I forgot to mention this before. Some time ago I found that someone's prebuilt Sam440 system had horrendous MaxTransfer & Mask values set in Media Toolbox.
Specifically, they had a MaxTransfer of "1FE0" (i.e. 130KB!) when it should be "7FFFFFFF". Mask was also set to something odd (can't remember) but it should be "FFFFFFFE". I would expect that such a low Max Transfer value to impact disk performance (increasing CPU usage & slowing disk access speed), although I don't know how badly without testing it, and a small Mask value could also cause problems.
This might have been a one-off or accident, rather that a systematic problem with pre-built systems from the seller (who I do not wish to name). I recommend that other users check their system, and request they report back on what they find.
1. Start Sys:System/Media Toolbox. 2. Choose sii3114ide.device from the list. 3. Choose "Fixed hard disk" from the list (it should be the first one, which has "0, 0" for "Id, LUN"). MAKE SURE TO CLICK "Edit partitions and filesystems". (If you accidentally chose to edit the RDB instead then you could wipe the entire drive.) 4. You can check a few partitions, but might as well leave the first partition selected for the moment. 5. Click "Select filingsystem/edit details". 6. See what values are written for Maxtransfer & Mask. 7. Cancel the windows when you are finished. WARNING: If you accept any (accidental) changes then you need to be prepared that this could wipe your OS4 system entirely!
ChrisH wrote: I forgot to mention this before. Some time ago I found that someone's prebuilt Sam440 system had horrendous MaxTransfer & Mask values set in Media Toolbox.
Specifically, they had a MaxTransfer of "1FE0" (i.e. 130KB!) when it should be "7FFFFFFF". Mask was also set to something odd (can't remember) but it should be "FFFFFFFE". I would expect that such a low Max Transfer value to impact disk performance (increasing CPU usage & slowing disk access speed), although I don't know how badly without testing it, and a small Mask value could also cause problems. [/b]
To add to that:
What should the buffers be set to?
I know the block size needs to be set to 512 for sfs/00.
Specifically, they had a MaxTransfer of "1FE0" (i.e. 130KB!)
0x1FE0 is even less than 8 KB (7680 bytes), 130 KB would be 0x20800 and couldn't slow down anything even on filesystems which use MaxTransfer.
Quote:
when it should be "7FFFFFFF". Mask was also set to something odd (can't remember) but it should be "FFFFFFFE". I would expect that such a low Max Transfer value to impact disk performance (increasing CPU usage & slowing disk access speed), although I don't know how badly without testing it, and a small Mask value could also cause problems.
It depends on the filesystem, for example my AmigaOS 4.x filesystems don't support these old workarounds for broken drivers (MaxTransfer, Mask and BufMemType) and it doesn't matter what you enter there.
For filesystems still using them the correct values are MaxTransfer: 0xFFFFFFFF Mask: 0xFFFFFFFF BufMemType: 0
Ooops, you are right! I must have typed 1FE00 in the hex->decimal converter. Thought that 130KB sounded a bit large!
Quote:
for example my AmigaOS 4.x filesystems don't support these old workarounds for broken drivers (MaxTransfer, Mask and BufMemType) and it doesn't matter what you enter there.
Does that includes SFS 1?
That would then mean only FFS could be affected. Some systems are still supplied with FFS, heaven knows why, so it could still be a problem (FFS is bad enough on it's own).