SETTING UP CF CARD IN PCMCIA SLOT

[AmigaBruno]

This is something I’ve never got round to doing, although I  meant to years ago!

I now have both a PCMCIA CF card adaptor, as well as a 4Gb CF card. Unfortunately, I have no installation software to go with it!

The software I need would come either on a floppy disk, an ADF image, or be downloaded directiy onto my Amiga from Aminet. Unfortunately, at the moment I have no floppy drive, my Gotek drive isn’t working, and I’ve never connected an Amiga to the Internet. My Amiga now boots and runs off CF cards, which I can easily swap as I’ve fitted an extension lead giving me an external CF card slot at the rear of the computer. I have two of these which I’ve used recently. One of these is from Amigakit, bought in 2015, while the other one is from someone on eBay, bought within the last 6 months. Unfortunately, the more recent one of these cards is suffering from file corruption of saved files! This card is in PFS format, which I don’t think I’ve even heard of before. These files have been saved from the game Civilization, as well as from Deluxe Paint version IV AGA and/or version V. The effects of the file corruption are that recently after reloading a saved game from Civilization lots or all of my cities have been taken over by the Barbarians and renamed as “NONE”.  As for the Deluxe Paint files, I’ve found that often some files that have been created in one version of Deluxe Paint won’t reload into that version, but will load into the other version!

I removed my internal floppy drive several years ago to fit the Gotek drive. This seemed quite easy. After that, I moved and the old internal floppy drive got lost. I did also have an external floppy drive, but I put that into storage at a club I was a member of, then then emptied all the storage units at a certain time without warning me, so I lost that as well. From some items for sale on eBay I see the software is supplied on a floppy drive. The external floppy drives are more expensive now and I may only end up using it once, just to install this software, so it’s not worth it.

When I first got this PCMCIA adaptor and the 4Gb CF card, I plugged them into my Amiga A1200, then turned it on, but the boot stopped and I got an error message in the AmigaShell window. After that, I reformatted it on my laptop using Linux with the software Gparted. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter whether I formatted it as FAT16 or FAT32, or whether the partition was 2Gb or 4Gb. The results were if I tried to boot with it already inserted, the boot stopped with the error message “LoadModule failed returncode 10”. I also tried inserting the CF card into the already inserted PCMCIA adaptor, but that always made my Amiga crash immediately.

I don’t know what’s the matter with my Gotek drive, which I bought over five years ago, but I stopped using some time ago. The original USB stick no longer worked, then I wasn’t sure what to do to get it working again. I think this version may require some older software, or the drive itself needs to be reflashed. 

Perhaps the solution is to get someone to set up the CF card for the PCMCIA slot in a certain way, then I’ll be able to use it, but I don’t know. 

[Pat the Cat]

Does the Amiga have any fast RAM?

You might need to reduce it to 4MB to get the PCMCIA slot working if it's mapped into zorro 2 space, rather than 32 bit fast RAM on 030 accelerators and up.

Recent thread here, you should be able to mount your "internal" CF card in Linux and read and write to it directly rather than copying the files twice.

https://forum.amiga.org/index.php?topic=75027.0

EDIT:

You can use GParted to reveal the CF cards device ID on your system (usually sdb1) and if it's formatted in Amiga Fast File system V40 (4 gigabytes or less mount it for use on Linux with;-

mount -t affs /dev/sdXN0/mnt                      <- In a Debian Linux terminal, probably need sudo at the front

[AmigaBruno]

This Amiga A1200 is fitted with an 8Mb RAM expansion card from Amigakit  https://amigakit.amiga.store/product_info.php?cPath=182_25_87&products_id=12690&currency=GBP  which I bought last year, so I get the impression you know all about how that works. Ever since plugging it in, I have left it on the default setting, meaning my Amiga A1200 has 8Mb of Fast RAM. When you say reduce it to 4Mb, do you mean 4Mb on the card or 4Mb TOTAL, meaning 2Mb on the card and 2Mb internal Chip RAM? Of course, I could easily drop and lose the jumper which may disable the card, so I suppose I should buy some spare jumpers which are compatible.

I've already read the other recent thread, which was started by a newbie to the Amiga. I can't see how this applies to me, though. This latest card is also in the PFS format, which I've never heard of before.

As for the advice about GParted, neither of these cards are formatted in FFS. I think the whole point of CF cards in the PCMCIA slot is to easily transfer files to a non Amiga OS computer. In that case FAT32 or even FAT16 format is the most widely supported.

[Pat the Cat]

4MB on the card, not total, to answer your question.

