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Offline giZmo350Topic starter

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That useless A590 switch 4!
« on: August 07, 2013, 09:44:19 PM »
I've tried to get Mechy's PCD-50B SCSI Multicard Reader to work in my A590 about 3 or 4 times with NO success. Today I thought I would give another google search a try (after reading that Mfilos got one working) and BINGO! Finally found the answer - from Mechy himself over at EAB. It was switch 4 on the A590 which enabled parity! Actually, ALL the card slots show up when you scan the unit. Mechy suggested HDToolBox but HDInstallTools on the OS2.1 install disk worked perfect. I created a 1GB partition using max transfer of 0x001FE00 and a 3GB partition and all is great. :D Now on to all the fun software installs!

Couple of questions though...

1. My A590 has always taken FOREVER to boot up. Even with the multi-card reader... about 1.5 minutes. Why is that?

2. Can I utilize the other card slots (different card types) as additional storage/drives simultaniously?

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Offline Oldsmobile_Mike

Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #1 on: August 07, 2013, 09:48:53 PM »
1: What transfer speed are you getting in SysInfo?

2:  Yes.  With the PCD-60 you can, anyway.  Don't recall offhand what the difference between the 50 and 60 was but Mechy's site should tell you.  I use a CF card as my primary "drive", and a second card (an old xD card I had laying around) as my backup partition.  :)

Side thought:  is 2.1 going to correctly support a 3GB partition?
« Last Edit: August 07, 2013, 09:52:41 PM by Oldsmobile_Mike »
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Offline giZmo350Topic starter

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Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2013, 10:14:06 PM »
Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;743960
1: What transfer speed are you getting in SysInfo?

SysInfo states 1,638,400

I noticed that the A590 HDD light will poll for a very long time and then I'll hear the floppy tick and then the A590 HDD will start reading data and boot shortly therafter. I do have Version 7 ROMS (burned).
« Last Edit: August 07, 2013, 10:19:42 PM by gizmo350 »
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Offline Oldsmobile_Mike

Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2013, 10:24:22 PM »
Hrm.  I'm getting about 2,100,000 with mine, but that could be down to the GVP controller being faster than the A590, or the type of card you're using.  I was going to ask the obvious question about if you have fast mem but see from your sig that you do.

If it's polling for a long time I'd go back to checking termination.  Is the card reader your only device?  Do you have the Termination jumper on on the bottom of it?
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Offline giZmo350Topic starter

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Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #4 on: August 07, 2013, 10:38:57 PM »
Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;743964
If it's polling for a long time I'd go back to checking termination.  Is the card reader your only device?  Do you have the Termination jumper on on the bottom of it?

That's a really good thought! NO termination on the PCD-50B. I see a a row of 4 terminations - not sure how to terminate it though.... If I put a jumper on ID0 (looking at the little chart on the unit) it still takes just as long...  any thought there?
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Offline Oldsmobile_Mike

Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #5 on: August 07, 2013, 10:53:10 PM »
Mine has that same block.  ID 0 is to set the SCSI ID.  The pair of pins furthest from that is for termination.  See attached pic.  :)
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Offline giZmo350Topic starter

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Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #6 on: August 07, 2013, 11:09:28 PM »
Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;743971
Mine has that same block.  ID 0 is to set the SCSI ID.  The pair of pins furthest from that is for termination.  See attached pic.  :)

Well, I tried every combination of ID's (nothing on the top term pins) and that seems to have no effect at all - ID seems to do nothing. I tried (like yours) jumper pins 1 and 4 (ID 0 and term) and still does the same thing. Well, maybe Mechy will see this and have an answer - at least it works! Also, 3GB partition seems to work just fine with OS2.1... I installed a few games from floppy...  :razz: Thanks sooo much for you helpfulness Mike! Lemme know if anything else comes to mind...
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Offline mechy

Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #7 on: August 08, 2013, 12:04:58 AM »
Quote from: gizmo350;743976
Well, I tried every combination of ID's (nothing on the top term pins) and that seems to have no effect at all - ID seems to do nothing. I tried (like yours) jumper pins 1 and 4 (ID 0 and term) and still does the same thing. Well, maybe Mechy will see this and have an answer - at least it works! Also, 3GB partition seems to work just fine with OS2.1... I installed a few games from floppy...  :razz: Thanks sooo much for you helpfulness Mike! Lemme know if anything else comes to mind...


The top 2 pins of the row of jumpers farthest away from the scsi connector end is termination-the 3 sets below are scsi ID.. put a jumper block on those 2 top pins to enable termination,which should be enabled if its the only drive on the A590. You need  no other jumpers on the scsi ID pins,which will leave it device #0.

the PCD drives label shows all the settings for ID's/termination right on the drive.

The reason it is taking a long time is the 2091/590 is a slow controller,and although luns work for the most part they aren't handled very intelligently- it takes forever to scan 7 luns per scsi ID of 0-6(so 49 checks approx). A couple ways to possibly fix this are with HDtoolbox.

