The derpy adventures of RedWarrior...

[RedWarrior]

So, you might remember me from the ongoing saga around trying to get my PCMCIA CF card working on my Amiga 1200.

It's basically a compilation of falling down stairs, hitting my head & stubbing my toes repeatedly- although in Amiga hardware/software terms.

I was described as "Frank Spencer", and someone also described my fumbling saying it "looks like he doesn't know what he's doing"...  Well yes, as a matter of fact I don't.

I don't have a clue what I'm doing. Having to manually enter arcane numbers in fields with weird names is a bit daunting to me. Running anything from a command line gets me at least slightly anxious. Using diskpart, HDTools, HDinsttools and about 3 different text commands on 2 different operating systems to merely format an already obsolete Compact Flash card isn't what I'd call streamlined or user friendly- but that's just me.

Thanks heaps to those who offered assistance, advice, and even derision! ;-) It's a bit embarrassing!

I'm still hoping to one day get my Amigas working, but get the strong impression that this is nowhere near as simple as I imagined it should be. Back in the day I think I edited the occasional start-sequence and felt like I just hacked the matrix.

I'm writing this as a preface to those who might expect me to have a PhD in computer science or work as a programmer or imagine that I should instantly understand what they're talking about when they offer helpful advice... Thank you for helping, but please try to dumb it down a bit for me =)

I got my IDE CF card working eventually... and then there was another mountain to climb. I did get my PCMCIA CF card working eventually... and now there is another mountain to climb... This could go on for a while.

My next posts will be "Why doesn't WHDLoad work like I think it should?" and "why is my A600 refusing to boot after I changed the filesystem to pfs3?" and "how do I make this degrader work?" ...and "why did Commodore do such a lousy job with backwards compatibility? It seems almost spiteful- even inverting the colours on Workbench for no good reason..?"

Not sure if I should quarantine myself to this thread so you know what to expect from me...

Cheers guys. =)

[SACC-guy]

We truly wanted to help...but you did lead us on a merry chase.

Where are you? If you are local to Sacramento, come to the SACC meetings, we will help!

Consider coming to AmiWest2016 (see sacc.org) Meet lots of us who know enough to get in trouble! (smile)

[Thomas]

"why is my A600 refusing to boot after I changed the filesystem to pfs3?"

Because different file systems can't read each others files. Isn't this obvious?

After changing file system in HDToolbox you have to format the partition and restore files from a backup.

[Minuous]

It seems almost spiteful- even inverting the colours on Workbench for no good reason..?"

You mean why were the 2nd and 3rd colour defaults swapped around? The answer is because white on grey (in 2-colour modes) would look atrocious.

[vince_6]

One solution is someone to help you via teamviewer making a WinUAE config same as your amiga with the CF plugged to a card reader.

Then step by step you can see how it's done or even asking questions through the communication of  teamviewer or skype.

When the work is done the CF will boot from your real amiga too (99% after all Amiga is full of surprises :-)

I wish I could help you but my time is limited and will be till mid of September.

[paul1981]

I don't use diskpart, or whatever it's called. My old PC has XP on it, I just use the Computer Management section, then DiskManagement to alter partitions and such. You shouldn't need to do this though under normal circumstances because CF cards of such capacities will be fat32 formatted already, so will work immediately with the Amiga. The reason you had to was because your card was previously used as an Amiga boot disk which was either FFS or PFS formatted.

You can format your CF card on your laptop or PC (PC through a card reader) to fat32, and if your Amiga is setup correctly it should read it.

One thing at a time though is the best way. You should read the Workbench User Guide too as you'd learn the basics there (did you download it from the link I provided?) Everyone has to start from the beginning, and that'd be a good place to start.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

This is great.  Glad you have a good sense of humor about things!   I often get frustrated because I know a good user group (if such things still existed) could get you squared away in a few minutes, rather than 50 messages back-and-forth in a forum.  But at least you're learning!  

[SACC-guy]

You know...SACC is a great user group and still going and going..and go..

[RedWarrior]

Because different file systems can't read each others files. Isn't this obvious?

After changing file system in HDToolbox you have to format the partition and restore files from a backup.

Nothing is obvious to me here... and all the things I think are obvious turn out to be wrong! =D

Here's the situation with my a600: It was sorta kinda working from the last time I sought assistance here (back around 2004!) - though has been deteriorating. Checksum errors galore and even keyboard errors (which might be hardware)... so since having discovered pfs3 on here recently while working on my A1200 I figured it might help my a600...

So in WinUAE I copied everything off my a600 drivecard... did the 12 steps to formatting the card in pfs3... then copied my data back to the drive/card... and now I get a giant error immediately on boot. Could it be the pfs3 thing doesn't work on an a600? I don't think I changed anything else really...

=)

[RedWarrior]

We truly wanted to help...but you did lead us on a merry chase.

Where are you? If you are local to Sacramento, come to the SACC meetings, we will help!

Consider coming to AmiWest2016 (see sacc.org) Meet lots of us who know enough to get in trouble! (smile)

I'm on the opposite side of the world =)

[RedWarrior]

Error 80000004.

My ram isn't feeling privileged enough or something?

Before I unscrew and remove the CF/drive again, perhaps someone could offer a course of action please? Is pfs3 compatible with an a600? All I did was copy my files off with diskmaster... format with pfs3 & repartition... then copy files back. And now it's being a moody little piece of $%^t...

[vince_6]

Can't remember if you own an accelerator but if you don't just stay with ffs.
If you have try sfs, this is what I got on my A600 ACA620.

There is a nice guide here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=la9wW-r10lQ

You must add no recycle command on format line though.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Pfs is compatible with all Amiga's. I assume you're using the latest version of PFS-AIO from Aminet? And the tools from the 53 archive?

You can't just change the file system and expect it to work. After you change the file system you need to repartition the device (with HDtoolbox), format the partitions, and reinstall all your applications.

[paul1981]

Error 80000004.

Before I unscrew and remove the CF/drive again, perhaps someone could offer a course of action please? Is pfs3 compatible with an a600? All I did was copy my files off with diskmaster... format with pfs3 & repartition... then copy files back. And now it's being a moody little piece of $%^t...

The one that has failed (DH2) looks to be your third partition. Is it empty? Looks as though for some reason it's not liking it - I don't know about OS3.9 but it could be a problem with the old 4GB scsi.device perhaps? OS3.9 should take care of that upon booting...so perhaps something wrong with your startup-sequence? More likely though is that you have done something wrong in the partitioning and filesystem installation. You did install PFS onto the RDB yes? If not I would expect a failure like this as the Amiga would be expecting the partition to be FFS formatted and it would instead get presented with a PFS filesystem layout which would surely cause your machine upset. The Amiga has FFS built into ROM - if you'd like to boot from PFS it has to be installed on the RDB.

[RedWarrior]

I reformatted within WINUAE and DH2: was the first available number. They're just drive names though, right? It was a multi-step process of entering Dostypes and all that weird stuff again, but I think I nailed it.... it looked fine in Winuae.

In terms of "re-installing" my old programs- I have no idea what that person is talking about. The beauty of Amiga, in my experience, is you can just copy a bunch of files for a given program, and that's all it needs. (When it works at all, of course)

So, DH2 is my boot partition, with all my old stuff from 25 years ago on it... Workbench 2.2? Definitely not 3.x

The reason I thought I should try a different file system is that last time I was getting a heap of checksum errors popping up...

I don't know what an RDB is, by the way.

I'm pretty confident I installed pfs correctly and formatted properly. It worked for my 1200... eventually.


Can I get a definitive yes or no- is pfs3 compatible with an Amiga 2.x A600?

Cheers guys =)