AdIDE w/3.1 ROMS

[GreggBz]

Has anyone used an ICD AdIDE w/3.1 Roms in an Amiga 500?
Does the ROM / OS upgrade improve my chances of formating larger harddrives?

So far, I've tried a few older Maxtors, they all seem to format wrong, have bad sectors or the ICD_Format utility throws a guru.

Also, is there a way to put custom gemetry in with the above mentioned program, or am I stuck with "IBM Bios Type" selections?

The Amiga has 2.04 roms and I have WB 2.04.

[Piru]

Does the ROM / OS upgrade improve my chances of formating larger harddrives?

No.

Mainly because the KS rom has no drivers for the AdIDE. Assuming someone would do AdIDE drivers with NSD (NewStyleDevice) support, then V44/V45 FFS and OS 3.5/3.9 HDToolBox might be of some use.

[Azryl]

I beleive that the 2.1gigabyte harddrive size is a limitation of the device driver inside the rom onbaord the ADIDE. Not a limitation of the AmigaOS version ( altho older versions have their own unique limitations )

To setup the drive using the ICD format utility ( gets the mickey mouse award if you ask me! ) you need to run the software once, get the ID of your drive from within the device scan, then edit the parameters for the drive in the text file.  This bipasses the BIOS drive number BS

On your drive itself will be the heads/cyl/secs
insert these into the text file under the correct description types ie.. scsi or ide sections

example:- inside icdfmt.dat

******************** IDE DRIVES **************

ST9190AG       16    00873  024

above is drive ID, heads/cyl/sectors per track, with the correct information typed into the text file, your drive should be recognised by the software and setup normally for partitions etc

Hope that helps
Az

P.S If I get a chance over the next few days, I will drop KS3.1 rom into my a500 and check if the IDE works ok.

[GreggBz]

Awesome,
Thanks for the help guys.
Back to hacking, I'll let you know how it goes.

[GreggBz]

Argh.
Well, After editing the file, and trying my available hard drives, I made little or no progress.

The program now reports the right geometry for each drive, but they are all mysteriously limited to one 24.78 - or some such MB partition. These are all LBA drives, bigger then the 1.37GB, or whatever that limitation was. I think that's the problem. I just ordered some older drives from eBay Hopefully, that will do the trick. The system is clean, professionally maintained and functions nicely, so I don't think it's a hardware issue. Unfortunately, I biffed the prehistoric Quantum hard-drive that came with the system because I firmed up a mounting screw that ended up cracking the PCB.

The good news is that I got the mother of all deals when I bought this system. THOUSANDS of disks, about half original, an ICD flicker fixer, the ICD AddRAM two external floppy drives, a nice monitor and stuff I have not even sorted through yet for 40 dollars from an old hacker type in town.

I'll be selling some of the original software on EBAY. Great stuff, lots of original games. Anyone know of a good, compatable accelerator for this system? I realize that the AdIDE is not compatable with A500 accelerators, so I might just scrap the whole thing in favor of a sidecar.

[TjLaZer]

On another note, I am unable to use HDInstTools to edit and partition my AdIDE2 on my 1.3 A500.  It seems ICD uses a custom HD prep method.  I currently have a 127MB 2.5" IDE HD in my A500 and have installed it fine with the ICD tool.  When I try to check it with HDInstTools there is no partition or file system on the HD!  I also tried to use HDInstTools to make one and it bombs out on a format and all hell breaks loose.  So it seems I can only use ICD's Micky Mouse interface!  The main problem I have is when I attach my A590 I cannot see my partitions, as they are using the Amiga Standard and ICD does not.  Any way around it?