Installing 3.1 on external scsi hard drive. How long does it take?
Gerald Pine
I have a 2000 HD with a GVP HC-8 scsi controller card populated with 8 Mb
of ram. I have been trying to install OS 3.1 on an external scsi drive on
the first 2Gb partition. Everything is set up for 3.1 as that is already
installed on a couple of other external hard drives connected to the
machine. I'm even using the partition that I'm trying to install 3.1 on
for storage of about 400 Mb of files.
When I run the install program from the Install diskette, it seems to
start okay with the usual questions, but then it seems to hang up with the
message Preparing Icons. The computer is not locked up. I just get the
clock symbol indicating that the computer is doing something and it just
stays at 8% done until I stop the install program. Which brings up my
question. How long should the install take typically? This does not seem
normal to me, but then I have no prior experience installing the os.
Should I just be patient and wait longer (I've waited a couple of hours
twice)? If not, do you have any suggestions as to what I might be doing
wrong?
Gerald
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Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
Daniele Gratteri
> my question. How long should the install take typically? This does not
> seem normal to me, but then I have no prior experience installing the
> os. Should I just be patient and wait longer (I've waited a couple of
> hours twice)? If not, do you have any suggestions as to what I might be
> doing wrong?
It doesn't have to take hours, just few seconds normally!
Have no idea, really, of why it takes so long: probably the install
script itself hangs. I suppose things like SCSI termitaions are ok. Can
you try to move that drive internally and do the install? If it proceeds
fine, then maybe there is some problem with the external device.
--
___ __
/ __|___ Daniele Gratteri, Italian Commodore-Amiga user... ///
| / |__/ Nickname: fiat1100d Ritmo S75 __ ///
| \__|__\ Home page: http://www.gratteri.tk forever! \\\///
\___| E-MAIL: dan...@gratteri.tk ...since 1990 \///
Gerald Pine
yes, the terminations are all okay. Everything went okay in the initial
partitioning of the drive and the formatting. Maybe I'll try the install
of os 2.04 or 2.1 and see if one of those installs okay. Thanks for the
comments.
Gerald
On Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:42:15 -0700, Daniele Gratteri
<grat...@nospamemail.it> wrote:
> Gerald Pine ha scritto:
>
>> my question. How long should the install take typically? This does
>> not seem normal to me, but then I have no prior experience installing
>> the os. Should I just be patient and wait longer (I've waited a couple
>> of hours twice)? If not, do you have any suggestions as to what I
>> might be doing wrong?
>
> It doesn't have to take hours, just few seconds normally!
> Have no idea, really, of why it takes so long: probably the install
> script itself hangs. I suppose things like SCSI termitaions are ok. Can
> you try to move that drive internally and do the install? If it proceeds
> fine, then maybe there is some problem with the external device.
>
--
.
"Gerald Pine" <gdp...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:op.u0972...@gerald-pines-imac.local...
Did you try the quick format option?
Gerald Pine
formatting went fine. I just can't install the OS on it.
zipper
- a pretty simple job.
Petteri Valli
> Yes, I did. There's data on the hard drive already. Partitioning and
> formatting went fine. I just can't install the OS on it.
If you have OS installed on another HD (internal maybe), why not just copy
it over to that external and see if it works? "copy source:#? dest: all
clone quiet" is a friend :)
.
"Gerald Pine" <gdp...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:op.u1aa6...@gerald-pines-imac.local...
Gerald Pine
Thanks.
Gerald
On Sun, 04 Oct 2009 10:08:05 -0700, Petteri Valli <xx...@xxxx.xxx.fi>
wrote:
Gerald Pine
It hung up in the same place which makes me think the os installation
diskettes might have some problems. They're copies that i received with
my system. I didn't get any originals. I suppose springing for some new
OS diskettes might be in order some time.
On the partition size, some threads of discussions I saw on line suggested
that I should be able to use up to about 2 Gb in a partition. I've set up
partitions just under 2 Gb. When I copied everything from a working
bootable drive to the one I was trying to install on, it did boot. I
obviously have some problems with the startup process as it's trying to
assign some volumes that don't exist on the drive, so there's cleanup, but
at least it's bootable now if I just cancel the script commands a couple
of times during the boot process.
