Dataflyer & 2.0 Autoboot
12 messages in this thread
My son just installed AmigaDOS 2.0 Kickstart and Workbench 2.1 on his Amiga
500. The machine will not boot from the hard drive, Dataflyer 500
Revision 2.0 with Autoboot ROM 1.3 (sticker info). In hard drive toolbox
program, it says there's no hard drive installed, even when the hard drive
has been manually mounted and can be read. Anyone know of any help?
The Dataflyer disk has all the utiliies for the controller, so your going
to either have to copy the utilites (defdisk, setautoboot) to another boot
disk, or copy the mountlist for your hard drive to the dataflyer floppy
and boot from that.
Then you have to:
1. boot with on of the disks I mentioned above.
2. open a shell.
3. mount all the hard disk partitions with the mount command.
4. copy l:fastfilesystem from the AmigaDOS 2.1 install disk to L: in the
boot partition: COPY DF0:l/FastFileSystem DH0:l
5. then type:
. cd DH0:
. defisk DH0:
. setautoboot on
wait till you get a message that says that it's done, take out the boot
floppy in DF0: and reboot. It should boot fine from the hard disk!
Let me know how it goes! If you have any problems or questions, just leave
me a message, I check in every day.
Bob Comer
Bob: Thanks for the response.
Your instructions seem clear enough, but it doesn't work. On booting
the light on the drive indicates that it's reading something from the hard
drive. Then it just settles into a graphic presentation showing the
floppy disk being inserted. The Dataflyer users manual says that "The
autobooting function will work only with a Kickstart 1.3 in the A500 or
A2000." Might it not be backward–compatible?
The Users Manual shows a jumper 1.3 for configuration, normally present.
Another area of confusion arises from the difference in fastfilesystem
treatment per your instructions, and the following from the Amiga Users'
Guide: (p2-13)
FFS in ROM. "The fact that the FastFileSystem is now in ROM, rather
than a handler in the L: directory, has important implications for
those upgrading to Release 2 from a 1.3 system. For the ROM
filesystem to operate, references to L:fastfilesystem should not
be made." It goes on to give instruction on deleting lines that
refer to "L:fastfilesystem" or "globvec=-1" from mountlists and
RigidDiskBlocks.
By the way, he's using just one disk partition, and I'm reasonably sure
he didn't re-format the hard drive. with the 2.0.
This seems a lot harder than working with my IBM.
I have a DataFlyer also, and it works fine with a 2.04 ROM and 2.1 WB, So
I don't think thats your problem. (You want the 1.3 jumper set)
Unfortunately, the dataflyer controller wont use the FFS that's in ROM,
that's why you have to have it in the L directory. Only controllers that
use Commodore's RBD scheme can use the ROM to autoboot. That's why you
need the fastfilesystem on disk, (when you do the setautoboot on, a file
is written on disk that points to the l:fasfilesystem, and partition
sizes, disk size, andother parameters like that (Just like RDB, but not
compatible with RDB)
Perhaps, it's just the Hard Drive not spinning up fast enough, you can
test that by, when you try to boot off the hard drive and get the insert
floppy screen, try to do a warm boot with Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga, if it boots up
from the drive, that's the problem and I can suggest how to make a custom
boot flopy that transfers over to the hard drive.
If thats not the problem, maybe you could me more info, what are all the
jumpers set on the controller, and what AmigaDOS he started with before
the upgrade.
(The FastFileSystem problem with the dataflyer, is the same reason
HDTOOLBOX wont work either… No RDB. )
Bob Comer
Bob; The warm reboot makes no difference, so it can't be related to disk
coming up to speed.
This disk has not been set up to autoboot before, because the Kickstart
was version 1.2 and autoboot wasn't supported. Prior to attempting the
autoboot, the autoboot (1.3) jumper was put in place. There is a three-
prong jumper not described in the documentation, with position a (reset,
normal) and postion b. He's tried it both ways. Two jumpers have to do
with power supply, which would appear not to be a problem. Other jumpers
have to do with expansion RAM. After insertion of the new ROM chip, the
dataflyer was re-formatted using the dataflyer installation software. We
don't know, but assume that means the 1.3 fastfilesystem.
Could you please post the content of your mountlist entry for your
boot partition? Does there have to be a separate mountlist entry in DOS
drivers or elsewhere under 2.0? Or in the expansion drawer? Does ANYTHING
have to be in the expansion drawer?
Sure, I'll post my mountlist:
. DH0:
. Device = ExpSys.device
. Unit = 0
. Flags = 0
. Surfaces = 2
. BlocksPerTrack = 41
. Reserved = 2
. Interleave = 0
. Buffers = 32
. BufMemType = 0
. LowCyl = 0 ; HighCyl = 753
. FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem
. GlobVec = -1
. Mount = 1
. DosType = 0x444f5301
. StackSize = 4000
. #
.
. DH1:
. Device = ExpSys.device
. Unit = 0
. Flags = 0
. Surfaces = 2
. BlocksPerTrack = 41
. Reserved = 2
. Interleave = 0
. Buffers = 32
. BufMemType = 0
. LowCyl = 754 ; HighCyl = 1244
. FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem
. GlobVec = -1
. Mount = 1
. DosType = 0x444f5301
. StackSize = 4000
. #
It doesn't sound like you have a jumper problem. The dataflyer wouldv'e
formatted with 1.3, unless the (special) 2.0 FastFileSystem, but that
shouldn't be a problem either. Once you get the setautoboot to take, you
don't have to worry about having the mountlist in DOSDrivers, it doesn't
use this copy. You might try looking in the L: directory to see if you
have some files that start with AutoBoot.* This is where the controller
keeps all the controller parameters (You can't really tell what in them,
just see if they're there after you do a setautoboot on.)
Nothing has to be in the expansion drawer, but there is a few files in
Devs: that the software should've put in, (ExpSys.device, HardDisk.driver,
IDEdf.handler, SCSIdf.handler) L: needs (FastFileSystem, and the autoboot
stuff above) and Libs: needs SCSI-Link.library.
That should be everything… What version of the dataflyer sofware are
you using?
Bob Comer
Thanks for your help with the Dataflyer autoboot. It's now autobooting
like it spoze to. He explained ALL the details of how autoboot was finally
achieved. Twice. The part I retained was that he copied the FastFile
whatchamacallit that came with the new 2.x ROM onto the Dataflyer disk,
booted from that disk, then did a manual installation of the Dataflyer
and then . . . my eyes just sort of glazed over and I don't know the
rest. Anyway, I gave him your messages and I'm sure they helped. – Herb –
Glad to hear it!
Bob Comer
I'd suggest talking to the folks who made the DataFlyer. It may have an OS
incompatability with the newer OS.
{@_@}
He got it working, finally. It really doesn't have any incompability with
anything up to 2.1, it's just fairly old technology.
Dataflyer is a PIO SCSI or IDE contoller that farily slow, but cheap!
Actually, it works pretty well, and I haven't found the need of upgrading
the controller (I'm updating to the new A1200, but that's for AGA!) (heck,
it even works well with my 10M Konica floppy.)
Bob Comer
Whyinheck does it require l:fastfilesystem in the RDBs? Is the DataFlyer
brain dead that it does not realize that the new file system is in the
ROMs unless you want to try that new directory caching version?
{@_@}
Exactly! It's even more brain dead than that — no RDB's (well, not
commodore rdb's anyway…) An update has been promised for over a year to
bring us up to C= standards, but so far nothing… 🙁
Bob Comer