Adding large HDD to an A4000 running AmigaOS 3.5

ash

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Hi!
I have an A4000 running AmigaOS 3.5 on a 4 GB CF card. I wanted to add another large (40 GB) drive but it doesn't seem to work.
The disk was recognized by HDToolBox, so I divided it into partitions and selected the file system (FFS International). But after saving the settings and rebooting, NDOS partitions don't show up on the desktop.
The disk is brand new and from a respectable source, so I don't suspect it's faulty.

I'd appreciate any help. Thanks in advance!
 
Hello,

i have only half answers! The boundary of a 32bit filesystem and original scsi.device is about 4gb: to install large hard-disk, you need to be sure that filesystem and scsi.device support 64bit range of addressing. I do not know what OS 3.5 offer...

Regards
Stefano
 
All I can advise is to use the PFS filesystem and Toni Willens PFSaio version this has been re-coded by Toni so that you can use large HDrives and greater than the 4gb barrier,the only thing I will add is that using PFS will use more ram so make sure you have at least 4mb
There are great tutorials on other Amiga sites to help partition and its not really that hard to do , just the correct mask and max transfer settings are really important
 
As far as I know OS 3.5 supports >4 GB HDDs, but I haven't had the chance to test this before.

I have 16 MB of RAM, so I'll try PFS today and I'll let you know if it helps.
 
settings I used for my a600 are:

Dos type :0x50465303
Mask = 0xfffffffc (7f)
MaxTransfer = 0x1fe00

and I changed my buffers from 30 to 100
 
While I don't have an answer I'd believed that a Kickstart 3.x ROM would remove the limitation in hardware. This is what I was considering for my machines. :shrug:
 
Ok, I've tried PFS, but it didn't help. I had an optical drive connected to that ATA cable, so I know there's nothing wrong with the controller or the cable.
 
Hello,

if i am right, you have installed the hard-disk from the CF (boot partition on CF)? If yes, your compact flash card can be incompatible with the hard-disk (i have CF that live ok in an A1200 but alone).

Regards
Stefano
 
Yes, I've tried to install the HDD from my OS 3.5 boot partition on CF. But even when I disconnect the CF card and boot the system from a floppy, the HDD doesn't show up. The card was working fine with two different optical drives.
 
Hello,

if you power on the A4000 without CF, you are on 3.0/3.1. If you have attached the hard-disk, boot with the install disk and launch hdtoolbox.
The hard-disk need to be visible by this program: install it from zero and make a small partition. You can install the 3.5 on this partition, boot your Amiga from this hard-disk and then set-up the whole hard-disk (the remainder part) with a 64bit filesystem installed on the hard-disk, but you need to be sure that on a 3.5 environment, scsi.device is patched to address a boundary of 64bit.

Regards
Stefano
 
Hi Stefano,
It looks like it could work, I just need to borrow 3.1 floppies from a friend.
 
Ok, I figured it out.
It looks like my new 40 GB disk doesn't like company - it works fine on its own, but refuses to cooperate with any other device connected to the ATA controller, like my old CF card or DVD drive.
Bad news is that I accidentally erased my CF card in the process... :-/

Anyway, thanks for the help!
 
Last edited:
No, not recently, but that's ok, I didn't have any valuable data there.
 
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