VA2000 SD Card Formatting Issue

[madgrizzle]

Has anyone with a VA2000 successfully formatted a SD card?  I followed the instructions, mounted the drive, and then issued:

Format drive sd0: name "sdcard" quick

and it comes back with:

Initializing disk...
Format Failure: seek failure

The only difference between my mountlist and the one in the instructions is that I used:

FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem

Interestingly enough, I get the same result W/O a SD card installed, so it suggests it isn't detecting the card.

Thanks.

John

[Matt_H]

What was the file system line in the original mountlist? Give that a try first. If it's still not cooperating then I would attribute your problem to beta buggy-ness.

[madgrizzle]

pfs, which I don't have.  I get a different response if I don't do a quick format.. something like "formatting sector 0 / 1000" (something like that) and it doesn't seem to move to sector 1.  I read somewhere that you should always use quick format for sd cards.

I haven't gotten a response from the developer so I am wondering if my format syntax is good.

[Thomas]

This is the mountlist from the instructions:

Code: [Select]


SD0:
   Device = mntsd.device
   Unit = 0
   Flags = 1
   Surfaces = 1                    <- Adjust to the number of Gigabytes you
   BlocksPerTrack = 1024              want to use on the card
   Reserved = 2
   Interleave = 0
   LowCyl = 2
   HighCyl = 1024
   Buffers = 32
   GlobVec = -1
   BufMemType = 1
   Mask = 0xFFFFFFFE
   MaxTransfer = 0x7FFFFFFF
   FileSystem = L:pfs3            <- Change to your filesystem of choice
   StackSize = 8192
   Mount = 1
#                                 <- Don't forget the closing hash mark


It is for a 512 MB card. How large is your card?

Also try to add

DosType = 0x444f5303

[madgrizzle]

I first tried a 32 GB card and when it didn't work, I figured the problem might be the card size.  So I ordered a 4 GB card and got the same results.

My file is identical to the one you posted, except FileType=L:FastFileSystem since I don't have pfs.  I first tried Surfaces = 4 but that didn't work so I tried Surfaces = 1 and it still doesn't work.  I assumed from the instructions it was for a 1 GB SD card (the arrow said to adjust surfaces to the number of GB you want to use).

Will try your suggestion.

[madgrizzle]

No luck, but I did get an "*" instead of a seek failure.  I left it there over an hour and still all I had was a "*".  Then power glitched at the house and the Amiga rebooted.  I wonder if the format command is locking up after the "*" is on the screen.  I issued the command again but got the seek failure the second time.  I find that a number of programs crash (e.g., screenmode) whenever I exit them.  Some other programs don't even run without crashing.  So I'm not sure if its something with my install rather than the sd card port.  I posted an issue on GitHub.. maybe will get a response.  I wish there was a way to check to see if the SD card is recognized as being inserted by the VA2000.

[Thomas]

I wish there was a way to check to see if the SD card is recognized as being inserted by the VA2000.

Try this after mount SD0: http://thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de/downloads/hddreport.lha

since I don't have pfs

You can get it from there: http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/PFS3_53

[madgrizzle]

Thanks, I'll try it out this weekend.  If the CD drive and OS3.9 CD converge upon my house via USPS today, then I'll try it using pfs this weekend (right now, its a pain to get things onto the Amiga 2000.  I don't have room in my "office" to have both the Amiga and the old XP computer with floppy out at the same time.)

[Pat the Cat]

All good responses. However, AFAIK you generally can't format an Amiga partition until you've used HDToolbox to change the partition data and set an RDB on the drive, with the correct driver.device being used to access the drive. mntsd.device seems to be right one, that has to be in devs:

The instructions are a little bit weird, I would just save the file as "SD0" rather than "mountlist". That approach of having all different mountable devices in one text file called "mountlist" went out with WB 1.3.

Typically drives that don't work that way have their own utils and don't use standard format command.

Also be aware there was apparently release of new firmware for the VA2000 on the day you posted. https://www.generationamiga.com/2017/07/07/new-drivers-and-firmware-released-for-mnt-va2000/

The actual homepage gives an earlier release date in late June this year, but part of that does increase SD card compatibility, still marked as beta.

http://mntmn.com/va2000/

It might be worth updating before you do Thomas' test on the drive.

I also suspect your Maxtransfer is set too high (depends on what memory you are using for buffers) but that makes no difference to formatting. It can make a difference when you copy files to the drive and they get corrupted if they are larger than the buffer size.

[madgrizzle]

Thanks for the insight, I'll try creating a mount file for it.  I have been using the latest version (v.1.6 released June 21).

I thought the same about using HDToolbox to do a partition, but the drive doesn't appear there.  I've never used it before so maybe I'm not running the program correctly (because my drive connected to the GVP Combo doesn't appear there either.. I just assumed GVP had its own program for it.. I got this Amiga used with HD many years ago so I never had to do any HD work).

[Pat the Cat]

Oh, it should work if you change the device name on the icon. So GVPSCSI.device rather than SCSI.DEVICE for your existing drive. And MNTSD.device for the current equipment.

(Select the icon for HDToolbox, select "Information" from the drop down menus).

More here, it's badged as for Amigados 3.x for large partition support, but should work very similarly for Kickstart / Workbench 2 and upwards.

http://www.pjhutchison.org/uae_hdtoolbox.html

After the right device driver has been selected, you should be able to read the geometry from the card, which should give you correct Cylinder, Head and Surfaces values.

One tip - I partition drives with a PC laptop to have small partitions 500MB-2GB at the start especially for Amiga boot partitions. But, I'm usually using classic / non upgraded AmigaDOS systems.

That way I've got something any Amiga should be able to boot from, regardless of how out of date the Kickstart and Workbench are.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

except FileType=L:FastFileSystem since I don't have pfs

It's free, you know.

[LoadWB]

I haven't had a chance to try it.  Will the SD device not work with fat95?

[madgrizzle]

Yes, it's on my list of things to install now that I have a working CDROM drive in the Amiga (the old XP computer I had with a floppy quit on me.. makes transferring files to the Amiga extraordinarily difficult).

[klx300r]

This is the mountlist from the instructions:

Code: [Select]

SD0:
   Device = mntsd.device
   Unit = 0
   Flags = 1
   Surfaces = 1                    <- Adjust to the number of Gigabytes you
   BlocksPerTrack = 1024              want to use on the card
   Reserved = 2
   Interleave = 0
   LowCyl = 2
   HighCyl = 1024
   Buffers = 32
   GlobVec = -1
   BufMemType = 1
   Mask = 0xFFFFFFFE
   MaxTransfer = 0x7FFFFFFF
   FileSystem = L:pfs3            <- Change to your filesystem of choice
   StackSize = 8192
   Mount = 1
#                                 <- Don't forget the closing hash mark
It is for a 512 MB card. How large is your card?

Also try to add

DosType = 0x444f5303

sooo I'm confused with the Surfaces=1 here....is the 1 relating to 1GB card size? so if I want to use 32GB the line should read: Surfaces=32 ??:confused: actually woudl any other figures on the list need to be changed