Changed Roms from Cloanto 3.X to 3.1 Can Only See Partitions with Emergency Disk HELP

[magnetic]

Hey guys kind of an odd issue. I had the Cloanto 3.9 "3.x" Roms in my A4000 and I removed them and installed the 40.68 original commodore 3.1 roms instead. Whats odd is that my hardrive wont show the partitions and says they are Non Dos. However, when I boot from the Emergency Floppy with Amiga OS 3.9 CD all the partitions can be seen and accessed. Anyone can help me with this. I think it has something do with the skipromupdates or something but not sure. Any help is appreciated I dont want to install from scratch again as the system is pretty configured. Thanks

btw the reason I "downgraded" from the 3.x roms to 3.1 roms was due to the fact that floppy drives dont work with them installed. Weird right? External floppy wont work either. With regular 3.1 roms all ok with floppy drives.

[guest11527]

Whats odd is that my hardrive wont show the partitions and says they are Non Dos. However, when I boot from the Emergency Floppy with Amiga OS 3.9 CD all the partitions can be seen and accessed.

Most likely because these partitions are behind the 4GB barrier. They will become visible once SetPatch installed the NSDPatch.

[magnetic]

Most likely because these partitions are behind the 4GB barrier. They will become visible once SetPatch installed the NSDPatch.

Hi Thomas. Thanks. What do I have to do to correct it please?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Check the version of SetPatch installed, and if it's skipping anything you need?

Might not hurt to also try a "version full scsi.device" when booting off the 3.9 ERD vs when booting off your DH0: partition.

[Castellen]

the reason I "downgraded" from the 3.x roms to 3.1 roms was due to the fact that floppy drives dont work with them installed. Weird right? External floppy wont work either. With regular 3.1 roms all ok with floppy drives.

There's an exec interrupt bug in v45.061 that breaks floppy drive operation.  It's fixed in v45.064 which should be available very soon if not already.

Your ROMs should be under warranty, so arrange to return them to your vendor and I'd expect they should be able to re-write/replace them at no cost.

[duga]

There's an exec interrupt bug in v45.061 that breaks floppy drive operation.  It's fixed in v45.064 which should be available very soon if not already.

Your ROMs should be under warranty, so arrange to return them to your vendor and I'd expect they should be able to re-write/replace them at no cost.

Interesting. Source?

[Castellen]

Interesting. Source?

I work with the software developer doing the recent ROM development work for Cloanto, specifically I was doing some hardware compatibility testing on v45.064.  Not sure how publicised this bug causing intermittent floppy operation is, but it's been around a bit over a year and observed by a number of users.

And Cloanto now list v45.064 as the current version, they also state that the floppy interrupt problem is fixed in this version.

[magnetic]

Guys I got rid of the roms. So how do I get my drive to work with the 3.1 roms plz

[duga]

I work with the software developer doing the recent ROM development work for Cloanto, specifically I was doing some hardware compatibility testing on v45.064.  Not sure how publicised this bug causing intermittent floppy operation is, but it's been around a bit over a year and observed by a number of users.

And Cloanto now list v45.064 as the current version, they also state that the floppy interrupt problem is fixed in this version.

Updated 2016-10-05, nice!

I have the ROM 3.X in an A600 (with ACA620) and can't remember any floppy drive problems, so either I'm lucky or A600 systems aren't affected at all.

[Castellen]

Guys I got rid of the roms. So how do I get my drive to work with the 3.1 roms plz

As Thomas mentioned, Setpatch needs to install updates for all of the >4GB disk to be seen.  The temporary solution until you get your ROM sorted out would be to let the system start from the emergency boot floppy disk to install the updated ROM so that you can see the HD partitions.

If you alter S:startup-sequence as suggested by Cloanto then Setpatch will only install ROM updates if you're running less than the v45.xx ROM.  So the full process would be:
1. Boot from floppy, let it (Setpatch) install the OS3.9 modules in memory followed by automatic reboot
2. Your HD and boot partition is now visible
3. Enter early startup and manually select your boot partition if required, eject the emergency boot floppy disk so it doesn't try booting from the OS3.9 CD
4. When it boots from HD, Setpatch will install the BB2 updates if they aren't included on the ROM update on the emergency boot floppy. Your system should boot and work normally until you power off.


Ideally your boot partition needs to be in the first 4GB of the disk and be under 1GB in size so that it's seen by standard OS3.1, therefore the OS3.9 ROM updates can be applied from the boot partition at startup, unlike the situation you're in now where you can't see any partitions on startup.  The details of this are well documented elsewhere.

[magnetic]

Castellen
I have done as you stated and it worked im able to see the partitions on reboot from the emergncy floppy. However, how do I fix the partitions so i can boot normally from them. (I am NOT changing from the 3.1 40.68 commodore roms) Thank you

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Maybe I missed it, but how big are your partitions?  Especially the first one?

[SnkBitten]

First off your first partition has to be less than 4 GB in size so that the scsi.device in ROM can see it to boot.  Then in the startup-sequence you can have LoadModule load the latest scsi.device so that when the the Amiga warm reboots during startup the new scsi.device will be used allowing you to see your HD properly and use larger partitions.

You need the latest scsi.device copied to your DEVS: folder, you need the latest loadmodule copied to your C: folder and then you need to edit your startup-sequence to add above the Setpatch line
 
C:LoadModule AUTO NOREBOOT

and edit the setpatch line
C:Setpatch SKIPROMMODULES scsi.device QUIET

[Castellen]

As above, but more to the point, the boot partition has to be in the first 4GB of the disk for it to be visible by OS3.1.

The general rule of thumb is to create a 'System' partition as the very first one (left hand side of HDtoolbox), a size of 200MB is generally what I use.  This partition will be visible to OS 3.1 at power on.  Install OS3.9 + updates on this partition.  When the system boots, Setpatch will load the necessary OS3.9 modules into memory and reboot.  Then after reboot the system will see all partitions on the disk, plus will proceed to boot normally into WB3.9.



Another point not mentioned is if you have a more modern IDE disk which potentially uses LBA48 addressing only, it won't be readable by the OS3.1 scsi.device.  So without being able to access the disk, you won't be able to read the new scsi.device from that same disk.

The way around this chicken and egg situation is to use a different boot device that OS 3.1 can see, e.g. a 1GB compact flash card and suitable adapter.

The least amount of messing around for you is to simply sort out the ROMs to use v45.064.  Your vendor should be able to do this at no cost if the ROMs are under warranty.

Or they might agree to supplying you a binary of v45.064 and if you have access to a UV eraser and EPROM programmer, you can update the ROMs yourself.

[Pat the Cat]

(I am NOT changing from the 3.1 40.68 commodore roms) Thank you

Technically speaking, you don't have to open up and change ROMs. You can Softkick with a ROM image.

If you have already paid for a 3.9 ROM, this is a legal option. Unfortunately, somebody appears to have wiped softkickers from Aminet. MMU.Library utilities are only available there now. 32 bit memory only, must have MMU capable CPU fitted.

Come to think of it, Aminet seems to have been carefully pruned over the years. Or maybe it's just a temporary glitch.

(I don't think that last idea is at all feasible, judging from what I have observed. Looks more like a subtle Amiga ROM takeover bid).