Fresh 3.9 install on an 20GB harddrive

[TheBilgeRat]

Title pretty much sums it up.  From my working install I created the 3.9 "emergency Boot" disk.  When I created the boot disk, I chose "IDEfix" over SCSI when asked.  I then removed my working drive, stuck the new drive in, put the boot floppy in and away I went - to nowhere.  The emergency floppy will boot the machine, where IDEfix tells me its a trial run and if I like it yadda yadda yadda... but then workbench asks me to insert the OS disk, which is already inserted. retry gets me nowhere and quit gets me a bunch of assign errors and an unresponsive workbench.  I've tried changing master/slave on the cdrom and hd to no avail.  I am running off the internal ide port.

Anyone run into this issue?  Should I have chosen SCSI on the boot disk?

[giZmo350]

Boy, that's a damn good question... possibly. Amiga & it's SCSI "simulation" is everywhere but I thought that's what IDEFix was supposed to take care of. Did you already have the CD Rom installed previously? I will be performing the same operation soon to the A1200 so I'm glad you're already knuckle deep! :roflmao: Will be following this one!
 
Rog..............
 
After thought... remember that if you using two seperate IDE channels then both drives should be set to master anyway. You might have to tell IDEFix that info? I havn't done it yet so I'm just tossing out pancakes.

[TheBilgeRat]

Boy, that's a damn good question... possibly. Amiga & it's SCSI "simulation" is everywhere but I thought that's what IDEFix was supposed to take care of. Did you already have the CD Rom installed previously? I will be performing the same operation soon to the A1200 so I'm glad you're already knuckle deep! :roflmao: Will be following this one!
 
Rog..............

Yes.  I use asim cdfs when I do a 3.1 install.  I should probably just go buy another flash card and set it up, but the thought was to use this 20GB guy on hand and partition it up so I can just have one partition thats bootable to wipe clean with the nightly builds of AROS 68k and one set up specifically for Shapeshifter (I have a lot of old classic Mac apps, including the old school complete NG that runs on classic mac) to maximize the speed.  I am just unable to get past the hurdle of getting 'er installed.  The emergency boot disk is supposed to use cacheCDFS to grab the CDROM.  The other way to do it would be to boot up into 3.1 and try it that way, but then the old tooltypes don't recognize the big drive.  I might have to try to build one using the Amiga911 and see if that doesn't get me what I need.  In a perfect world, I'd have a boot floppy that would let me format a big drive as a PFS3 drive and then begin a clean 3.9 install.

[Thomas]

I chose "IDEfix" over SCSI when asked.

You should select IDEfix only if you have IDEfix software installed and want continue to use it. In all other cases choose SCSI. The IDEFix choice just does *not* install the >4GB support of OS 3.9.

Also you should try out the emergency disk and correct any errors *before* you change the hardware config. What use is an emergency disk that does not work?

[NovaCoder]

You should select IDEfix only if you have IDEfix software installed and want continue to use it. In all other cases choose SCSI. The IDEFix choice just does *not* install the >4GB support of OS 3.9.

Hi Thomas,

Sorry to hijack but are you sure about that, I was just about to install the IdeFix express software on my 16GB setup and I don't want to kill it

Update:
Actually it looks like the Express install discs were patched with TD64.

[Thomas]

Sorry to hijack but are you sure about that, I was just about to install the IdeFix express software on my 16GB setup and I don't want to kill it

Yes, I am. If you select IDEfix, it does not copy the AmigaOS ROM Update to the disk, but tries to copy all components of IDEfix instead.

Actually it looks like the Express install discs were patched with TD64.

IDEfix does not need to be patched, it supports TD64 by design.

[Thomas]

one set up specifically for Shapeshifter

Be aware that if you use a partition as virtual harddrive for Shapeshifter, this partition *must* be completely inside the first 4GB of the real harddrive! Shapeshifter is not aware of the 4GB problem and cannot access outside the first 4GB of a real harddrive.

If you use hardfiles, you are safe, though. Although hardfiles cannot be bigger than 2GB (AmigaDOS limitation).

[Daedalus]

Having just gone through this process in my A1200 (similar setup - 3.1 ROMs, 3.9 CD, 60GB HD and IDE CD-ROM on internal port). My 3.9 boot disk was made on another Amiga, but the CD drive worked fine on it. If you put the IDE-Fix files on a floppy and use it to examine the devices to find the CD drive, that'll tell you if it's detectable (maybe it just doesn't play nice with that hard drive). You might have to boot the emergency floppy with no startup-sequence and use the shell to get there...

If you can boot to 3.1 and install IDE-Fix from there, you should be able to use the big drive in 3.1 provided you use a 64-bit filesystem as well (SFS for example). Also be very careful with Shapeshifter, as Thomas pointed out, and don't full format any of the partitions...

[TheBilgeRat]

You should select IDEfix only if you have IDEfix software installed and want continue to use it. In all other cases choose SCSI. The IDEFix choice just does *not* install the >4GB support of OS 3.9.

Gotcha - tried it with SCSI chosen, with similar results - the Emergency disk does not recognize that there is a CDROM drive with the OS 3.9 disk in it.

Also you should try out the emergency disk and correct any errors *before* you change the hardware config. What use is an emergency disk that does not work?

That is definitely the problem - the emergency floppy does not recognize the CDROM, and therefore is unable to begin the install process at all.  I would like to correct that problem, but have no idea why it would not find the CDROM.

[Thomas]

I would like to correct that problem, but have no idea why it would not find the CDROM.

