The A1Floppy thread

OK, since this is the first time that the floppy driver has been released, some people are going to have trouble with it. I'll offer help and answer questions here.

FAQ
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Q1: Why can't I read my <insert name of game> floppies?
A1: The XE hardware can not read Amiga-format floppies. There is support for Amiga filesystem (FFS2) on PC-formatted floppies, this will let you read/write floppies on either an A1 or a Classic. See the docs on the CD.

Q2: So-and-so managed to get his PC to read Amiga floppies, why can't we?
A2: He isn't using the VIA 686B Southbridge chip that we have in the XE. It can't read them.

Q3: Does it click?
A3: If you ask it to.

Any more questions?

Does it read through the CatWesel hardware if you have one in place? In other words does it just ignore the CW as though it isn't there?

It does not use a Catweasel at all, it only addresses the VIA 686B chip.

Quote:

Sorry, I guess I didn't make myself clear. I understand it doesn't use the CW. What I'm trying to understand is if you can use the new drivers inspite of the fact that a CW is installed. Does having a CW installed in the hardware path cause any problems?

If you have two drivers trying to control the same hardware, then obviously something will break. But a CW connects directly to its own floppy drive, so there should be no cross-connection between the hardware.

The name "FD0" is hard-coded into the a1floppy driver, so you should not use the same name for a CW drive if a1floppy is running.

If you ONLY have a CW installed, then I suggest you disable the a1floppy driver. Similarly, if you don't have a CW, then don't load its driver.

The simplest way to disable the driver is to edit Kickstart/kicklayout by commenting out the line "MODULE Kickstart/a1floppy.device.kmod". Just put a semi-colon in front of the line to disable loading the driver.

While you are at it, disable the IDE/SATA drivers that you don't use.

I can't get the floppy to work at all.

I hadit unplugged from the A1, and now, when I plug it, the A1 doesn't boot...
I am afraid, I don't hook it the right way. Where can I find a schematic or the connection?

Luca

Just use a standard floppy cable (34-wire) and connect it to the motherboard at one end and the floppy drive at the other. In the middle of the cable there is a narrow strip that is twisted over - this twist should be between the motherboard and the floppy drive to make the drive appear as drive 0. If the cable is not twisted, then the drive will appear as drive 1 (which is OK, just not normal).

Make sure that the red stripe on the cable connects to pin 1 on the motherboard (away from the memory DIMMs) and pin 1 on the floppy (towards the power socket).

Also check that the cable connects properly to the motherboard and is not "one row out" on the pins.

If the machine still does not boot, disconnect the floppy cable, boot OS4, go into Prefs/U-Boot and make sure that the floppy boot priority is not higher than the HD - for instance:

First bootsource = Floppy
Second bootsource = parallel SII IDE Disk

- won't work because U-Boot will try to boot from the floppy first.

@ tonyw :

Thanks. I fiddled a while with the cable. Now the fdreader is recognised by media toolbox, but the disks are not accessed. The command "fdtool u 0 c" returns only:

"Requesting a check now on drive 0"

without any result (no led, no noises, nothing).

Luca

OK, so it's running OK (otherwise MTB wouldn't see it).

What sort of disk is in the drive?

What does "fdtool (u 0) info" say?

i can't get it going.
i've managed to get it going wile booting, but nothing else. varthall reported the same.

edit: hey! it seems to be alive!
it is! =) formatting a dd disk now. no hd disk support?

ah i used fd0, maybe pc0 can handle hddisks?

Edit: both fd0 and pc0 works with 1.44mb disks.

@ tonyw:

> What sort of disk is in the drive?

I tryed some old PC formatted disks, both HD and DD

> What does "fdtool (u 0) info" say?

