Why cant I format my CF Card on a500+

[djos]

@djos Not wanting to hijack your thread but if you are still looking at a 500 plus board...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/COMMODORE-AMIGA-A500-MAINBOARD-REVISION-8A-PERFECT-FAST-UK-SHIPPING-/290770253300?pt=UK_VintageComputing_RL&hash=item43b341f5f4

Bah, finally gave in and bought one, the desire to restore my 500+ to 100% got too strong! :biglaugh:

[djos]

Ok so I got PFS3 working and it is very fast compared to FFS but I keep running into an issue copying some files (doesnt matter which file system but does seem slightly worse with PFS3) from my PC to the CF card under winuae, it just get's to some files and appears to hang the VM (mouse works but thats it).

These files are typically ADF's with big long names - anyone else have this issue?

EDIT: Im wondering if it's choking on the "[" "]" characters in some file names?

[djos]

Well I just proved that theory wrong, replaced the square brackets with round brackets and it still choked on the same file.

..... However I tried shortening the file name lengths and that worked perfectly! :p

[djos]

I thought id fixed my IDE68k speed issues but I clearly havent, even with PFS3 installed both my 4GB CF cards are dead slow - Im getting 21,000bytes per second transfer from my Floppy drive and 5,500bytes per second transfer from my CF Cards.  I've even installed IDEFix97 and it hasnt made any real difference and either does boosting the buffer sizes.

CF Card:


Floppy Disk:


Anyone got any idea's?

[Azryl]

Ideas? Yup...  try 2 or 3 different manufacturers cards, CF cards seems to have limitations placed within themselves regarding speed, interface type etc

I have found some cheap ebay CF cards work better than big name brands
why this is so.. no idea

I have an 1200 with a 4gig CF card installed on an adapter and it works perfectly. Not sure if the gayle adapter works similar to the IDE built into 1200's

Swap out some smaller/brands of CF and see what happens?

Az

[djos]

I've got a Kingston from Amigakit and SanDisk (30MB/s rated), both are as slow as each other - dont have any others to play with unfortunately.

[orange]

about long filenames, there is a util for pfs3 (setfnsize) to increase the filename size. but you can't decrease it afterwards.

[paul1981]

about long filenames, there is a util for pfs3 (setfnsize) to increase the filename size. but you can't decrease it afterwards.

I think it's his old Workbench that's struggling with the long file names, not the filesystem (he's on PFS3 now). Best thing would be to rename all long files, and Workbench will truncate the names to what it can deal with.

[djos]

long files names aren't an issue for, just speed or lack thereof.

Btw, IDEFix + PFS3 seems to be a bad combo, I can no longer writ to my CF card as I get block ID errors. :crazy:

[djos]

Update: Today I completely rebuilt my miggy from scratch on my SanDisk 4GB 30mb/s CF card (instead of the Kingston 4GB) but even with a 200mb System Partition and 2 other partitions (1.9GB & 1.7GB), again using PFS3, the speed issue remains (it's not faster or slower).

Im waiting on a new rev8a Mobo, 1mb trapdoor card and 8mb auto-config ram board so it'l be interesting to see if anything changes then.

[Azryl]

You should try a CF card that is much smaller. Under 1gig if possible, see if you have a faster read/write speed even with the older tech inside the card.

Also, is you CF reader a twin system? Above and under the reader are positions for insert CF cards? Master/slave maybe causing issues?

My 1200 I has a single reader, 90degree adapter, works perfectly.

Az

[djos]

I've got 2 single readers and there is no difference between them in speed, both are set as master.

Hmm, ok I'll get an el cheapo 1GB unit and try that.

[djos]

problem solved, it was the IDE68k v402 - according to Mika some cpld's were programmed with code revision where secondary /int2 wasn't working and mine only had connections for the secondary's so never tried the primary's (soldered some wires to the primary's this morning).

now I get 580,000 bytes a second transfer. :cool:

[Azryl]

Awesome! Glad your CF reader and IDE interface are now working correctly. Now swap them out into the rev8 board and have MORE fun

Az

[djos]

Thanks me too.

Yep as soon as they arrive my 500 will be a genuine 500+ again with 2mb chip-ram.

[gertsy]

Well done!  Another success story.  You've kept at it I must say...