CF / SD and large drives FAQ

Vacuum:
As far as I know z3scsi.device does not support NSD so you´re limited to 4GB when using 3.1 or 3.9 FFS file system.
So get PFS3AiO, it will use directSCSI and all should be fine.
All you need to setup the scsi drive is hdtoolbox and PFS3AiO, so boot from floppy or either of the old drives as you wish.
Z3scsi.device is stored in the card, you just need to tell HDToolbox to use it. (Via commandline or tooltype).

Than you frodegh! I have followed your advice and tried to use pfs3aio.
This is the result.

Partitioning with 3.1
I started hdtooldbox from the 3.1 drive. i clicked change drive type and define new. i read the configuration from disk and i it says that the disk i 1937 MB big. It is actually 36 GB.
Then i partitioned the drive. I created a 961 MB big partition, checked advanced opions and then add/update.
I deleted the old file system and added l:pfs3-aio (i renamed pfs3_aio-handler).
I entered 0x50465303 as dostype and it shows as custom file system. I googled for dostype pfs3aio and found that value.
I changed file system for the partition to custom file system and entered the 0x50465303 as identifier.
I saved the changes to disk, exited hdtoolbox and rebooted the system.

The partition doesn't show in early boot
It doesn't show when the system has booted.

If i run hdtoolbox again it says that the disk status is unknown.

Partitioning with 3.9
I copyed pfs3_aio-handler to a floppy, changed ide drive to 3.9 and booted. There i copyed pfs3_aio-handler to L:pfs3_aio-handler and ran hdtoolbox. It found the entire drive and when i added pfs3_aio-handler it automatically chose 0x43465300 as identifier. I created a 1GB system partition and a 8 GB data partition that both are using the file system. I saved and rebooted.
The partitions are visible in early boot and i have to disable the system partition every boot as it is marked bootable! I dont have any of the pfs3 tools so i can't format the partitions.

I changed back to 3.1. It finds the partitions!
I tried to format with pfsformat from PFS3_svn_134.lha but during the format it says that it couldn't create trashcan.info and disk.info. if i try to write to the drive it says that it is write protected.
I tried rebooting to see it it solves the problem but it didn't.

Then i discovered that the version i used was PFS 5.2. Not 5.3. I tried to format with pfsformat 5.3 and it looked better but the format hanged. I then rebooted and it boots but i can't use the desktop.

I have tried to start ClassicWB in cli-mode and i ran the format but i didn't get the pop up window when i started the format. I have to try to partition and try to format it again.
If that doesn't work i have to connect the drive to a PC and test it there.
 
As Toni Wilen said you need to do a normal amigaOS QUICK format.
Toni is the author of WinUAE and the AiO version of PFS3 by the way.
PFSformat and the other PFS tools from older versions will not see above 4GB on your setup afaik, as they have not been updated like the file system.

(I thought hdtoolbox would read the correct geometry of the scsi drive irrespective of scsi.device version loaded, sorry about that. Should still work if you specify the drive size values manually on 3.1 though.)

Edit: And you should change it back to PFS3 dostype 0x50465303.
 
As Toni Wilen said you need to do a normal amigaOS QUICK format.
Toni is the author of WinUAE and the AiO version of PFS3 by the way.
PFSformat and the other PFS tools from older versions will not see above 4GB on your setup afaik, as they have not been updated like the file system.

(I thought hdtoolbox would read the correct geometry of the scsi drive irrespective of scsi.device version loaded, sorry about that. Should still work if you specify the drive size values manually on 3.1 though.)

Edit: And you should change it back to PFS3 dostype 0x50465303.

Strange. I tried some other disks to hear how they sound and if they are wroth using in my amiga. I discovered that the boot was quicker. I then saw in early boot that it only found two cards in the machine. I have 4 cards and the fastlane card identifies itself as 3 devices.

I pulled some of the other cards and then no cards were visible. I moved the z3 card to one of the other slots and i can see it again.

I have partitioned and formated some drives in a pc. When i try to install it with hdtoolbox and press install it says "Error 4 in drive description".

I have tried to shorten change the manufacturers and drive name and the drive revision.
I have tried a bunch of disks and another cable without termination. I enabled termination on the disk. Same error every time.
 
