A1200 Surf Squirrel problems

Cosmic Space Artist

Cosmic Space Artist

Member
Joined
Sep 26, 2024
Posts
56
Country
Uk
Region
Lincolnshire
Hey everyone,

Has anyone managed to successfully setup their A1200 surf squirrel scsi interface running latest workbench?
I am running the genuine copy of 3.2.2.1 along with the custom 3.2.2 roms . (EHIDE.DEV) added.

if I allow the surf squirrel to install by its installer which applies older versions of software such as Mount and more, then I get the Cd0 mounted and everything works until i reboot and then it will only boot to a grey screen. I removed the startup sequence to eliminate that but still grey screen.

I suspect its to do with the older software incompatible with the latest versions, So I use the installer to avoid installing the older versions but then it will not work,

I have tried allsorts manually configuring the Cd0 to match scsi ID, and only installing squirrel scsi.device by extracting it from the installer, but It requires all files or nothing.

When I opt for keeping newer files of Mount, setpatch, fastfile system the scsi device will not work at all.

am i right in thinking the device is non compatible with 3.2.2.1 ? its worth noting my PCMCIA CF card works perfectly, with the cfd133 and Fat 95

many thanks,

Jamie.
 
Last edited:
Boing-ball said:
Which version of the Surf Squirrel driver are you using?

Have you tried the version you can download from here?

Click to expand...


Hello mate, good to hear from you, Its a good question, It was not clear at 1st but i used the hex reader in dopus to read the version of the squirrelscsi.device and it appears my version is the 37.1765 and the floppy disk version is 2.03

I just looked at the link you sent thanks, the 1st disk image is the same as mine, and the 2nd one is version 2.01 and has the same 37.1765 device.

I have done a fair amount of non squirrel surfing 🧐 online to find others with similar problems on various forums but no apparent resolve.

Not sure what to do now
 
davideo said:
No problem. The offer is there when you need it.

I used to have a couple of these on my 1200s
Click to expand...
Hi mate,

Thanks i appreciate it, if you dont mind it would be of great help if could you install the surf squirrel software on your amiga as I get these problems with or without the device plugged into the pcmcia port. If it installs correctly it will show up as squirrel.dev in config and cd0 under drives and it should reboot with no issues, only thing i have is a tf1260 but that works with the pcmcia cf card no problems. Ive a backup of my Entire Workbench on a CF card so its easy to re install everything prior to the conflict. Ive tried installing it under novice where its automatic and advanced ignoring the older versions. If you could try both that be awesome. Im nlt able to go anywhere as of now due to family commitments.

I presume when you used to use the surf squirrel it was on an older OS?

The files are on the amiga hardware database, 37.1765 squirrel.dev not sure if im aloud to post links here ?

nice chatting to a fellow amiga lover in Lincolnshire. Thanks.

Jamie.
 
Jamie,

I should get a chance to try this on Monday (Got a hectic weekend as per normal)

I've got a 1260 in mine but I can also try a standard RAM card as well.

I'll let you know how I get on
 
Not sure if this helps or not. I’m running a setup with anPiStorm32. I found the standard Squirrel PCMCIA would refuse to work on this setup. But the Surf Squirrel does work. With the former, the system would lock up as it was looking for SCsI devices on the chain. When switched to the surf variant, no issue.

One thing to note is, that the surf squirrel will get its nickers in a twist if you have other things setup to run in your startup-sequence and or User-startup. Such as a Archos CD PCMCIA drivers. Have you also tried taking out the PCMCIA mount in Devs DosDrivers for any CF card adapters?

Something to also help is getting g hold of Idefix97’ and use the Find Device tool to see what other devices are mounted and check for the squirrel device driver is showing up correctly.
 
davideo said:
Jamie,

I should get a chance to try this on Monday (Got a hectic weekend as per normal)

I've got a 1260 in mine but I can also try a standard RAM card as well.

I'll let you know how I get on
Click to expand...
Really appreciate this mate, I have the latest 3.2 Ehide roms aswell, im hoping i can find a soloution to get this working and without having to install the older versions of software bundled with it.
 
Boing-ball said:
Not sure if this helps or not. I’m running a setup with anPiStorm32. I found the standard Squirrel PCMCIA would refuse to work on this setup. But the Surf Squirrel does work. With the former, the system would lock up as it was looking for SCsI devices on the chain. When switched to the surf variant, no issue.

One thing to note is, that the surf squirrel will get its nickers in a twist if you have other things setup to run in your startup-sequence and or User-startup. Such as a Archos CD PCMCIA drivers. Have you also tried taking out the PCMCIA mount in Devs DosDrivers for any CF card adapters?

Something to also help is getting g hold of Idefix97’ and use the Find Device tool to see what other devices are mounted and check for the squirrel device driver is showing up correctly.
Click to expand...
Hello mate thanks for your suggestions and your findings, Sometimes the drive searchcwould hang at the end of installation butnupon reset it would search and then see it, but then after resetiing it souldnbever re boot. in reply to the CF Pcmcia mount, No. I have not tried removing the CF pcmcia mount device, I wil give it a try, Also I did have idefix but Ive no idea of how I used it as upon recently trying to install theres no password, only demo mode. So I did not try installing.

