Weird Whdload / general crashes ... any ideas?

[-Acid-]

This has just started happening with my second A1200. I noticed it when testing a CF card out at first I thought it was the install but it's happening on my old one which was fine a few days ago too.

One time I got a random software failure on boot but besides that it gets to WB no problem. Once there a few times it has guru'd on me numerous times opening whdload drawers on WB, once of twice recoverable errors came up but wouldn't recover and crashed anyway.

Then I decided to play some Slamtilt to test stability, it was going well for about 5 minutes then bombed out on me. But it was Whdload that bombed back to the WB screen and it has done this a few times, I managed to get some screens of it (attached).

At first I was using an 8mb ram board which was working fine until today. Then I decided to try out an 030 board with 8mb and the same thing was happening with that in the A1200.

Any insights?

 

[bdb]

Hmm, everyone says the maxtransfer (maximum data block sent at a time) needs to be low at 0X001FE00 or you get CF read crashes using WHDLoad and such. Look for threads in this realm. Next, check the default options in the S: directory a d the the option in the game's icon (RAmiga+I then click icon portion at top and look for information on how the game is to run. The are MMU options for a 68030 accelerator and such.

 

[-Acid-]

The card was working fine for ages and has suddenly stopped so I doubt max transfer is the problem (ive set dozens of CF cards up and they've all worked fine with 0x1fe00 as max transfer using SFS).

It does the same with the ram board or the 030 in regardless. Sometimes it crashes quickly but just now I had a 20 minute game of Slamtilt with no problems. An oddity is if I load Dopus4 up and iconify it it always crashes (using Classic WB lite).

It crashed earlier with yet another weird SFS error message which i've attached. I did have some CF cards which kept reading as not being disks in hdtoolbox, but it read the values correctly so I partitioned them anyway. I'm thinking maybe that could be the cause of the SFS problems but that still wouldn't explain the card I have been using for months suddenly crashing out on me.

Any ideas people?

 

[Firthy2002]

Memory fault perhaps?

 

[Chinners]

that still wouldn't explain the card I have been using for months suddenly crashing out on me.
Any ideas people?

Compact flash cards do fail sometimes. Could you not follow FitzSteve's CF backup procedure (somewhere on this forum) and see if the card reads fine in a PC?

 

[-Acid-]

that still wouldn't explain the card I have been using for months suddenly crashing out on me.
Any ideas people?

Compact flash cards do fail sometimes. Could you not follow FitzSteve's CF backup procedure (somewhere on this forum) and see if the card reads fine in a PC?

It works fine in WinAUE if that is what you mean?

 

[Allen1]

Hi there Acid,

have you tried playing a game from floppy to see if the computer itself has a problem. Obviously you would need to disconnect the CF adapter to see if the problems still arise from the computer, WDHLoad games would be of little use here but normal games may help to eliminate where the problem lies ie the card or the computer.

Also try another CF adapter and cable if you have then, there may be a poor connection on one of the pins in either the adapter or the cable, hopefully not the computers IDE port as that would mean stripping out the mother board to have a look.

Another Also. have you tried the card on your other 1200 to see if it is at fault?

 

[rkauer]

WinUAE disregards the max_transfer value in flash media, on the real Amiga this value must be 0x0001FE00 else you'll experience crashes and corruption of large files over the partitions.

Exactly what you are experiencing right now.

Backup the partitions on the pc and re-partition the CF with the correct values, then move the data back if it is still valid. Better to install everything fresh because corrupted files might not work any more.

 

[Justin]

is whdload registered?

 

[rkauer]

is whdload registered?

Remember WHDLoad also have a fantastic "alternative"irate: WHDLoad.key detector, so if you are trying to use a key from another computer WHDLoad will do various types of errors.

 

[-Acid-]

is whdload registered?

It's not on this computer but I have it registered. But what does it matter? it wouldn't explain dopus crashing and other random sfs errors. Whdload does not need to be registered it is fully functional without a key too.

I'll try some of the latest ideas over the weekend.

 

[Justin]

sorry i only read about whdload errors, no key can lead to random whdload crashes

 

[roy_bates]

hi acid,its a bit unrelated.

but whdload isent fully functional without it being registered some games wont load.

 

[-Acid-]

I went back to 16.9 instead of 17.x and games have stopped crashing it seems. Have been playing around with my main A1200 lately so still need to investigate further.