FaasstCr*p
24 messages in this thread
Figure this one out! I've just cleaned my harddrive and restored it. I have a
perfectly good Syquest drive that runs (ran) off of my GVP controller. Now,
good ole' FaaaassttPrep won't allow me to make an AmigaDos Syquest cartridge.
Amax likes it, I can make a nice Macintosh-formatted Syquest cartridge. Same
cartridge, so I don't have a dud. FaaaaaaastPrep complains that my Syquest is
not a Dos disk. It used to work with AmigaDos. I just detest GVP software! Any
suggestions?
I've got a GVP G-Force 040 with SCSI adapter. I don't use my Syquest a lot,
but I know it's sometimes taken magic incantations and several reboots and
invocations of the 'gvpscsictrl -r 2 0' command to get it to recognize
cartridges. And yes, it was a known working and/or even a known formatted
cart. And watch your language! 🙂 But I agree, I think I've bought my last
piece of GVP hardware, and that's a shame, because I'd always bought GVP from
the beginning.
Well, the hardware works fine – the controller itself, it is just the
controller software that makes me use foul words. I picked GVP because I wanted
to run my Amax with partitioned harddrive support. I've had the Amax when I had
my 1000 and the Amax for me has been very reliable with the software – no
complaints. I made the mistake of backing up my system to an AmigaDos syquest
cart, so I've lost a lot of stuff. It shouldn't be this difficult and I
consider myself a fairly experienced nurdette.
Oh, I was cursing at the software when it did that to me too – it acted like
the Syquest wasn't even there. I don't know what the problem was. Here's what
I did to "fix" it. I popped out the cart, then rebooted with a second
known-working, formatted cart. It came to life on that one, then upon swapping
carts, it recognized the one it wouldn't acknowledge a few moments before.
Well I called King'A'Prussia. My Workbench isn't quite back the way I like it,
so it never occurred to me to look under my main disk window. Support said
reboot and I did and the icon popped up as a bad disk. Then I used the AmigaDos
Format from the bench. So then it was there. Then I did a cold boot, put the
cartridge back in and it was unrecognizable again and it wouldn't format. It
hit a bad area on the cart. Now this cart reads and writes fine when I make it
a Macintosh cartridge with the Amax. I've used it to ship my artwork. The Mac
Syquest formatting program that I use can't find any bad spots on it and
neither can FaastForgetit. So I used another cartridge which formats and will
show up if it is in the Syquest drive when I reboot. None of the PD utilities
to mount the cartridge post boot work. I only have three carts and I'm not
buying anymore of them.
Margaret,
I had a similar problem with my Syquest 88. Apparently the MAC software I
was using was writing out the bad blocks and the Amiga formatting software
(Faaastprep) couldn't handle it. I bought another cartridge and the
problems went away.
-Jonathan
Well FaaastNot! has bad block allocation but it doesn't appear to work. It'll
sail through this particular cartridge. It is AmigaDos that kicks on a certain
block and stops the format. Oh well, I'll use it as a Mac cart. I have one
Amigados one that is working but I bet it won't if I do any changes to my
harddrive. I added (when I started this folly), a separate partition that I can
wipe out from time to time, to use as a place for my VM swap and large files.
Deleting big files does not do much for disk performance. I'm letting Imagine
put those proliferous pic files there as I rarely save my test anims. This has
nothing to do with the Syquest except to say that it seems to have made the
previously-working AmigaDos cart unreadable.
Incidentally, I used Ami-Back tools to write out the back block on my
Syquest cartridge that Faaastprep could not do.
-Jonathan
That cooks it, I'll have to get one of these commercial programs so that I can
do backup more often. I've just always relied on the CLI.
The other thing I forgot is that if the cart wsa formatted under an older
FaaaastPuke it poassible will not recgonize the cart with newer
gvpscsi.device. This is 'cause GVP is now supporting a little more of the
RDB than they used to and sometimes the blocks per track, heads per disk
infor for the wame cart differs in teh GVP software revs. SO the
controller gets wacky as it is trying to read the new format that, of
course is not on the disk.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Nope, it isn't that – same FaaastNot!. My theory is that when I reparti- tioned
my main harddrive, that it writes some kind of entry to the RDB. It then never
can read anything that was created when the RDB on the boot drive was
different. I had two partitions on my Quantum. The offending cart was created
then. I changed it to three – no SCSI ID changes, nothing else and then it
wouldn't read the cart. This is just my theory.
Oh yeah,
forgot – try recovering the disk with FixDisk (QBtools 1.5 version) then
use QBTools to unformatt and reformat.
wmc – via Autopilot!
I don't have Quarterback or any other commercial Amiga disk utility.
