Flyer Drives not showing on Workbench screen

[rcgrabbag]

I'm trying to configure an A4000T with a Flyer board. The Flyer HDTools recognizes the three SCSI drives that I installed and I was able to test and format them, but they don't show on the Workbench screen. It looks like the drivers for the drives are in Devs/DosDrivers folder, but I'm not sure if the settings are right. All I see when I get the Information on the drivers is Activate=1. Shouldn't there also be a reference to the SCSI ID as well?

[Matt_H]

The device and unit information might be in the DOSDriver itself (a plain text file), not the icon information. But note the naming conventions of the DOSDrivers - Fx0 is for unit 0, Fx1 is for unit 1, etc. (where x = A, B, or C). You shouldn't need to edit them, just have the correct one(s) enabled. I think the default install only puts Fx0 into Devs:DOSDrivers and the rest are in Storage. So if your devices are set to 3, then they won't show up by default.

And I think FlyerInit needs to run from user-startup, although I don't recall the exact arguments.

What version of the Flyer software are you using?

Been a while since I set up my Flyer, I may not have all this right
And FYI, Amiga-to-Flyer transfers (i.e., DH1 to Fx0) and vice versa are absurdly slow. Within the Toaster interface, Flyer to Flyer is fine.

[rcgrabbag]

Yes, that was it! I edited the DOSDriver files (FA0, FB0 & FC0) and found the line that had "CHAIN=x,UNIT=x" values and changed the UNIT=x to the SCSI address of the respective drive (A,B,C), rebooted, and voila! The drives appeared on the Workbench screen. Thanks, Matt!

[Pyromania]

Why not just use Compact Flash cards instead of real hard drives? Your machine will run a lot cooler and the chances of drive failure go way down.

[rcgrabbag]

Someday maybe, but I'm sort of a vintage tech fan and wanted to build a Toaster/Flyer system in true retro fashion. But for future reference, would that require some sort of SCSI to IDE converter for the flash drive modules?

[Pyromania]

Yes you would need three of those, they are pretty cheap. You might like this too.

http://www.discreetfx.com/Millennium.htm

[Matt_H]

Yes, that was it! I edited the DOSDriver files (FA0, FB0 & FC0) and found the line that had "CHAIN=x,UNIT=x" values and changed the UNIT=x to the SCSI address of the respective drive (A,B,C), rebooted, and voila! The drives appeared on the Workbench screen. Thanks, Matt!

Glad that worked, but...

 I'm not sure exactly how things work internally, so I'd suggest not having Fx0 be a unit other than 0, just to be safe. Something might get confused otherwise. So use, for example, Fx3 if your drives are jumpered to ID 3 (or rejumper the drives on each chain - I assume you have just one on each - to unit 0).

[rcgrabbag]

Glad that worked, but...

 I'm not sure exactly how things work internally, so I'd suggest not having Fx0 be a unit other than 0, just to be safe. Something might get confused otherwise. So use, for example, Fx3 if your drives are jumpered to ID 3 (or rejumper the drives on each chain - I assume you have just one on each - to unit 0).

Ah, yes, I see what you're saying. So, I removed the driver files that I edited (the original versions are still in Storage/DOSDrivers) and started over. Flyer drives A, B and C are on SCSI addresses 1, 2, and 3 respectively, so, I grabbed driver FA1, FB2 and FC3 from Storage/DOSDrivers and copied them to Devs/DOSDrivers and it worked without any file editing. Flyer drives show up on Workbench just fine. I did open the driver files just to see what was different in them. I noticed TWO references to the UNIT number, and both reflected the same SCSI address. When I edited the driver files previously, I only changed ONE of the UNIT values, so even though it worked, I might have screwed something up if I attempted to use it for any video work. Nice catch, Matt! That probably saved me a bunch of headaches going forward.

[Matt_H]

The 3 SCSI chains on the Flyer (A, B, and C) are independent, so you can have each drive set to 0 on its respective chain. That's what I've done, at least (so I have FA0, FB0, and FC0). Not sure what the "official" or "recommended" config is, though.

[rcgrabbag]

Yeah, I got ya. I could have made them all ID 0, but on separate chains. In my case, FA0, FB0, and FC0 drivers where installed by default, so it would seem as though that is a recommended config.

