#floptical mountlist
8 messages in this thread
Yup, but the HDtoolbox does not work with a 2090a. Commodore abandoned the old
stuff again.
—–Paul—–
If you bought your floptical from an Insite approved PC vendor TWO difficulties
prevent you from using your floptical on your Amiga.
You must have both conditions satisfied.
1) you must have special program that sends a SCSI MODE command with the
appropiate floptical specific parameter to unlock the floptical drive. The
floptical drive otherwise power up as locked which means you _cannot_ write to
any disk inserted. This mode command must be sent via AmigaDOS direct SCSI
driver access. All A2090 and 2090'a have damaged direct SCSI access. 2) you
must have a mountlist or RDB for the drive.
Also you must high level AmigaDOS only format the floptical disk. This is
impossible on
the 2090's since its driver requires that you Prep the drive. But the 2090
Prep program low level formats the drive which would be unacceptable to the
floptical media and drive whose normal mode in low level formatting is to map
out errors on the media in the formatting which Prep will not accept.
Your only choice is to buy a new controller that does proper direct SCSI
access. This will interfere with your current MFM drive.
You would also need special programs to format AmigaDOS 720k and 1.44M 3.5"
floppies in order to use those lower media floppies which the drive is capable
of using.
Hmmm. That sounds awfully ominous. Does the fact that I can format on the IBM
and work thru CrossDos help me any? I guess the SCSI unlock command is the
real killer.
I'll have to hope someone can figure a workaround. I don't think the 2000
merits a major investment like changing both hd interface and drive at this
point.
Thanks for the info.
—–Paul—–
If you have the 2090's, not the 2091, then you must switch hardware. CrossDos
will not work around the problem if you have one of the 2090's. Reason: is the
RDB. The 2090's DO NOT support RDB and never will. CrossDOS 5.0 and the
emulator are setup with RDB drives and floppies ONLY. You would have to do
multple convoltions to get a 2090 or any controller not supporting RDB to work
with CrossDOS.
As goes CrossDOS so does the floptical.
No it is not a major investment to switch over to an RDB controller. I have
seen many Dataflyers for sale used from $10 to $30. And new ADSCSI's and
DataFlyers for around $60. And several mail order places such as Briwall trying
to sell out of thier 2091's for as little as $49.
Sell your what is it? 40Meg MFM for $100 or so and I could you a reconditioned
90 day warrantee, brand name SCSI 40 MEG. for $149 at most computer shows.
Point is that what you want to is already a work around even if you already had
an RDB controller.
Well, I wander the computer shows too and haven't noticed any really good
prices on SCSIs. IDEs and MFMs, yes. (Have you tried to find an RLL lately?)
But, yeah, I've ordered a 2091 and will probably have switch. I was kind of
hoping someone could tell me how to coexist the 2090a and a 2091.
Thanks for the info, though.
—–Paul—–
Paul,
I exist with a 2090 (not the A model) and an A2091, no problems. What
exactly is it you want to do and/or what problems are you having?
Don
Paul,
I had a problem with my floptical – the system would not find it from a cold
boot. I could either warm boot or figure out a mount list and do it the old
way. I have an A3000 with the newer controller however. This mount list worked
for me. V2.1 cured the problem I was having by rescanning the drives after
loading workbench, so I don't use it anymore.
* Disk Size: 20 Meg
* Vendor and drive name: Insite
*
*/
Surfaces = 2
BlocksPerTrack = 27
LowCyl = 2
HighCyl = 752
DosType = 0x444F5301
Buffers = 30
BufMemType = 0
Activate = 1
Device = scsi.device
Unit = 1
Flags = 0
FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem
StackSize = 2000
Priority = 5
GlobVec = -1
Hope this helps, Patrick
PMFJI, but . . .
Could you expand on the comment: 'I have an A3000 with the newer
controller however.'?
I have an A3000, and was unaware of any difference in controllers. (Or
were you just referring to newer vs the A2090 controller, or sumthin'.)
Is there any way to tell what 'version' I might have?
Thanks, sorry for the interruption,
Erik Flom