GVP Binddrivers Causes Black Screen

[madgrizzle]

Instead of playing with jumpers: Why not just remove the boot ROM, physically?

Well, this whole thing started because I was trying to get a PCD-50B I got off ebay to work in the Amiga with the ultimate goal of booting from a CF disk in it. It didn't work with the GVP with a 3.12 ROM in it. The black screen issue came about because I was trying to get the 4.15 binddrivers to work to verify that the the PCD-50B wasn't causing the problem.  But, there's no use really trying to get the RAM back with ROM disabled because I have to have a ROM in the GVP to boot from the PCD-50B.  Maybe I'll try it.. got nothing else to do until the ROM arrives.

[Pat the Cat]

Using KS3.1 from AmigaKit. It won't "completely" boot (as described above) from floppy with Ralph's 4.15 Binddrivers (gvpscsi.device / gvpscsi.info) installed in the expansion directory of an OS3.9 Emergency Boot Disk and the GVP ROM is disabled. The computer, when the the GVP ROM is enabled, will boot from the same floppy (I assume because it's not using the binddrivers but rather the drivers provided by the ROM??) This is the point I want to confirm, can I have a v3.12 ROM in the GVP, disable it, but boot from a floppy with v4.15 binddrivers. Forget the PCD-50B for now.. just trying to get the 4.15 firmware/drivers to work the the GVP Combo card.

Maybe they switch it back for 3.5 and 3.9, but AFAIK from KS 2 onwards, you have to put devices in devs drawer the your boot disk, not expansion drawer. That was for KS and Workbench 1.3, for adding hardware.

If PATH has been added for Expansion drawer, I would guess binddrivers would find the device anyway (it would search every PATH'd directory for all .device files). But if the gvpscis.device is in the wrong drawer and binddrivers can't find it, that would be an issue.

Isnt there a handler file as well that has to go in L drawer of boot disk? I don't seem to recall one for GVP hard disks. Again, more of a old school hard drive problem rather than the later ones, GVP much more plug and play.

[guest11527]

Maybe they switch it back for 3.5 and 3.9, but AFAIK from KS 2 onwards, you have to put devices in devs drawer the your boot disk, not expansion drawer.

Actually, no. "BindDrivers" does and always had scanned "SYS:Expansions" scanned, and nothing else. What you find there are typically (though not necessarily only) devices, in the sense of "exec device".

What resides in "L:" is and always have been "handlers" in the sense of the dos.library. Unfortunately, and due to the Tripos legacy, handlers are also sometimes called "Devices", though that is a completely different concept. It is unrelated to the expansion mechanism. The command that is responsible for bringing up "Devices" from "L:" is "mount", not "BindDrivers".

What "BindDrivers" does is that it scans the Zorro port for expansions that are not yet configured, and then checks all the icons(!) in SYS:Expansion for a matching product and manufacturer ID, then loads them.

Hence, everything in SYS:Expansion must be associated with a ".info" file (i.e. an "icon"), and the product and manufacturer ID in the icon (select "Info" from the workbench menu) must match your expansion. In specific, such a product and vendor ID must exist in first place.

Isnt there a handler file as well that has to go in L drawer of boot disk?

If this is a gvpscsi, all what is needed is a filing system. The FFS resides already in ROM and does not need to go elsewhere. This said, L:FastFileSystem does certainly not hurt, but is typically not used (unless explicitly mandated).

[mark_k]

I have a GVP A2000-030 Combo with a 3.12 ROM in it.  I've been trying to get it to work with a PCD-50B and 3.12 recognized the drive, but not an inserted 4 GB SD Card (the PCD-50B lights blink around and stop briefly on the SD card when inserted which tells me it's getting recognized as being there by something).

Are you sure the PCD-50B definitely supports SDHC cards?

[madgrizzle]

Are you sure the PCD-50B definitely supports SDHC cards?

I was able to insert and partition a 32 GB sd card.  However, I am having trouble getting any card on the PCD-50B to mount.

I have a 4GB CF card installed and partitioned it in HDToolBox, but when I reboot the computer, no partitions appear.  When I go back to HDToolBox, they're all there.. just nothing mounts.  I'm still using binddrivers and booting from a floppy.  So I swapped in my old hard drive and I get the same thing (it won't appear with binddrivers).

So, now what do I do?  The CDROM shows up, but I see a CD mount file in devs on the boot floppy.  Do I need to create mount files to mount the drives because I'm using binddrivers?

Update:

Well, the HDToolBox detected the 32 GB SDCard as a 3.6 GB card.   So, not sure about SDHCs.

