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RPC disc problems

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Alan Adams

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Sep 23, 2020, 9:28:16 AM9/23/20
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I have an RPC I use occasionally because of some software that won't work
on later machines. It runs 4.02.

It has/had two 3.5 inch discs connected to the two IDE ports of a unipod,
and one 2.5inch IDE disc connected via an adapter to the motherboard IDE
port.

I *think* the latter is configured as the boot disc. Recently I plugged
this disc into the adapter incorrectly, only connecting the bottom row of
pins of the dics to the top row on the socket. Since then, even correctly
plugged in, it doesn't work.

I've tried plugging the ide cable from the motherboard into one of the 3.5
inch discs. During boot up, I get the ADFS message, and the disc activity
light comes on, flickers briefly, then goes off. The boot eventually fails
ansd offers "floppy boot", there's no floppy drive that works, retry,
which gets to the same pioint, and cancel, which stops at the splash
screen.

I suspect this disc is not configured as a boot disc. The other 3.5 inch
disc now prevents the PSU from starting. It seems to have failed during
all the plugging and unplugging I've been doing.

I would like to get this to boot again, probable using the 3.5 inch disc
that does still seem to work. It holds a backup of a lot of what was on
the failed 2.5 inch disc. Options would be either to connect it to the
motherboard or the unipod. The latter requires *configure filesystem idefs
I believe.

How can I get to the supervisor to reconfigure things? I don't have an RPC
ketyboard now, only USB. The USB keyboard does get a reaction once I'm at
the "failed boot" screen - pressing escape is equivalent to cancel. F12
does nothing however.

I've checked the CMOS. Years ago I replaced the motherboard battery, and
relocated it well clear on extension wires. It's still producing 1.3
volts.

Secondly, in order to make sure the 2.5 inch disc has failed, is there any
way to connect it to an ARMX6? It's IDE.

--
Alan Adams, from Northamptonshire
al...@adamshome.org.uk
http://www.nckc.org.uk/

druck

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Sep 23, 2020, 9:47:06 AM9/23/20
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On 23/09/2020 14:27, Alan Adams wrote:
> I've tried plugging the ide cable from the motherboard into one of the 3.5
> inch discs. During boot up, I get the ADFS message, and the disc activity
> light comes on, flickers briefly, then goes off. The boot eventually fails
> ansd offers "floppy boot", there's no floppy drive that works, retry,
> which gets to the same pioint, and cancel, which stops at the splash
> screen.

I would recommend taking all other podules out and connecting the drives
one at a time to the motherboard interface to check that they work. Once
you know which drives still working, you can put them back on the
desired interface.

Make sure you set the links on each drive to master when it is the only
drive, and one as master and one as slave when 2 drives are on the
cable. Do not use the CS cable select option, only grief lies here.

Just thought if the master drive of a pair has failed, then the working
slave drive might not be recognised either.

> I suspect this disc is not configured as a boot disc. The other 3.5 inch
> disc now prevents the PSU from starting. It seems to have failed during
> all the plugging and unplugging I've been doing.

To make the disc bootable, you need to issue a

*OPT 4 2

Assuming it is set to the only disc on the motherboard interface.

> I would like to get this to boot again, probable using the 3.5 inch disc
> that does still seem to work. It holds a backup of a lot of what was on
> the failed 2.5 inch disc. Options would be either to connect it to the
> motherboard or the unipod. The latter requires *configure filesystem idefs
> I believe.

*Configure FileSystem ADFS

When using the motherboard.

> How can I get to the supervisor to reconfigure things? I don't have an RPC
> ketyboard now, only USB. The USB keyboard does get a reaction once I'm at
> the "failed boot" screen - pressing escape is equivalent to cancel. F12
> does nothing however.

You either need to press shift when powering up or pressing reset, but
this probably wont work if you have a USB keyboard via a podule. In that
case keep hammering Escape from the moment anything appears on the screen.

You should be able to get out of the failed boot to the desktop by
pressing one of the buttons in the error box - can't check right now.

> Secondly, in order to make sure the 2.5 inch disc has failed, is there any
> way to connect it to an ARMX6? It's IDE.

There are IDE to SATA adaptors, but the good old motherboard interface
should you first port of call.

