Problems reading Amiga CF cards on PC

[AmigaBruno]

I'm trying to install some WHDload games and demos on a CF card which has WHDload pre installed, but my main problem with two cards is just reading them on a PC with a USB CF card reader.

I have used various emulators with CF cards, but I'm worried in case one or another emulator won't read a CF card. I most recently used FS-UAE under Linux on a PC I built which only has Linux Mint 17.1 %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8220;Rebecca%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!8221; installed.

I'm using Workbench 3.1, while Oldsmobile_Mike is using 3.9. I hope this process works exactly the same way.

My USB CF card reader didn't seem to work anymore, after trying two CF cards, although I only tried them under FS-UAE in Linux, so I bought a new USB CF card reader and a PCMCIA CF card reader from eBay just to make absolutely sure I can get files onto my CF card. Perhaps I should buy another CF card as well just for copying files from a PC to an Amiga CF hard drive without removing it. I also hope to read my data from a CF card which will no longer boot or even be recognised on my A1200.

I also hope all this will enable to finally transfer my artwork onto the Internet. So far, it's all been stuck on Amiga formatted floppy disks and CF cards. I've never connected my Amigas to the Internet, because I feel that if I did, then they could just become more Internet connected terminals, then I might use them for that a large part of the time. When I used Amigas as my only computers, I used to connect to BBSs some of the time, but I never upgraded enough to connect to the Internet. I used to visit cybercafe's where I saved webpages and files to MS-DOS formatted floppy disks, then read them back on my Amiga with CrossDOS, but now I can't even remember how to use CrossDOS anymore! Also, I don't currently have a PC with a floppy drive, but I do own one with a motherboard that supports a floppy drive. USB drives aren't 100% compatible and probably wouldn't work for the purpose of reading DSDD MS-DOS format disks created on an Amiga, while an Amiga floppy drive may not be able to read DSDD MS-DOS disks formatted on a USB drive either.

As for my latest news, a new USB CF card reader has recently arrived. I inserted my old CF card which I can no longer boot my A1200 from and the A1200 can't even detect it, then I plugged it into a Pentium 4 HT CPU computer running Linux Mint 17.1 "Rebecca".

I found I got different readings for what the device or card was called depending on which USB port I plugged it into. I only had the FS-UAE emulator and couldn't find another emulator to download. I found that FS-UAE recognised it but wouldn't boot from it, default to a floppy df0:. It showed the card as about 4Gb and half full, but didn't show any files on it, no matter how I changed the options such as Show all files, as Icons, etc.

I also tried under the Linux Mint desktop and the formatter/partitioning tool GParted. It appeared as a 2.1Gb device on the desktop, while GParted said something like 2Gb, but 4Gb used and that the format was FAT32, but I had formatted this card some time ago as Amiga FFS with 3 or 4 partitions. I don't know what this all means, but it doesn't encourage me to try reading my new card from Amigakit, which was preformatted with WHDload installed. All I did with this card before was trying to read it in a USB CF card reader which has worked in the past. It couldn't read it, so I tried to plug it back into my A1200 and bent a pin on the CF IDE adaptor. This was sorted out by Amigakit at the recent 30th Anniversary event in Peterborough. I also bought a new CF card and adaptor from Amigakit, which is preformatted with WHDload and I I hope to be able to read it, but I'm very worried that as soon as I try to read it in my new USB CF card reader it will get corrupted, then require reformatting and I'll be back to square one.

I hope someone can suggest what I can try next with my old CF card.

[paul1981]

I know with WinUAE, in the drive section there is a tick box labelled 'Mount removeable drives' or something (ie. memory sticks etc) and when using a USB card reader I believe the system see's them as such, and doesn't see them as IDE like devices like a hard disk. So for this reason you wouldn't be able to mount the CF as a real Amiga hard disk partition. Not sure if this helps you any, but it's perhaps best if we try and tackle one problem at a time as there's an awful lot of information in your post.

[AmigaBruno]

So, I suppose I should try using another PC running WinUAE instead of FS-UAE under Linux. I'm not sure what differences there are between FS-UAE and WinUAE, though.

I've just found out that WinUAE runs under Linux using WINE so this means I've got two PCs I can try it on.

[AmigaBruno]

GOOD NEWS! I have managed to read and boot up from my latest CF card (bought from Amigakit at the Amiga 30th event in Peterborough) on a desktop PC using WinUAE running under Windows XP!

The bad news is that this particular PC kept turning itself off or crashing, even after I defragmented the hard drive and ran some software by Ashampoo to delete unnecessary or suspicious files. I think this may be a problem with the mains power lead itself and where I had positioned this desktop PC, which I can soon check.

A bigger problem is that when clicking on the button to add hard drives after already adding the CF card, I got an error message that no RDB formatted or empty hard drives could be found, so I'll have to find out what to do next, otherwise I don't see how to copy anything onto my CF card. I may have to just Add Partition, but I thought I'd tried that as well.

As for my older CF card, it came up on a list as something like UNK 3.7Gb, instead of RDB 3.7Gb, so any recent data on it may be lost forever. I wonder what software I could use to try and retrieve it.

I think the fundamental reason for all these problems is because WHDload was probably originally created to work with floppy disks and IDE or SCSI hard drives.

