PFS3 SD card Setup

[LuigiThirty]

I have an A2000 with a GVP 030 SCSI host, a SCSI2SD and 4GB SD card and I'm trying to get PFS set up. I have two 1.8GB partitions on it. I connected the SD card to my PC and loaded it with WinUAE, partitioned it with the PFS3 filesystem, and formatted the partitions I made with pfsformat, following the instructions here. I installed Workbench on it and I can boot my Amiga with the SD card.

The problem comes when I try to do anything on the drive though. If I try extracting an .lha file, I get PFS-III error requesters that say Write Error 0 counting up every 64 sectors/32KB. Tiny files (like saving a new script with ed) work fine. After the write errors I get block ID errors on that volume when I try opening any directories until I reboot. pfsdoctor can't find anything wrong with the volume. What am I doing wrong here?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Ah, the classic MaxTransfer issue.  What do you have that value set to in HDToolbox?

[LuigiThirty]

MaxTransfer is 0x1FE00 like in the PFS3 walkthrough there. Can I lower it without having to reformat?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

MaxTransfer is 0x1FE00 like in the PFS3 walkthrough there. Can I lower it without having to reformat?

You may want to post a screenshot of all your settings.  SCSI "supposedly" doesn't have the same issues as A1200/A4000 onboard IDE, but I noticed in my A2000 that I also had problems when cranking it up too high (I have a similar config to yours - SD, CF, and xD cards using a SCSI card reader and PFS).

You're using the latest version of PFS3-AIO from Aminet?  What brand of SD card?

Yes, you can change MaxTransfer without a reformat.

[LuigiThirty]

HDToolbox said I'd lose all my data if I changed it was why I asked. The settings should all be the same as on the page but I'll double check when I get home.

I'm using PFS3-AIO 2.3, the one on AmiNet. The SD card is a standard 4GB Sandisk that's brand new.

It's also got a SCSI CD-RW drive and a fried floppy drive if that matters. (I have a Gotek in my ST that I'll probably throw in there.)

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

How many buffers?

[LuigiThirty]

My startup-sequence adds 200 buffers to DH0: and DH1:. I've got 12MB of 32-bit RAM and 6MB of fast RAM.

[LuigiThirty]

Here's my file system from the HDToolbox setup. (I tried lowering Maxtransfer to 0xFE00 but it didn't help other than lowering how much was transferred between errors...)

http://i.imgur.com/XsMVTxn.jpg

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Ah-ha! It looks like you have a character wrong in your identifier field. Fixing this will also correct it from saying "PDS\03" to "PFS\03".

Also, buffers should be added through HDtoolbox not S-S. See attached screenshots. Sorry for poor quality, I just fired up my A500 and pointed my phone at the screen.

[LuigiThirty]

It looks like that fixed it! I guess my hardware doesn't like PDS\03. I also changed it to add the buffers through HDToolbox. Thanks!

Now if I could get a fancy desktop on my machine like yours there I'd be set.

[guest11527]

SCSI "supposedly" doesn't have the same issues as A1200/A4000 onboard IDE, but I noticed in my A2000 that I also had problems when cranking it up too high (I have a similar config to yours - SD, CF, and xD cards using a SCSI card reader and PFS).

No, SCSI doesn't have this issue, but the SD-Card, or rather the SCSI2SD might. It would not surprise me, at least. If this converter just blindly transfers SCSI commands to IDE commands to the SD side of it, then such problems will appear.

Actually, the problem is less the Amiga side of it, but rather the IDE interface.

[mindprober]

Hijacking this thread a bit....my problem does not entirely match.

I decided my PAL A1200 (stock '020, zero FAST RAM) will become a dedicated game machine. I have a spare 16GB SanDisk CF card available since I upgraded another machine to a larger card.

Since the A1200 will be modestly spec'd, I will keeping the OS to v3.1. I will be throwing everything on it WHDLoad-wise, including demos so I most of the space will be used but will still have a lot of breathing room.

I prepped the card using WinUAE as I have done successfully in the past. I used the PFS3 handler for the file system and did the scsi.device patch to cover the large drive size. My partitions are: dh0 2gb, dh1 6gb and dh2 8gb. Everything went smoothly and I even tested the system successfully by matching the specs of the stock A1200. I ended up with ~700k chip ram and 0 fast ram with the ClassicWB lite install. Of course, not much in WHDLoad will work with zero fast RAM and I expected that. I plan to pick up a cheapy RAM expansion soon.

When all was done, I popped the CF card in the A1200 and fired it up. The system booted but then I was greeted with an insert volume "Work" message. Ehh?  The system booted fine from the dh0, but my other two partitions are not recognized! They show up as non-dos on the Workbench. I loaded up HDTools and can clearly see the other two partitions and their correct partition sizes but they are not mounting.

I returned the cf card to WinUAE and all is well again.

So, how do the two systems differ? Well, I have Kickstart 3.0 ROMs in the real A1200 but I do not think that matters with PFS3. The compact flash adapter might be questionable though. It is one of those all-in-one right-angle units that just sits on top of the IDE header (no ribbon cable). I became aware that some CF cards are not recognizable with this adapter on a cold boot. If a soft-reset is done, the system boots fine. This is not quite what I am seeing though. It boots from DH0 on a cold start OK but not mounting all partitions. If the adapter were to blame, I do not think it would boot dh0.

I suppose I could pull the CF adapter from my other A1200 (that one uses a cable) but I really don't want to pull that system apart right now.

Is there something else to blame here or should I hunt down a better adapter?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Is there something else to blame here or should I hunt down a better adapter?

I would blame ClassicWB here, but that's just 'cause I think it's rubbish. :lol:

Also, your DH0: partition is too big.  I would keep it under 500MB for full compatibility with older applications.  Do you really need 2GB SYS: ?

Third thought: fast ram is cheap.  Add one of those generic "coprocessor+ram" cards will nearly double the speed of your machine.  Again, seems like a "no brainer" to me, but your budget may say otherwise.  

Fourth thought: download the full PFS 5.3 package from Aminet and format the remaining partitions on the Amiga with the pfsformat command.  Do they work if you do that?

[mindprober]

Fourth thought sounds good.   I will give that a try.

Still, why would it work under WinUAE but not the real thing?

[mindprober]

Yeah, something is not quite right here...

The card was put back into the A1200. The pfsformat returns an "Initializing disk..." message and then nothing. It should have finished in a few seconds. I can still move my mouse cursor but cannot open any volumes. Like the whole IDE bus just locked up. Here is the command I entered:

pfsformat drive DH1: name "Work" quick noicons fnsize=107

I even tried to do the DOS Format within the HDInstTools program. It too locked up.

I know my CF card is okay as it works great in WinUAE and it came from another A1200 using a different adapter. It was prepped in OS 3.9 before.

I think I will try finding another one of the same adapters.