How do I properly set up a new bootable drive?

[amigaonefan]

So I got my new 160G IDE hard drive and plugged it onto my AmigaOne sii0680 ide card port. Used mounter after setting the tooltypes correctly and mounted it. Then used media toolbox to creat 10 various hard drive partitons, 2 SFS0, 2 SFS2 and 6 JXFS.
I also added to the drive an SLB under edit/rdb install and selected the slib_v2 I found on my os4:L/ directory. Hmmm...version 1.19. THat sounds new. Sure enough, I go and look and the one listed on my bootable OS4 partition drive shows SLB_v2 ver 1.16.
Hmmm...they must have updated it. Nice.
Set up the SLB, saved it to the hard drive, Then I copied my workbench partition over to a 10 gig partition on the new drive that is formatted as SFS00. PErhaps this is where I made my mistake. Can SFS00 support drives greater than 4 gig?
Anyway, all seemed well. I set the bootable flag on the new drive partition to active, saved from media toolbox. Turn off the amigaone.
I disconnected my internal IDE drive and plugged in the new drive to my micro A1 motherboard. I have a valid SLB, I have a bootable partition. The partition has all my workbench files on it - an exact copy in fact.

What could go wrong?

I power up the amigaone. Go through uboot and see the happy OS4.1 screen! Oh hurray..I think.
Then I get an error in the cli - setpatch - unknown command.
Easy, I though. I'll just look around ... must have missed something. Hmmm. Actually, I can't use any commands. dir, list, nothing works!
I reboot. Same thing. Well, at least I can just go back to my old hard drive and connect this one again as my sii0680ide card master, with my Os4 boot drive connect to the internal micro A1 as master.
I connect everything up and boot.
Same error! Setpatch - unknown command!
Ah!
How can this be? I reset. Same thing. Power off the amigaone.
So I disconnect my new 160G drive. Power up.
Whew....AmigaOs4.1 comes up in all its glory. No errors, no problems.
I reset a few times, make sure. Everything is okay. I power off.
I connect the 160G drive to my sii0680 ide card. Power on.
error- setpatch unknown command!
I try booting and holding down the right mouse button. I get the early startup menu. I tell it to disable the B: drive (my new 160G bootable OS4.1 partition). Boot - same error - setpatch - unknown command.
I try booting with no startup-sequence from the early startup menu. Obviously something is wrong because it again says - setpatch - unknown command!

Can someone tell me what I did wrong? I cannot even access the new drive to try to fix it, because whenever I plug it in it seems to take over and want to boot from it, no matter what I tell the early startup menu.
Am I going to have to plug the new drive into a (yuk) PC and reformat it to gain access to it again? Even so, how do I make a new hard drive a bootable OS4.1 drive?

Thanks!

[Raziel]

Have you set the UBoot prefs to use the newly installed sii0680?
type nvgetvar in a shell

sii0680ide_maxbus must be set to 4
sii0680ide_conf must be set to 1100 (for the first two in the chain being harddrives=

Either use Prefs/Uboot for this task or C:NVSetVar

Otherwise even when you install a sii0680 is will not be seen by UBoot and as such not being accessed.

It seems that it loads the kernel files always from your old hd, but when it comes to OS4 it switches to the partition with the highest priority, but fails because it isn't "known" to the system.

What i don't really understand is how it can load kernel files with your original hd plugged off?

Do you maybe have an OS4 hd or USB stick with OS4 plugged in?

PS: You can try and see if the new hd is properly supported by unchecking it as bootable drive or setting it to a lower boot priority than the internal hd.
Then all should be loaded again from your internal hd and you try starting programs from your new hd.

PPS: After rereading your post it seems it's the sii0680.
It "may" be because it isn't properly set up yet (UBoot Prefs)
In a shell type "idetool -l sii0680ide.device" (or a1ide.device)

This brings up a list of all installed hds/dvd/cd and shows you some info

[amigaonefan]

@Raziel

Have you set the UBoot prefs to use the newly installed sii0680?

Yes...I did. I forgot to mention that. Sorry.

It seems that it loads the kernel files always from your old hd, but when it comes to OS4 it switches to the partition with the highest priority, but fails because it isn't "known" to the system.

Yes...that seems to be happening when both are plugged in. Why doesn't the early startup menu selection work? When I hold down the mouse buttons and reboot and get the early startup screen, it sees both partitions as active and bootable, the original OS4 one on my old 80gig drive, as well as the new bootable partition I just made on my new 160Gig drive. When I select the new partition to deactivate it, it shows that it is disabled. So I hit the boot button and it boots as if the new partition is still enabled. Why doesn't the early startup menu prefs work? I have also tried booting through the early startup menu with no startup-sequence, yet when it boots it tries to execute the startup-sequence.
Under what conditions does the early startup menu have no effect? I've certainly found one!

What i don't really understand is how it can load kernel files with your original hd plugged off?

Well, remember, I installed an SLB2 on this new drive and set it up to be a new independent bootable drive. I would expect it to load the kernel files and boot properly into OS4.1. Why it is not is what I don't understand. Its obviously missing something, but what?
Did I need to make a SWAP partition on my new drive for this to work? Remember, I copied everything over from my old drive just as it was..and it had a swap partition set up.

PS: You can try and see if the new hd is properly supported by unchecking it as bootable drive or setting it to a lower boot priority than the internal hd.

