HD Installation Problems

[Python15]

I have an 18.6 Gb 2.5" HD I want to put into my A1200. My problem is that my HD Toolbox and HD Install floppy has corrupted down the years. Is there a way I can install WB3.1 onto this HD via WinUAE. I've ran WinUAE up and it sees the drive but when I try to partition/format the drive it shows no HD. I must add that it has been a looong number of years since I fired this machine up and I've forgotten nearly everything I ever new about Amiga's (which wasn't much anyways) but would love to show my Grandkids what they're mum's and dad's used to play with. If it can be done would there be some sort of tutorial somewhere? Thanks in advance.

[kolla]

Yes, there are a number of video tutorials on this on youtube, typically for installing to a CF card, but if you put the disk in a USB tray, there is really no difference

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=install+CF+card+Amiga

[Python15]

Wow, thanks for the rapid response, I shall have a look right away!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Your problem is going to be if you want to use the full capacity of the 18.6GB of available space.  3.1 doesn't support drives that large by default (you'll generally be limited to about 4GB).  There's various methods of hacking and patching 3.1 to use large capacity drives, which vary pretty widely depending on controller, file system, version of the operating system, etc.  It's not hard and instructions exist all over the forums (just a google search away!).

My personal opinion is to use 3.9 instead, but an easier method, if you just want something simple, might be to get a CF card and just reinstall 3.1 fresh.  OS disks and CF adapters are dirt-cheap and will save you a lot of headache.

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1211

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=883

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1214

[Python15]

Thanks for the info guys, I've managed to get WB3.1 loaded and running but still on the PC. Next step is Amiga 1200 surgery. I guess my next headache will be getting software ported from PC to Amiga once the HD is fitted.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Thanks for the info guys, I've managed to get WB3.1 loaded and running but still on the PC. Next step is Amiga 1200 surgery. I guess my next headache will be getting software ported from PC to Amiga once the HD is fitted.

Lots of options for this, too.  Various serial & parallel transfer methods, adding a USB solution to the 1200, probably the easiest (IMHO) would be a Fat95-formatted CF card with adapter in the PCMCIA slot.  Have fun!  

[goldfish]

Hi

I would recomend one of these see below
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=24_78&products_id=883

[Python15]

Thanks guys, you've given me a lot to think about! I wish it would all come flooding back instead of just trickling! Guess that's old age! I vaguely remember using something called Parnet in the 90's but I believe this was Amiga to Amiga. Open to correction. Now that I come to think of it I think I have an old A500 in the garage somewhere. Must go have a look.

[rvo_nl]

the a1200 can very easily be expanded with an IDE cdrom drive. you will just need to find such a drive and get the cables from amigakit or vesalia. after that you can read cdroms burned on your pc. MUCH faster than parnet or serial.

[Python15]

OK now, a few questions. I've had the hard drive in the Amiga and everything was going swimmingly. Then the machine had one of those software errors during a transfer of data and rebooted. When it came back on line all the partitions were NDOS. I must add that the drive was partitioned as HD0 @ 400Mb, HD1 @ 1Gb and the rest of the drive partitioned in just under 4Gb lots (18 Gb drive). Is this not acceptable? Should it be just the two partitions not greater than 4Gb? I also tried slaveing in a DVD/CD ROM drive but didn't really know what I was doing with AmiCDROM 1.5, just too many variables I couldn't answer so was just guessing. I also saw a sweet mod with what looked like a laptop DVD drive which ejected out the back of the machine. Looked real neat! Any advice very welcome!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

What file system? Didn't you read my comment above about not using more than 4gb with 3.1?

[Pat the Cat]

OK now, a few questions. I've had the hard drive  in the Amiga and everything was going swimmingly. Then the machine had  one of those software errors during a transfer of data and rebooted.  When it came back on line all the partitions were NDOS. I must add that  the drive was partitioned as HD0 @ 400Mb, HD1 @ 1Gb and the rest of the  drive partitioned in just under 4Gb lots (18 Gb drive). Is this not  acceptable? Should it be just the two partitions not greater than 4Gb? I  also tried slaveing in a DVD/CD ROM drive but didn't really know what I  was doing with AmiCDROM 1.5, just too many variables I couldn't answer  so was just guessing. I also saw a sweet mod with what looked like a  laptop DVD drive which ejected out the back of the machine. Looked real  neat! Any advice very welcome!

