Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Is there a write protect gadget in fastprep?

john

    John,
    
    If your referring to GVP fastprep, no there is no write protect gadget.
    
    

>     If your referring to GVP fastprep, no there is no write protect gadget.

Yes, I was. I thought I had seen one. Does the RDB contain a software write 
protect bit?

john

     Perhaps some of you other series II owners can help.
     There are a number of gadgets in the software that you can set inside
     Fast prep, however these are not explained in the manual.
     There is LUN for one. If no one else remembers the rest of these I'll 
     write them down tonight and post them tommorrow.
    
    							Ed
    
     

    Re: .4

>     Perhaps some of you other series II owners can help.
>     There are a number of gadgets in the software that you can set inside
>     Fast prep, however these are not explained in the manual.
>     There is LUN for one. If no one else remembers the rest of these I'll 
>     write them down tonight and post them tommorrow.
    
    The "Last Disk" and "Last LUN" gadgets inform the driver to stop scanning
    the bus for other SCSI devices during autoboot (stops the scan from looking 
    for the maximum of 7 scsi devices). Setting this is supposed to result in
    faster autoboot. I've set both, not quite sure of the difference between
    last disk and last logical unit number, and haven't noticed all that much
    of a speedup. Boot time to Workbench for me is on the order of 25 seconds,
    so I'm not complaining. It's not referenced in the part of the GVP manual
    that talks about manual prep, but can be found on p. 18 (Speeding up the
    Autoboot Process).

    -Dom
     

    Ed,
    
    I have 
    a Conner CP3200, the GVP Series II and the installation was a breeze.
    You might want to verify the disks "topology"<--pardon the mis-use, i.e
    the hd/cyl/sec, etc.. that GVP reads from the drive.  You can look in
    "/etc/disktab" on an Ultrix system and verify that the total block counts
    are consistent.
    
    I do not recall a "write protect" setting, but as mentioned, the LUN
    (logical unit # - each SCSI ADDR can handle 7 devices(logical units) - so
    two devices on SCSI address 1 would be SCSI 1, LUN 0 & LUN1), and Last
    Disk buttons, when set, will prevent the GVP II from polling the SCSI
    bus for more devices beyond the device which has the button(s) set.
    
    Using my example above, 2 devices on SCSI address 1; if I set the "LUN
    & Last disk" buttons in the faaastprep screen for the device at LUN 0
    then the GVP controller will not recognize nor mount the device at
    LUN1 or vice versa.  The same goes for SCSI addresses.  If you have
    only one disk set the LUN/Last disk buttons; why have the device
    waste time trying to find more devices?  You can determine whether 
    the are buttons set by resetting the Amiga and looking at the hard
    drive *LED.  After the reset, if the LUN/Last disk buttons are not set
    for any drive you should see the hard drive *LED blink(pulsate) for 
    a number of seconds after a signinficant wait, the blinking is the
    controller polling the SCSI bus.(I believe this polling is during
    the light grey screen)  When the controller is done polling you will
    get your normal boot sequence.  
    
    * IF you have your hard drive LED connected to the LED posts on the
    controller module.
    
    How significant is the speedup.  Mileage may vary.  For my hardware
    configuration, with LUN/Ldisk disabled it takes about 49-52 seconds
    for a complete boot.  With "Last Disk" set it takes 18-20. I have one
    SCSI drive(15ms) at SCSI address 0.
    
    mark
    
    this is from memory...

     Perhaps the DEC ID the drive returned is whats giving it a problem.
     It could be that it looks for specific types of drives when setting
    up?
     Maybe I should manually try formating it instead of Automatically.
     Does any one have the nessacary specs?
     I've never tried it, perhaps the "field" that has the drive ID ie:
     "dec","quantum" etc... can be manually set.
     Also in a previous note someone wrote that they didn't do a low level
     format. They just formatted the drive with Amigados and it worked!
     Maybe it does a low level and a regular format at the same time and
     the low level is kicking back the write protect error.
                    
    				I don't know, what do you people think?
    
    							Thanks, 
    								Ed
    		
                                                                  

>      Perhaps the DEC ID the drive returned is whats giving it a problem.
>      It could be that it looks for specific types of drives when setting
>     up?