---druck

Alan Adams

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Sep 23, 2020, 11:44:06 AM9/23/20
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In message <rkfjkp$ika$1...@dont-email.me>
druck <ne...@druck.org.uk> wrote:

> On 23/09/2020 14:27, Alan Adams wrote:
>> I've tried plugging the ide cable from the motherboard into one of the 3.5
>> inch discs. During boot up, I get the ADFS message, and the disc activity
>> light comes on, flickers briefly, then goes off. The boot eventually fails
>> ansd offers "floppy boot", there's no floppy drive that works, retry,
>> which gets to the same pioint, and cancel, which stops at the splash
>> screen.

> I would recommend taking all other podules out and connecting the drives
> one at a time to the motherboard interface to check that they work. Once
> you know which drives still working, you can put them back on the
> desired interface.

Thanks.

Done that. Only one causes the drive activity light to do anything.

> Make sure you set the links on each drive to master when it is the only
> drive, and one as master and one as slave when 2 drives are on the
> cable. Do not use the CS cable select option, only grief lies here.

They were all masters - one on the motherboard, one each on the two Unipod
interfaces.

> Just thought if the master drive of a pair has failed, then the working
> slave drive might not be recognised either.

True, but not relevant here.

>> I suspect this disc is not configured as a boot disc. The other 3.5 inch
>> disc now prevents the PSU from starting. It seems to have failed during
>> all the plugging and unplugging I've been doing.

> To make the disc bootable, you need to issue a

> *OPT 4 2

> Assuming it is set to the only disc on the motherboard interface.

>> I would like to get this to boot again, probable using the 3.5 inch disc
>> that does still seem to work. It holds a backup of a lot of what was on
>> the failed 2.5 inch disc. Options would be either to connect it to the
>> motherboard or the unipod. The latter requires *configure filesystem idefs
>> I believe.

> *Configure FileSystem ADFS

> When using the motherboard.

>> How can I get to the supervisor to reconfigure things? I don't have an RPC
>> ketyboard now, only USB. The USB keyboard does get a reaction once I'm at
>> the "failed boot" screen - pressing escape is equivalent to cancel. F12
>> does nothing however.

> You either need to press shift when powering up or pressing reset, but
> this probably wont work if you have a USB keyboard via a podule. In that
> case keep hammering Escape from the moment anything appears on the screen.

I tried that. I'll need to try again (and again...)

> You should be able to get out of the failed boot to the desktop by
> pressing one of the buttons in the error box - can't check right now.

I thought that, but none do. The most likely candidate was cancel, which
produced a splach screen in what I think is 800x600 resolution, then
freezes.

>> Secondly, in order to make sure the 2.5 inch disc has failed, is there any
>> way to connect it to an ARMX6? It's IDE.

> There are IDE to SATA adaptors, but the good old motherboard interface
> should you first port of call.

> ---druck



Alan Adams

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Sep 24, 2020, 7:21:05 AM9/24/20
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In message <6bad8fb458...@ArmX6.adamshome.org.uk>
Alan Adams <al...@adamshome.org.uk> wrote:

> In message <rkfjkp$ika$1...@dont-email.me>
> druck <ne...@druck.org.uk> wrote:

>> On 23/09/2020 14:27, Alan Adams wrote:
>>> I've tried plugging the ide cable from the motherboard into one of the 3.5
>>> inch discs. During boot up, I get the ADFS message, and the disc activity
>>> light comes on, flickers briefly, then goes off. The boot eventually fails
>>> ansd offers "floppy boot", there's no floppy drive that works, retry,
>>> which gets to the same pioint, and cancel, which stops at the splash
>>> screen.

Making progress.

I have found an old RO4 boot disc that still works. Connecting this to the
motherboard allows the computer to boot. Connecting the remaining working
disc, holding the data backup, to the IDEFS interface on the unipod also
works. So I now have access to the data.

However: These are both old discs. What I would like to do now is get the
data onto a SATA disc connected via a SATA-USB adapter. Is this possible
using a Unipod USB interface. If so, how would I go about it? (The disc is
currently NT formatted, so I guess that would need to change).

As an alternative I also have a Castle USB podule (4-port). Would
connecting via this be any better?

