DENEB various small issues

[bash64]

1) Thumbdrive must be in port 0 (internal port) in order to boot. If any other mass storage device is plugged in ahead of it it will not boot.

2) AsimWare keeps ejecting CDs. AsimWare does not seem to like usb cd drives. I am having better success with CachCDFS under Os 3.9.

3) Cannot have CD in drive while booting. Not too unusual as I have had this same issue with PCs. It appears to be an issue specific to certain models of drives regardless of platform.

4) USB audio eats full 500ma of power. Locks up system even when plugged into a powered hub. A hub that Trident says it likes.

5) PsdStackLoader never copies to envarc: during the install. This is a definite bug. I keep psdstackloader on floppy because of this.


6) Installing to a thumbdrive presents a LOT of inconvenient circumstances. For instance:
   a) Installing Deneb software requires setting the rescue jumper so that the deneb 'hardrive' will appear on the desktop. Unfortunately this disables all usb devices and there is no thumbdrive to install to. Interesting dilemma , right? Perhaps an install CD with every card purchased?
   b) Upgrading Poseidon to a newer version causes usb stack to halt and thumbdrive you were installing to disappears and the usb cdrom you were installing from goes bye bye too! Ouch!
   c) Neither Installer 43.3 nor MUI 3.8 which are required to install the Deneb software are included with the software on flashrom. Makes installing to an os 3.1 formatted drive (non-usb) a little difficult.

More later. Share your issues too.

 :-D

[mboehmer_e3b]

1) Thumbdrive must be in port 0 (internal port) in order to boot. If any other mass storage device is plugged in ahead of it it will not boot.

Not true. Tested on all ports, on ports of attached hubs, and various combinations of bootable (FFS) and non-bootable USB mass storage devices.
Booting is handled only by RDB entries, which are not present on FAT formatted sticks.

The port number just influences the sequence in which attached mass storage devices are recognized by the stack, not the boot order.

4) USB audio eats full 500ma of power. Locks up system even when plugged into a powered hub. A hub that Trident says it likes.

Blame the Taiwanese chip manufacturer who made the USB audio dongle. We have two USB audio sticks here which heated up during operation until the case of the stick got soft and melted. That's what I call inefficient power handling (both were 4USD parts from ebay, btw).

Recommandation: spend more than 5EUR on a quality stick, not the Taiwan junk from ebay.

Regarding hubs: not true - or better: if you draw more than 500mA as allowed by the specification, strange things will occur. If a device increases the load over the 500mA limit, the voltage will drop (to protect your Amiga), and with the dropped voltage the device seems to become unreliable.

The behaviour depends on the way the hub implements overcurrent situations, and almost no hubs uses a dedicated circuit to handle this.

5) PsdStackLoader never copies to envarc: during the install. This is a definite bug. I keep psdstackloader on floppy because of this.

Will look into this issue tomorrow.

   a) Installing Deneb software requires setting the rescue jumper so that the deneb 'hardrive' will appear on the desktop. Unfortunately this disables all usb devices and there is no thumbdrive to install to. Interesting dilemma , right? Perhaps an install CD with every card purchased?

Not true. "Dilemma" here is that you didn't read the manual (page 8, jumper description: "USB is only available as Zorro II in rescue mode. More information can be found in appendix A.").
Setting the "RESCUE" jumper automagically downgrades the USB host controller into Zorro II mode. You have full access to all USB functions (only limited by Zorro II transfer rates) in rescue mode.
We made this on purpose to have easy access to installation media (like USB sticks) even on systems with broken disk drives, missing CDROMs or no network card attached.
We really did try to get a solution where you just fit the DENEB into any Amiga system, and are able to install the whole Poseidon software without relying on the old and in many system inreliable mass storage devices like floppy disk or CDROM.
(apart from that: many old CDROM drives have problems with CD-Rs, so in case we had supplied CD-Rs as installation media, you would have complained here that we didn't provide really mastered CD-ROMs, I guess...)

   b) Upgrading Poseidon to a newer version causes usb stack to halt and thumbdrive you were installing to disappears and the usb cdrom you were installing from goes bye bye too! Ouch!