It says:

Version: 52 Revision: 2
Controller state: free
Debug level: 0
Task readiness state: ready
Disk state: drive empty
Drive status: ST0=20 ST1=00 ST2=00 ST3=00
Drive currently on cylinder 1
Driver state:
Interrupt state 0
Data count 0, status count 0
Unit Open count: 3
Change number: 0
Recovered errors this disk: 0
Config word: 00000000

But the drive should not be empty. An I don't get any icon on the WB, so no format possible. What if I wont to read PC disks?

Luca

Quote:

If Catwesel driver do not work for you then it like problem whit new memory system, it?s on my to TODO list.

If you have a CW installed then just rename the mount list, nothing more.
(Device names are not hard coded in cw.device)

@Ricossa:

The drive (and the driver) do not know there is a disk inserted unless the driver tries to read it. That is the purpose of the "Auto Check" or "Check now" commands.

From the "config word" I can see that you have not enabled Auto Check. Either do that ("fdtool u 0 a") or make just one immediate check ("fdtool u 0 c") and the driver will check the drive to see if anything is in there.

It can tell the difference between DD and HD diskettes (it tries both formats until a Read works without errors), so let it check by itself and see what happens.

Try "fdtool u 0 c" and it should check the disk.

Then try "fdtool u 0 i" again and it should show the disk loaded and identified.

@ tonyw

>Try "fdtool u 0 c" and it should check the disk.

>Then try "fdtool u 0 i" again and it should show the disk
>loaded and identified.

I did it, with no result, besides:

=========================================
4.Workbench:> fdtool u 0 c
Requesting a check now on drive 0
4.Workbench:> fdtool u 0 i
Current state of A1Floppy Drive Unit 0
Version: 52 Revision: 2
Controller state: free
Debug level: 0
Task readiness state: ready
Disk state: drive empty
Drive status: ST0=20 ST1=00 ST2=00 ST3=00
Drive currently on cylinder 0
Driver state:
Interrupt state 0
Data count 0, status count 0
Unit Open count: 3
Change number: 0
Recovered errors this disk: 0
Config word: 00000000
==========================================

The disk is not loaded

Luca

Do you know if it works under Loonix? Perhaps you don't have a Linux installation you can boot.

If you set the driver to "Auto check", does it click? Does the LED flash (need a dark room to see it) once every five seconds?

In any case, I would look for another floppy drive or another cable. It seems the "drive status" signal is not getting through to the controller. Although the software can see that there is a drive there, the hardware tells it that there is no disk in the drive.

@ tonyw

I had linux many years ago, and it worked, and later I did my uboot updates with the floppy...

> If you set the driver to "Auto check", does it click?
> Does the LED flash

no and no... The led goes on only during boot

Luca

Hello, I'm glad to say that I could solve my floppy and usb problems. In fact, it was one only problem. After playing still a while with the floppy connections, it started to work, and at the same time I got back my USB.

A big thank you to everybody who wanted to help me!

Luca

Great news. What did you change to get it working?

@tonyw

A shot in the dark, maybe he left out two pins when connecting
the floppy cable (there is no "plastic leading" (at least not
on my XE) around the onboard floppy and IDE connectors, thus
it?s easy to miss out two pins.
Happened for me too with onboard IDE in early testing and suddenly
my USB was completely missing not talking about the IDE bus

@tonyw

Well, I've just shoved a disk in to see if it works, and it appears to pick it up as DD rather than HD (format shows 720K for FD0 and PC0). Can I somehow tell it it is a high density disk?

Even for DD that seems a bit rubbish - why is it limited to 720K when AROS manages 800K for FFS on PC hardware?

Is the AROS format compatible with the OS4 one?

Hmm... is there any chance that auto-detect and something like the USB Mass Storage manager (ctrl-alt-m) could become standard for all removeable devices? It's always been a problem that different format disks have several mountlists and icons appearing on screen, or if the driver auto-detects there is no way of formatting to the correct format. Perhaps just having a filesystem selector on the format tool would be sufficient - and then let the drivers handle auto-detect themselves.

Chris