Could be, but if it's a modern SCSI board, probably not.

>      I've never tried it, perhaps the "field" that has the drive ID ie:
>      "dec","quantum" etc... can be manually set.

No, this cannot be changed (unless you know how to talk to the maintainance
port of the RZ23 and like to write to EEROM locations :-)

>      Also in a previous note someone wrote that they didn't do a low level
>      format. They just formatted the drive with Amigados and it worked!
>      Maybe it does a low level and a regular format at the same time and
>      the low level is kicking back the write protect error.
>                     

There's no need to low-level format an RZ22/23. In fact, the low level format
(SCSI FORMAT command) only does a WRITE of all sectors since these drives have
embedded servo)

Just partition it and dos format. In fact, you can probably do an AmigaDOS
format in quick mode:

	FORMAT DRIVER DH0: NAME WB2.0 FFS QUICK

john

    Faaastprep does not care what is in the ID field and will not let you
    change it.  I have partitoned and pformatted a RZ56 using faaastprep. 
    The ID field said DEC RZ56.  I did notice that the cyl/sec/hd
    information that faassstprep reported was different than what was in
    /etc/disktab so I changed it before partitioning.  I did not trust
    "automatic mode" so used manual mode.
    The RZ56 worked great!!! Too bad I had to return it :( 600+megs!!!
    
    Try manual mode, this is the information from /etc/disktab:
    
    	RZ23      33  sectors/track
    		   8  tracks/cylinders
    	         776 cylinders/disk
    
    the above should get you started.  If it doesn't work you may have
    a defective drive.
    
    mark
    

     Thanks guys,
    		I'll try some of your suggestions over the weekend and
     let you know what happens.
    					Ed
    

re                        <<< Note 4564.0 by SHARE::DOYLE >>>
>                         -< More stuff on RZ23/Conner >-

> 5.     I partition the drive into 3 33meg partitions and "prep" it.
>       (I believe this writes the information to the RDB).

	I believe not, I think you have to click on the  "WRITE"  box 
	to do this.

> 6.     Then when formatting the drive, I recieve a "DH*: write protected"
>        on my screen for each of the partitions...?

	I think that if you click on the  "WRITE"  box it will write 
	the RDB & PART which will, in effect, knock down the software
	write protect bit(s). 

>	Can anyone enlighten me?!
>	It does write the disk, because if I reboot and run the program again
>	the partition information is still there!

	Yes, but can you open up the partitions and see trash cans ?

	{I'd guess not}


	Reg

	The following is a success story I've had with hooking up 2 RZ23's
   with the GVP Series II card.
	Some of the following is opinion, and I hope I'll be corrected.
        (The only thing worse than no information is wrong information).
	
	RZ23's are strange beasts - period.
	They don't as a rule spin up on power up in less the native programing
	has been played with. (setting a special bit in the unit's eprom).
        However, GVP Series II cards will talk back and forth to the unit
        evidenced by fluttering led activity from the controler card, then
	in what seems to be a fit of rage the card sends one long signal
        to the unit and it spins up, this takes about 45 seconds or so, 
        (sorry I didn't time it). 
       
	Now if you've gone this far, and you've got more than just the rz23
	hooked up on the scsi buss, you've wasted you're time.
	I tried 4 different combinations of units on the scsi-buss and whenever
	I got the gvp software to boot up, as soon as I ran FastPrep, the 
	controler would hang in a "on" state (led would just stay lit).
	
	So I removed all other SCSI devices from from the buss, and hooked
	up ONE rz23.
	
	This time when I ran fast prep, the controler recieved the correct
	information from the drive and allowed me to "Prep" it. When I tried
	to continue (the program moves on to mount and format the drive) it
        choked and up came a DHX: write protected requestor. 

	Okay, so I dump out of the program and try formatting the drive from
	the shell on the GVP INSTALLATION DISK.
	No go, same error. 
	Now the drives are partitioned because I can open them up from the 
	workbench, however both are empty and info on thier icons says 
	read only.

	I booted up a different workbench disk and tried formatting from 
	a shell again with FFS and it took!
	I did this on both partitions. 
	
