A1200 and PCMCIA problems - Help -

[AmiBiL0]

Hello all,
I have 2 A1200 and I am strugling to get any pcmcia to work on them.
I have an orinoco Wlan 16 bit that should work (as red on other forum) and I have also a pcmcia to cf and even that seems not to work.
On the network card I don't get the lights and when I try to set it up with Amitcp I get errors that can't find the card.
On the pcmcia to cf I should get the icon on the desk, even if not accessible and then I should be able to format it, but I don't get such icon.
Am I doing someting wrong? Am I missing something(like I ned to mount the disk etc).

Please help as I going crazy

Thanx for the help

BiL0

[CLS2086]

Hi,
is your machine got the PCMCIA bug fix ? (look on aminet)
What did you install for the CF ?? MSD/Fat95/CFDriver ?

[ncafferkey]

You can do a more basic test with the wireless card using sanautil from Aminet:

sanautil device prism2.device status

You need to either have one of the PCMCIA fix utilities from Aminet installed, or only insert the card after you boot. It's also possible you have bent pins in the slot.

[AmiBiL0]

Hi
first thanx for replying.
No I haven't installed anything for the cf card. I just thought it would work.
in the past when  had a 4 mb flash I just inserted and as it wasn't formated then you would see the floppy like icon with nodos and you had to format it. so I assumed that this would be the same. (apparently not)

I will search on Aminet for the suggested names and see what I find.

for the nic I will try the suggested application to see if more info are there.

I'll post the result later tonight.

Thanx again

BiL0

[AmiDelf]

The cnet.device should be able to use the card. Is the card a 16 bit card? It must be, as PCMCIA 2.0 cards wont work etc.

[countzero]

AmiBiL0 wrote:

On the pcmcia to cf I should get the icon on the desk, even if not accessible and then I should be able to format it, but I don't get such icon.
Am I doing someting wrong? Am I missing something(like I ned to mount the disk etc).

BiL0

Yes, you need to mount it (there is a ready script inside the cfd archive, RTFM !). And there must be a flashcard inside it (empty adapter can not be mounted). Then you'll get the icon on the desk. Btw, you need to install fat95 driver, and you don't need to format it (unless you formatted your flashcard with another fs) if you really need to format it, I'ld suggest you do it on the windows side.

edit : you need to install compact flash driver and fat95 driver for it to work.

[AmiBiL0]

Thank you guys for the response

I just got home and I will try the suggestion. I didn't know that I had to mount it.

I will post the new result as soon as I try it.

PS: yes the nic card is a 16 bit and in theory it should work. (on another post the same card seems to work) however I don't have an accellerator to try MiamiDX (which apparently should be the easy one). I use amitcp and the prism2 driver

more as soon as I try

BiL0

[Matt_H]

MiamiDX should work on a stock 1200 - you just need to be very careful about memory consumption. Once you get your interface configured, you can set the program to go online automatically and not open the GUI - very helpful for low-memory systems.

[AmiBiL0]

No success last night.
Part of it is for the monitor that I am using at present that it wont disply the full image
as it is a PC monitor. (I am waiting for a box to turn up so I can use the RGB).
Its difficult when you can really read everything and you have to scroll all the time from one side to the other.

Miami wont run as I only have miamidx and it check that you have a 020 at least.
(if you know even a demo that I can use with a normal A1200 please suggest the link).

The fat95, I copied the files but I couldn#t yet figure it out how to use it (will try again).

going to work now, I'll try again tonight and I will see as well what the sana device utill shows me.

BiL0

[patrik]

@AmiBiL0:

On your Workbench-partition, move both Storage/Monitors/Multiscan and Storage/Monitors/VGAOnly to Devs/Monitors/ and then reboot your computer.

Then, still on your Workbench-partition, start Prefs/Screenmode and choose "MULTISCAN: Productive" or something named similar and select say 8 colours.

This screenmode will work fine on a regular VGA-monitor. I assume you are using a regular VGA-adapter to connect the PC/VGA monitor.

I think you might be interested in this reply also.


