FALCON WORKS at last :)

[yerzmyey]

So - the CF card adventures - Part II.

Yes, we connected the 4Gb card instead of HDD.
Yes, it worked after some time of format/configuration and so on.
No, it did NOT work together: CF and HDD.

GRRRRRRRR.

Next try: on Saturday.



Factor6:
The cost was about 1100 PLN (You'll have to count). Which is pretty a lot.
Well, as for the demos - some are better, some are worse. But I found many good progs.
Although now I stopped to checking out all the demos because I have no place on the HDD.
But when the CF works..........

PS: Can You take some photos of Your ST? I would like to know what exactly is the model.

[wongck]

So - the CF card adventures - Part II.

Yes, we connected the 4Gb card instead of HDD.
Yes, it worked after some time of format/configuration and so on.
No, it did NOT work together: CF and HDD.

Did you set one of the IDE device to master & the other to slave?
My CF and DVD both can be set to slave and it works.

[yerzmyey]

Did you set one of the IDE device to master & the other to slave?
My CF and DVD both can be set to slave and it works.

Hello!
I have some QUANTUM disk and my friend found somewhere an information that the specific kind of disk can't co-operate with any other drive (no matter if slave or master). However we STILL will be trying to connect these things somehow.

Anyway - You mean that we could try to connect both disks (HDD&CF) as slave and it could run then?

[wongck]

Argh.
We found too late it works with small IDE ribbons only. And we didn't have a small ribbon for 2 drives.

Well, maybe next time.
Meanwhile we managed to fix the sound!!
So now I can try to make some multichannel stuff on Falcon, heh.

No it can work with 40pin.
It works with 44pin to 40pin adapters but you need to swap again the lines, with another adaper.
I have this for my DVD which is a 40pin device along my 44pin HDD.

[yerzmyey]

Argh.

Nothing but troubles, continously.

I changed my small original HDD into a CF (four gigabytes) card.
Most of programs stopped to work. They claim they have now not enough of RAM.

Boot without harddrives (CF) gives 4Mb of RAM.
Boot with CONTROL gives me about 3,2Mb.

Is there any possibility to regain 4Mb of ram, still having the 4Gb CF card?

Anybody has any ideas...?
I would be totally grateful.

[CiH]

What hard driver software are you using?

If it is HD-Driver, that tends to be a memory hog, so it's a good idea to set it to minimal memory usage on starting. (Escape Key when first booting.)

[christos]

Change the cache size in the appropriate hddutil control.

[yerzmyey]

Many thanx, Christos - that's exactly what we finally did.

If anybody has (will have) the same problem - here is the thing:

HDDRIVER has its "installation" version, including a program HDDRUTIL.APP which one must enter.

Then: Settings/General/
(now choose the HDDRIVER.SYS from the C: )

On the right hand You can see:

Cache for FAT: (I put here 2)
Cache for Data: (I put here 2)
Additional Folders: (I put here 10).

Then go to
File
and press
Install HDDRIVER
(still pressing OK several times).

Reboot.

For now there are no problems with drives and I have most of the RAM free and all demos work just fine.

Thank You!

[wongck]

Normally I would make the HDDriver cache as low as possible and make use of the MiNT cache as it suppose to be more efficient (ie not need to go down so low to fetch the data).

[yerzmyey]

Normally I would make the HDDriver cache as low as possible and make use of the MiNT cache as it suppose to be more efficient (ie not need to go down so low to fetch the data).

Erm. I would like to do that as the fornicating Sonoluminescence doesn't work now.
cluck, that's really poo. If You find some time, pls write me some "idiot-guide". Thx!

[wongck]

Erm. I would like to do that as the fornicating Sonoluminescence doesn't work now.
f*ck, that's really poo. If You find some time, pls write me some "idiot-guide". Thx!

No need because making HDDriver using less cache is same as what you mention 3 posts behind.
No black magic about it...

[yerzmyey]

I made the HDDRIVER possibly the smallest. Which means with 4Gb CF card and 5 partitions it takes 160Kb.

1) "Sonoluminescence" still doesn't work (and it works from a floppy, which is funny)
2) Some HDD functions stop working properly with such small cashes.

In this case I got back to
2
2
10
(which takes 161 Kb) and I started to look for some differend harddisk drivers.

That's why I was interested in Your sentence: "(...) and make use of the MiNT cache as it suppose to be more efficient (ie not need to go down so low to fetch the data)" as I bought the Falcon last year and not everything's clear for me. Yet.

