Understanding and Optimization of OS 4.1 for Classics

[Calgor]

Nice find on the audio filter switch danbeaver. Keep up the interesting info!

[danbeaver]

This post doesn't have anything to do with OS 4.1, but is a small "heads up" since we CSPPC owners have 68-pin SCSI Cables in our cases; the cables have male connectors which mean small metal "finger-like" wires exposed in each connector. I have the "Cable2Go" 7 connector round cables and one unattached end came in contact with the pins on the small AV card in the rear of my A4000T last night. There was a loud pop, then a lot of smoke which resulted in a dead 400W PS, a dead IDE CD/DVD R/W, and a dead 146Gb Maxtor U320 10k HDD. Believe it or not, that was the extent of the damage; all 3 of the devices were replaced this am. I can not explain how the damage was so small, but it seems God must love Amigas or their owners. I've taped over the exposed ends of the connectors with black plastic tape. Beware, these cables carry more than data; they carry current for the active terminators (mine haves little glowing LEDs).

Sorry to be "Off Topic."

[Calgor]

danbeaver, that is a timely reminder to tape up also all of those free Molex connectors (or use cable tie equivalents). The SCSI cable does carry some voltage on one of the pins for termination power, but it can also cause a short (however unlikely as pins are so short) anywhere inside the case. I never thought of taping the scsi cable free connectors as they are usually not free to move around but it doesnt hurt to be extra safe where an irreplaceable CSPPC is involved.

[danbeaver]

Calgor's,

That was my worse fear (loss of CSPPC) or the NCR/Symbiosis 53C770 SCSI controller. I did obtain a AMI MegaRaid board off of *bay that has 2 working 53C770 chips on it; luckily un needed at present. I'm following the UltimatePPC developments closely now.

Back on an OS 4.1 topic, I replaced the IDE CD/DVD Drive with a beige Sony SATA CD/DVD on the sii3114ide card and here is what I found very helpful: it was automatically recognized, mounted and ready for use. None of that define and mount a DosDriver. I kind of thought I would use DVDs for backup, but now that I several usable HDDs (RDB Issue from the other thread) I may just use the DVD's as archive material such as downloaded files and work-product related material like I do with my PC and it's BlueRay drive. A BR drive on the Amiga would be silly as it can't play the video, and everything Amiga related I have would fit easily on half of a 25 GB disk. True, a Classic Amiga can't play a DVD movie at an acceptable speed, but then I have lots of options for that.

Currently I have found that by using the tips I discovered from the Amiga forums and Trial-and-Error, I rarely need my swap partition. I am pleased that Individual Computing is going to release a much less expensive RAM Board.

[danbeaver]

Minor update: After my near disaster (vida supra), I took my SCSI card reader off my CSPPC SCSI chain and put it on the A4000's 4091-like internal SCSI controller. My reasoning (other than access may slow down UW SCSI speed, and to protect another device from damage) was that access in OS 4.1 is limited to read-only, so might as well use it in OS 3.9 and lower. For OS 4.1 I can use my USB card reader or the CF card adapter on the IDE port.

As with all things Amiga there was a secondary issue, had to change dip-switch number 8 in rear of A4000T to "ON" to allow other LUN's to be recognized, and had to put a big flat 50-pin SCSI cable running across my CPU card (this has one fan for the 060, one fan for the 604e, and a muffin fan blowing across both). Didn't like the "gestalt" of air flow and ordered a round SCSI cable from CablesDirect.com for <5 US salad leaves. Also got a couple of SATA ribbon cables with metal latches because the regular ones just fall off in use.

Has anyone checked out 68-pin HDDs recently? The prices have fallen drastically; I pick up a lot of 4 drives (Maxtor Atlas U320 146GB at 10K) for just 25 US leaves. Must be some reason that servers are going out of service or being updated with SAS/SCSI drives. After "un-blocking" several other drives (see other threads), I now have several functional 36GB 15K U320 drives as well. Would they make stocking stuffers for X-mas? So many questions, so little time.

[danbeaver]

Seems I can't quit fiddling with my Amy, so I found a 146Gb Maxtor SCA 80-pin HHD spinning at 15k for 25 US salad leaves; copied all my programs and data to it (took over night) and slipped it in as a replacement. Then to decrease the number of buffers used (thus increasing available ram), I shifted some programs around and unmounted a partition; I had a lot of disk thrashing and decided to optimize 2 partitions. Here is a no- brainer, I tried to use Partition Wizard on my SYS partition; well don't do that! Boot from another drive as SYS needs to be "free of obligations" or the partition is soon corrupted. OK, lesson learned. I now have low 80's megabytes free ram with full WB, or low 100's without WBStartup.

