R-IDSC-E/R with ACE HD (SASI) was Thunder Blade and writing back to disk

[JackLeather]

I have had my cyber stick for a while now and just got round to actually using it on my x68000.

One of the games i am dying to try is Thunder Blade. However after trying many sets of disk images (which all work fine in emulation) it appears that disk C has a problem. the game loads disk A fine and then i insert disk B and it loads and then wants to access disk C. at this point a message appears CRC (Error?) as it tries to access disk C.

Can anyone help me out?

[x68000]

sounds like it may be a bad image dump. May have been a corupt disc too when it was first archived.

[JackLeather]

sounds like it may be a bad image dump. May have been a corupt disc too when it was first archived.

i have tried 8 or 9 different sets - some I already had and all the sets i can find on 'ROM' sites. My disks are good as I can write other games to them and they work fine. my drives play any of my other multi disk games. oddly i am having the same issue with afterburner (another Sega game). is it some sort of copy protection that the emus work around?

I must be doing some thing wrong! 

[eidis]

 It could be necessary to replace capacitors and clean the hardened grease from rails on your drives. I have ACE-HD aswell and those drives are very fragile. The first thing you can try is changing drive ID for both drives. Aka drive 0 to 1 and drive 1 to 0. There are jumpers on the drives and the process is straightforward. If the game starts to load fine, you could have to repair the faulty drive. Try my tutorials and please post your results.

http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=x68000:floppy_drive_issues

http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=x68000:advanced_floppy_driver_repair

Eidis

[JackLeather]

Thanks for your help!

Could someone try writing afterburner and/or thunder blade back to disk and trying on their own system? a google search will locate a few sets easily. please?  

You are probably right about my drives needing a service and i will do this if all else fails.

Its a fact that all my other games (originals and xfloppy'd back to disk) work fine, every time. its just these sega games!!

[eidis]

Maybe this will help. Please download scorpius (1991)(shinseisha).zip and transfer it to floppy disk. I use this game to test how well I have calibrated my floppy drives. It is a one disk game which fully loads from both drives and does some crazy random seeking throughout the whole disk. If this game will load fine from both drives without any weird/unusual noises then your problem could be, hopefully, only software related.

Here's a another wild guess. Check that your system is not overclocked in any way.

P.S. With so much ram this mod is a must

http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=x68000:hard_drive_on_sasi_machine

Good luck and keep us posted !

[JackLeather]

Maybe this will help. Please download scorpius (1991)(shinseisha).zip and transfer it to floppy disk. I use this game to test how well I have calibrated my floppy drives. It is a one disk game which fully loads from both drives and does some crazy random seeking throughout the whole disk. If this game will load fine from both drives without any weird/unusual noises then your problem could be, hopefully, only software related.

I actually already had Scorpius, but didn't realise that it would load from both drives. I tried it in both drives and it loads faultlessly every time from either. Phew!  

Here's a another wild guess. Check that your system is not overclocked in any way.

My x68k is not over-clocked.

P.S. With so much ram this mod is a must Wink

http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=x68000:hard_drive_on_sasi_machine

I would love to try this out. i still have the original SASI drive from the ACE and it works. However the ATX psu (slim) meant it had to come out.

I would do this mod if i could get hold of either of the interfaces mentioned, which i have looked high and low for. the only possible substitute i could find is this one:

NEW IDE 40pin to SCSI 50pin Converter
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230450465086&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Do you think it would work?

Either way i want to get a game of thunder blade or afterburner with my cyber stick - would you try writing either/or both to floppy from *any* of the on-line sources and tell me if it works for you?

Please?!!!  

[eidis]

 I'm almost 100% positive that R-IDSC-E/R adapter will work.  While you're at it, get an IDE CF adapter with LEDs whose legs have been soldered through PCB. This will allow you to make a very cool HDD activity LED mod. The X68000 led is 2v and my CF adapter outputs ~2v on the HD activity LED. You will have to wire the HD Busy LED directly to the CF reader observing the polarity. Works like a charm.

About the Thunder Blade. There is no need to transfer images. I'm sure that they will work on my hardware. If the error message of disk C appears when it wants to start reading the floppy, your PC side floppy drive could be causing it. I have two drives. One samsung and one insanely tortured TEAC. Files which were transfered with samsung work fine while the ones I did with TEAC show the same effect. For example Daimakaimura and Final Fight. Disk 1 loads fine, and with disk 2 its CRC error or the other way arround. You could try to use a different drive for your transfers combined with some high quality floppies aswell. When transfering please format the disk with xFloppy first, then transfer the image and for extra safety you can then try to read it back to PC to ensure that the media is without bad sectors. If this doesn't help please concentrate on the HDD mod because this game will work fine from it.