From what I remember of a "true" Amiga partition, you are best off just  sticking with 1 max 4gb partition. A little less does no real harm.

The reason is for the legacy hardware, scsi.device eats RAM up with  directory entries, amongst others. One of the options is directory  caching on file systems, introduced in WB 3 if I remember correctly. If  you have a very large partition with billions of little files on it, the  Amiga grinds to a halt trying to cache it all.

AmigaDOS was designed and evolved as a 32 bit max operating system, and  while various hacks and mods do let you use big drives and partitions,  they all eat resources, which are sometimes scarce in emulators and  always in legacy hardware.

IIRC, there were also a couple useful  hacks from the period, which did things like write files to a dummy  name, then alter the original to a backup, then alter the dummy to the  original. That way, a software failure during a write does not trash  your whole hard drive partition. I've no idea if these are still  widespread or in use on the Amiga, or were perhaps included on later  versions than 3.1 of AmigaDOS, but you do get similar "bulletproof"  characteristics from current Linux based operating systems. Turn them  off during a write operation, they don't care, and startup as normal  when power is back on.

[Thomas]

I must add that the drive was partitioned as HD0 @ 400Mb, HD1 @ 1Gb and the rest of the drive partitioned in just under 4Gb lots (18 Gb drive). Is this not acceptable? Should it be just the two partitions not greater than 4Gb?

AmigaOS has a 4GB limit and the limit applies to the harddrive, not to partitions. Partitions can be as large as they fit into the harddrive limits. But with standard drivers the harddrive may not be larger than 4GB.

At each 4GB border the offset wraps around to 0 and the data is actually written to somewhere inside the first 4GB of the drive. So every partition which is outside the first 4GB area overwrites data within the first 4GB. That's what happened to you.

To use more than 4GB you need a file system which supports some new API (either NSD or TD64) and a device driver which offers this new API.

To check if your OS is ready for harddrives >4GB you can use this program: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de/downloads/hddreport.lha
The "check" column in the overview tells you if a partition is safe to be written to.

[rvo_nl]

OK now, a few questions. I've had the hard drive in the Amiga and everything was going swimmingly. Then the machine had one of those software errors during a transfer of data and rebooted. When it came back on line all the partitions were NDOS. I must add that the drive was partitioned as HD0 @ 400Mb, HD1 @ 1Gb and the rest of the drive partitioned in just under 4Gb lots (18 Gb drive). Is this not acceptable? Should it be just the two partitions not greater than 4Gb? I also tried slaveing in a DVD/CD ROM drive but didn't really know what I was doing with AmiCDROM 1.5, just too many variables I couldn't answer so was just guessing. I also saw a sweet mod with what looked like a laptop DVD drive which ejected out the back of the machine. Looked real neat! Any advice very welcome!

Without a hack for both the filesystem (FFS) and the device driver (scsi.device) you will run into trouble copying anything beyond the first 4gb of your drive. Hardware devices like the Idefix patch the device driver on the fly, software solutions will perform an extra reboot when starting your Amiga from cold. As for the filesystem, most popular would be to use SFS, though some will recommend PFS3 (which, by exception, does not need an updated scsi.device).

The best option IMO would be to install OS3.9 since it updates the device driver (it uses a new software kickstart that does that extra reboot) and replace FFS with SFS 1.84. This does restrict you to put OS3.9 within the first 4Gb of your hard drive though. If you dont want this, you will  need to fiddle around with a boot up partition. You should also know that any software that does low level access to your hard drive (ie pc and mac emulators, old tools like disksalv etc) will expect a drive with  max capacity of 4Gb.

As for your CD-Rom drive, there are a handful of filesystems you can use to access the drive, I recommend you read the documentation found within these packages to find out how to install it. You can transfer those packages to your Amiga using a 720Kb formatted pc floppy disk and Crossdos found within Workbench 3.1. I recommend looking into AsimCDFS. Good luck.

[zipper]

One of the options is directory  caching on file systems, introduced in WB 3 if I remember correctly. If  you have a very large partition with billions of little files on it, the  Amiga grinds to a halt trying to cache it all.

Which was meant for floppies afaik. I remember I once created a HDD boot partition unintentionally with FFS-DC on OS 3.9 and it did continuously show read errors until I found the culprit to be that filesystem. Changing it to  FFS stopped the errors immediately.