At first you should connect your old HDD back to the Amiga and boot from it. Then put the OS 3.9 CD into the CD drive. Open a shell window and enter INFO. Check what the drive is called the CD is in (usually CD0: ). Now look into Devs: DosDrivers if there is a file of that name. Load it into a text editor and paste its contents into this thread.

Now insert the emergency disk, open Devs/DosDrivers on the disk and load the file EMERGENCY_CD into a text editor. Paste the contents here, too.

Basically we need to check if Device= and Unit= have the correct values for your hardware configuration and that the files named in Device= and FileSystem= exist on the emergency disk.

[digiflip]

I installed 3.1 first then cdrom system , then isomount, then virtual cd since i dont have cdrom on my amiga. then loaded os3.9 via vitualcd.

[TheBilgeRat]

Output of INFO:

Mounted disks:
Unit      Size    Used    Free Full Errs   Status   Name
CD0:      467M  239593       0 100%   0  Read Only  AmigaOS3.9
PC0:      720K      14    1426   1%   0  Read/Write EMPTY
RAM:       15M     146   15635   1%   0  Read/Write Ram Disk
HD0:     1009M   51291 2016367   2%   0  Read/Write Workbench
DF0:      Unreadable disk
HD1:     1004M  939668 1117595  46%   0  Read/Write Work
HD2:    -2033563K  392761 3928722   9%   0  Read/Write Storage

Volumes available:
EMPTY [Mounted]
AmigaOS3.9 [Mounted]
Ram Disk [Mounted]
Storage [Mounted]
Work [Mounted]
Workbench [Mounted]

No CDO in DEVS: in HD0:

Output of EmergencyCD on the Floppy Drive:

/***************************************************************/
/*  CacheCDFS mountlist entry © 2000 Amiga Inc.          */
/***************************************************************/
       FileSystem     = L:CacheCDFS /* The name of the game */
       Device         = "asim_atapi.device" /* Name of exec device driver */
       Unit           = 1 /* exec device unit */
       Flags          = 0 /* OpenDevice flags */
       BlocksPerTrack = 351000 /* Unused */
       BlockSize      = 2048 /* True, but unused */
       Mask           = 0x7ffffffe /* Memory mask for direct read */
       MaxTransfer    = 0x1000000 /* Maximum amount of bytes for direct read */
       Reserved       = 0 /* Unused */
       Interleave     = 0 /* Unused */
       LowCyl         = 0 /* Unused */
       HighCyl        = 0 /* Unused */
       Surfaces       = 1 /* Unused */
       Buffers        = 50 /* Number of cache lines */
       BufMemType     = 1 /* MEMF_PUBLIC */
       BootPri        = 2 /* Boot priority for MountCD */
       GlobVec        = -1 /* Do not change! */
       Mount          = 1 /* Mount it immediately */
       Priority       = 10 /* Priority of FileSystem task */
       DosType        = 0x43443031 /* Currently unused */
       StackSize      = 3000 /* Minimum stack required is 3000! */
       Control        = "MD=0 LC=1 DC=8 L LV AL LFC=1 AUDIO=Utilities/PlayCD"
   /* The Control field is for special adjustments */
   /* L/S convert all file/volume names to lowercase */
   /* LV/S convert volume names to lowercase */
   /* AL/S Auto-Lower converts only non-Amiga CDs */
   /* LFC/N start converting at this character */
   /* LC/N/A number of blocks per cache line */
   /* DC/N/A number of cache lines for the data cache */
   /* MD/N/A number of blocks, when starting direct read, not using */
   /* the cache. 0 will be a reasonable default (LC*DC+1) */
   /* S/S Do SCSI direct commands, no Trackdisk like commands! */
   /* NC/S Do NOT use TD_ADDCHANGEINT, poll for DiskChange! */
   /* M/S Issue a TD_MOTOR (OFF) command after read */

I use AsimCDFS on my hard drive - I am wondering if this is what is causing the issue.  I thought that the Emergency Floppy copied just what it needed from the OS3.9CD to boot the amiga.  I am thinking that "asim-atapi.device" is what is causing the problem.

[TheBilgeRat]

I installed 3.1 first then cdrom system , then isomount, then virtual cd since i dont have cdrom on my amiga. then loaded os3.9 via vitualcd.

My goal is to be able to do an install straight from OS 3.9 to any sized hard disk (read - modern) without having to resort to WinUAE or UAE etc etc.  This should be doable.  I think what I am going to do while waiting for Thomas to tell me what rookie mistake I'm making is build an Amiga911 disk set up to be an "any size hard drive in PFS3" tool.  I can at least get the HD set up - that will be helpful by the time I can actually boot from Emergency floppy and do a clean 3.9 install.

[Thomas]

Output of EmergencyCD on the Floppy Drive:

/***************************************************************/
/*  CacheCDFS mountlist entry © 2000 Amiga Inc.          */
/***************************************************************/
       FileSystem     = L:CacheCDFS /* The name of the game */
       Device         = "asim_atapi.device" /* Name of exec device driver */
       Unit           = 1 /* exec device unit */
       Flags          = 0 /* OpenDevice flags */

Please change asim_atapi.device into scsi.device and try to boot from the disk again.

[TheBilgeRat]

Please change asim_atapi.device into scsi.device and try to boot from the disk again.

Worked like a charm!  I decided to ditch my old klunker big drives and just go with another CF card - 4G is plenty big for now.  If I'm really desperate for space I'll figure something out.