HDDriver 7.93 + CAF + CF Cards

[Coda]

This is a problem I am trying to solve. I want to use CAF again (I have an external SCSI JAZ 1GB Drive for recording), and AudioTracker (records to IDE disks just fine).

I have used a 1GB CF card in the past with HDDriver 8.20 for doing dev work, internally connected via a 2.5" -> 3.5" -> CF adapter (generic chinese brand). This has worked for years without errors.
I just took a 8Gb CF card out of my camera for testing, made 8x partitions (<1GB), TOS mode, non-byteswapped.
With hddriver.sys from 8.2 on the C partition, the card boots fine.
With hddriver.sys from 7.93 on the C partition, the boot sequence loads the hddriver.sys file, then it complains that there are no partitions found I'm confused as to why it wont find the partitions, when an 8GB IDE HDD works fine.

Is there something I am doing wrong or is 7.93 basically unable to read the partitions on this card (even though the driver loads find from the CF card in the TOS boot sequence)?

I need 7.93 because of the non-CAF compatibility of hddriver8.x, and I want to use 2 CF cards (1x 8GB and 1x 1GB TOS/Win formatted card for file transferring to the mac).

[uweseimet]

Did you actually configure HDDRIVER (the one on your boot partition) to check your IDE master device when booting? (If not HDDRIVER will not report the device name when booting and will not check partitions on this device.)
Note that there were many improvements related to using memory cards since HDDRIVER 7.93, so it's absolutely possible that HDDRIVER 7.93 does not work with your type of card.

[Coda]

Yes Uwe, both hddriver.sys versions are configured the same, with the first 2 IDE and SCSI IDs.
When it boots, the Falcon TOS reports the IDE0,0 as the ID of the CF card, so the falcon sees it, and tries to boot it.
I see HDDriver 7.93 in reverse text on the screen so I guess that the root sector of the card is successfully loaded and executed and this has loaded the hddriver.sys file and executed that.
So, the card is visible to TOS and TOS boots it, but HDDriver complains the card has no partitions (or something similar, the text goes past so quick on a CT60 lol). So, I'm wondering if this isn't a problem with 7.93 not being able to parse the partition table on a CF card. From a SCSI perspective I can't see how a CF card would present its structure any different to a real IDE HD.
If you can figure it out, and make a 'quick patch' or a 7.94, I'm sure there are a few people that would be grateful, me included. I'd happily pay for upgrade to 8.4x regardless of whether i'd use it (not saying that I won't buy it anyway, and it's not really an incentive for you to put in lots of work )

[uweseimet]

So obviously HDDRIVER is actually bootstrapped. What happens if you start an appropriately configure HDDRIVER.PRG from a floppy disk?
There is indeed no difference in the layout of partition tables between SCSI and IDE. But you could use HDDRUTIL 7.93 instead of 8.2 to partition the CF card, just to make sure that it's defnitely not some kind of partition layout problem.

If I understand you correctly you have a working 1 GB card. What happens if you copy this card (HDDRUTIL can do that) to the 8 GB card? (Not the actual files, but a sector copy.) You would only be able to access 1 GB on the 8 GB card, but for a test it would be interesting to know if HDDRIVER detects the partitions on this copied card. Depending on the result one can most likely draw some conclusions.

I'm afraid I cannot provide a version 7.94 of HDDRIVER. Version 7.93 version is so old (more than 12 years) that its support has definitely ended. I even doubt that I still have the source code for the actual driver. The sources for HDDRUTIL 7.93 are definitely lost. By the way, you are the only one ever asking for this kind of update.

[Coda]

I admit, you are kind to be even answering questions on software which is 12 years old (I didn't realise it's been so long). The patch request was sort of tongue-in-cheek, not seriously expecting it at all

Yes the 1Gb card would have been partitioned with 8.20 some years ago, and boots 8.20. The 8Gb card also boots fine with 8.20. BTW - I don't remember seeing a disk copy function in 8.20. That's the latest version of HDDriver that I have. But - I could use the Mac to do a 'dd' from the CF to an image file, and then write this image back to another card.

I have booted from a fresh 7.93 floppy. I made sure that the hddriver.prg in auto was reset to defaults, and that it looks for at least the first ID on SCSI and IDE. After booting this floppy, the 8Gb CF card is not visible in the partition dialog. I was just about to go through all my CF cards to make sure I have the same problem with all of them, but I'm bitten by a hardware bug since I fitted the CT60, that between every cold boot I have to slightly remove and re-seat the CT60 on the main board, otherwise it won't start. I decided I need to fix it now before I throw the whole falcon out of the window. I've already re-wired the CT60 today with fresh cables and it didn't help (although I think my DSP clock is better lol).

I'll come back when I've put the Falcon back together and tested all the CF cards I have.

Edit: 6 CF cards tested, booting with 7.93 on floppy. Not able to create a partition on any card - the cards do not show up in partition dialog, even though they appear on the list when you do an ID Check.

[uweseimet]

The fact that the cards are not offered for partitioning means that there was a problem when reading the current partition layout (e. g. root sector could not be read or an error reported by the adapter). But the 1 GB card is offered for (re-)partitioning? If it is, this card must somehow be different from the others, but I have no idea what this difference could be.
Anyway, using dd for copying one card to another would be fine. (The sector copy and image save/load features were added to HDDRUTIL in version 8.30.)

By the way, HDDRIVER 8.16, which was released in 2005, is the first version with what I would call official support for CF cards. I remember that changes in the IDE code were required in order to support cards and adapters that did not work with older versions, and HDDRIVER 8.16 was the first version with these changes included.

[Coda]

No CF cards including the 1Gb card are visible with 7.93 loaded, and that's on two different CF adapters (both of which work fine in the Amiga 600 but that's irrelevant).

I'll buy the update to 8.4x anyway, even though I won't use it (although I have a TT which would be nice to resurrect and boot from CF card (I have a Yamaha made SCSI->IDE bridge)).

Oh, and thanks for your help.