Theo

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Sep 24, 2020, 9:37:39 AM9/24/20
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Alan Adams <al...@adamshome.org.uk> wrote:
> However: These are both old discs. What I would like to do now is get the
> data onto a SATA disc connected via a SATA-USB adapter. Is this possible
> using a Unipod USB interface. If so, how would I go about it? (The disc is
> currently NT formatted, so I guess that would need to change).

Only if the disc was smaller than 2GB [1] and FAT formatted. I don't think
any such discs exist.

(It is possible a disc with a single <2GB sized FAT partition at the
beginning might work, but I doubt it)

You could try a CompactFlash card in an IDE adaptor - if you want to
transfer to another OS maybe FAT32FS would work with it? Otherwise you
could format it ADFS. Note that some CF cards work and some don't. Some
(CJE?) can supply ones that are pre-tested. I think they can also supply
SD-IDE adaptors that might work.

> As an alternative I also have a Castle USB podule (4-port). Would
> connecting via this be any better?

The card was a bit of a dead end, but I vaguely recall someone getting the
SCSI stack on that to talk to large(r) USB mass storage devices than the
Simtec card, but I don't recall the details. You could try, I suppose.

Theo

[1] a dumb decision by STD back in the day

Stuart

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Sep 24, 2020, 2:56:14 PM9/24/20
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In article <c899fbb458...@ArmX6.adamshome.org.uk>,
Alan Adams <al...@adamshome.org.uk> wrote:
> However: These are both old discs. What I would like to do now is get
> the data onto a SATA disc connected via a SATA-USB adapter. Is this
> possible using a Unipod USB interface. If so, how would I go about it?
> (The disc is currently NT formatted, so I guess that would need to
> change).

I would have thought the first thing would be networking the machine, if
possible, and getting all the data stored somewhere safe without delay.

I did once try using an IDE to SATA adapter on the motherboard interface
of a Kinetic but I couldn't get it to work. Of course, this may just have
been down to that specific adaptor.

CPC do still have re-certified 3.5" 160G IDE internal Hard drives on their
website, available on back-order, expected in stock 06/10/20.

Part no CS29478.

--
Stuart Winsor

Tools With A Mission
sending tools across the world
http://www.twam.co.uk/

Stuart

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Sep 24, 2020, 4:01:35 PM9/24/20
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In article <58b5257e...@argonet.co.uk>,
Stuart <Spa...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
> I did once try using an IDE to SATA adapter on the motherboard interface
> of a Kinetic but I couldn't get it to work. Of course, this may just have
> been down to that specific adaptor.

I have just remembered that that adapter is now in use in my Iyonix to run
a SATA SSD as the main drive, so it may have been an issue with the MB
interface, though I seem to recollect trying it on my ARCIn card without
success. One may work on your Unipod.

The drive is an ADATA SU650 and is reported by "Free" as 112 GB, 40GB
free. It's the machine I am using for this email.

Adaptor was from Ebay.

druck

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Sep 25, 2020, 3:26:18 AM9/25/20
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On 24/09/2020 19:55, Stuart wrote:
> I did once try using an IDE to SATA adapter on the motherboard interface
> of a Kinetic but I couldn't get it to work. Of course, this may just have
> been down to that specific adaptor.

The motherboard is an extremely old version of IDE, you might have more
luck with one of the later third party IDE cards, but obviously no
guarantees.

---druck

Stuart

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Sep 25, 2020, 4:18:25 AM9/25/20
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In article <rkk62p$n6i$1...@dont-email.me>,
Yes, as I suggested in my second post, an adapter might well work with the
Unipod and it might need the latest version of !HForm.

druck

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Sep 25, 2020, 8:00:33 AM9/25/20
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On 25/09/2020 09:18, Stuart wrote:
> In article <rkk62p$n6i$1...@dont-email.me>,
> druck <ne...@druck.org.uk> wrote:
>> On 24/09/2020 19:55, Stuart wrote:
>>> I did once try using an IDE to SATA adapter on the motherboard
>>> interface of a Kinetic but I couldn't get it to work. Of course, this
>>> may just have been down to that specific adaptor.
>
>> The motherboard is an extremely old version of IDE, you might have more
>> luck with one of the later third party IDE cards, but obviously no
>> guarantees.
>
> Yes, as I suggested in my second post, an adapter might well work with the
> Unipod and it might need the latest version of !HForm.

