Hi

Sorry for being utterly thick here, but I have read so much these last two days about patching the A1200 scsi.device and installing a new file system so I can access bigger hard drives but I cannot for the life of me find a clear guide on the simple aspect of patching the scsi.device.

What I need is a link to where I can get the components that let me patch the device.

Plus a guide on how to patch the scsi.device for use with IDEFix97 on a 3.1 ROM Amiga 1200. I have read the guide by Thomas but that kinda drifts off and start to talk about cheap options and OS3.5 and OS3.9 and then linking to an scsi.device and FastFileSystem. It doesn't make it clear whether this applies to IDEFix. The paragraph about IDEFix just ends.

What I need to know is how do I get scsi.device patched to use IDEFix97. What do I do to get this software to see bigger hard drives. Or if I even need to patch the device at all.

Hope that makes sense.

scuzz

@scuzz

IDEfix is a patch for scsi.device. The latest version (IDEfix97) gives you access to large hard drives up to 128GB. If you want more, you need to stop using IDEfix.

As mentioned in the guide, the fix for the 4GB limit needs two components: an updated scsi.device and a matching file system. Fortunately IDEfix supports all three alternatives, TD64, NSD and SCSI, so you can freely choose from FFS V43+, SFS or PFS3. Only the default FFS V40 or below must not be used.

Note that large partitions might also need large amounts or RAM, as do many partitions.

My recommendation in a low-memory-large-harddrive scenario would be PFS3.

Last edited by thomas on 19-Jul-2019 at 01:22 PM.
Last edited by thomas on 19-Jul-2019 at 01:21 PM.

_________________
Email: thomas-rapp@web.de
Home: thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de

@thomas

Hi Thomas

Thanks for the swift reply. I have studied your guide in great depth and find it incredibly infomative and useful. Also all the links are just magic. Just that I had gotten quite excited about patching the scsi.device but couldn't find a link other than lower down where you talk about the cheap option.

IDEFix97 comes with FFSTD64 which states is incompatible with all CBM SCSI devices. So I was kinda thinking that IDEFix must be patching the scsi.device for it to work in some way. Just wasn't clear.

Sounds like I just need to use that plus the software.

One point that puzzles me and that is the first 4GB of a drive which I assume is pretty safe to use with the current scsi.device. My thought is if I have this 40GB drive but only partition the first 4GB in say two 2GB volumes and then simply left the remainder of the drive empty, is it possible to use a drive like that as the bytes outside of the 34 bit numbering limit will never be accessed. Saves me all the trouble. Just that you cannot get 4GB drives for the Amiga anymore... or getting rare anyway. I can pick up 40GB drives for a fiver.

scuzz

@scuzz

Quote:

IDEFix97 comes with FFSTD64 which states is incompatible with all CBM SCSI devices.

I think you misread this section of the readme. It says that the TD_GETGEOMETRY function is disabled for the Commodore SCSI devices. This means you cannot use removable media (e.g. ZIP drives) with it. But you can still use it for partitions on harddrives.


Quote:

One point that puzzles me and that is the first 4GB of a drive which I assume is pretty safe to use with the current scsi.device. My thought is if I have this 40GB drive but only partition the first 4GB in say two 2GB volumes and then simply left the remainder of the drive empty, is it possible to use a drive like that as the bytes outside of the 34 bit numbering limit will never be accessed.

That's perfectly possible if you can live with wasting 36 GB of storage.


Quote:

Just that you cannot get 4GB drives for the Amiga anymore... or getting rare anyway.

People tend to use CF cards in CF-IDE adapters instead. Or Disk-On-Module (DOM) drives.

_________________
Email: thomas-rapp@web.de
Home: thomas-rapp.homepage.t-online.de

@thomas

Thanks for the reply. I just need the sound of a hard drive and the floppy click when I am on the machine. I get so many signals and so on from the activity. Amiga files are not very big. My first Amiga hard drive was 80MB then 350MB and then 550MB and I still get by easily with a 1GB drive no problem. Not interested in games you see.

Thanks. I have been working on the new config with the 4GB limit and seems to be working fine.

scuzz

Last edited by scuzz on 19-Jul-2019 at 05:37 PM.