Only about 1 in 3 cf cards work in the PCMCIA slot, it seems. You can get a card that will work plugged into the IDE with an adaptor that works fine, but won't work in a PCMCIA adaptor.

And for over 2GB partition in FAT32, you have to have a block size of 4096 or 8192. 512 bytes won't cut it if you are using Windows Format to set it up.

One alternative is to get a CF-SD card adaptor, and plug that into the PCMCIA adaptor. Those seem to work consistently, with small partitions at any rate... but that doesn't help you get the compactflash.device, fat95, CF0 and CF0.icon files onto your Amiga drives to use them.

From what you are saying, it sounds like you do have those files (CF0 in Devs/Dosdrivers, compactflash.device in Devs, Fat95 in L) but it still isn't playing ball?

EDIT: Instructions in the next link for setting up a USB stick for use with an Amiga Gotek (basically you have to copy a couple of files to the root directory of the stick so the Gotek will read any ADF files on the stick as Amiga floppy disks).

https://www.retro32.com/gaming/amiga/01042020508-amiga-gotek-getting-started-guide-installation-set-up-and-game-downloads-flashfloppy

[AmigaBruno]

Here's my Progress Report. I checked to see if all those files were on my CF card and in the right places, which they are. After this, I changed the RAM jumper position for the first time since I got this card and found out that my Amiga A1200 wouldn't boot up! It wouldn't boot up in the 4Mb position, so then I also tried it in the 5.5Mb position, as well as the disable position, but none of these settings worked. Sometimes I was able to view the Early Startup Menu, but sometimes I wasn't. I selected the Expansion Card Diagnostic and no card was detected! Sometimes I saw the HDD drive flickering. while sometimes I didn't. Sometimes when my Amiga seemed to be booting up, I eventually got a No Signal message from my MATSUI TV. This has also happened in Deluxe Paint whenever I've tried to change screen resolution after running the program, instead of at the beginning. I have to use the CVBS port because my RGB port is broken.I assume from what's happened that each time I moved the jumper it failed to make proper contact, so the card was disabled, but this also prevented the Amiga from booting up. I can't easily remove the card because it's too big to fit properly in the Amiga and I had a hell of a job plugging it in! The first time it didn't make contact and wasn't detected. I have only moved the jumper this time.  I even had to watch a video showing how someone else finally managed to do this before I could get it working! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W75pJpy93q4

After the problems I had fitting this card, I don't want to remove it then try plugging it back in. I feel that if I did this I may break the card or my motherboard!

 

[NinjaCyborg]

[Removed because OP is ungrateful]

[Pat the Cat]

...because my RGB port is broken...  I can't easily remove the card because it's too big to fit properly in the Amiga and I had a hell of a job plugging it in!

If you remove the top metal metal shield from an A1200, it gets very easy to reach the top of the card without unplugging it. This has to be done anyway to change the capacitors for new ones (definitely recommended on an A1200 if not done already).

It sounds like the connectors are a little short and it will only have full connection when it's arranged just right (not quite fully in and sligtly out of 90 degrees.

[AmigaBruno]

Obviously you haven't read my original post or my last post! To sum up, in my original post I said that my Amiga A1200 now boots and runs off CF cards which can be easily swapped thanks to an extension lead providing an external slot. Obviously the CF card adaptor is connected to the IDE connector. AFAIK there is no other way of booting from CF cards. In my last post I said I'd checked that all the necessary files for using a CF card in the PCMCIA slot were present and where they should be!!  This means that the problems now are the RAM expansion and/or if my particular FAT formatted CF card is compatible with the Amiga.

I don't know about your memory expansion, but here's what to do with your CF card:

Yes you're right in one sense that the CF card could/should be FAT so that you can easily transfer files to another computer. But to get that far you need to first have a valid operating system that boots.

Are you using the IDE adaptor of your A1200 for anything? A hard disk? Personally I'd use a CF card with a CF to IDE adaptor internally. Treat it as your fixed system hard drive. Then you can use another CF card in the PCMCIA slot as your 'floppy disk' for data exchange between Amiga and PC.

If you have your operating system installed and booting up, then you still need a FAT filesystem driver for the removable CF card. For this, you can either use fat95 from Aminet, or if you have OS 3.1.4 then CrossDOS has been updated to support FAT32 and long file names.

If you want to boot from the CF card in the PCMCIA slot or IDE interface, it will need to be setup using HDToolbox, either by booting from the Install floppy from your AmigaOS disk set, or you can do it from WinUAE or FSUAE on a pc, mac or linux, but it's a bit fiddly.