Sorry only read your post after I replied.

---druck

Alan Adams

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Sep 25, 2020, 10:01:04 AM9/25/20
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In message <rkkm4v$v6a$1...@dont-email.me>
I have an adaper on order. We'll see whether it works.

Chris Evans (CJE/4D)

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Sep 26, 2020, 9:11:41 AM9/26/20
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In article <ffeb8db558...@ArmX6.adamshome.org.uk>, Alan Adams
Several years ago we spent quite a lot of money and time on IDE-SATA
adaptors IIRC none worked on a RPCs motherboard IDE interface and only one
worked reliably on an Iyonix.

Stuart's suggestions of using a network attached drive sound a good idea.

Chris Evans

--

****** IGEPv5: The fastest RISC OS computer so far! *******
------------ http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/igepv5 ------------
CJE Micro's 'Raspberry Pi & RISC OS Specialists'
Tel: +44 (0)1903 523222
ch...@cjemicros.co.uk http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/
Unit 16 Arunside Ind. Est., Fort Road, Littlehampton, W.Sussex BN17 7QU

Don't let the urgent things in life, crowd out the important things!

Alan Adams

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Sep 26, 2020, 10:33:50 AM9/26/20
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In message <ant26113...@client.cjemicros.co.uk>
"Chris Evans (CJE/4D)" <ch...@cjemicros.co.uk> wrote:

> In article <ffeb8db558...@ArmX6.adamshome.org.uk>, Alan Adams
> <URL:mailto:al...@adamshome.org.uk> wrote:
>> In message <rkkm4v$v6a$1...@dont-email.me>
>> druck <ne...@druck.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> On 25/09/2020 09:18, Stuart wrote:
>>>> In article <rkk62p$n6i$1...@dont-email.me>,
>>>> druck <ne...@druck.org.uk> wrote:
>>>>> On 24/09/2020 19:55, Stuart wrote:
>>>>>> I did once try using an IDE to SATA adapter on the motherboard
>>>>>> interface of a Kinetic but I couldn't get it to work. Of course, this
>>>>>> may just have been down to that specific adaptor.
>>>>
>>>>> The motherboard is an extremely old version of IDE, you might have more
>>>>> luck with one of the later third party IDE cards, but obviously no
>>>>> guarantees.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, as I suggested in my second post, an adapter might well work with the
>>>> Unipod and it might need the latest version of !HForm.
>>
>>> Sorry only read your post after I replied.
>>
>>> ---druck
>>
>> I have an adaper on order. We'll see whether it works.

> Several years ago we spent quite a lot of money and time on IDE-SATA
> adaptors IIRC none worked on a RPCs motherboard IDE interface and only one
> worked reliably on an Iyonix.

> Stuart's suggestions of using a network attached drive sound a good idea.

I might end up using that route. However the application does heavy disc
activity, and I suspect that that will be significantly slower over the
network than using the Unipod and adapter (if that combination works).

I do have an SLU2 NAS I bought some years ago, but I struggled with it,
and eventually gave up.

> Chris Evans

David Higton

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Sep 26, 2020, 12:15:29 PM9/26/20
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In message <ab2115b658...@ArmX6.adamshome.org.uk>
Alan Adams <al...@adamshome.org.uk> wrote:

> In message <ant26113...@client.cjemicros.co.uk>
> "Chris Evans (CJE/4D)" <ch...@cjemicros.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Stuart's suggestions of using a network attached drive sound a good idea.
>
> I might end up using that route. However the application does heavy disc
> activity, and I suspect that that will be significantly slower over the
> network than using the Unipod and adapter (if that combination works).

If you have a more modern RISC OS machine, ShareFS may well be your
best bet in terms of speed and reliability. But I abandoned my RPC
many years ao (except as a monitor stand!), so I can't be sure in
your case. I did some speed tests with various filing systems some
months back. ShareFS is an oddity in that it isn't a filing system
in its own right, it just shares some other underlying filing system
such as ADFS or RamFS, so the speeds you get depend completely on the
underlying FS. I got some pretty impressive speeds with ShareFS
sharing a RamFS drive.

