Validating df0: and/or df1:

[JSS3rd]

I cranked up my trusty old Amiga 2000 the other day, after not having used it for several years, and was greeted with a screen saying "Validating DF0:".  I have tried swapping cables, jumpers, everything I can think of, and all I've accomplished is that sometimes the screen says "Validating DF1:", instead.

I've tried unplugging the floppy cable from the motherboard and unplugging the power connectors from the drives, hoping that I could boot from the hard drive, but I still get the validation screen, even though the floppy drives aren't physically connected.

Can anyone shed any light on this, or has my 2000 become just a doorstop?

[Piru]

Really DF0 and DF1? Not DH0 and DH1?

[Matt_H]

When that message comes up, just leave the system alone for a while. Validation can take a long time to complete and letting it do so is the only way to solve it, short of reformatting.

[JSS3rd]

DF0: and DF1: are the floppy drives, which are, apparently,  giving me the messages.  DH0: and DH1: would be either two hard drives with a single partition each, or two partitions on a single hard drive.

[Orjan]

What Piru probably meant was that he was surprised that the computer tried to validate the floppy drive, since validation is normally done on harddrives. So he just wanted to verify it.

Correct me if I´m wrong, Piru..

[Piru]

Yeah. I mean if there is no floppy in the drive it for sure should not be "validating"...

[JSS3rd]

This is getting more and more weird.  I left the computer on all night, doing its validation thing, but I don't remember if it said it was validating df0: or df1: (the information disappears from the screen fairly quickly).  

This morning, with a blank DOS screen showing, I shut the computer down.  When I powered up, the computer booted normally from the hard drive.  Just out of curiosity, I inserted a disk into df0: and, working in a CLI window, typed "cd df0:".  The response was "Can't find df0:".  Just to check, I inserted the same disk into df1:, repeated the command, and the drive read the disk.

So, now I seem to have df1: working properly.  Any thoughts on how to accomplish the same thing with df0: ("validate" isn't an AmigaDOS command)?

[rkauer]

Nope!

Validate lies in any Amiga ROM (after 1.3, if I remember right).

[JSS3rd]

Validate lies in any Amiga ROM (after 1.3, if I remember right).

And what, exactly, does that mean?  That if the system senses an abnormality it will attempt to correct it, but I can't do it myself?

[rkauer]

JSS3rd wrote:
And what, exactly, does that mean?  That if the system senses an abnormality it will attempt to correct it, but I can't do it myself?

 Almost that: if a partition becomes corrupted, at the very next boot the system will try to repair it automatically.

 I really don't remember if you could validate a partition after the boot (maybe in some earlier versions of WB<1.3).

 Need to check. Since I'm using SFS for all my partitions on ALL my Miggys I never see that crappy black screen again.:-D

[motorollin]

The only way I know of to manually validate a partition is to copy the data off of it, format it, then copy the data back. While you're at it, install SFS and say goodbye to validation hell.

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moto