Frankly, the boot process is still not clear to me--which files are used.
I found the user-startup file and tried deleting commands that were
causing me problems, but that still didn't fix the boot script errors.
Guess there must be some other places to look that I haven't found yet.
Gerald
Gerald Pine
Amiga OS 3.1 again. I have a hard drive with four formatted partitions on
it. HDToolBox sees all of them and shows them as SDH0: though SDH3:
SDH0: is mounted when I boot. However, SDH1: through SDH3: are not. I
thought maybe I needed to create an entry in mountlist, but I don't see
any entries there for any external hard drives or cd drives, only for the
single internal hd. So apparently you don't have to do anything to have
the first partition recognized. What do I need to do to make the other 3
partitions visible after I boot up?
Gerald
On Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:31:19 -0700, Gerald Pine <gdp...@alum.mit.edu>
wrote:
.
"Gerald Pine" <gdp...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:op.u1aup...@gerald-pines-imac.local...
In HDToolbox, highlight the partition,
then select `change`, and then tick
automount..save all changes, then reboot.
Gerald Pine
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Okay. I did that, and the partitions still don't show up after rebooting.
One thing that I expected to have to do was to format each partition AFTER
partitioning, but there appeared to be only an option to format the entire
disk drive. Does my trouble perhaps indicate that the partitions still
need to be formatted. I thought that a single operation had formatted the
entire drive, but is this incorrect?
Gerald
.
"Gerald Pine" <gdp...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:op.u1els...@gerald-pines-imac.local...
That looks like a problem I had with
my A600 OS2.1; when I`d prepped
the harddrive under emulation on the
PC; using OS3.9.
which set the partitions as Custom.
Try changing the partition type to:
FastFileSystem, and see if that`ll
make any difference.
.
"." <.@.com> wrote in message
news:SuZym.45928$ze1....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
Gerald Pine
Well, unfortunately, that didn't do the trick either. In fact two of the
three unrecognized partitions were set up exactly the same way as the one
that is recognized.
Any other ideas?
Petteri Valli
> One thing that I expected to have to do was to format each partition AFTER
> partitioning, but there appeared to be only an option to format the entire
> disk drive. Does my trouble perhaps indicate that the partitions still
> need to be formatted. I thought that a single operation had formatted the
> entire drive, but is this incorrect?
Every partition must be formatted separately. Format doesn't have option
to format "entire drive", there should be seen only partitions made with
some other software and each of them have to be formatted separately.
What are your HD and partition sizes? Maybe you have used more than 4GB of
the HD, but you don't have working support for bigger drives?
Gerald Pine
wrote:
> Gerald Pine <gdp...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
With HDToolBox, I do seem to see ONLY an option to format the entire
drive. I don't see an option to format a partition.
As for the size of the partitions, I used 4 partitions of 2 gigabytes
each. Should I be able to at least format partitions within the first
four gigabytes? As I said, I do see all four partitions, and I am able to
use the first partition, but I cannot do anything with the other three
partitions. When I use HDToolBox and select the DOS Format option, a
subsequent message indicates that the entire drive will be formatted. Is
that perhaps really talking about the entire partition?
Alternatively, I had thought that I might use the Format command from dos,
but when I do that it doesn't seem to recognize the partitions as valid
drives.
.
"Gerald Pine" <gdp...@alum.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:op.u1gm3...@gerald-pines-imac.local...
1 What version of HDToolbox are you using?
2 You`re harddrive may be bad.
3 See Peter Valeys` post.
B Sellers
The drive is larger than the built-in fast file system can handle
thus you have to break it down into partitions that ffs can recognise
and deal with.
You need to examine all the options presented as buttons in
HDToolBox. Do you see the Advanced button? Have you clicked
on it? Select, by clicking on its graphical representation in
HDTB, an
unformatted partition and examine the presented options.