Everything working great except RUNinUAE; why do I keep checking out each new OS4Depot addition? Popped in the latest "click to run" using as my retro game, Lemmings. Simple game that barely runs in UAE on a damn fast Classic Amiga. I need to practice what I preach -- I built an A2000 with dual KS 1.3/3.1 with 32MB on an 040 board that can revert to 68000; it has a HDD, CD/DVD reader, and a SCSI card reader, with an Indivision ECS flicker fixer. Sole reason so as to be game compatible. No network, no RTG, just a retro gaming rig AND I still try UAE? I need a CAT scan or is it a PET scan? Might just be a pet cat, oh I have two

[danbeaver]

I've downloaded and installed Update 5, there is a lot of support for the AmigaNG machines, but for the Classic Amiga, there have been:

Updates to the Kernel -- Version 53.34
A new A3000 layout kernel build
Update to the NewLib.library.kmod
The Startup-Sequence shows a new command: P96LoadDefaultMonitor,
A way to link a RAM disk.info to the RAM device without copying it,
A Script to add the network device, and
A new way to play a startup sound.

The C directory has new IDETool & FlashTool, plus some others.

Devs: has new support for the Catweasle device.

MUI is updated and RunInUAE is updated with a more complete OS 3.1 install.

There are newer graphic card and PCI card updates in the KickStart directory, plus an updated SmartFileSystem.

L: has a new launch-handler.

Libs: has a new Warp3d.library and MIDI support with a camd.library; Picasso96 has an update to ease its use (see the documentation).

And there updates to GrimReaper, RinghioServer, and Media_Toolkit's SP_Engine.

Since I've installed the Update, I have not noticed any changes except the linked Ram Disk icon.
----------------------------------------------------------------
On the personal side, I'm changing one of my CSPPC's SCSI connector to give access to external devices; to that end, I've acquired very inexpensive ex-Mac peripherals in the form of 3 external cases: one has a Jaz 1 GB drive, the second houses an SCSI DVD+RAM drive, the third contains one of the 146GB SCA-80 10K HHD's I have, and lastly I acquired a NEC 4Xc 7-disk CD-ROM changer (new in package) for 80 US salad leaves. They all work on the A4000T's external SCSI connector (the device NOT supported by OS 4.1). I hope that within a week I'll have them accessable to the CSPPC. The termination may be an issue as I'm using active (narrow) termination on these narrow devices.

[Calgor]

@ danbeaver

My CSPPC has an external terminator on one side with internal devices and an internal terminator on the other side. Do be aware that when mixing internal and external devices on the one chain you can encounter impedance problems resulting in potentially slower transfer or data problems. I have not as yet connected any external devices there apart from the terminator so do not yet know what practical problems there might be with the UWSCSI implementation. Also keep in mind the maximum recommended SCSI chain length and devices combinations (look up UWSCSI standard).

[danbeaver]

Thanks Calgor!

The cable length externally does not exceed 3 feet / 1 meter. The worry I have is not about the impedance but that all 4 boxes (I plan only using one at a time) are ex-Mac and SCSI-2 (i.e., 8-bit ) and i worry that the active, narrow termination on that end will leave the other 8-bits (the rest of the Wide bus) unterminated. I suppose a 'T-connector' could have Wide, Active termination at both ends of the Wide bus with the '"T" side to the external devices only narrowly terminated. I suspect that trial-and-error will tell. C'est la gare.

Now I do have a wide, pass-through terminator device I could put on the cable just before the "T" goes external, and since I'll only be using 1 device at a time, this might keep everything "with scales and cud-chewing cloven hooves."

[Calgor]

No - if you are to have narrow devices on your chain, I would recommend a 68-50 pin adapter with active high byte termination to go from your UWSCSI cable to your 50 pin cable. And then terminate the narrow part of the chain with a narrow active terminator. Do not leave the upper bits unterminated. You may get away with it but it is not the recommended setup.

I believe this is documented also in the CSPPC manual at the end where it displays various SCSI chain combinations - this would be good to confirm it there in case I made a mistake in my explanation (I believe in only wide devices on the chain myself!)

If you were to instead include individual 50 pin devices all connected to a 68pin UWSCSI cable (a bit more complicated), then I cannot remember exactly what adapter you need to go from 68pin to 50pin for each device (whether 68-50pin adapter needs to be upper byte terminated or not if the device is in the middle of the chain).