Demos not running

[MartinW]

I've got quite a few demos on my CF card (in my A1200) that don't run. At first I thought it was the ACA-1233 so I removed some of the more exotic boot options like VBRMove etc. and now more run. I now just have 'acatune maprom *'. But there are still quite a lot that don't run. One for example is Arte. I know this will run if I create a floppy and run it that way (not actually tried though) but I'm guessing it should run via WHDLoad?

Could they be affected by the file system and / or position on the disk?

My disk is as follows:

DH0: (System) - PFS3, 500M
DH1: (Data) - PFS3, 1G
DH2: (Games) - PFS3, 2.5G

(All figures approx)

Demos are in the Games partition.

I will could change this again when my replacement 16G CF arrives which could be as soon as tomorrow as it has been sent but I'd prefer to understand the problem (if any) first before making blind guesses.

Thanks.

 

[-Acid-]

Maybe SetPatch is causing some problems? Some things do not work properly without it, so it stands to reason it may affect some things when it is run. Also are you using CWB? stuff like Fblit and some other options can break some programs as well.

 

[MartinW]

For the most part, no, I'm not using CWB stuff. What I've done is load CWB and now I'm also looking at AmiSys but on FSUAE and then I'm deciding what I like and cherry picking it. Don't know if that's the "done thing" or not! Anyway, so I'm running AntiClick and StickyRMB from CWB but I think that's about it so far. I stopped running FBlit and FText because I was getting graphic glitches on my Indivision but I think they were a red herring. I've fitted a fan now and the glitches are history.

I'll have to try commenting out setpatches and see if it helps but I don't know if OS3.9 works without it?

 

[fitzsteve]

I've heard that pfs3 can cause problems with whdload, but not seen this myself. However you could try with sfs or just plain ffs to rule that out.

 

[MartinW]

Happy to give that a whirl when my 16GB card arrives on Monday (i guess they thought sending a CF card by DPD was somehow doing me a favour!). Is SFS as large partition compliant as PFS3? I would prefer to stick with the "500MB WB, 1GB Data, Rest Games" layout if I can but I guess Data could be shunted to the end if it causes problems.

 

[fitzsteve]

Yes it is but with 16gb you also need to patch the scsi device, I recommend Chris/Toni's version, it's included with the classic workbench packs.

 

[MartinW]

Oh no! I hope that wasn't what was corrupting the 16GB card in the first place! I thought the scsi.device that came with 3.9 was OK for 16GB. Thats a bit of an "Oops" if that could have been the problem all along

I need to get my head properly round that again then by the sound of it

 

[fitzsteve]

Yes the 3.9 rom update includes an updated scsi device that provides large disk support so you should be all set, however this particular version does have issues with some CF cards.

This is the reason I was always against doing a large disk support tutorial as there are so many quirks. If you disable the rom update you obviously won't have large disk support in place so bare that in mind.

 

[MartinW]

lol! right, ok - this is fast turning into another large disk thread so my apologies, but I'm getting a bit confused here!

I have OS3.9 with BB1 & BB2 installed. BUT, I had to disable the rom update from BB2 and go back to the rom update from BB1 since I couldn't boot with the BB2 rom update enabled.

Right this second I guess thats fine as I am currently running off my backup 4GB card until the 16GB comes back from RMA but obviously when the 16GB card is here I will want to copy everything off of the 4GB onto the 16GB using the quickest and easiest method which I assume will be Dopus 4 (I never did like the Dopus 5 I bought, it did all sorts of weird things to my icons and colours).

I'm not running CWB but I have it on FS-UAE so I can easily copy files to / from it.

First thing, I'm going to try re-enabling BB2 rom update as I've not tried that while being back on 4GB. But what then?

Happy to be told to do some reading if I know where it is I should be reading

- - - Updated - - -

Ohh, now this is interesting (well, maybe it's what you expect?)

I just re-enabled the BB2 rom update, rebooted and everything it fine and I'm running Arte demo from DH2: as I type this. But of course I'm on a 4GB drive at the moment.

Not sure what that means or what I need to do when the 16GB comes back!

 

[fitzsteve]

He he, well at least you're making progress

If your CF card isn't compatible with the scsi.device of BB2 then what will happen is after the first reset you will see a guru and get stuck in a reboot loop.

This can also happen with some old HDD's and in the OS3.9 documentation I believe it mentions this too. What you have to do in this case is use the setpatch declaration:

c:setpatch skipromupdates 'scsi.device' quiet

Now, that's fine if you have a 4gb HDD or an 8GB when using a direct scsi capable file system such as PFS3 but with your 16gb you would need to substitute another scsi.device

Now, let's cross that bridge if you come to it however essentially there are a few ways of overcoming this:

1) Use loadmodule to load in another scsi.device
2) Burn a custom Rom with another scsi.device & the other BB2 updates
3) Use the ACA1233's Maprop fucntion to load in a custom Rom scsi.device & the other BB2 updates

With options 2 & 3 you can then disable the BB2 update by software using the following declaration:

c:setpatch noromupdate quiet

Ideally with the ACA1233 you should be using Maprom to load in a custom Rom with the BB2 updates as it will make your system faster and also do away with the reboot.

 

[MartinW]

Incidentally, I worked out what was preventing my demos and games from running...

It was the PCMCIA network card. If I reboot without it everything works fine. I'm cool with that, I only need the card in when I actually want the net.

And the CF was getting corrupted by the latest, latest scsi.device (Doofus? D something or other). I did find one that works and have left it at that for now. It looks like I do need to create my own custom 3.9 ROMs though.