A1200, 30gb hdd, installation help?

[cathalferr]

I got myself an A1200 recently, and I have started down the road of getting it up and running as a portable games machine.

I upgraded to 3.1 roms, and I have a 30gb 2.5" hdd for it as well, and I have a Blizzard 1230 IV on the way, and I have an A500 powersupply to help with the extra power draw. Also I have a pcmcia network card on the way too. I have copies of wb3.0 and wb3.1 on floppy and wb3.9 on cd.

I have a couple of questions.

I have the harddrive installed fine, but I am having difficulty partitioning it correctly. Any partition of any size above about 3.1gb comes up as 'not a valid dos disk'.
The other partitions at the start of the disk are fine, and I have installed wb3.1 there. I know I won't be able to access >4gb until I get a couple of files onto the wb install.

I have tried to read the harddrive under my pc linux install  but I can't read the partition table. Is it possible to read and write to an amiga harddrive e.g. under winuae?

Thanks..

Cathal.,

[amigakit]

Without additional patches/upgraded FileSystems, keep partition sizes below 2GB.

You can set it up this way with the latest FFS/SFS and PatchStrip and NSDPatch programs but I would recommend using either AmigaOS 3.5 or AmigaOS 3.9 especially as you will soon have a Blizzard 1230.

Both the more modern AmigaOS versions contain the NSDpatches and better filesystems. Importantly they report partition sizes correctly.

[cathalferr]

I will have difficulty in getting 3.9 onto the 1200, as I have seen elsewhere that having a cdrom as well as the harddrive puts the chipset at risk. Is this true?

I'll get a 44pin to 2 40pin cable, to get os3.9 onto it if it is not a risk. I can power the hdd and cdrom seperately from a pc power supply, and I have a 3.5 to 2.5 adapter also.

Thanks for the quick reply.
Cathal.

[amigakit]

You have two choices:

- buy an A1200 CF to PCMCIA adapter with AmigaOS 3.9 and we can at the point of purchase put OS3.9 on the CF adapter as well as supply the original CD

- Buy a Subway USB and external CD Drive for the A1200

Hope these suggestions help!

[tonyvdb]

Without installing a different file system you will not be able to use any of the hard drive space above the 4gig mark. You will need to use SFS instead of FFS to use to space above 4gig. If you use OS 3.9 I beleave it comes with it already installed but you will need to select it when setting up your drive in HD toolbox. Otherwise you cna get it off Aminet.

[darksun9210]

with 3.1 roms, you can get the patches off the net to patch up  your l:fastfilesystem to 45.1 which supports NewStyleDevices (64bit filesystem support) this works fine. or if you can get 45.9 off the OS3.5/9 CD this works too. just dont have your system partition got over the 4Gb boundery - just for safty's sake, and if you run fusion, don't have your mac partition go over the 4Gb boundery either, as it only has 32bit partiton internal addressing.

for example.
1Gb system partition, 2Gb Mac, 0.99Gb Temp partition, 25Gb Data, 25Gb Apps... thats just my config.

to update your fastfilesystem on the disks RDB, go into HD toolbox, and go advanced options "update/add filesystem" you should then be able to put your updated L:fastfilesystem in the disks RDB so it is available (and unbderstands your >4Gb partitions at boot time.

yay! large disks in workbench3.1! i will only use the 3.1 version of HDtoolbox as it is the most stable...

[amigagr]

cathalferr wrote:
I will have difficulty in getting 3.9 onto the 1200, as I have seen elsewhere that having a cdrom as well as the harddrive puts the chipset at risk. Is this true?

nonsense, i use a cdrom together with the hard disk about 8 years now without any problem. the external psu is a good idea for power purpose.

[Blomberg]

nm.

[cathalferr]

nm^2