[AmigaBruno]

This is a particular 8Mb RAM expansion card from Amigakit, which I gave you details of in two links. As you might have expected, the jumpers are facing DOWN, so are accessible just by removing the trapdoor panel. They're not accessible at all from the upper side of the motherboard.

Since installing the 8Mb RAM card I have never moved it at all, because it doesn't fit the casing properly and is a tight fit. I had to install it from the top instead of through the trapdoor, like in that video. All I have done since then is move the tiny jumper from the 8Mb position to the 4Mb, 5.5Mb, and disable positions, but none of these changes worked. They have made my Amiga temporarily unbootable or resulted in it turning off the output to the CVBS port before it finishes booting up.

All I can do now is keep moving the tiny jumper around on the different RAM setting positions and press it down to make sure it's properly in contact with the pins until it actually works.

As for getting my RGB port repaired, the 8Mb card checked or anything like that, I'm afraid that the COVID-19 restrictions have made that very very difficult or even impossible. It took 17 days for Amigakit just to get the RAM expansion card to me. God only knows how long it would take them to replace my RGB port, check the 4Mb, 5.5Mb, and disable jumpers on my 8Mb card. I think I might die of depression caused by the COVID-19 restrictions before then. I used to go to some electronics repair parties where one of the repairers was an Amigan. If only those parties were still running, but the COVID-19 restrictions have forced them to be suspended and moved online. I could watch lots of videos of people soldering as well as changing jumpers, but that doesn't enable me to do these things myself!

Another way round this is that there is actually some Amiga to PC file transfer software that has been preinstalled onto the main CF card hard drive I'm using. This requires a connecting cable to work. In the past, I used similar software with an old PC serial port. I don't know if the software on my current Amiga CF card will transfer files using a cable from the Amiga serial port to USB, though.   

...because my RGB port is broken...  I can't easily remove the card because it's too big to fit properly in the Amiga and I had a hell of a job plugging it in!

If you remove the top metal metal shield from an A1200, it gets very easy to reach the top of the card without unplugging it. This has to be done anyway to change the capacitors for new ones (definitely recommended on an A1200 if not done already).

It sounds like the connectors are a little short and it will only have full connection when it's arranged just right (not quite fully in and sligtly out of 90 degrees.

[NinjaCyborg]

People here are trying to help you. If you don't want their help that's fine too.

[Pat the Cat]

Another way round this is that there is actually some Amiga to PC file transfer software that has been preinstalled onto the main CF card hard drive I'm using. This requires a connecting cable to work. In the past, I used similar software with an old PC serial port. I don't know if the software on my current Amiga CF card will transfer files using a cable from the Amiga serial port to USB, though.   

Programs to look for on your CF drive - NComm, Zterm, Xterm. They are terminal emulators that can transfer files over the serial port.

Now, I know setting up a usb port as a COM port is doable in Windows, because that's how programs like Pronterface talk to 3D printer controller boards. same principle, although Pronterface can't upload or download files (just typing commands).

That means on the PC side, you would have to install a terminal emulator program capable of file transfers like XModem, YModem or Zmodem protocols, point it at the right COM port, and yes, that should work. If they're both running at 38400 speed or lower.

It is worth checking the "storage" drawer of your bootable CF drive. You might find that compactflash.device and Fat95 are already in devs and L, but the CF0 icon was put into storage rather than devs/Dosdrivers.

EDIT: I apologize, you have obviously done the last as you reported finding the files! 

[Pat the Cat]

If you disconnect the CF drive and set the memory to 4 or 5.5 mb - do you get the purple Kickstart screen with a disk going into a drive?

That would indicate the problem with less memory isn't the memory card, it's your hard drive setup needing at least 6MB of fast RAM to boot up properly.

One way to further test that is to reconnect the CF card, hold down both mouse buttons, and turn on. Wait for a prompt to type at.

Then type

Bindrivers
Loadwb
endcli

Pressing the reurn key each time. That would give you a very minimalist Workbench.

EDIT: One particularly hoggy program is Poseidon. It's for usb. If that's in your user-startup drawer (automatically loaded on start). It would cause this sort of problem (and it's completely pointless unless you have a usb interface on a clockport or similar). I don't think you do, otherwise you wouldn't be bothered about PCMCIA or serial solutions to transfer files.

[AmigaBruno]

Great suggestion! Somehow this worked!! 

The sequence of events as I remember it is as follows...

