Amiga BlizzPPC 603e+ (scsi) CD Boot

[LawlessPPC]

does anybody know or have actually done this.
Booting of a cd on hte amiga with PPC scsi (extra menu).
If so please give me the settings that work for definate.
Thanx in advance

[amigagr]

i think that amiga cd's are not bootable except these for cdtv and cd32 but who knows...

-edit-
in makecd there is an option for this but the boot code has to do with cdtv. it ask for a ''trademark'' file to make the cd bootable on cdtv/cd32 as i said before...

[Hyperspeed]

Wasn't the Surf Squirrel capable of booting off a CD? This may only have applied to CD32 games though.

CD-ROM drives don't appear in the Early Startup Menu so it would be interesting to find out at what point they are recognised by the system. It might be possible to put one of those boot selectors in your User-Startup and have it execute an S/Startup-Sequence on the CD-ROM. Might work...

[Legerdemain]

Hm, I have no clue whatsoever, but I've always though that some of the later acceleratorcards let the user boot from CD's just like from a hd or floppy, as long as there were a s:startup-sequence to be found.

The only reason for me writing this is that when I think of it, I do not know from where I got that information and why I've always taken it for granted. I'm curious aswell in this matter.

[Vincent]

Hyperspeed wrote:
CD-ROM drives don't appear in the Early Startup Menu so it would be interesting to find out at what point they are recognised by the system.

CD-Roms are recognised when the DOS Drivers are loaded (whenever that is), but after ENV: is setup you can use "mount CD0" (or whatever number your drive is) and it should appear fine.

Although to boot from it, no idea.  With IDEfix 97 you get a CD32 emulator which boots from floppy, then the CD but I haven't looked at that in a long time.

[Matt_H]

The BlizzardPPCs and CyberstormPPC/MK3s supposedly have a CDFS in ROM (which I believe is the same CDFS used in MorphOS). There's some settings pertaining to it in the cards' boot menu (hold ESC when booting/rebooting). Maybe you can figure it out (I've never tried to). There's some slightly better documentation for that boot menu included in the FlashUpdate archives (see Aminet), maybe it'll help.

[Nickman]

Yes it's possible to boot CD's on the BlizzPPC and CyberPPC cards. I asked the same question here on the forum before. Think it was master Piru who answered that

It's all in the manual.

o CDBoot Pri
  define the cdrom boot priority. Check the System bootmenu for the boot priority of other devices.

o CDRom Device Name
  define the device name with which the cdrom should be mounted.
o No CDRom Bount
  CDRom Mount
  CDRom Boot

The buildin CDRom filesystem is the old Phase5 CDRive filesystem. Its feature set may not be enough for your needs.

To change filesystem:

o CDFS
 o No CDFS HD RDB Scan
   CDFS HD RDB Scan

Update the filesystem.resource with CDFS filesystems when these are placed in the RDB of HDs **BEFORE** the CD Drive at the same controller. This way you can theoretically use other cdfilesystems.

*Theoretically* means that i haven`t tested if other cd filesystem work with such startup as they may need to find their prefs.

The CDFS dostype is
#define ID_CDFS_DISK   (0x43444653L) /* 'CDFS' */
The new SCSIConfig has an automatic filesystem entry for this.

[Hyperspeed]

So whatever MakeCD is burning to a CDR for CDTV/CD32 specifics must be similar to a bootblock on a floppy disk. Something that will boot pure code without a file system?

Does anyone have screenshots of this early startup menu for the BlizzardPPC or CyberStormPPC? I've read it also has settings for different SIMMs...

[amigagr]

@Hyperspeed: probably is need it something like the boot code of the floppys or rdb of hard disks. makecd writes rock ridge bootable code if i understand it right.

-edit-
the other and simple solution is a bootable floppy that direct the boot process to the cdrom as the emergency disk of os3,5-9 and the boot disk of a590 in the amiga500 with kick 1.2

[LawlessPPC]

Nickman this is the most concise answer I have had of anyone and probably makes the most sense. Because of the RDB scan to check for file system. I just never realised what it was scanning for. So hopefully if I add the Filesystem to the rigid disk block I should be laughing. Thanx again I will try 2morow and will let you know the outcome

[Hyperspeed]

I've put this in my gallery if it's of any interest:

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/photo.php?lid=2482

It shows MakeCD's options for burning bootable discs.

[Matt_H]

And the TM files are included in the CD32 developer package which is on any of the Amiga Developer CDs.