A600 with large harddrive

[Dauer]

Hello
I own an A600 with kick 3.1, 2 Mb chipmem and a 30 Gb harddrive(yes it's 30 Gb!). I running Workbench 3.1.

The problem is that I am not able to se more than 8 Gb of the harddrive. I know that there is a limit of 8 Gb when your are running OS3.1, but you should be able to patch this by installing scsi_ide43_23.lha. This patch updates my kick from 40.5 to 43.23.

I have installed this patch and fastfilesystem 45.13, but I still can't se more than 8 Gb! Why not?

[Matt_H]

The default limit under OS3.1 is actually 4GB.

Updating scsi.device isn't quite enough, and your version of FFS is from OS3.9, so I'm not sure you can use it directly with 3.1. Check ffstd64.lha on Aminet for a package that definitely works with 3.1.

If you don't mind my asking, why do you need a 30GB drive on an A600? It just seems a bit excessive, that's all.

[Framiga]

Hi

download IdeFix97 and use SmartFileSystem (SFS) 1.214 both from Aminet.

Ciao

ftp://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/disk/misc/IDEfix97.lha

ftp://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/disk/misc/SFS.lha

[amigau]

which hard drive prep program are you using? This might also have an effect - the HDToolbox program provided with 3.1 isn't quite as good as the 'HDinstTools' program you can get off Aminet.  The latter gives you way more control over things in setting up drives.

On the other posters' note about TD64 - I've used that many times for drives that were bigger than the 4GB FFS limit and it works great.  I'd not use SFS unless you had to - I used the 'other' alternative filesystem once (can't remember the name offhand but it was written by a company in France).  I just remember having lots of problems with it on my A1200, I'd have to 'fix' the bitmaps constantly and when you use an alternative FFS instead of the default, none of the disk fixer tools out there (DiskSalv, Quarterback, etc.) will work with that disk as a result....

That's not to say others may have had different results than I, just that if you can stick with FFS, I'd do that first....

kevin orme
amiga university
www.amigau.com

[darkwave]

Would these tools (IDE Fix & SFS) work on an A1200 with 3.0 ROMs. I too have recently acquired a 30Gb drive and wish to use it in my A1200 which has WB3.0 and I do not wish to install 3.1 ROMs if at all possible.

[Dauer]

Matt_H wrote:
If you don't mind my asking, why do you need a 30GB drive on an A600? It just seems a bit excessive, that's all.

I know :-D I could not find a used HD under 4 Gb so when I saw a cheap 30 Gb I bought it. I didn't know at the time that it would be a problem :-(

I have tried ffstd64 from aminet before I tried with ffs 45.13, but that didn't work either.

I have also tried with HDinstTools, but that didn't work either. I have also tried with IDE-fix software but doesn't work either :-(

I have also tried with the NSDpatch, but that doesn't work.

Is there no one out there who can tell me how to use a 30 Gb harddrive with OS3.1? Using the internal IDE connector on A1200/600.

[darkwave]

I got a reply to my similar question over on EAB. I haven't had time to try it out yet but it sounds like it should work.

thomas wrote:

You can create a boot partition within the first 4GB of the 30GB HDD which installs the needed patches to access the rest of the drive.

You can download a replacement for the scsi.device here: http://home.arcor.de/micky.d/IDE.html (the page is in german but the links at the bottom will work for english people, too :-) ).

In additon you have to use a new file system which can use 64bit commands. I strongly recommend SFS for this.

Bye,
Thomas

Hope this is of use.  :-)

[crystall]

amigau wrote:

 I'd not use SFS unless you had to - I used the 'other' alternative filesystem once (can't remember the name offhand but it was written by a company in France).

I used SFS for years now since the very first betas and found it rock solid under all 3.x systems. And BTW being a journaled file-system I never had to use 'fixing' tools on it, I would recomend it as the better Amiga FS around ATM.

[Dauer]

The problem is that SFS only works with 68020 or higher CPU's.

[lordv]

writing.

crystall wrote:

I used SFS for years now since the very first betas and found it rock solid under all 3.x systems. And BTW being a journaled file-system I never had to use 'fixing' tools on it, I would recomend it as the better Amiga FS around ATM.

In fact, SFS has some serious (as for me) problem. My binkd writes logs at highest loglevel, so logs quickly become several megabytes in size. Writing to such logs becomes progressively slower as they grow from megabyte to megabyte. The same conditions on PFS don't slow down the writing.

[leirbag28]

Matt_H wrote:
If you don't mind my asking, why do you need a 30GB drive on an A600? It just seems a bit excessive, that's all.


 In my opinion, thats not enough for todays times..........having a 30 gig on an A600 is a great idea............makes it a portable powerhouse loaded with games, music, applications etc...

I have a 40gig myself, and my A600 has at least 130 games in it. Also loaded with Songs in 8svx format which when sampled at 19886khz sounds as good as MP3's.

My A600 also has all kinds of applications you can think of and lots of video footage that I digitize and convert to anim5 and then add the sound in sync using SCALA MM300.

My A600 has an Apollo 630 50mhz 32megs ram, 2meg Chip, and a 2 Gigabyte (yes 2 gig) PCMCIA card loaded with music.

Good things come in small packages :-)

[Dauer]

Sounds great :-D
But you have an Apollo card - I don't :-(
Doesn't the card get very hot? Is it stable?

[Matt_H]

Sorry I couldn't help on the hard drive front :-(

As for the Apollo, check here for information on one in use. There's a lot of information on the board's caveats and how to help correct them.

Since the original Apollos are out of production and very rare, you'll also probably want to investigate this, as potential plans are in the works for a new production run.

[Dauer]

Matt_H wrote:
Sorry I couldn't help on the hard drive front :-(

Don't worry about it - nobody else has been able to help  :-)
This isn't the first forum I have asked for help regarding this.

I have heard about this new production of the Apollo card, but I don't think I will buy one. If it was a stable and reliable card I would buy it, but I will not risk buying a card that will never work or the chip will die because of heat problems. If a want to spend more money I think I will buy an A1200 with a 1230/40 card.

[leirbag28]

@Dauer

Yes my Apollo/Winner/Viper 630 runs great. the only thing is you need to make sure the board stays on the CPU and that you have enough air circulation using an internal fan........................Mine does not seem to get hot................by the way, I have 2 of them. I may be selling one on ebay with the A600 included.

@Matt_H

Thanks for those links dude! I've known about the Extreme Amiga 600 page, which is where I got the idea to add a clockport to my 600 and USB (coming soon).