I am doing this from memory so i may not be overly accurate here- in the hdtoolbox tooltypes you will find and can set these values:
MAX_SCSI_LUN=5    (or 6 of you have a 6 slot reader)
MAX_SCSI_UNIT=1  (this assumes you set the scsi ID to 0 -no jumpers).

save the settings and then run hdtoolbox and save your partitions again so these take effect- i seem to think they are saved in the rdb from memory.

scsi scans from device 0 on up,so finding a drive early may help boot time.

this will give a slight speed up,but if you want access to all the slots,luns will always be slow on the A590. The gvp doesnt suffer from this.

if you want the quickest boot its best to only use the pcmcia slot with cf adapter and turn off luns.

Speeds you will see will vary quite a bit based on scsi controller,cf,sd,sm,etc card used, and filesystem used. FFS is very slow.
The a590 will be good doing 1 to 2MB in speed.

It is doubtful to exceed 4MB/s (although the manufacturer claims 4-5MB/s). i have reached 3.9MB/s using sfs and a transcend class 10 -4GB sd card in the sd slot with the card reader hooked to the cyberstorm MKIII uwscsi(with proper highbyte adapter). No idea why this was slightly faster than the cf slot.

I never recommend using hdinsttools on any amiga drives, this program creates a non standard rdb that is no longer compatible to the C= standard. I spent much time/tech help finding odd troubles users had who bought the scsicard readers because of hdinsttools.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2013, 12:08:17 AM by mechy »
 

Offline mfilos

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Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #8 on: August 08, 2013, 12:21:00 PM »
It actually does 30 blinks before the drive can boot (at least in my case).
Putting the tooltypes didn't seem to fix the boot delay sadly.
Maybe putting an active terminator on the back of the A590 could be a good idea but I have none atm. I might get one from eBay and if I have any difference I'll report back.
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Offline mechy

Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #9 on: August 08, 2013, 02:21:30 PM »
Quote from: mfilos;744000
It actually does 30 blinks before the drive can boot (at least in my case).
Putting the tooltypes didn't seem to fix the boot delay sadly.
Maybe putting an active terminator on the back of the A590 could be a good idea but I have none atm. I might get one from eBay and if I have any difference I'll report back.

My memory may be fuzzy here, my 590 is buried somewhere and i cant find it atm or i would pull it out and test.

the passive termination is fine on the PCD drive. This is not a problem,and nothing to do with termination,its simply a matter of the 590 being very slow and its poor implimentation of lun scanning.
I had sworn setting the tooltypes and resaving the partitions to the rdb would speed it a bit(it still will not be fast like proper scsi controllers) but again i may be confusing it with another controller..

This slow lun scanning doesn't happen on A3000 scsi,warpengine,cyberstorms,gvp stuff etc.

I do wonder if someone could hack the roms to improve the lun scan. It may just be the hardware can't do it faster. I suspect its just down to a case of a old, slow controller that was not very good to begin with.
 

Offline giZmo350Topic starter

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Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #10 on: August 08, 2013, 04:16:07 PM »
Quote from: mechy;743979
I never recommend using hdinsttools on any amiga drives, this program creates a non standard rdb that is no longer compatible to the C= standard. I spent much time/tech help finding odd troubles users had who bought the scsicard readers because of hdinsttools.

Continuing with this today... you're absolutely right about HDInstallTools! After the unit's been on for about 20-30 minutes, I get a lot of software error Gurus! I'm going to start over with HDToolBox... and try some other things. Thanks for all the great help!
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Offline Zac67

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Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #11 on: August 08, 2013, 06:17:53 PM »
1. deactivate LUN support (sw 2 off) - most probably LUNs work anyway, just not for booting from or auto-mounting
2. put your boot drive on ID 0 or 1 and use HDToolbox to mark it as last drive
3. deactivate long spin-up time (sw 3 off) - if your drive doesn't work without it better replace it anyway

This should start booting within 2 or 3 seconds.
 

Offline Oldsmobile_Mike

Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #12 on: August 08, 2013, 06:27:48 PM »
HDToolBox worked great for me with mine.  If you disable the LUN support, won't you also lose the option to use multiple cards (think it will limit you to just the CF in the PCMCIA slot)?

Have you considered doing the 14MHz hack, @Mechy - think that might speed things up for him any?

There's some info on it here, with links to other threads for additional info:

http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?t=19260
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Offline psxphill

Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #13 on: August 08, 2013, 07:40:32 PM »
Quote from: mechy;744007
I do wonder if someone could hack the roms to improve the lun scan. It may just be the hardware can't do it faster. I suspect its just down to a case of a old, slow controller that was not very good to begin with.

The wd33c93 chip was used by a lot of high end hardware, it's very likely that it's a software issue. Whether it's one that can be solved within the confines of AmigaOS is another matter.
 

Offline Zac67

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Re: That useless A590 switch 4!
« Reply #14 on: August 09, 2013, 07:34:16 AM »
Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;744025
HDToolBox worked great for me with mine.  If you disable the LUN support, won't you also lose the option to use multiple cards (think it will limit you to just the CF in the PCMCIA slot)?


As long as you're using mountlists to mount the other cards I don't think it matters. The LUN scan should only affect the automount and autoboot mechanism; when a mountlist entry is used the controller should be looking at that LUN anyway. I'm not 100% sure (ignoring LUNs just because the scan is deactivated would be braindead though) but it doesn't hurt to try.
Back when I had an A590 I did a lot of hot-plugging and such, so what's been scanned during boot shouldn't really matter.