Not reproducable here, sorry. We installed several rescue systems on CF cards, and upgrading the Poseidon stack on the CF card attached by an USB reader did work.

In case you fail, there's still the option of manually copying the new files to the USB mass storage without restarting the Poseidon stack inbetween.

You just have to make sure that USB operation is not interrupted during the upgrade, as this will lock up everything (as you stated correctly).

   c) Neither Installer 43.3 nor MUI 3.8 which are required to install the Deneb software are included with the software on flashrom. Makes installing to an os 3.1 formatted drive (non-usb) a little difficult.

Not true. You can operate the whole USB stack from shell without MUI or installer (well, look into the Poseidon guide). Size of the installation FlashROM is limited, and neither MUI nor the new installer could be included, also regarding copyright issues.
It is clearly stated that MUI V3.8 is required for operation, so in case you don't have it on your system yet - don't blame us, as your system does not fulfill the requirements, simply said.

More later. Share your issues too.

/bin/done

Michael

[mboehmer_e3b]

So, I found some time to verify your issues. Let's start:

1) Thumbdrive must be in port 0 (internal port) in order to boot. If any other mass storage device is plugged in ahead of it it will not boot.

Just tried again: port 0 connects to a 128MB fat formatted USB stick, port 1 to a 256MB CF card (fat) reader and port 2 to a 128MB CF (FFS) card reader with integrated USB2.0 hub. The port 2 media is bootable, and boots right into the install WB3.1 - without any need for intervention by user, or any changes in the boot menu.

Tested with Poseidon V4.1, A4000D, DMA driver.

Michael  

[Darrin]

Hi MIchael,

While you're posting in the forums, perhaps you can help me.  I bought a USB to IDE/SATA cable for attaching 2.5" and 3.5" drives and I did have it working great under OS3.1 and it would mount my old A1200 2.5" drives where they would appear as a normal disk icon and  could click on them, copy files, etc.

I've now got OS3.9 running and I've tried testing a number of 3.5" and 2.5" drives and while I can install and partition them using HDToolbox, no icon appaers for them.  FAT16 pen drives continue to work perfectly.  Any ideas?  I'm using the new v9 firmware and the v4.1 stack.

Hardware setup:
A4000/40 @ 25MHz
OS3.9 with BB2
2MB Chip RAM
16MB Fast RAM
8MB Zorro RAM
1 x HDFDD
Cybervision 64/3D using Cybergraphx 4
FastATA4000
1 x 80GB HD (Primary master SFS)
1 x CD ROM (Secondary master)
1 x 80GB HD (Secondary slave SFS)
Deneb with USB Ethernet in port 0

Any guesses would be apprecaited.  The device seems to mount and dismount correctly and is visible on HDToolbox on USBSCSI.device, I just can't get an icon.

[wawrzon]

i have similar issue under os4. poseidon seems to mount devieces but the difference is the drives are not visible under media toolbox either. must be some installation detail i have overseen. or the way os4 handles things differently than 3.9. (newbie)

[MozzerFan]

@Darrin

Had the same problem as you. Are you by chance using HDToolbox? It s#?cks big time. Try using HDInsTools instead. When I partitioned my disk with this program, it showed the [drive:]uninitialized icon after reboot.

Regards,
Lloyd

[bash64]

Alas.......

I'm not sure why the guys at E3B feel that every customer issue is an outright ATAAAAACK on them but I really wish they would take the chip off of their shoulder and just stick to going over the facts rather than repeatedly mentioning what a dumbass someone is who missed something in their documentation.

Do you get your head bitten off on a regular basis by a nagging wife? Missed your coffee this morning? My questions are not attempts to ASSASINATE the character of those at E3B or to malign your hardware.

I'm not your enemy, I'm your customer and I wish you would put down your fists and stop trying to box with me.