How big is your SYS: partition? It needs to be smaller than
the 2 Gigabytes because until you move beyond 3.1 you will find
it hard to load the OS from a partition at the limit of your
filesystems
capability.
The DOS format is only for floppy disk drives AFAIK..
The Aminet used to have file systems for 3.1 that could be
used for the larger partitions and drives but you still needed the
basic included ffs on the system partition of less than 2 GiB.
Good luck and you might want to talk about what hardware
you are using,
later
bliss
.
"B Sellers" <bl...@sfo.com> wrote in message
news:7j6h3kF...@mid.individual.net...
Thanks Bobby
I`m glad that a more knowledge-able
person has joined in.
B Sellers
I think getting into the Amiga at this point is very difficult
unless you
are willing to read all the on line references and maybe some
hard copy.
I started out in the 1990s with an A1000 and ended up after exposure
to all the others with an A2000 which until the year before last
was reliable
on OS 3.9. I spent years and bucks learning the system when people
were still around to answer questions and you could still buy The
Amiga
Companion to learn the basic DOS on top of the lovely GUI. Nowadays
the aficionados have a stony path to walk though doing all this stuff
was hard. I note in the original post the SCSI host card is a
GVP+8 which
was my first. Which firmware is the GVP using? The original was
not up
to modern disk sizes and I upgraded it to a later ROM before I
started
using the Blizzard 060's Host Card.
Again good luck with the machine
later
bliss
Gerald Pine
Hey, great responses. Thanks to everyone. I see several questions that I
can't answer without exploring the Amiga a bit more, but I'll start with a
very simple one that probably exposes my lack of knowledge of the Amiga
and Os at this point. My experience in the days when amiga was introduced
was still focussed on CPM machines. What SYS: partition are you referring
to? Is the first partition on each hard drive a SYS: partition, or is
there a single SYS partition on the machine if I have multiple hard
drives? My first partition is almost exactly 2 gigabytes, actually I
think just a hair over (2040 or so instead of 2000). Problem there? It
is recognized and has files on it at the moment. Will I run into problems
with it eventually?
Okay, for some of the other questions. I don't see an easy way to show
the version of the hdtoolbox. The OS is 3.1. I also don't see an obvious
way to display the firmware of the GVP scsi card. Is there a hardware
information utility that I just haven't found?
As for the options under the advanced button on hdtoolbox, among the other
things (start cylinder 2418, end cylinder 4833, total cylinders 2416,
buffers 30, etc, it shows the partition size as 2049 Meg, the file system
type as International FFS the partition name as sdh1, the hostid as 7, the
boot priority as 0 and the bootable option checked. I also have 2 other
partitions, and they are obviously above the 4 gigabyte limit that has
been mentioned. maybe the second one is also based on the 2049 Megs per
partition for the first two.
Gerald
Gerald Pine
wrote:
A correction to my earlier posts. It appears that what I have installed
on the Amiga 2000HD is OS 3.5 (Workbench version 44.2). The Kickstart
version is 40.63. That is somewhat baffling since I didn't get any OS
install or update diskettes for 3.5, just for 3.1.
Clocky
The SYS: partition is the partition upon which Workbench is installed, the
default boot partition that Workbench normally installs itself on.
> Okay, for some of the other questions. I don't see an easy way to
> show the version of the hdtoolbox. The OS is 3.1. I also don't see
> an obvious way to display the firmware of the GVP scsi card. Is
> there a hardware information utility that I just haven't found?
Hold both mouse buttons when you boot the Amiga and you will be presented
with a startup menu which allows you to choose which drive to boot from and
shows what autoconfig devices you have installed and some other startup
options. From memory the GVP also shows the ROM version on that screen.
Early versions had limited support for drives over certain sizes and other
SCSI devices, one fix was to install a GuruROM.