I'll add my current problem here as well.

I am trying to install my IDEfix97 software, but it hangs during installation where it says "AddIDEfixStartup". Did some research and learned that I have to apply Doobrey's IDEfix patch to the latest version of IDEfix provided by Elaborate Bytes. I've tried patching this thing for the past 1hr but every time it returns "wrong number of arguments".

Any help?

- I've downloaded the latest version of IDEfix (http://icomp.de/t/bin/eb_final.lha)
- Downloaded Doobrey's IDEfix patch (http://www.doobreynet.co.uk/amiga.html)
- Downloaded spatch (http://aminet.net/dev/misc/spatch.lha)
- Copied spatch to C
- Copied IDEfix from the icomp archive to RAM:
- Renamed it to IDEfix_old
- Copied IDEfix.pch from Doobrey's archive to RAM:
- Opened a new shell, changed active dir to RAM: and entered "spatch -oIDEFix -pIDEFix.pch IDEFix_old"
- ???
- wrong numer of arguments.

What am I doing wrong?

I'm still stuck here...
Could someone maybe patch the file for me?
 
Vacuum: So the drives that worked before (until formatting) with 3.9 now also give the Error 4? Cannot help you if your card is unreliable.
Thomas (guru) suggests WHDLoad Error 4 has to do with Termination here.

Dragonheart: Sorry, I'm 2000km away from my amiga. Try exactly what they did in the thread I linked to..
 
frodegh said:
Dragonheart: Sorry, I'm 2000km away from my amiga. Try exactly what they did in the thread I linked to..

I did.
Invalid number of arguments.
 
Small update: Added 'No disk in drive' bug description from Toni Wilen. (Thanks!)
 
I have a working PCMCIA<>CF adapter for my A600 and A1200.

I will receive next week a dual SD to CF adapter which supports SDHC. (Max 64Gb, 2x32Gb MicroSD cards)

As soon as I am able to make some testing, I will report here if I can break the SD->PCMCIA 2Gb barrier :)
 
That should work, but you never know until you try.
I am sure there are sdhc compatible pcmcia-sd adapters as well, they're just not very common.
Good luck in any case!
 
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Hi!

My experience with DualMicroSD->CF-PCMCIA.

Works!!

First of all, the dual MicroSD adapter is weird. Has 2 slots for MicroSD. Slot 1 works as a normal MSD to CF, just unplug from your smartphone or PC MicroSD reader, fit slot 1 and plug into CF to PCMCIA adapter, works.

Weird things using both slots. Only tested with same capacity cards, 32+32Gb. It sees the dual as one merged card of 64Gb and you need to reformat. Some kind of RAID??? So data from the cards is unusable without plugging to this card. (Pretty way of "encoding" personal files... no dual adapter, no readable files...)

But yes, with this adapter you can have 32Gb FAT32 at PCMCIA from a single MicroSD card, or 64Gb with two :D

Hope this info helps a bit

Click for larger image :p
 
There is a new version of compactflash.device out at http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/cfd
v1.28 04/2009 First attempt to make cfd ROMable.
v1.29 11/2009 Added transfer mode autoconfiguration. New "dd" version including speed gauge and performance test.
v1.30 11/2009 Major API rework and optimizations for use in kickstart ROMs.
v1.31 11/2009 Fixed bug in "memory mapped" mode. Further optimizations.
v1.32 11/2009 Added more detailled error messages.

04/2014 Removed "dd" as it is part of "fat95". Finally made this open source.

Cool that it is open source and can be put in ROM..

Anyone care to try with those Kingston cards with the flower image to see if they work now?
 
I've tried one of the new SDXC-IDE adapters..

The good news: It reports as a fixed device, so no IDEfix trouble or Type 7 error messages in HDToolbox.

The bad news: It doesn't provide 'illegal' CHS values larger than 7,87GiB, like the older SDHC-IDE adapter does, so you cannot skip the scsi.device patch with cards above 8GB.

Otherwise it works fine, but I'd still prefer the SDHC one in setups where it could save you a reboot.
 

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Update: I've added information about the 'CHS drive size issue'.
 
Update: I've added information about the 48bit LBA issue, boot partition size, SDXC adapters, and made some minor changes and improvements.
 
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