 :-o

[wawrzon]

the solution to my problem was shameful easy: no installed fat95. i cant imagine how i could forget it. and poseidon clearly complains about it too! so if you want to mount pc formated drives on ur amiga-usb u have to get fat95 from the aminet, its also supplied with deneb as far i recall.

@bash64: they may be little harsh sometimes, but otherwise imagine that they are not big companies but single people supposed to support community of idiots like me, mea culpa!!

[Darrin]

MozzerFan wrote:
@Darrin

Had the same problem as you. Are you by chance using HDToolbox? It s#?cks big time. Try using HDInsTools instead. When I partitioned my disk with this program, it showed the [drive:]uninitialized icon after reboot.

Regards,
Lloyd

Cheers, I'll give that a go.  It still doesn't explain why my old Amiga formatted FFS drives which used to pop up suddenly don't.

It may be OS3.9 or Boing Bag related as BB2 made my CGX screen modes vanish without a trace until I found a patch to update one of my libraries.

I might make an OS3.1 installation on one of the drives and see if they'll pop up on that.

[Darrin]

wawrzon wrote:
the solution to my problem was shameful easy: no installed fat95. i cant imagine how i could forget it. and poseidon clearly complains about it too! so if you want to mount pc formated drives on ur amiga-usb u have to get fat95 from the aminet, its also supplied with deneb as far i recall.

@bash64: they may be little harsh sometimes, but otherwise imagine that they are not big companies but single people supposed to support community of idiots like me, mea culpa!!

LOL. None of us like to RTFM and I'm guilty of that more than anyone.  I do wish someone would create a FAQ out of some of these threads (I know, why don't I do it as I thought of it!).  You have no excuse though as the Poseidon itstallation offers to dump the FAT95 installer into RAM: for you.  :-D  I did have to search for an NTFS filesystem though.

[mboehmer_e3b]

...devieces but the difference is the drives are not visible under media toolbox either. must be some installation detail i have overseen. or the way os4 handles things differently than 3.9. (newbie)

Some versions of the HDToolBos do not like USB drives, after my experiences. Try the OS3.1 HDToolBox, as well as the versions of 3.5 and 3.9.

Michael

[mboehmer_e3b]

LOL. None of us like to RTFM and I'm guilty of that more than anyone.

And believe me, almost 90% of all customer support requests are caused by not reading the manual (which did take us also some time to create).

This creates a big and completely unnecessary overhead in support, which keeps us away from our normal business.

Maybe you can imagine that this makes us angry, sometimes - as time is a resource which cannot be replaced by money, or anything else in the world.

Michael

[mboehmer_e3b]

Do you get your head bitten off on a regular basis by a nagging wife?

Please don't try to put up my private life here for discussion, that's none of your business - you don't know anything about me, so stop making assumptions.

Regarding the other stuff - take a few minutes and read the last mails from you sent to us, and ask yourself who started "boxing" in this issue.

You did put up some "observations" in your list of small issues which are either not true, or simply show that you didn't read the manual.

There's one point to be checked left - the installation issue on USB mass storage based systems, which seems to be an issue (I tried the installation with the beta versions of V4.1 which behaved differently, the V4.1 user archive seems to do a "AddUSBHardware REMOVE ALL" after installation of the necessary files, so you get a lockup, but have all new files installed correctly.
This issue relates to creating a new PsdStackloader file with the new file versions of the updated version.

Michael

[platon42]

bash64 wrote:
1) Thumbdrive must be in port 0 (internal port) in order to boot. If any other mass storage device is plugged in ahead of it it will not boot.

The port number has no effect on anything USB related except for minor timing issues on checking the ports -- if no devices are connected to the ports in front, there is no difference at all. This must have some other reasons. Are you sure you can 100% reproduce this effect?

2) AsimWare keeps ejecting CDs. AsimWare does not seem to like usb cd drives. I am having better success with CachCDFS under Os 3.9.

No idea. I don't have that software. You could try enabling Simple SCSI in case the device gets irritated by some USB responses (which are usually indeed b0rken).