	Then I file copied from the workbench onto DHX: and softbooted, presto
        up came workbench.
	
	I repeated the process on the second drive, again makeing sure it was
	the only device on the buss, giving it different names for the hard
	drive partitions to make sure it didn't clash with the original RZ23
        when I hooked both up.

	Then after that was done, I hooked both units up and turned on the
	computer, both drives spun up and then ..... workbench requestor?
	O.k. warm reboot, and voila, the computer boots off rz23 device 0 and
	mount rz23 device 1.

	Conclusions.....

  1.	The above procedure works for the "GVP Series II" card, with the
	fast-prep software.
  2.    prep each rz23 buy itself (no other devices on the scsi buss).
  3.    softboot with a different system disk and format the drive from shell.
  4.    be prepared to softboot the system from a cold start, the drives don't
	seem to spin up fast enough on initial cold boot to automount.
  5.    Probably all the above can be avoided if you can get the spin-up bit
	set.

								Ed

	(p.s. "thank you" to everyone who helped)

    I have had an unusal problem with RZ23's also.  I went from the older
    version controller with the Fasstrom update to a new Series II card
    that has the eight meg memory slots. I started experiencing strange
    problems (animations would not run under Director II ect). I went out
    and selected Direct Scsi,and Scsi disconnect for the rz23. Everything
    seemed fine. Next morning my amiga would not boot, even from a floppy.
    Well now I think if i'd waited a 30 more seconds it may have. When I
    got home last night I played with the setup. I found like ed that if I
    mount an RZ23 on the card by itself I could run auto,and it worked
    fine. Then I mounted my Quantum 40 meg on the end of the cable,and it
    would boot fine.(I damaged a terminating resistor pack so this is all
    done without the end drive being terminated). Then I put the quantum
    on the card,and the rz23 on the cable, NO go!. IF you put a brand new
    RZ23 on the cable it will hang on the install page with the drive light
    lit. the older card setup had quantum on card,Terminated rz on cable.
    	I think that the quantum works on the cable,and not the RZ because
    if the drive is not terminated the RZ is more sensitive. I still
    haven't got a source for terminating packs yet. If I get some I plan to 
    try different configurations.
    
    I made a mistake in manual mode. Even if i repreped the RZ23 I could
    not
    fix it.(dh0: not a dos disk is scary) I did a low level format,and that
    allowed me to redo everything. So it looks like a low level format is
    the way to go if you experiance problems during configuration. I keep
    messing up the cylinders etc in manual mode.
    						bill

 I ended up sending back my gvp series II card to GVP.
 I started getting read write errors, and then the system just plain hung
 on a software error refusing to boot.
  I suspected the disk errors as being bogus.
  I then called GVP Tech support, the man had me disconnect the scsi cable from 
the card and try to boot, it hung still.
  He then told me to send in the card and he'd send me thier newest revision
board. So I mailed it out on a friday 1st class us mail. the following thursday
 I got my new card.
 I mean brand new, off the shelf box with software, warrenty card, gvp product
advertisements.
  Both the software and rom are newer versions.
  I installed it and it booted up faster than ever.
  My friend brought over an RZ23, hooked it up and bingo! The drive spun up instantly.
 With the older board, we had to wait almost a full minute for the drive to 
 spin up, and then do a warm reboot in order for the machine to boot off the
 rz23.
  As soon as he finnishes backing his drive up, we are going to try installing it using the newest version of Fast-Prep.

  Also included with the software is a program called GVPINFO (or something similar), this is like the public domain SYSINFO, except not as flashy.
  However, what it doesn't have in flash, it makes up for in displaying
Technical info, It tests the system chips, tells what version they are,
 Tells all about any expansion cards on the system, what they are, how the machine sees them, it gives alot memory addresses and other stuff I don't 
understand.
 Clock ratings and other stuff.
 Specifics on drives attached to the system, whats controling them, high cyl...
etc.
  Version Workbench being run ,Version Rom being used , Version Exec being used.  etc etc etc.....
 Real nice.... 

 Sorry, I don't remeber the rom version off hand..., However, I'm making up a new scsi cable tonight and I'll post it tommorrow.

							Ed

    Ed,
    	Tough to read your note...lines are too long.
    
    JV