Aaah, doesn't matter.
I will check out the "scsitools / cecile / icd driver" stuff. Hm.

[wongck]

Oh.... Mint cache... that the MiNT OS for Atari I am talking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiNT

That's the multitasking OS, which I think will not work for most demo (if not work for any)

[christos]

Of course running mint will reduce your available memory to that of a 520ST which i imagine isn't what you want to do. I don't know what's the issue with sono but if you could run it from an st compatible resolution you'd get some more free ram. Maybe that will do the trick...

[yerzmyey]

Thanx guyz.


As for the demo, normally I run the machine in 320/200 mode, 16 colours (or with CTRL, which gives 320/200 and 4 colours).
But maybe I could try to start the machine normally and then set up into 4 colours...? Hm.
I will test it when I'm back home.

[DarkLord]

That's a great demo. I run it on my CTxx Falcon by booting up with everything off. I boot up with the
CTxx off, lo rez, holding down the button to bypass everything but HDDriver at bootup.

Then I navigate to my E partition, where the demo is, and run it. Works great.

It of course, also runs off floppy. I showed it to one of my Windows friend one time,
then told him it was running off a floppy disk. Took me a while to convince him I
wasn't joking.

[wongck]

That's a great demo. I run it on my CTxx Falcon by booting up with everything off. I boot up with the
CTxx off, lo rez, holding down the button to bypass everything but HDDriver at bootup.

There you go... it works with HHDriver.

[yerzmyey]

Yes, guys - I was watching it before, on HDDRIVER and a small original disk.
When we forced the CF card to work - the demo stopped working.

I see this (after pressing "any key") -


____________
Illegal instruction at address $000721e
____________

or sometimes

____________
Illegal instruction at address $0007cc6
____________


...and so on.

and then there are many colums of digits.


This is also in 4-colours mode, 320/200.

[DarkLord]

Yes, guys - I was watching it before, on HDDRIVER and a small original disk.
When we forced the CF card to work - the demo stopped working.

I see this (after pressing "any key") -


____________
Illegal instruction at address $000721e
____________

or sometimes

____________
Illegal instruction at address $0007cc6
____________


...and so on.

and then there are many colums of digits.


This is also in 4-colours mode, 320/200.

Ooops, sorry - I missed that part that said you had it running then it quit.

Cut 'n paste that error message and send it to Uwe Seimet. He's the HDDriver
author and I bet he can sort it out for you super quick. Great guy.

[yerzmyey]

Well - it's done.
We will see.
Thanx for the idea.

[coze]

this reminded me of the "max transfer" issue we have with Amgia 1200's when we use a CF card on the internal IDE port. I wonder if it's a similar problem.

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=637345&postcount=4

[yerzmyey]

this reminded me of the "max transfer" issue we have with Amgia 1200's when we use a CF card on the internal IDE port. I wonder if it's a similar problem.
http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=637345&postcount=4

I also slowly stop to believe it's the driver's place in RAM fault. Seems rather like the CF cards are not 100% 'compatible' with harddrives after all.
Grrrrr.
This is SUCH A GOOD DEMO........................
Well, I will think someting out. Maybe some additional HDD (hopefully not equals more RAM for HDDRIVE ) could do the trick. Not my old disk as it appeared it somehow wasn't designed to co-operate with any second drive at all. But I could try to get another. Hm.

Well, I bother You guyz, because in 2 months there is an Atari meeting in my neighbourhood and they wanted me to make some presentation of the best demos for standard Atari Falcon config, on a bigscreen.
And now I lost one of the best demo-candidates, hehe.

[DarkLord]

Well, you've not lost it totally - play it from floppy.

Not only will it work, amaze them that so much code
got crammed onto one floppy disk.

[wongck]

sorry but I not really into demo, but since like so many ppl saying it so cool.... where can I dl it from?

[nativ]

Well, you've not lost it totally - play it from floppy.

Not only will it work, amaze them that so much code
got crammed onto one floppy disk.

You ought to check out :-

Digital Chaos's Floppy demo ( a bit old now, but runs from floppy!) http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=17802

Delta by Lineout Which also runs from floppy (less than a 1MB file!) and is a very top demo! http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=8514

http://www.pouet.net/


Sono works on my 4Mb Falcon with HD Driver 8.02 and CNTRL pressed at boot? I am interested to check out CiH's comment that holding escape performs some function?



Regards