of files!

Regards,
Sim085

[sim085]

But I can not transfer a large bulk of files!

Actually I can not even transfer a single file from my PC to the CF card. I tried to transfer 'Installer' into Sys:C. However when I reboot before Workbench comes up I get an error ... something about bad header section! After that I can not transfer anything else!

I am lost! ... After installing Workbench from A500+ WinUAE seems ok, but after trying to move files this happens

[sim085]

Have you used Fastprep or HDToolbox.

I have used FastPrep to create the partitions. I then installed workbench 3.1 - always from real A500+.

If you used Fastprep, try to format the Card to Fat32 on your pc and try to partition it with HDToolbox under Winuae. Try to format from the shell (see my previous post).

My XP does not want to know anything about the CF card anymore. Anything I try it does not want to format the CF card. However from A500 everything works great!

Use a maxtransfer size of 'FE00' just to be sure.

Can I re-partition from A500+ and then I load CF card from WinUAE and change the MaxTransfer to 0x1FE00? - btw ... it is 1fe00 or fe00? I am asking just to confirm.

[sim085]

From WinUAE, when I change the MaxTransfer from HDToolBox everything seems to crash. As soon as I press 'save change' it acts very strange! starts freezing.

Additionally sometimes Windows may just un blug the USB adapter! I do not know ... maybe it is the USB adapter that is faulty!

[sim085]

I think it is more probable that the problem is the card reader because when on A500+ I managed to install workbench wothout even one error! (neither checksum errors!).

Additionally WinXP keeps giving strange errors! I will try to use the card reader on another OS (Vista) and see if I have more luck

.. all in all I am happy that I can Install Workbench on the CF card from the A500+ ... all I am scared is the number of formats I did on the poor card

[sim085]

With Windows Vista I have some better results but still far from a solution.

I tried copy the contents from my laptop to the CF card but I had a lot of checksum errors. I must admit that using MaxTransfer equal to 0xfe00 gave me less errors then using 0x1fe00 however the errors seemed to be on the same files.

Also from my A500+ I can format (from workbench) any drive, while when in WinUAE, after selecting this option, after some time I get an error "Not a DOS disk".

In short, from WinUAE my CF card is identified but I can not manage to interact with this CF card!

[sim085]

Hi again ... ok I can confirm all the problems where because of the card reader. I had an external hard drive. pulled the IDE -> CF adapter out of the GVP and put all cables in place inside the external hard drive. The CF card and works fine in WinUAE ... also I can format from Windows without any problem!! ... aahh ... I should have thought about faulty card reader before.

Thanks for all the help