3) Cannot have CD in drive while booting. Not too unusual as I have had this same issue with PCs. It appears to be an issue specific to certain models of drives regardless of platform.

I am afraid your conclusion is wrong here -- AmigaOS/Poseidon is not a PC/BIOS. But without errorlog, it's pretty hard to make assumptions on what's exactly causing it. Usually, even with a media in the drive, the mass storage class will have difficulties mounting it with a CD filesystem as except for CDrive (phase 5), no CD filesystem can be made rom resident.

4) USB audio eats full 500ma of power. Locks up system even when plugged into a powered hub. A hub that Trident says it likes.

How do you know that it needs full 500mA? Because it says so? If you read the manual, you will have noticed that there is a line about devices often lying about the actual consumption or being self-powered or bus-powered. Anyway, lockups should never occur, regardless of power consumption. Something different must be wrong here.

5) PsdStackLoader never copies to envarc: during the install. This is a definite bug. I keep psdstackloader on floppy because of this.

On successful installation? There are thousands of Poseidon installations out there and you are the first and only one that seems to have this particular issue (that I cannot reproduce here).

6) Installing to a thumbdrive presents a LOT of inconvenient circumstances.

See Michaels response. Updating while running Poseidon has never been supported. The stack stops itself during installation for a reason (e.g. to avoid library version conflicts). I'm gonna remove this stopping for you in the next release, but if any other havoc happens for you or other people, it's definately not my problem.

   c) Neither Installer 43.3 nor MUI 3.8 which are required to install the Deneb software are included with the software on flashrom. Makes installing to an os 3.1 formatted drive (non-usb) a little difficult.

MUI is not required to install the software. Trident will work with the NOGUI parameter for the most basic operations like saving the current prefs. MUI, however, is an essential and required third party component for many programs and sorry, it's not my problem to ensure that the user takes care of this for reasonable use of the Poseidon stack. It's not included in *any* software package such as IBrowse, Miami(Dx), Voyager, AmIRC, AmFTP, and dozens other MUI applications.

If a user stubbornly refuses to install MUI and therefore refuses to access 95% of the configuration possibilities (and there are a lot, especially for HID devices), this doesn't sound very smart to me.

And regarding the Installer: This is a standard tool, provided by Commodore/Amiga Tech for software installations since OS 2.0 (I think) and is part of the Workbench setup. Again, I think it's the users responsibility to ensure an up to date and working system setup that hasn't been poluted with hacks and patches that will cause incompatibilities for example. With the same kind of reasoning you could say, we should include SetPatch and the latest Amiga ROM Update files with the Deneb, right?

More later. Share your issues too.

I'd appreciate it if you registered to the highway mailing list for support or send emails directly to me (for the latter, a less offensive tone wouldn't have spoiled our "relationship" in the first place).

I can't write to the a.org forums from work (Wayne! XOOPS sucks in this respect, especially when you only get "An Error occurred: No Error" responses), so its unlikely I will participate here often for the time being.

[platon42]

bash64 wrote:

I'm not sure why the guys at E3B feel that every customer issue is an outright ATAAAAACK on them

There is a difference between a customer who says "I have this issue here, these are the circumstances, can you please help me?" and somebody who comes yelling "F*cking b*llsh*t, this piece of junk that I spend my last money and the whole weekend doesn't work and is driving me crazy, fix it, you idiots, before I throw the machine out of the window or pass by at your homes with the thing so you can see it for yourself" (okay that was slightly exaggerated, but you should get the gist of it).

Do you get your head bitten off on a regular basis by a nagging wife?
[rest of pointless rant skipped]

That was uncalled for.

I'm not your enemy, I'm your customer and I wish you would put down your fists and stop trying to box with me.

If you'd just for once behave less like an enemy who is just on the verge of mud slinging in public forums... well, then...

PS: Indeed your "support queries" already costed me hours of time that I'd honestly rather spend for something different. Pointless? Maybe. You tell me.