I'd like to, but it is impossible to have the new hard drive attached and boot into OS4. I have to physically disconnect the new drive to be able to get into my old drive's OS4 partition and have a CLI that supports any commands. If the new drive is connected, I boot into a shell that does not understand any commands. Not dir, not anything. It will not load workbench, it will not allow me to CD to C: and then run commands. Nothing. Dead in the water.
This is what is amazing...I have found a way to totally disable the internal drive booting capability just by attaching another drive to a different controller card and powering up. Now, having gotten myself into this situation, there is no recourse but to reformat the new drive on a PC or other computer...because I cannot access it because any time it is plugged in, it disables my other drive from booting.
Perhaps I can try attaching also the DVD drive and booting from the OS4.1 install CD with just the DVD and new drive connected to the amigaone, and the old drive disconnected. I'm not sure if that will work.
I guess another option I have is to stop in uboot, put in the debian install CD, boot into debian and reformat the new drive as a linux drive. This would have the same result as reformatting the new drive on a PC, but keep me from having to drag my clunky old PC out of the closet!

Really though, can anyone tell me the step by step procedure of how to properly connect a new hard drive and set it up to be a bootable OS4.1 drive with SLB and bootable partition and all. This is assuming you are booting from an existing OS4.1 partition on a different drive.
The original docs that came with my micro A1 are essentially what I followed...I expected it to work. Of course, it does not take into account the possibility of having a second bootable drive.

Thanks!

[Raziel]

To put the simplest of causes aside...did you check the master/slave jumpers on your drives?

IDE doesn't like it if two slaves or two masters are on the same chain...and it sounds to me this is a hardware problem

...and no, you don't need a SWAP partition...the system just won't swap if it can't find one

[amigaonefan]

@Raziel

IDE doesn't like it if two slaves or two masters are on the same chain...and it sounds to me this is a hardware problem

Well, I've never put them on the same chain. The old drive is always connected as master to the internal IDE bus of the microA1, the new drive is either connected to the sii0680 as master, or I disconnect the internal drive and plug the new drive as master on the internal microA1 IDE bus.

I will connect both the new drive and the DVD drive to my sii0680 with my old hard drive connected to the internal micro IDE bus and see if I can straighten this out.

Thanks

[Raziel]

LOL

Just read your reply on AW.net and how you solved it

You didn't tell us that you were having more than two partitions (A: and B:) and were naming them alphabetically (C:, D: and so on)



Life is learning, mate

[amigaonefan]

@Raziel

Yes, silly me. I made a volume name of C: so whenever the AmigaOne booted and that volume was mounted, off went the OS looking for the commands on an empty volume.

I found another problem too ... hopefully a small one. Perhaps you have an idea how to fix this....

While backing up a lot of my stuff from my internal 80Gig drive to the new 160 Gig drive, I got an error in JXFS:

JXFS System Request
DHI has a checksum error in block 133261.

This occurs in the middle of a 1 Gig partition in the middle (roughly) of the 160Gig hard drive.
Does JXFS, or any Amiga filesystem, have a way of locking out a single bad sector so it won;t be used? If so, how do I make that happen?
I remember reading that you should never do a FULL format, I have done all quick formats of all these partitions. Yes, the block size is 512. Any idea how to lock out a bad sector?

Thanks!

[Raziel]

Not sure, could be anything up to a defect on the drive itself

Read this thread and check all the options he did to see if you can find the culprit.
Don't let you down by the fact he's using SATA and by his solution (faulty RAM), just see if you can find some hints and probably your error will go away

[amigaonefan]

I checked the thread you mentioned. It doesn't seem to be my A1 memory. However, the UDMA recommended by IDE tool showed UDMA5, so that is what I set it to in uboot prefs. However, I got another error on a different partition, so I reduced the UDMA by 1 to UDMA3. I have not seen the problems again. I reformatted the partition with the consistent bad boot block as SFS\02 and that sector that consistently failed with JXFS does not fail with SFS\02..but I am not sure if it is because of the different filesystem or because I reduced the DMA setting.
I hope to get better IDE cables soon.

[Raziel]

I checked the thread you mentioned. It doesn't seem to be my A1 memory. However, the UDMA recommended by IDE tool showed UDMA5, so that is what I set it to in uboot prefs. However, I got another error on a different partition, so I reduced the UDMA by 1 to UDMA3. I have not seen the problems again. I reformatted the partition with the consistent bad boot block as SFS\02 and that sector that consistently failed with JXFS does not fail with SFS\02..but I am not sure if it is because of the different filesystem or because I reduced the DMA setting.
I hope to get better IDE cables soon.

I wasn't able to ever get the maximum out of my drives - UDMA 6.

My drives are up to it (says so in the manual)
The sii0680ide device is up to it (also manual)
The XE "should" be up to it (133 MHz bus speed)

I only tried it once to let the drives run in UDMA 6 connected to a sii0680ide device
I got massive loads of read/write errors from the start
Getting back to UDMA 5 solved every problem

So, i ripped the sii0680 out again and connected the drives back to the UDMA 5-max onboard IDE

No problems EVER again

You can try UDMA 4, though, you went down two stepd (UDMA 5 to UDMA 3)
Actually you won't really feel a difference and if your drives are fine, everythings fine