1. I moved the jumper from disable to 4Mb

2. I removed the Amiga A1200 CF card hard drive.

3. I turned on the Amiga A1200 and the purple insert floppy disk animation was displayed

4. I turned off the Amiga A1200 and inserted my older CF hard drive card which I bought in 2015 from Amigakit.

5. I turned on the Amiga again and it booted up from the five year old CF card!

6. I turned off the Amiga and inserted the CF hard drive card I bought last year.

7. I turned on the Amiga again and it booted up from this latest CF hard drive card!

8. After booting up, I found a new icon on my Scalos/Workbench screen. It looked like a floppy disk, but its name was a number with a dash in the middle of it. After clicking on it, I found that the capacity of this new disk was about 2Gb! This meant that the CF card inserted in an apaptor in my PCMCIA slot was finally recognised!!

9. I soon found that I was able to copy my Deluxe Paint graphics files from my Amiga CF hard drive card onto the FAT32 hard drive card in my PCMCIA slot!

10. Just after this, I loaded these same Deluxe Paint graphics files into Personal Paint which was preinstalled onto my Amiga CF card hard drive, converted them all into PNG format, then saved them onto the CF card in the PCMCIA slot.

11. I turned off my Amiga and removed the CF card from the PCMCIA slot.

12 I inserted this FAT32 formatted CF card into a USB CF card reader and plugged it into a Toshiba Satellite C60 laptop, which has both KDE Neon Linux and Elementary OS Linux installed.

13. I found that using a combination of Elementary OS and KDE Neon Linux (both Debian based) I was able to mount my CF card, read the files and copy them onto my laptop hard drive. I can't remember the sequence of events here, but each of these Linux distros has access to the other distro's partition. I feel that KDE Neon Linux is more powerful than Elementary OS.

14. I was able to copy the files from the CF card onto my laptop hard drive!

15. I was able to view the PNG format graphic files using the Gwenvew file viewer under KDE Neon Linux.

So, that's it! I can now take my Amiga artwork further, although my Amiga still isn't on the Internet! I think that the whole attitude behind the Amiga is more creative and quite different from other computers, running Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. I stopped using Mictosoft Windows some time ago. At the moment, apart from Amiga OS I use Linux on my laptop, Android OS on my mobile phone and tablet, and only a couple of days ago I bought a Macbook Air (2014) from eBay, running the latest version of Mac OS, called Big Sur. I now plan to take my Amiga artwork further, posting it online, as well as using my newly installed FAT32 CF card to transfer a lot of amazing Amiga programs onto my Amiga fron anywhere online where I can find them. 

For now, I'll try to upload some artwork for a music album of my own music which I'm designing with a friend. Apart from Deluxe Paint, we've been using Ibis Paint and Adobe Draw to help put it alll together. The album is called "Decay". This is a kind of protest about lack of fashion connected with music, as well as a lack of progress in certain technologies, including space exploration. Unfortunately, although I tried, I wasn't able to upload the DECAY logo into this message!

If you disconnect the CF drive and set the memory to 4 or 5.5 mb - do you get the purple Kickstart screen with a disk going into a drive?

That would indicate the problem with less memory isn't the memory card, it's your hard drive setup needing at least 6MB of fast RAM to boot up properly.

One way to further test that is to reconnect the CF card, hold down both mouse buttons, and turn on. Wait for a prompt to type at.

Then type

Bindrivers
Loadwb
endcli

Pressing the reurn key each time. That would give you a very minimalist Workbench.

EDIT: One particularly hoggy program is Poseidon. It's for usb. If that's in your user-startup drawer (automatically loaded on start). It would cause this sort of problem (and it's completely pointless unless you have a usb interface on a clockport or similar). I don't think you do, otherwise you wouldn't be bothered about PCMCIA or serial solutions to transfer files.

[Pat the Cat]

Great news.

Maybe if you'd just edited the CF0 mount entry to use a sector size of 4096 rather than default 512, the card would have worked as supplied and you'd have all the capacity.

Something wasn't seated quite right, but it's all going now at least.

I can understand totally if you don't want to mess with it anymore.

[AmigaBruno]

I reformatted this card a few times in the past to try and get it to work at all. I used GParted under Linux every time. The last reformat also involved only having a 2Gb partition because I heard there were problems with larger partitions, or even cards larger than 2Gb at all. I have never used a CF card in the PCMCIA slot before, and I don't remember reading any advice about editing the CF0 mount entry. I'm just relieved that it's finally working! 

At the very bottom of this post you can see a graphic file I've transferred from my Amiga A1200 running Linux. I also converted it to PNG using Personal Paint. I think I just needed to add the extension PNG for it to be uploaded on here.

Great news.

Maybe if you'd just edited the CF0 mount entry to use a sector size of 4096 rather than default 512, the card would have worked as supplied and you'd have all the capacity.

Something wasn't seated quite right, but it's all going now at least.

I can understand totally if you don't want to mess with it anymore.