CF Cards my nightmare

[Lurch]

Okay, so I've been using a FastATA and CFCards for awhile now. My 8GB card died which was using PFS3 AIO (wouldn't detect anymore) so started using my 2GB CFCard from the 500.

It was using FFS and everything worked fine, but I made the horrible mistake and decided to try PFS3/SFS etc.

So followed a few guides, including Gorilla's. But since I've put PFS3 / SFS on the CF Card has been coming up with the wrong block id for PFS3 and some other random error for SFS.

So thought (after trying different masks/max transfers/blocks) I'd go back to FFS with the same two partition setup. System/Work.

But getting HDD errors and wont boot, however boots fine on WinUAE.

I have even used diskpart and cleaned the cfcard and started from fresh.

I am using AmigaOS 3.9 with all the patches / boing ball packs. Smartfilesystem / PFS3 AIO is in the L folder.

When using SFS I used SFS format and that didn't report any errors... so after a few days I've become very confused.

So here I am posting here :-) Any help appreciated :-)

[Thomas]

Try to reduce the PIO mode by one in FastATA prefs.

[Lurch]

Hmm, if I set it to PIO 0 it works fine. Crap drive access though :-(

Weird thing is I can access it before at PIO 3.

Still get checksum errors so going to do another format and try again.

Thanks Thomas.

[fitzsteve]

Maybe your FastATA isn't making good contact, try to clean the pins and socket with IPA

[Geit]

It is for sure not the card unless you bought some cheap crap.

Also the file system does not matter. All our filesystems are a nightmare for all CF cards, as each write cycle involves several blocks and the file system does not care about the pysical internals of a card.

I am using a Transcent 16GB 400x for about 2 years now, without any problem. Writing around 250MB a day (daily MorphOS update) and there is no sign of a problem. I for sure would know as it is my main system.

Just go for proper cards. Simple card often die and cause problems due broken contacts, cheap flash and wrong implemented wear leveling.

Geit

[Lurch]

@fitzsteve - Will give that a go, I have it connected with a cable tie which is a new addition, maybe something to do with that. Would like to get it sorted before I purchase any new CF Cards.

@Geit - No the cards haven't been cheap, usually stick to mainstream brands. The card out of the 500 I've been testing with has been fine for a couple of years just went to custard when trying to change the file system.

The Sandisk one wasn't cheap and it was a higher end card that's used in Cameras, but it only lasted a few months and now doesn't detect it, even on the PC.

So going to setup a standard laptop drive and use that, well that's when I get the ATA prefs to stick with no split and not keep going back to split when I restart LOL

All fun and games, just want to play a game now :-)