> I do have an SLU2 NAS I bought some years ago, but I struggled with it,
> and eventually gave up.

I used an NSLU2 happily for some years until it died. I replaced it
with a Raspberry Pi 3B+ running OpenMediaVault, which gives me Samba
and NFS shares, and very creditable transfer speeds of two 2.5" USB
portable hard drives via gigabit LAN. But again, it's with much
more modern RISC OS hardware (BBxM, more recently RasPi 3B+) than
an RPC.

David

Stuart

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Sep 26, 2020, 12:57:46 PM9/26/20
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In article <ab2115b658...@ArmX6.adamshome.org.uk>,
Alan Adams <al...@adamshome.org.uk> wrote:
> > Stuart's suggestions of using a network attached drive sound a good
> > idea.

> I might end up using that route. However the application does heavy disc
> activity, and I suspect that that will be significantly slower over the
> network than using the Unipod and adapter (if that combination works).

The important thing is to get everything copied across to somewhere safe.
Then, if the adaptor idea doesn't work, get one of CPC's re-certified
drives, put that in and run on it, keeping regular back-ups to a safe
place.

I bought a 4TB NAS from R-Comp and Andrew made sure it worked from RISC OS
before delivery. !Safestore runs daily to back up my stuff.

druck

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Sep 27, 2020, 6:46:33 PM9/27/20
to
The 3B+ was close to the performance to my router performing a NAS role
with a USB3 2.5" HD. Now I've got a couple of Pi 4B's I use one as a
NAS, as it has over twice the performance of the router, given it also
has USB 3 and true gigabit Ethernet.

The router was SMB only, where as the Pi does NFS which is far better
for Linux (all fs attributes supported for the other Linux Pi's) and
RISC OS. Although LanmanFS can still achieve a faster transfer with
multi-megabytes files, SunFish is far quicker for lots of small file
transfers. That's important when using it as an application server for
all my RISC OS machines.

---druck

Peter Wightman

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Oct 1, 2020, 1:17:24 PM10/1/20
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On 23 Sep 2020 Alan Adams <al...@adamshome.org.uk> wrote:

> 2.5inch IDE disc connected via an adapter to the motherboard IDE

> Recently I plugged this disc into the adapter incorrectly, only
> connecting the bottom row of pins of the dics to the top row on the
> socket. Since then, even correctly plugged in, it doesn't work.

> in order to make sure the 2.5 inch disc has failed, is there any way
> to connect it to an ARMX6? It's IDE.


Something similar happened to me many years ago. A damaging short
circuit was created when the socket and pins were misaligned.

Thankfully it was the adapter that failed first, not the drive. Take a
careful look at the adapter PCB, for any tracks that have melted or
similar.

It's a long shot, but worth checking.

--
Peter Wightman

Alan Adams

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Oct 2, 2020, 9:49:16 AM10/2/20
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In message <3d3fb7...@iyo.pmkw.co.uk>
There's almost nothing to the adapter. It connects the 40 pins from the
computer side to the first 40 pins on the drive, and connects a second,
power connector to the other 4 pins on the drive. There are a couple of
LEDs on the board too, but as it's multilayer, I can't see how that are
connected.

This is how the pins were connected when I mis-plugged it:

Computer Disc drive
even nos odd nos
2 GND 1 /RESET
4 DD8 3 DD7
6 DD9 5 DD6
8 DD10 7 DD5
10 DD11 9 DD4
12 DD12 11 DD3
14 DD13 13 DD2
16 DD14 15 DD1
18 DD15 17 DD0
20 KEY 19 GND
22 GND 21 DMARQ
24 GND 23 /DIOW
26 GND 25 /DIOR
28 SPSYNC:CSEL 27 IORDY
30 GND 29 /DMACK
32 /IOCS16 31 INTRQ
34 PDIAG 33 DA1
36 DA2 35 DA0
38 /IDE_CS1 37 /IDE_CS0
40 GND 39 /ACTIVE
42 +5VM 41 +5VL
44 /TYPE 43 GND

I can't immediately see how damage could have occurred. The most apparent
thing is that there is no connection to the ground on the drive. Several
inputs are grounded, so it might have induced a reverse voltage in those
as the rest of the drive floated to 5 volts.


--
Alan Adams
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