> As for the options under the advanced button on hdtoolbox, among the
> other things (start cylinder 2418, end cylinder 4833, total cylinders
> 2416, buffers 30, etc, it shows the partition size as 2049 Meg, the
> file system type as International FFS the partition name as sdh1, the
> hostid as 7, the boot priority as 0 and the bootable option checked. I
> also have 2 other partitions, and they are obviously above the 4
> gigabyte limit that has been mentioned. maybe the second one is also
> based on the 2049 Megs per partition for the first two.
>
> Gerald
I think you are dealing with a limitation of FFS and drives over 4GB likely
of the SCSI controller with an early ROM.
Petteri Valli
> was still focussed on CPM machines. What SYS: partition are you referring
> to? Is the first partition on each hard drive a SYS: partition, or is
> there a single SYS partition on the machine if I have multiple hard
SYS: is automatically made assign to the partition which you have booted
from. If you boot from DH0:, SYS: will point out to DH0:. If you boot from
floppy DF0:, SYS: will point to DF0:
> drives? My first partition is almost exactly 2 gigabytes, actually I
> think just a hair over (2040 or so instead of 2000). Problem there? It
> is recognized and has files on it at the moment. Will I run into problems
> with it eventually?
If it's 2040 megabytes, it makes 1.99 gigabytes. So it's under and should
be OK in every way by size.
> Okay, for some of the other questions. I don't see an easy way to show
> the version of the hdtoolbox. The OS is 3.1. I also don't see an obvious
Open shell and type: version sys:tools/hdtoolbox full
But I guess the most important thing to know is that it's from 3.x
installation.
> way to display the firmware of the GVP scsi card. Is there a hardware
> information utility that I just haven't found?
I'd try: version gvpscsi.device full
> As for the options under the advanced button on hdtoolbox, among the other
> things (start cylinder 2418, end cylinder 4833, total cylinders 2416,
> buffers 30, etc, it shows the partition size as 2049 Meg, the file system
> type as International FFS the partition name as sdh1, the hostid as 7, the
> boot priority as 0 and the bootable option checked. I also have 2 other
> partitions, and they are obviously above the 4 gigabyte limit that has
> been mentioned. maybe the second one is also based on the 2049 Megs per
> partition for the first two.
OK, 2049 megabytes is one megabyte too large to be in the 2GB limit :) I'd
make it several megs smaller just in case.
Thomas Richter
> I think you are dealing with a limitation of FFS and drives over 4GB likely
> of the SCSI controller with an early ROM.
Maybe, but things are more complicated....
First of all, the *partition size* alone is not quite the problem. The
problem is that the trackdisk-type commands for reading and writing
blocks on the harddisk are 32 bit fields and for that reason cannot
access blocks beyond the first 4GB. It doesn't matter whether the
partition is 2GB or not, as soon as it contains a block that is beyond
the 4GB barrier, it won't work anymore.
To address this deficiency, three possibilities exist:
a) Instead of using the trackdisk style commands, a different command
set called the HD_SCSI commands exist. They will issue the SCSI commands
directly to the harddisk, and do not have this limitation. However, the
FFS doesn't use them, but some third-party filing systems like the SFS do.
b) Since vendors became aware of the trackdisk limitations, a consortium
of independent hardware vendors designed an extension of the old
commands, called TD64. Phase 5 and (later) GVP products support it, and
probably a couple of others. For the GVP board of the OP an update
called the "Guru ROM" aka "the omniscsi.device" exists, designed by
Ralph Babel, which would allow full addressing of data beyond 4GB.
Again, unfortunately the original FFS from 3.1 does not support this.
c) Completely ignorant (and yes, really that!) of TD64, Heinz Wrobel
developped NSD, "new style device interface", another incompatible
extension that would, amongst a considerably broken query mechanism,
adds 64 bit capability for sector addressing. Unfortunately, it uses
commands *different* from TD64 to break the barrier.
However, as Heinz also worked on the FFS, the latest FFS release -
namely the one that came with Os 3.9 - does support NSD *only*. Os 3.9
came with a patch (the NSDPatch command) that added patched in support
for the NSD style command set, either using option a) or option b)
(thus, actually patching completely working 64-bit aware implementations
of devices just to do the addressing by a different command).