[T3000]

My flyer drives are as follows:
Video A drives ~ FA0 FA1 FA2 of 8, 18, 18 gig
Video B drives ~ FB0 FB1 FB2 of 9, 9, 18 gig
Audio drive ~ FC1 of 9 gig - FC0 went bad and removed, eventually to be replaced.
CDrom on FC6 - eventually to be replaced with a CD or DVD writer for flyer clip and project back up.

Best bet would be to get larger HDs and have just one on each chain.  Even better, CF cards would fit nicely inside the A4000D chassis eliminating the need for a Flyer tower and that damn octopus cable.
it's only money...

Any info on these questions would be useful:
1- How does one get rid of the ghosted amiga dos icons for the flyer drives that show on the workbench?
2- Where are the default desktop Flyer icons located? Would like to substitute default icons with smaller ones to possibly save on chip ram use.
3- How to snapshot the desktop Flyer icons to help keep the desktop neat if thats possible?

Thanks

[Matt_H]

Any info on these questions would be useful:
1- How does one get rid of the ghosted amiga dos icons for the flyer drives that show on the workbench?
2- Where are the default desktop Flyer icons located? Would like to substitute default icons with smaller ones to possibly save on chip ram use.
3- How to snapshot the desktop Flyer icons to help keep the desktop neat if thats possible?

Thanks

1. Hmm, that doesn't happen on my system. Or I haven't noticed
2. Creating disk.info in the root of each drive would probably override the default. Not sure where the default would be, though. I think old versions of CrossDOS did something similar with default icons - not sure where those were, either.
3. Does the standard snapshot command not work? Maybe it will once disk.info exists? Not sure.

[amigadave]

My flyer drives are as follows:
Video A drives ~ FA0 FA1 FA2 of 8, 18, 18 gig
Video B drives ~ FB0 FB1 FB2 of 9, 9, 18 gig
Audio drive ~ FC1 of 9 gig - FC0 went bad and removed, eventually to be replaced.
CDrom on FC6 - eventually to be replaced with a CD or DVD writer for flyer clip and project back up.

Best bet would be to get larger HDs and have just one on each chain.  Even better, CF cards would fit nicely inside the A4000D chassis eliminating the need for a Flyer tower and that damn octopus cable.
it's only money...

Any info on these questions would be useful:
1- How does one get rid of the ghosted amiga dos icons for the flyer drives that show on the workbench?
2- Where are the default desktop Flyer icons located? Would like to substitute default icons with smaller ones to possibly save on chip ram use.
3- How to snapshot the desktop Flyer icons to help keep the desktop neat if thats possible?

Thanks

@T3000,

I see that you have some 18gig drives in use on your A & B Flyer SCSI controllers.  I have been trying to upgrade my old noisy 9gig drives to 18, 36 and 73 gig drives, but have had trouble getting them working.  I have tried several different brands of drives and terminators without luck.

What 18gig drives are you using and how do you have them converted to 50pin SCSI of the Flyer board (since I am assuming that not many, if any 18gig drives were made with 50pin SCSI connections).  All my large SCSI drives are either 68pin, or 80pin.

[rcgrabbag]

The IDE/CF adapters are pretty cheap on ebay, like a few bucks, but the SCSI/IDE adapters are considerably more expensive (~50 bucks). Anyone know of a cheaper source?

And does anyone here have a Flyer setup using CF/IDE -> IDE/SCSI -> Flyer combo?

[T3000]

@T3000,
What 18gig drives are you using and how do you have them converted to 50pin SCSI of the Flyer board.

Fortunately, I purchased the drive bay used with listed drives and a malfunctioning on/off switch from a working environment that was being parted out.  The drive bay was professionally set up. I started with three drives stacked on the desk while setting my system up. Not bad for $250.

The 18 gig drive is a 68 pin, Seagate Cheetah ST318404LW
The adapters are stickered with the word ACTIVE and look like this

edit ~
hmmm...   after putting the case back on I seem to have lost FB0:
The drive is showing up with scsi inquire but not in the Flyer HD tools or in the flyer project interface. Also the ghosted icon reads FB0:\0\0\0\0 where as the ghosted icons for the other working flyer drives read FA0:FLY\0   FA1:FLY\0  etc.
sigh...