Using A600 PCMCIA CF adapter With FFS

[wildstar1063]

Hi,

I got 4gb Sandisk CF and an adapter and downloaded the
archive with the compactflash.device and installed it.

However I do not want to use the CF with a PC FAT format but an
Amiga format. So I did not install the fat95 package

Cardprep can see the card, but as I have read is worthless for much else

I have tried editing CFO: so that the file system is L:fastfilesystem
but nothing happens and running the debug utility for the compactflash.device
says the CF.device is not active. I have tried Booting with the card and adapter
both in and out with no luck. I also have a Verbatim 4gb CF and it does not work either
the Devs:compact.device does not seem to be working, though trying to mount CF0: a second time gets a message that it is already mounted

My goal here is to format the CF card as a bootableAmiga hard drive, so I can copy the hard
 drive from my 600 to it, then put the CF in one of those IDE adapters and install it as the main hard drive.

Does any one have any Ideas

Thanks

Chuck E.

[kolla]

Tried HDToolBox with compactflash.device yet?

In order to have a bootable CF card, it must be configured as a hard drive, meaning RDB partition table and at least one bootable partition with a file system either supported by kickstart, or installed in RDB.

[wildstar1063]

HDToolbox only sees my my primary seagate HD. the CF does not show at all

I also tried HDTOOLBOX device=sys:devs/compactflash.device and it showed no drives at all

Chuck E

[wildstar1063]

I guess I should also say my A600 and has 3.1 ROMs and is running OS 3.1. Other than that it
has no upgrades yet, not even trap door ram. I have a Vampire A600 V2 that I intend to install eventually, but I want to get the drive situation sorted out first.

Chuck E.

[Thomas]

My goal here is to format the CF card as a bootableAmiga hard drive, so I can copy the hard
drive from my 600 to it, then put the CF in one of those IDE adapters and install it as the main hard drive.

This goal is quite difficult to achieve.

Firstly in order to make the card bootable you have to prepare it with HDToolbox.

The right command line is: hdtoolbox compactflash.device

compactflash.device must be in Devs: on the boot partition.

Now comes the difficult part. After saving changes in HDToolbox you have to reboot. On the IDE bus new partitions are automatically mounted after reboot. Compactflash.device does not do that. You have to find a utility which can mount partitions from a harddisk.

OS 3.9 comes with the Mounter utility which can do this. I am sure that similar utilities exist for OS 3.1, but I don't know of any.

Once the partitions are mounted you can format them and copy file to them.

[wildstar1063]

Ok,

I used "HDToolBox compactflash.device" and got HDToolbox to see the SanDisk card. I was also able to partition it.

Now I just need to get it to mount. I'm thinking about using giggledisk to create a mountlist
entry, but that will have to wait 'till tomorrow night, it's bed time.


Chuck E

[wildstar1063]

Success!!

I created 3 partitions with "HDToolBox compactflash.device"

Then used "Giggledisk compactflash.device to work:" which created 3 mount files for each of the 3 partitions I had created.

I had to use Memacs to edit each of the 3 files because giggledisk left out
the file system. The field was there, but blank and was causing a mount error. I
just added L:fastFileSystem and saved each one

Then clicked on each one but nothing showed on my desktop

Went to the Format icon under system: and it showed each of the partitions

You cannot use the full format it will fail, but quick format worked just fine and after the format each partition appeared on my desktop.

After I was sure that the 3 giggledisk created mount files would work, I copied them to "SYS:DEVS/DosDrivers", so the partitions will mount at boot

The first partition is small (512 megs) and bootable  the other two about split the rest of the 4 gigs.

Now I should just need to copy everything over from MY seagate drive

Once I am sure of boot from the CF it will be on to installing the VAMPIRE 600 v2

I have not done this much work with mount files since setting up my 3000T which has ZIP and CD drives


Chuck E.

[kolla]

Yay, congrats! Cool that compactflash.device can be used like this, I may very well use the same method for preparing cards in the future

[Thomas]

You cannot use the full format it will fail

You shouldn't full-format a harddrive anyway. For normal harddrives it is just a waste of time but for flash memory it is really bad because it writes to every cell and thus prevents the internal wear-levelling and garbage collection. AmigaOS depends on these internal mechanisms because it does not support TRIM.

[wildstar1063]

Thanks to Thomas for correcting "HDToolBox device=compactflash.device" to
"HDToolBox compactflash.device"

This is what got me going again. I guess I thought I was typing in a mountlist

Chuck E

[psxphill]

it is really bad because it writes to every cell and thus prevents the internal wear-levelling and garbage collection.

If formatting just writes zeroes to each block then it's possible the drive will turn it into a TRIM.

Before TRIM was supported by drives and OS then it was common to write zeros to free blocks up. The official SD card formatter for windows gives you the option of erase or overwrite. Sending all those zeros is slower.

[Thomas]

Workbench's Format program does not write zeros to the disk, it writes a more or less random bit patterrn which cannot be recognised as empty.

[magnetic]

Pretty cool, glad you got it working.