CC0: SRAM, and booting from CC0: - Questions

[TheGoose]

Folks, I just read through a couple threads about SRAM cards here but no answers I was hoping for:

http://amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10011
and
http://amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=52297&highlight=sram

My questions are like this:

• You can boot from CC0: true?
• WTF SRAM?
• If I move my SRAM card to virgin A600/1200 nothing installed, can I get it to boot from the CC0: ?
• Has anyone used the CC0: to perform AOS installations ?
• CC0: device must be in ROM, yes?

EDIT - Holly baby Jesus I just found 4MB SRAM for 143.99 ! what the hell?

Nevermind the SRAM specification, got that now...

Ok just figured out most of this, but still curious about 3 and 4 from the list...

[Matt_H]

A PCMCIA RAM card needs to be prepped as a disk (using PrepCard) before you can boot from it, but otherwise it should work on a stock system. It'll need to have a working battery, of course. Mine doesn't, so it's always recognized as RAM from a cold boot.

I think CC0: tops out with a 4MB card, which may not be enough for a full 3.1 installation (plenty of room for a cut-down install, though). If you need a PCMCIA bootable solution, a workaround that I used for a while was to mount CF0: from the startup-sequence of a bootable floppy (see cfd.lha on Aminet) and then to reassign the system to the CF card. Not truly bootable, but good enough.

[Gulliver]

A PCMCIA RAM card needs to be prepped as a disk (using PrepCard) before you can boot from it, but otherwise it should work on a stock system. It'll need to have a working battery, of course. Mine doesn't, so it's always recognized as RAM from a cold boot.

I think CC0: tops out with a 4MB card, which may not be enough for a full 3.1 installation (plenty of room for a cut-down install, though). If you need a PCMCIA bootable solution, a workaround that I used for a while was to mount CF0: from the startup-sequence of a bootable floppy (see cfd.lha on Aminet) and then to reassign the system to the CF card. Not truly bootable, but good enough.

Cool, I would love to have a bootable pcmcia sram card.
BTW, 4MB is just enough for a complete 3.1 setup (aprox. 3.4MB is required).

[mfilos]

Apart from the fun part...

...What's the point in sacrificing a rare and expensive 4MB SRAM card to boot from it, while you can do the same using an El'Cheapo IDE2CF adapter and an CF card and use the SRAM card for Fast RAM?

I mean ok just testing to see if it works, it's cool. And you'll have an ultra nice stock 3.1 with 0MB Fast RAM and no room to put something useful

[Gulliver]

Yes, you are right, it is just for the fun factor and the coolness of it. It is not really worth if you see how much a pcmcia sram card costs.

[TheGoose]

@Matt, now that is a pretty good idea, still need a floppy though. Well, I may keep an eye around for SRAM but it's just silly expensive to me.

SRAM - I don't care about memory,  just cool to have a one shot way of popping in and setting up a system. Of course you would need real fast ram or accelerator.

4MB - Right, probably not enough to hold all of AOS3.1 - Damn Commodore! They knew we would try this in future. Wish there was a way to hack PrepCard to work with CF media...

I guess what I really want is a new version of our ROM chips that includes CF0: in the way CC0: shows up in the early boot options. I guess that isn't going to happen. Well, in the mean time I will try to see if WB3.1 disks would fit into 4MB.

Or the cool way that DENEB has its flash ram available to store stuff and use at boot time.

[Thomas]

Wish there was a way to hack PrepCard to work with CF media...

Well, there is one IDE controller for the PCMCIA slot listed on BBOAH which works with just the ROM driver, i.e. it's bootable. Don't remember the name, though. And it's probably very very rare.

[jj]

Why need prepcard for CF?  you can get pcmcia CF card readers and these bootable

[TheGoose]

Well, there is one IDE controller for the PCMCIA slot listed on BBOAH which works with just the ROM driver, i.e. it's bootable. Don't remember the name, though. And it's probably very very rare.

Interesting, will look it up. Wonder how they did that..., thanks.

EDIT ah - cool:

http://www.bboah.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=59&id=2508&artlang=en&highlight=PCMCIA

[Thomas]

you can get pcmcia CF card readers and these bootable

No.

[doctorq]

Interesting, will look it up. Wonder how they did that..., thanks.

EDIT ah - cool:

http://www.bboah.com/index.php?action=artikel&cat=59&id=2508&artlang=en&highlight=PCMCIA

I got one of these last week, and have it all modified and installed. It contains a ROM of some sort which launces a program in order to mount the harddisk partitions and another program to hand over the rest of the booting to the actual harddrive. A drive icon for the ROM contents are placed on the desktop after loading the OS.

It's basicly just contains the boot floppy mentioned earlier; I have made the same and it is quite useful, not only for setting up an OS, but for gaming as well if one for some reason doesn't want to use a harddrive (or haven't got the correct Kickstart version for A600 for instance.)

[Tension]

Wonder what the max size of HD you can put in a Commodore Overdrive is?  (And why anyone would bother)

[doctorq]

Wonder what the max size of HD you can put in a Commodore Overdrive is?  (And why anyone would bother)

I have tested with a 1 GB CF card and it currently has a ~850 MB Seagate drive installed. Access time is more or less the same as the onboard controller.

Why bother? No particular reason since the two computers that can use it already has a controller. I believe the device was aimed at people not wanting to open up their Amiga and therefore loosing their warranty and/or people wanting to use 3.5" drives instead of 2.5" drives, as 3.5" drives were a lot cheaper than 2.5" drives back in the days.