#Bad Docs!
4 messages in this thread
I've decided that Commodore often makes pretty nice hardware, but ALWAYS
accompanied by PATHETIC documentation!
I'm struggling to understand certain aspects of my A2090 set-up. IE:
Do all partitions need to have the same mountlist entries, save for the
respective cylinders? If res2: (1st SCSI) is defined as having 5 buffers,
does that go for dh2: too? Is there a difference between the buffers
listed in the mountlist, and the buffers it asks for during prep? What is
the "write pre-comp cylinder"? What does the "reserved" parameter mean?
The example mountlist entry for SCSI drives shows a figure of "0", and the
book indicates that the value should be "2". It seems the drive runs a
little faster with "0" entered there…
The difference between a RESx: mountlist entry and a working
partition entry is that a RESx: entry isn't an AmigaDOS filesystem. The
RES entries carry the information you enter during PREP and that's what
enables the auto-mount of the first partitions.
Simply put…the write pre-comp parameters deal with the fact that as the
head moves inward on the disk, the tracks get smaller. That is, less
distance between the individual sectors. Pre-compensation adjusts for
this.
Interleave should be 0 for all partitions, including the RESx: mountlists.
Reserved should be 2 for an AmigaDOS partition. Buffers are for filesystem
entries and are equivalent to ADDBUFFERS, except that they are automaticaly
added when the drive is mounted.
Use the default values for the RESx: partitions. Check your drive's
documentation for the proper pre-comp value if your drive doesn't match one
of the included drives from PREP, otherwise, just take the defaults done by
PREP.
Hmmm….good to know. What baffles me is, apparently the res2: partition
isn't mounted on startup. If I try to do a mount command on my first
partition, it indicates it's already mounted. On the other hand, if I try
a mount command on the res2: partition, it apparently mounts.
The other one that's baffling me is, that when I do a cold-boot, turning on
the power to the SCSI drive before booting, the startup-sequence seems to
stall around the point where it must be doing binddrivers. I notice that
the drive will not spin up until that point, but then the startup-sequence
hangs.
Also trying to think of a way to run some sort of relay off of the SCSI
port to power up, and power down, the drive. The drive does NOT shut off
when the CPU is shut down. ?
The problem with the drive not spinning up is the RESET line on the
SCSI port. That can hold off spin-up until the System unit is powered.
You can remove that line with no problems. Well…I should say, you
shouldn't have any problems.
Yes…that's what's causing the startup-sequence to stall and it'
is the binddrivers command. It has to wait for the drive to spin-up and go
thru it's self-diagnostics routines and report 'ready' before it'll
continue…or it'll time out.
NO, the RESx: partitions are NOT mounted by binddrivers. The RESx:
partitions are NOT filesystem partitions..they are information reserved for
the controller/driver combination to tell it what kind of drive you have
out there and how to mount the FIRST filesystem partition on the drive
only. That is why you must specificaly MOUNT the RESx: partitions before
you can use PREP with them.