Write protected partitions with SCSI -> IDE Bridge

Hello Guys,

I?ve just bought a SCSI-IDE bridge interface (R-IDSC-E) and it works perfectly on AmigaOS 3.1 and AmigaOS 3.9.

This bridge adapter has a 50pin SCSI interface. I?m using a 68pin to 50pin adapter.

The problem is with AmigaOS 4 for classic.

I?m running it on my A4000 CPPC, Mediator Voodoo 4.

I can boot on OS4 using the bridge. The Amiga can read anything from the disc, no problems. But when i try to write anything to any of the partitions it says the drive is write protected.

I have 5 partitions. Two of them are FFS (OS3.1 and OS3.9) and the other 3 are SFS.

Partition Wizard report the SFS partitions as "Read Only" and the FFS ones as "Read/Write". But despite that all of them can?t be written to. The SFS ones the system returns a "volume is write protected" error message, and the FFS ones returns another error message i can?t remember, but it?s a number (52 i think).

I imagine this problem is related with the adapter not translating some info from the drive to the SCSI bus correctly, as it works perfectly on the other installs (OS3.1 and OS 3.9 as i said before).

Have someone experienced anything like that before? Any ideas to solve this?

Thanks!!

@mugo
Can't help, but perhaps OS4 driver detects a problem with the adaptor & for safety makes the drive read-only?

For example, OS4 is known to detect bad cache behaviour of some drives, and so flushes the caches all the time for safety (with the side-effect of slow performance).

@mugo

I've had similar problems with an ACARD SCSI->IDE bridge, where sometimes in mediatoolbox it will detect it and say something like "NULL IDE BRIDGE".

But normally it works, however I have difficulty updating the RDB. It says write protected, or cannot write. I can format partitions, though.

Mediatoolbox is very picky about which devices it accepts unfortunately.

For USB devices, with Deneb, for example, on OS4 classic, you have to do some magic to get the usbscsi.device to work in mediatoolbox.

I've also had difficulty using SFS filesystem between OS 3.x and OS 4.0 classic. on OS4 it is not able to read the SFS partitions.

Sticking with FFS (DOS/07) is safer and seems to be more tolerant.

@ChrisH

That?s what i suspect.

But i don?t think there?s really a problem with the adapter, as it works fine in MOS and previous AOS.

Anyway, i?ll try other HDs, as this one is 2.5", and there?s even other adapter before the bridge. I don?t think this is the problem, but you never know...

Thanks for your reply!

@HammerD

That?s interesting.

And it?s almost the same problem i have.

I can read anything from the drive, and it?s healthy data.

But anything related to writting to the drive returns an error. I can?t partition the drive, can?t format partitions, can?t save files, etc.

But now i just remembered... I?ve installed this same drive with the same bridge once with Mediatoolbox. The created partitions and formatted them. But had some problems seeing the last bigger partition in other AOS versions...

I?ll make some tests with other drive to see what i discover.

Thank you guys very much for the help!

@mugo

Quote:

The author of the original (68K) cybppc.device did a lot of tweaking to work around wrong or missing termination and other incompatibilities. The MOS version is from the same author, so probably has the same tweakings. The AOS4 version is from a different author who didn't even have the specs of the CSPPC, so I could well imagine that the AOS4 version is far less tolerant against wrong cabling and the like.

Bye,
Thomas

@thomas

You may be right!

I?ve thought of this too, and this may be the problem.

I?ll try some different cabling and drives. If i manage to solve the problem i?ll let you guys know

Thanks!