Margaret,
It sounds like its time to order one of the commercial disk utility
programs. I'd suggest Ami-Back Tools, but have only used QB Tools. Haven't
tried the new version of QBTools either, but you need one of them.
BTW, I use a GVP controller and two 44MB SyQuests for the Amiga and AMAX
sides, and use the external SyQuest on a MAC II cx and the carts have
worked fine. Fast Prep hasn't caused me any troubles. No idea what to
suggest to you to fix your problem. I need to know more about your system.
If your setting up multiple partitions on a 44MB removable cart my first
question to you is WHY?! 44MB to me is the smallest partition I'd want on
one of those things. <smile>
Please check the LowCyl and HiCyl numbers and sectors, is there a chance
these were changed when you did your repartitioning? I've been using 1,
and 1274, with 34 sectors, but newer carts seem to get LowCyl=1, HiCyl=638
and 68 sectors, so I edit them to reflect the older settings. If I didn't
do that then I'd have to mount them as a different device name, or they
wouldn't mount.
Chris
Pardon, it wasn't my Syquest cartridge I was partioning, no point in that. My
Quantum had two partitions on it, AmigaDos etc., and one for Amax. I
repartioned the Quantum, so I have a partition for AmigaDos, programs etc., an
AmigaDos partition for large files, swap files, and a third partition for the
Amax: roughly 40,30,30. This is kind of compacting my Amiga programs but then
an AmigaDos Syquest might not be a bad place for infrequently used programs.
So…. after I did this to the main drive – my Quantum – my previously running
and happy Sy- quest carts were unrecognizable. Now, all of this works but I
lost what I had on the Syquest. I thought it might not be a bad idea to use a
Syquest for backup but I've lost faith.
Want to have real fun…
try using fastprep on a harddisk that was prepped with just about any
other program ( supraedit, RDPrep, HDToolbox ) and watch all of your data
disappear!! It seems that GVP incorrectly reads the start and stop cyl #s
and just uses their own idea of what makes up an X MB partition!
Fortunately for me I had the RDP printed out for all but one of my drives.
I still have not recovered the data from that drive, though I am working
on it!
I talked with GVP and they suggested that I DL the latest version of
fastprep from their BBS… one LD call later I discovered that I already
HAVE the latest version.
I like their hardware, but their software leaves something to be
desired!!
Bill… on Autopilot in Womelsdorf 😉
Yes, the software is very finicky about other formatting with other control ler
software. If you didn't have to recover anything, you'd be better off
initializing and starting over.
Margaret,
Did the eame thing with my Ricohs. Some things to try:
1) boot with the cart in the drive.
2) read RDB from a "good" cart, take it out put in the bad one and write
the RDB.
3) If you have an NDos Icon, use ADos format command on it.
4) Upgrade to the latest GVP crapware (FastPrep 2.0 and ROM 4.13).
5) use a disk editor to see if the root blocks are damaged or not
(physically). If so, get a new cart.
6) if you are 2.x or above on the OS, and running w/o gvpscsi.device in
the Expansion drawer, try creating a mount list for the offending disk and
mouning it with the ADos mount command.
I've tried 'em all and they seem to work under different circumnstances
short of physical damage to the disk.
wmc – via Autopilot!
I do boot with the cart. I can't afford a 2nd cart for just AmigaDos RDB
reading. It is working now and seems to be sticking – if I boot with the cart
in – the Icon shows and all if fine. I do have the latest EPROMS and the latest
FaastNOT!, I checked with GVP. I do not have a disk editor that can check the
root blocks and I wouldn't know what to look for any way. I do have an
appropriate Mountlist for this cart in DEVS:. It may work for me today but with
the way things are, I can't count on it. So weird, since on the Amax-side of my
machine, my carts always format, mount and behave. Thanks for the checklist.
Have you considered getting SCSIMounter? (SCSIMT.L?? in the Libs here)
It's the workaround for booting the system without a cartridge in
removable drives. Run this after the drive is ready, and it will list all
devices on the SCSI bus, and allow you to select one for mounting or
dismounting all, or only selected, partitions on any SCSI device.
Works for me with my 88MB Syquest…
// Brian — Cruising on AutoPilot…..
\X/
I'll try it. I tried another PD one and it didn't do anything. I'll look in the
library. Thanks for the tip.
Magaret,
I also found termination a real problem with GVP stuff. For example I have
to unterm the internal drive, and externally, term the RIcoh removable,
unterm the CD-Rom and term the tape drive in that order on the chain.
Bizzaar!!
wmc – via Autopilot!
Yes, it is a problem. I had one external drive I tried to connect for almost a
year. I gave up. Then when I got my used DPI Syquest external drive (despite
all the warnings about connecting Mac peripherals to an Amiga) it worked right
away. I think this controller works when it wants to :'(.