I'll continue to work on this, but if I still haven't got at least one demo or game running under WHDload this Sunday night August 30, BST (GMT+1 hour), then I'll give up and buy a CF card which will probably be 8Gb with lots of demos and games pre installed under WHDload. I hope it won't be full up, because then I'll have to remove and replace it whenever I want to do anything except run demos or games. A solution to this would be an adaptor which allows two CF cards to be plugged in at the same time, but I haven't seen any.

[paul1981]

A bigger problem is that when clicking on the button to add hard drives after already adding the CF card, I got an error message that no RDB formatted or empty hard drives could be found, so I'll have to find out what to do next, otherwise I don't see how to copy anything onto my CF card. I may have to just Add Partition, but I thought I'd tried that as well.

Are you talking about HardDriveToolBox here or WinUAE?

WinUAE will not let you add hard drives (or CF hard drives) on a device level that are already partitioned with non-amiga partitions. This is to protect the user from accidentally formatting or re-partitioning existing good drives through the emulation (ie HDToolBox on the Amiga).

[AmigaBruno]

OK then, I'll try using HDToolbox to recover data from the older CF card.

As for my progress with WinUAE on a PC running Windows XP, since tuning up that system using Ashampoo Winoptimizer and Ashampoo anti virus software, it now seems to have made things even more difficult so the PC crashes even more often when I run WinUAE on it. Actually, I can hardly run WinUAE on it at all now. There's no point paying for a Windows 7 licence in the hope that will fix it. I think my money would be better spent on a CF card with all demos and games pre installed.

I think my next step will be to try again with FS-UAE and WinUAE under Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca. There is another version of UAE for Linux, but it may not be possible to download or install it under Linux Mint.

I can copy any ADF disks or files from ADF disks except NDOS from my Gotek drive onto my CF card when it's plugged into my A1200, but so far I've never actually made up an ADF file and transferred it successfully. I recently made a blank ADF image and copied files onto it under FS-UAE. The ADF contents survived ejections and reboots, but after transferring it to my Gotek drive I found it was empty!

[AmigaBruno]

Good news! I've just managed to mount a Windows Downloads directory under WinUAE, then boot into Workbench from floppy ADF images!!

The bad news is that my system is still quite unstable and Ashampoo software was warning me about things that WinUAE was doing.

I had a look round my Windows Downloads directory under WinUAE, but after a little while, when I was using Windows Explorer or Chrome, my Windows XP PC crashed and rebooted yet again!

I don't want to let this beat me, so I'm going to keep trying for another three days now. I've found out where I can buy an 8Gb CF card with WHDload demos and games installed, which also has 3Gb of space free, so that should enable me to install lots of applications and save data from them as well.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Ashampoo software was warning me about things that WinUAE was doing.

Ashampoo sounds like some rubbish software.  Just my .02 cents.  :lol:

[Ral-Clan]

It's difficult to follow what you're doing, but it sounds like you're somehow corrupting your CF cards by partitioning them or formatting them improperly or with the wrong filesystems.

UNK 3.7GB  probably means unknown file system.

[paul1981]

Ashampoo sounds like some rubbish software.  Just my .02 cents.  :lol:

Surprisingly there software is quite good, although it's not free.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Surprisingly there software is quite good, although it's not free.

It must be a UK thing.  Over here in the US I've never heard of it.  We use CCleaner on this side of the pond.  

[paul1981]

It must be a UK thing.  Over here in the US I've never heard of it.  We use CCleaner on this side of the pond.  

Yes, but is it anti-dandruff?

[PanterHZ]

AmigaBruno, with all the problems you seem to be having, maybe you should try a different approach instead?

Here  is my suggestion: Get a CF card which works with your Amiga, put it in  there, and let it stay in your Amiga. Now get another CF card, but don't  do anything to it, just let it stay FAT formatted. Then you can use  this for transferring files from the PC (via card reader) and to your  Amiga (via CF-PCMCIA adapter).

[AmigaBruno]

It's difficult to follow what you're doing, but it sounds like you're somehow corrupting your CF cards by partitioning them or formatting them improperly or with the wrong filesystems.

UNK 3.7GB  probably means unknown file system.

What happened was that I removed an old CF card from my A1200, then plugged it into a USB CF card reader, which I plugged into a PC. It refused to read this card. I put it back into my Amiga IDE adaptor, but the adaptor got damaged in the process. This was sorted out by Amigakit and it started working again, but then stopped working again and became unbootable.

I now want to try and salvage all the data on it.

[AmigaBruno]

AmigaBruno, with all the problems you seem to be having, maybe you should try a different approach instead?

Here  is my suggestion: Get a CF card which works with your Amiga, put it in  there, and let it stay in your Amiga. Now get another CF card, but don't  do anything to it, just let it stay FAT formatted. Then you can use  this for transferring files from the PC (via card reader) and to your  Amiga (via CF-PCMCIA adapter).

This is what I plan to do soon. I've already got a PCMCIA CF card reader, but I need to transfer some files from Aminet onto my Amiga CF card hard drive first, otherwise it can't use it. After this, I may occasionally want to use more than one CF card as a hard drive, so the best way of doing that would be to use a cable with more than one mini IDE connector on it, but I don't know if there are any available.