Compact Flash reader on A2000 causing strange problem

[barney]

Hello everybody, I have a question about a Compact Flash reader I bought off a website called A4000t.com (Mechware).  It's actually a pretty nice reader, that works well but acts rather strangely.  The exact model of the reader is:  SCM PCD-50B SCSI Card reader.

I hooked it up to my SCSI cable, powered up my Amiga and configured it.  I notice that it works pretty good except that it does it following:  Every second, I see my CDROM and Flash reader LED's blink simultaneously, then the next second the Hard Drive and Flash Reader led's blink simultaneously.  This goes on non stop back and forth except when I play games.

Does anybody know whether this is normal and if not, how to stop it?  Thanks.

Barney

[gertsy]

Some kind of SCSI chain game.  Never heard of it before.  Did you pose the question back to Mechware?  Could it be some kind of termination problem?

[barney]

I don't think its a termination problem.  I have my CDROM on one end of the cable (terminated) and the hard drive on the other end (terminated).  The flash reader is in the middle of the chan (not terminated).  Does that sound like a correct configuration?  I haven't notified Mechware on this issue yet but I will.

[magnetic]

that sound like a correct scsi config but some cars are weird with termination. The board itself may have onboard terminator packs.  What controller do you use?

[barney]

Here is the Accelerator / SCSI card I am using:  GVP Impact A2000-030 Combo.

[danbeaver]

Since the device is dealing with removable cards, it is checking to see if any have changed; it is a version of the Amiga floppy click

[Matt_H]

My card reader and other SCSI chains do this all the time. It's normal. The reason you're not seeing it during games is because the games are taking over the machine and the normal polling of the SCSI bus isn't happening.

[barney]

So am I fine just leaving it the way it is and allowing it to continue flashing every second?

[Zac67]

I guess the controller is just polling the devices for media changes...

[mechy]

Hello everybody, I have a question about a Compact Flash reader I bought off a website called A4000t.com (Mechware).  It's actually a pretty nice reader, that works well but acts rather strangely.  The exact model of the reader is:  SCM PCD-50B SCSI Card reader.

I hooked it up to my SCSI cable, powered up my Amiga and configured it.  I notice that it works pretty good except that it does it following:  Every second, I see my CDROM and Flash reader LED's blink simultaneously, then the next second the Hard Drive and Flash Reader led's blink simultaneously.  This goes on non stop back and forth except when I play games.

Does anybody know whether this is normal and if not, how to stop it?  Thanks.

Barney

This is completely normal, As many stated above its polling for diskchages.
MattH hot the nail on the head here.

If it did not do this it would never know when you swapped cards/cd's etc.

Mech

[barney]

Why does this new card reader cause my other devices on the SCSI chain to flash in sync also?  My Hard Drive and CDROM always remained calm in the past.

[Azryl]

It could be polling all LUNs as well as SCSI logical ports...  I think each SCSI logic port can have 7? LUNs attached? If so then each device would need to poll onto the SCSI BUS, so the BUS would become fully active every few seconds while each replied to the host controller.

From Wiki :-

From the computer perspective, SCSI LUN is only a part of the full SCSI address. The full device's address is made from the:

    c-part: controller ID of the host bus adapter,
    t-part: target ID identifying the SCSI target on that bus,
    d-part: disk ID identifying a LUN on that target,
    s-part: slice ID identifying a specific slice on that disk.

In the Unix family of operating systems, these IDs are often combined into a single "name". For example, /dev/dsk/c1t2d3s4 would refer to controller 1, target 2, disk 3, slice 4.

I believe the SCSI implementation on AMIGA uses the above example. So your CF card could be reporting to the SCSI host controller and activating each device on the chain to poll as well.

I'm not sure if synchronous mode would fix this or not?

Az

[Lurch]

They're all on the same SCSI chain.

[danbeaver]

I see this in OS 4.1 where I have an LED attached to the CSPPC board and it flashes about every second, even with SCSI CF card reader not mounted in the CSPPC scsi menu.  I haven't figured why you can't boot off the Card Reader in OS 4.1; you can in OS 3.X. The CF cards are present and can be mounted and read in OS 4.1. In the Media Toolkit you save device changes with "Inject" button as the "Save to Disk" button gives an error "Can't write to sector 0."

[Lurch]

I never had any luck booting without the pcmcia adapter. Even followed a couple of posts, just sits there after it's scanned through the luns. Has some strange quirks, but works really well with the adapter, downside is the cover of the a590 wont fit on with the adapter.

Case modding time coming up I guess.