For the OP, this means that:
-> you need to install the Os 3.9 FFS in the RDB of the harddisk.
HDToolbox can do that. You *cannot* use the ROM version because it is
neither HD_SCSICmd-aware, nor TD64-aware, nor NSD-aware. Thus, make sure
that the FFS is *not only* in the L: directory of the installed
harddisk, also make sure that it is in the RDB (rigit disk block) of the
disk. Note that the new FFS (the 3.9 one) intentionally refuses to mount
partitions beyond 2GB unless the device they are on support NSD.
-> you need to install the NSDPatch command, and use an appropriate
configuration file to patch over the gvpscsi.device. There should be
examples for this on Aminet, and there is also an independent
distribution of NSDPatch (an older version of it). Os 3.9 SetPatch
included NSDPatch.
-> Since you need to bootstrap the system somehow with a device that
does not support NSD without a patch, you *also* need to setup a boot
partition that must be completely within the first 4GB and that can be
accessed without NSD and that contains SetPatch to install the NSD patch
to make all remaining partitions accessible.
---
-> An alternative route would be to use a different filing system, i.e.
do not use FFS but something else that is smarter - or at least, has
been implemented by someone with a more pragmatic approach. The problem
there is that such solutions are probably not quite as stable as FFS
(aged for years), and doesn't support the same toolchain as FFS (many
disk editors etc. support FFS out of the box). If you don't need this,
an alternative might be a good option.
The whole situation is a mess, to a good degree caused be the "Egos" of
some of the participating developers.
So long,
Thomas
Petteri Valli
> With HDToolBox, I do seem to see ONLY an option to format the entire
> drive. I don't see an option to format a partition.
You don't format partitions with HDToolBox. It is only used for creating
the partitions. You must use system's Format command either from shell or
from Workbench's menus. If you see some format option in HDToolBox, it's
low-level format option, which should not be used ever. It is practically
completely obsolete and doesn't do anything on slightly modern drives. In
worst cases you just break things with it.
> As for the size of the partitions, I used 4 partitions of 2 gigabytes
> each. Should I be able to at least format partitions within the first
> four gigabytes? As I said, I do see all four partitions, and I am able to
> use the first partition, but I cannot do anything with the other three
> partitions. When I use HDToolBox and select the DOS Format option, a
> subsequent message indicates that the entire drive will be formatted. Is
> that perhaps really talking about the entire partition?
It all depends about the used device and filesystem. I'm not familiar with
gvpscsi.device, that how big disks it supports. Old FFS doesn't support
bigger than 4GB usage of the disk counted from the start of the disk, but
there are updates and patches for that too. I'd say make two first
partitions under 2GB of size and try then.
You could also try this: http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/check4gb
> Alternatively, I had thought that I might use the Format command from dos,
> but when I do that it doesn't seem to recognize the partitions as valid
> drives.
Yes, that's the way you should do. Unless there's some special version of
the HDToolBox for the GVP, but if it's the normal 3.x way now.
Clocky
Thanks for that very useful explanation. I guess it all went a long way
towards killing the Amiga as people got pissed off with the fragmentation of
the community and left.
Damn shame really.
Thomas Richter
>> The whole situation is a mess, to a good degree caused be the "Egos"
>> of some of the participating developers.
>>
>
> Thanks for that very useful explanation. I guess it all went a long way
> towards killing the Amiga as people got pissed off with the fragmentation of
> the community and left.
One of the many nails in the coffin, yes.
For details on TD64, the flame war between the developers and why NSD is
broken as designed, for gvpscsi images etc, go here:
Greetings,
Thomas
Gerald Pine
wrote:
> Gerald Pine <gdp...@alum.mit.edu> wrote:
Thanks Peter, Thomas, Clocky, and Bobby for all the great information.
I'm going to disappear for a few days while I absorb it all and do some
research following up some of the comments. I clearly have a lot new to
learn about the amiga os, but that was probably the main attraction for
the old machine for me--the fun of learning how it ticks.
Gerald