Also, apparently I need to run gvpscsictrl to get the partitions to mount.

[madgrizzle]

Instead of playing with jumpers: Why not just remove the boot ROM, physically?

Removing the ROM and returning the jumper to re-enable it had the same affect as removing the jumper (disabling it).  RAM still missing.  So, the ROM needs to be there for the RAM.. maybe there's a RAM binddriver, but at this point, I'm just going to wait for the 4.15 ROM to arrive.

[thebajaguy]

Enable your ROM
Connect your device, leave the power off.
Boot from a disk with a stripped down OS of the ROM you are using.  
On the disk, Include a GVPSCSICTRL tool from the GVP utilities disk.  
Have a partition tool handy.  If not FastPrep/ExpertPrep, then have HDToolBox handy.  Use HDToolBox gvpscsi.device

After boot up*, add power to your device.

To rescan the bus for missed devices, you can use gvpscsictrl -r

Use your partitioning tool.

Note that I think there is either an incompatible file system in the boot block, or more likely corrupted boot block information on that media.  The above rescan should be more tolerant of the bad boot block.

some gvpscsictrl info - http://www.verycomputer.com/2_a4679a1bc606cb53_1.htm

gvpscsi.device is tolerant of LUNs on devices, but some devices that make LUNs are stupid and can sometimes mirror devices at higher LUNs.  Note that there is a LastLUN feature in the RDB (seen in ExpertPrep screen) if you encounter this kind of thing.

*Binddrivers also works at this point if the ROM is disabled and driver in Expansion folder of SYS: - test your v4.15 Expansion drawer version with no ROM enabled this way.

Disabling/removing the ROM causes the RAM not to be software-mapped into the memory list.  AddMem 01000000-01FFFFFF (for 16MB, less for less installed). if you need it in a pinch.  ROM mapping is the better way.

This kind of thing was an issue on the A3001 AT interface if the old prep tools corrupted the boot block or the FFS installed in the boot block.  The binddrivers way was how we cleared it.

Robert Miranda - Fmr GVP Tech Support.

[thebajaguy]

For historical purposes, v3.07 was the first release of gvpscsi.device.  Longer bus scan on ID 0 and other IDs to make sure slower devices were found.  First Series I support.  Much better removable media support, and more efficient Polled I/O performance on the Series I.  Many bugs of the 33C93/33C93A were worked around.  Driver seeks out FastRAM or 32-bit FastRAM RAM to copy itself into.  Good LUN support.  SCSI-driect compliant and RDB compliant programming interface.

3.12 was a change to the scan process, faster boot was the result (shorter scan period).  GVPSCSICtrl added to rescan (insert in startup) as needed, or run manually if a device gets powered later.  First Combo030 support appeared here.

Versions from 3.12 to 3.15 were mainly additions for the first group of 68030 + RAM + SCSI cards.  One was a bug fix for a DMA to onboard 32-bit RAM bug found on the Rev3 surface-mount version.  Another was to recognize the Rev 4 card that replaced it (these were the Combo 030 cards, with surface-mount 68030's), and another was to incorporate a few hack fixes for HC8/A500HD8 Series II like the AdSpeed 68000 cache accelerator that fails to hook the OS cache control routines (though illegally tried to sniff the Zorro expansion bus, but doesn't cache ChipRAM because of the same issue - you are not allowed), the serial.device fixes to limit heavy DMA transfers when time-sensitive serial.deivce is open at higher baud rates, and maybe some others I am not recalling.  3.15 is the last version to support the Series I cards.  SCSI-level code was not modified as far as I know after 3.12.  I have a v3.9 beta in my stock, and it's much like the v3.7/3.07 release.

Ignoring any labels on ROMs, most of the 3.x series have the AT interface code for the AT interface on the A30xx sandwich accelerator boards burned higher in the 27C256 ROM/EPROM.  Some FastROM 4.0 labels are actually v3.3 AT and v3.15 SCSI code on them.  The first gvpscsi.device release was 4.5 on the newer G-Force PGA-chip 68030 accelerators and the 68040 board for the A2000.  Lost from the code was Series I controller support, and the AT code in a seperate area of the ROM was dropped from the image.  SCSI-level code was not modified from the later 3.x series.  I know the Supra 28Mhz accelerator had the same issue as the AdSpeed, so they revamped the kludge control tool option as 68KCache, and the DMA-tranfer size limiter tool can be pointed at any .device in the system, and activates when the device is in an open state.  I think there are v4.5, 4.12, 4.14, and 4.15 (read Ralph's explanation when it was released - though never on a produced card).