uIEC-SD Formating / Partitioning

[Mark D]

Hello Everyone,

I recently purchased a uIEC-SD unit and getting back into the Commodore machines again. I am just a novice and now see all the changes over the years with the new storage technology DNP, Dxx files etc which I am not familiar with yet. My dilema is with the SD memory cards themselves.

I have a few 4gb and 16gb sd cards which I have been working with on formating and partitioning. I use a few bbs and terminal programs and am trying to partition the sd cards so the programs  see the partitions as a 65535 block size, seeing the programs do not know how to move between sub directories but can thru partitions. I also use the cbm command program and noticed on large partitions with alot of files seems to take a long time listing files hence my thought on partitoning small size partitons like 32mb.

On 1 of the 16gb cards i just have 1 large partiton using the entire card, the 2nd partition is the EEPROMFS. The commodore is only seeing the partitions as

1 "                " 32 2A

65535 Blocks Free

2 "EEPROMFS        " EE 2A

0 Blocks Free because i tried copying all the cbmcmdxxx files to it

Now Windows Disk Management see's the card as just 1 large 14.83gb Fat32 primary partition without the 2nd partition which i believe is in the uIEC memory. Accessing anything past the 2nd partition just flashes the uIEC green light. I am also using jiffydos.

I used the MiniTool Partion wizard on a 4gb card and erased any partitons there to start fresh. On the settings I created a primary partition 31.48mb then 40 logical partitions all of 31.48mb size 64476 blocks as a test. The size setting parameters auto-populate so i didnt calculate the exact 65535 block size but its close.

The problem is I can not access any partition past 13 with out the green light flashing and partiton 13 is the EEPROMFS partition which i didnt create and is why i believe its in memory. Is there a limit on how many partitions you can have?

I have also tried reading the error channel to find the version of the uIEC but comes back as zero's with jiffydos turned off. I'm not sure if I affected something when trying to copy files to the EEPROMFS partition not knowing how large an area it had.

Any ideas on my concept of partioning on the software im trying to utilize the sd cards with.

Thanks

[Chris "xc8"]

Hi Mark,

Are you using a different uiecsd than the one built by RETRO Innovations?
as AFAIK its not possible to access directly the EEPROMFS on that device.

regards

chris

[Mark D]

Yes this uIEC-SD was purchased from Retro Innovations and installed internally by Ray Carlsen on a C= 64

[Eric Christopherson]

There is a setting for it, but I've forgotten what it is. I have it
turned on on mine.

--
Eric Christopherson

[Mark D]

I was able to use the @$=P and list the entire 13 partitions on the screen and get into partition 13 EEPROMFS and remove the cbmcmdxxx files also using this command i was able to see the uIEC version

@"",10

73,SD2IEC V1.0.0ALPHA0-91-G3375206,00,00

immediately after C= 64 powerup otherwise i get

00,OK,00,00

It maybe time to change the version from ALPHA to BETA or even better use the most current version, ALPHA made me twinge a little. :)

Still looking for an explanation on why i can only get 12 partitions created when 40 were partitioned in windows, is this a limitation of memory resources on the uIEC?

[Chris "xc8"]

I am using the 1.0.0alpha0-98, no issues in general.

I wanted to give a try about those kind of partitions, but I don't have a spare SD card :(

Can you try with an SD with primary partitions only (via easeus partition manager, or under a linux box) ?

rgrds

chris

[Mark D]

I downloaded and used EaseUS but found issues with it.

If i have your concept wrong let me know, I have never used multiple primary partitons on the same real hard drive in the past I always had 1 primary and the rest extended or logical drives And it appears EaseUS also shares my thought as it will only allow me to create 4 primary partitions and no more, it wants me to convert a primary partition to a logical partition to be able to make any additional partitions and the program will only allow the smallest partition size of 39.22mb even if i choose 32mb

On Sunday, May 22, 2016 at 2:16:24 AM UTC-4, Mark D wrote:

[RETRO Innovations]

On 5/23/2016 6:42 PM, Mark D wrote:
> I was able to use the @$=P and list the entire 13 partitions on the
> screen and get into partition 13 EEPROMFS and remove the cbmcmdxxx
> files also using this command i was able to see the uIEC version
> @"",10
> 73,SD2IEC V1.0.0ALPHA0-91-G3375206,00,00
> immediately after C= 64 powerup otherwise i get
>
> 00,OK,00,00
>
> It maybe time to change the version from ALPHA to BETA or even better
> use the most current version, ALPHA made me twinge a little. :)
>
> Still looking for an explanation on why i can only get 12 partitions
> created when 40 were partitioned in windows, is this a limitation of
> memory resources on the uIEC?

I can't speak to only 12 partitions, but I can attest that the code only
allows 15 partitions (1-15)

You could recompile the source code for larger numbers of partitions

You'll want to recompile the code for PARTITION_MASK = 6 (63 partitions)

Yes, EEPROMFS is in EEPROM memory on the AVR uC.

Jim

[silv...@wfmh.org.pl]

--
Sent from mobile device. Please have understanding.

On 24 May 2016 03:34:00 CEST, Mark D <madz...@gmail.com> wrote:

>And it appears EaseUS
>also
>shares my thought as it will only allow me to create 4 primary
>partitions
>and no more

AFAIK this is not an issue with EaseUS but yet another legacy limitation, which brilliant "PC engineering" endowed the world with. The workaround to this limit is exactly creating "logical" partitions rather than "primary".

[Mark D]

Thank-You All for your time and knowledge 

On Sunday, May 22, 2016 at 2:16:24 AM UTC-4, Mark D wrote:

[Ingo Korb]

Mark D <madz...@gmail.com> writes:

> Still looking for an explanation on why i can only get 12 partitions
> created when 40 were partitioned in windows, is this a limitation of memory
> resources on the uIEC?

The maximum number of partitions is indeed hard-coded due to memory
limitations, and in addition to that there is an internal maximum number
of partitions per device that you have hit. I never expected anyone to
use such a ridiculous number of partitions after all...

Jim has already mentioned how to increase the limit of partitions per
device, but if you only do that you'll hit the maximum total number of
partitions instead, which is set in the config file specified when
building the firmware with make. In the uIEC3 config, the limit is set
to 20 (CONFIG_MAX_PARTITIONS=20), but if you simply increase it you'll
run out of RAM on the chip. I recommend setting CONFIG_BUFFER_COUNT=8
(in the same file) if you really want to set CONFIG_MAX_PARTITIONS=40.

-ik

[Mark D]

Thank You Ingo for giving a novice an easy to understand explanation of the limitations and why they are there. I do not know the Unix/Linux use of the make command or the structure of the argument files involved but again the information is very helpful in understanding what is involved to overcome the barriers.

My ridiculous Idea was based on how the cmd hd works with 255 partitions and the older software programs like terminal programs and bbs software written back in the day that do not know how to move thru directories and the limitation of the number of files you can have in a directory. I have also heard that the listing of directory files pause in some programs during the listing because of this file limit, so to alleviate that came about the idea of using partitions so the programs can move thru / access the files.

Thanks Again

On Sunday, May 22, 2016 at 2:16:24 AM UTC-4, Mark D wrote: