ACE HD / SCSI2SD Write Errors

[wbo]

Greetings,

I have a X68000 ACE HD that I have been restoring.  It came with a 20MB SASI drive that appears to have failed.  I have been able to get pretty much everything else working just fine.  Both floppy drives read and write disks with no problems and games boot off of floppy just fine.

I purchased a SCSI2SD board from Inertial Computing with the intention of using it in place of the original SASI drive.  The board I have is a revision 5.0b board and I made sure the terminator resistor networks were in place and used the USB connection to configure the board for no parity and a 1GB hard disk at ID 3.

I used the utilities on the MasterDisk on the X68000 to partition the disk with a single 1000 MB partition (to avoid any potential problems with having a partition that is too large) and format the disk.  I also installed SxSI into the SRAM since my system is a SASI model.

The system now boots off of the SCSI2SD but I get frequent write errors when trying to write files to the disk. (Such as copying files from the MasterDisk to the SCSI2SD.)  If I hit retry the writes usually complete eventually.

Sometimes even doing a directory listing of the drive will fail - although rarely.  I have never had it fail to read or write to either of the two floppy drives - the errors only occur when reading or writing to the SCSI2SD (usually writing).

The SCSI2SD FAQ at http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=SCSI2SD_FAQ mentions that if small reads and writes work but large writes fail then the J3 TERMPWR jumper needs to be set.  This appears to match what I am seeing because the errors do tend to occur most often with larger files.

The SCSI2SD v5 compatibility page also mentions that J3 TERMPWR is required for termination on the X68000 to work properly.  But that only applies to older SCSI2SD board revisions - the v5 revision I have doesn't have a TERMPWR jumper and shouldn't have this problem according to the SCSI2SD wiki.

Has anyone gotten the SCSI2SD v5 boards to work reliably on SASI X68000 models?  If so, do you mind sharing what firmware revision your board is running and what settings you are using?

At this point I have tried almost everything I can think of such as adjusting the setting the SCSI selection delay to 0 or 1 and enabling the Respond to short SCSI selection pules option with no effect. 

My SCSI2SD board is running firmware version v4.7.01 which appears to be the latest available.  I am using the microsd card that came with the SCSI2SD but I have tried other cards as well and have the same problem.

At this point I am almost ready to order an AztecMonster to use instead but I hate buying another SCSI solution when everything I have been able to find indicates that my SCSI2SD should work just fine.

[wbo]

I think I have finally solved the stability problems I was having.  It looks like the newer SCSI2SD units are a bit picky about what microsd cards can be used.  I tried the card that came with my SCSI2SD (Sandisk) and another card which was originally from an Android phone (Kingston) and had the same problems with both. 

Finally I decided to try a third card which was an industrial SLC card designed for write-intensive uses.  It is only a 2GB card but that is plenty for a X68000.

With the industrial card, the SCSI2SD appears to be completely stable.  I have tried everything I can think of including reading and writing multiple large files (floppy images) and it has yet to fail.  If anyone else with a SCSI2SD has random errors reading and especially writing, try different cards. 

The cards that didn't work were from reputable brands and I was able to completely fill both cards using a card reader and read the data back with no errors so the cards themselves appear to be fine.  The SCSI2SD just doesn't like them for some reason.  The card that appears to work for me is an ATP Industrial SLC card that I think originally came from an old business voicemail system.

[Martin8bity]

Did you tell about this to Michael McMaster?