The CD file system is bundled with the OS and works greatvon my A2000 with buddha ide.

The Squirrel.dev driver seems to work only with the CD0 mount supplied on the driver disk if installing under novice overwriting newer versions of fast file system, get patch etc. Not ideal. But as I say once It mounts and everything appears to be installed in showconfig it wont reboot.

Going to try the CF0 mount removal now, ill report back my findings.

Thanks Jamie.
 
Cosmic Space Artist said:
Hello mate thanks for your suggestions and your findings, Sometimes the drive searchcwould hang at the end of installation butnupon reset it would search and then see it, but then after resetiing it souldnbever re boot. in reply to the CF Pcmcia mount, No. I have not tried removing the CF pcmcia mount device, I wil give it a try, Also I did have idefix but Ive no idea of how I used it as upon recently trying to install theres no password, only demo mode. So I did not try installing.

The CD file system is bundled with the OS and works greatvon my A2000 with buddha ide.

The Squirrel.dev driver seems to work only with the CD0 mount supplied on the driver disk if installing under novice overwriting newer versions of fast file system, get patch etc. Not ideal. But as I say once It mounts and everything appears to be installed in showconfig it wont reboot.

Going to try the CF0 mount removal now, ill report back my findings.

Thanks Jamie.
Click to expand...
Hi I have removed CF0 mount file but I still have the same problem.
 
I've had a look at the install script and it allows you to create a bootable floppy.

Have you tried that?
 
davideo said:
I've had a look at the install script and it allows you to create a bootable floppy.

Have you tried that?
Click to expand...
Hi I have not tried making a bootable floppy as I thought thatboption was for people who had no internal hard drive. Ill give it a go to see what happens.
 
Cosmic Space Artist said:
Hi I have not tried making a bootable floppy as I thought thatboption was for people who had no internal hard drive. Ill give it a go to see what happens.
Click to expand...

It is but the priority of the floppy is normally higher than a HD so should boot from the floppy ok.
 
davideo said:
It is but the priority of the floppy is normally higher than a HD so should boot from the floppy ok.
Click to expand...
Ive made a boot disk via df2 my external gotek, there are 2 options, 1 make a CD/CD32 / CDTV boot disk and 2 Just a CD rom boot disk. Option 1 I have not been successful as for some uknown reason, despite formatting the blank 880k adf image it wont complete the disk save as it sais volume cd32boot full, that being the disk image its creating! Oh dear lol. Up to now ive had no issue saving to blank adfs. Anyway Option 2 writes less files and I only really need to access the external scsi for reading and copying files, this worked perfect, note there is no option to select what files unlike the HD install option. It is fully automated so ive no idea if its using out dated versions of cdfs / mount, etc etc, but provided i boot from this created CDboot image it will load the squirrel.dev driver which can be seen in showconfig. Its worth noting though that even at this point it would not work, and the workbench defaults to anvery basic setting, not my usual settings saved on HD I have to copy the CD0 Mount file manually from the CDboot floppy image and plafe it in the devices dos drivers folder and change the info to match the scsi ID of external drive. Then after rebooting from the CDboot again it now works every time and everything appears as it should, I compared the included CD0 Mount file to that supplied by the 3.2.2.1 os in storage/dos drivers, Apart from the ICON being different and the scsi ID which requires changing you have to also rename it to squirrelscsi.dev and at the bottom write DONOTWAIT then the OS supplied CD0 will also work.

at least now i can access files on disc to transfer over to the internal HD. I would have prefferd to be able to just boot from the HD rather than using a boot disc. It should boot from HD, id still like to know why it wont work, as I had setup the mountfile exactly as it is now but for now im going to give my brain a rest!
Despite booting from the floppy everywthing appears to be the same on my workbench, all my WB settings, best classic workbench for 3.2.2.1 and all my device drivers CF0 intact.

If anyone can shed any light on why the HD installation cause the problems originally mentioned in thisnpost then Id love to know. Thanks for your time and I hope my feedback will help someone else.
 
Hey guys, not sure if you saw my last response to davideo, but as I have it working via booting from the created CDboot disk. I thought id trybone more time at manually copying the squirrel.dev file into devices folder, especially now the cd0 is already present. I reset the Amiga and boom there it was, booted from HD, and everything showing up correct in showconfig, but sadly after powering down and restarting it would work, just as before when using the install to hd options, it wont boot just a grey screen. So ige removed the squirrel.dev from devices and rebooted from the cdboot imagebon my gotek and everythings okay. Weird or what?

Update
I copied the cdboot adf into the WB startup folder, now i can boot right into my WB with everything working, as to if any of the surf squirrel floppy boot files are going to slow my system down, or be less reliable in anyway only time will tell. If so I will only boot from it when i absolutly need to use the scsi.
 
Last edited:
At least it's a step in the right direction.

How long have you left it on the Grey screen before giving in?

My original Squirrel would step through all possible SCSI ids before continuing to boot.
I eventually edited its startup routine and only checked the ids of connected equipment.
This made the bootup a lot faster.
 
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