/Patrik

[AmiBiL0]

Thanks Patrik,

I am using the productive one (which gives me 640x480) but I think its the 31 khz that my monitor is not handling correctly.
What I have is that the image is on the left and side and I can't move it on the right as the settings on the monitor are already to 100 and it wont go further.
So I can just about see my hard drive icons to move them on the right so that I can access them.
So with the limited space when you edit somethign you can just about read the page )
Its a strugle.
thanx for the suggestion of the nic as well.
I have added the information for the wlan on my user-startup (ssid and the key) but even that its not good. I get that amitcp can't add te default gateway as the network is unreachble) I guess it depends as the interface is not coming up at all (again the interface has 2 lights one should be on when you plug it, the other is the link).
I will do what you suggested and I will try the miamidx as everyone says at ;least you know if your card works.
I installed several network, I have no problem on that but no much luck with the amiga.
I'll post my new test tonight after work

Thanx

BiL0

PS:Patrik do you have any experience with fat95? or do you know any guide like the Amitcp that you have suggested? reading the info in the package apparently you have to change few things in the install script but then again, I can't really understand what they mean (

thx again

 

[patrik]

@AmiBiL0:

Have you moved the VGAOnly file to Devs/Monitors/? It might very well result in a better positioned screen. If it is a VGA-monitor, it should have no problem with 31kHz btw, as that is what they are specified for.

You can also run the Prefs/Overscan program to adjust the position of the screen a bit.

You don't need to be able to contact the network in any way for AmiTCP to be able to add the default gateway. If you had a normal ethernet-card, that would work fine even if the card didnt have a network-cable attached for example. It is as you say - the reason it fails there is that it has failed to configure the interface.

You don't need to add any info like SSID etc. via S:User-Startup for the prism2-device load successfully and configure the interface, so that is not the issue... as long as you didn't supply any wrong info that actually made prism2.device fail. Though, if pccard.library is missing or CardReset isnt run before, as I said in the previous post it _will_ fail.

Remember that in AmiTCP 3.0b2, you can't have any numbers in the interface-name (found in the file AmiTCP:db/interfaces) as when you call the interface from the startnet file (AmiTCP:bin/startnet), you supply a number at the end which says which unit-number of the device for that interface you want to use.

This means that if you say have wrongly named the interface "prism2" in AmiTCP:db/interfaces and tries to call it with ifconfig from AmiTCP:bin/startnet by "ifconfig prism20 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx....", ifconfig will then search for the interface-name "prism", which it ofcourse will not find in your interfaces file, as it is named "prism2". Also, if it found the interface "prism", it would make it try to open unit 20 of the specified device, which would be way wrong.

Personally I would recommend you go with AmiTCP because of much lower memory-usage, about double the speed and no time-limit.


/Patrik

[AmiBiL0]

That was a quick reply ) and very informative as well.
I should try this.
I red the guide as well and I will try what suggested in it

Jsut to see if I undestand correctly. If I prism2.device then the amitcp will think that I am using device 2 called prism?
so the suggestion is to change the device name? or...
I mean do I need to rename the actual prism2.device to something like prism.device?

I will try this as well anyway )

thanx again for the fast reply man

BiL0

PS: for the monitor yes I have all the monitor in there I think its my monitor that can't work properly with that resolution and refresh (being LCD and all)

[patrik]

What I wrote was regarding how ifconfig which is called in the AmiTCP:bin/startnet script interprets the names of the interface-definitions in the AmiTCP:db/interfaces file.

What I tried to say was that the name of the interface you define in the AmiTCP:db/interfaces file can not contain numbers. The name of the interface-definition is not the name of the device, but the first word on the line which you edit in AmiTCP:db/interfaces file. That name can not contain numbers - so it can be called for example "prism", but not "prism2".

If you name is prism, you call it with "prism0" in AmiTCP:db/starnet, which opens unit 0 of the device you have specified for the interface "prism" in the AmiTCP:db/interfaces file, which I assume is prism2.device in your case .

So, do not rename the prism2.device file!


/Patrik

[AmiBiL0]

)
thanx Patrik,

) make sense now. Sorry for being so thik sometimes

BiL0