Over the time I made an HDD image which can be restored back to real hardware. Open the following link and see what the future will bring you

http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=x68000:sxsi_disk_image_with_games_and_lots_of_mdx_files

[JackLeather]

Over the time I made an HDD image which can be restored back to real hardware. Open the following link and see what the future will bring you Wink

Ok, i have the interface and the compact flash and adapter. how do i write the drive image to the compact flash?

[eidis]

 Download Active @Disk Image v4.0.4 or newer from the usual places and use its restore function.

Eidis

[JackLeather]

No luck with the R-IDSC-E/R so far 

I have set the jumpers to the same as yours and written the image you posted but nothing (after running bootset). i have also tried creating the boot floppy with sxsi stuff on it. when i run scsiformat and select 3 it just ignores my input and asks the same question again. if i only know that the jumpers on the R-IDSC-E/R were the same as yours.

any ideas?

[JackLeather]

Thought i would add a bit more info.

I built the boot floppy using these instructions http://gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=x68000:hard_drive_on_sasi_machine.

here is the boot screen i get:



i notice that the 4th line doesnt match yours. i am guessing it says it cant find a scsi device with ID=3?

Here are my jumpers:



(1=closed,2=closed,3=open,4=closed,5=closed,6-9=open)

Finally here is a shot of the setup:



its a sandisk ultra II 1gb compact flash - i have tried a kingston CF also and a IDE hard disk - all with the same results; When i run scsiformat it just keep prompting me for the ID. i tried 0-7.

[JackLeather]

Can anyone translate line 4 on the first screen shot for me?

[Magic Knight]

As you suspected, it says that the driver wasn't registered because there's nothing working with an ID of 3. Have you tried using other numbers?

[eidis]

JackLeather

Sorry for the late reply. The jumper settings on your adapter seem to be correct. I have a small but trivial question. Have you connected a power cord to the card reader ? Strangely my card readers slot is pointing the other way (down). Could it be that you have plugged it the other way around ? That's just a wild guess.

Here are the jumper settings:

http://www.synack.net/~bbraun/IDSC21-E_Jumper_Settings.pdf

If you have installed the bootloader into SRAM with bootset.x the X68000 should autodetect connected hardware, which is connected to the SASI port, on every reboot. Please see the following picture for reference:

http://gamesx.com/wiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=x68000:bootscreen.jpg

As you can see the ID1 and ID2 have nothing connected to them and ID3 has some activity. You should see something similar. If not, please make sure that there is power connected to your SCSI to IDE adapter and card reader and that the reader is not plugged the other way around. The ID3 should have activity on every reboot, regardless of loaded drivers.

Here are some pics of my current setup:

http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/CF-Reader1.jpg
http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/CF-Reader2.jpg

Best of luck and keep us posted !

Eidis

P.S. Once again I reviewed your pictures. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that there is no power cord connected to your card reader.

[JackLeather]

thanks eidis (and magic knight)...

I have kind of given up

the CF adapter is keyed so it can only go one way - which i assume is the right way. i also tried powering the CF adapter - no change. nothing is sensed on the SCSI bus.

I also tried;
1. various CF cards - no change.

2. a real IDE drive (several actually) set as master/slave/CS - no change.

3. I wanted to be sure my SCSI bus was OK so i found an old quantum SCSI drive which once connected up formatted fine. so X86k is fine.

4. and of course every combination of jumpers - i hate jumpers now 

I have trawled the web and found an article on the 'English Amiga Board' http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=50651.
I just happened to have the GVP HD adapter. So i hooked up the R-IDSC-E/R to it and guess what...it works with the amiga 500 and the GVP Impact hardware (as the poster on EAB said it would). So My R-IDSC-E/R is fine also.

This unfortunately makes me believe that the R-IDSC-E/R isn't compatible with the X68k. i have read there are older firmwares that the R-IDSC-E/R might support which might make it more like the older IDSC but i couldn't find any.

I am at a dead end! help me!! please! 

[eidis]

 Your card reader seems suspicious. Here is a link to the one which I am using.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120537570211

Don't give up yet. IMHO any SCSI to IDE adapter with enabled bus parity and built in termination should work.

So right now we have concluded that the SCSI to IDE adapter and X68000 SASI bus is working and the SASI cable is not damaged. Please confirm that your card reader is working by connecting it to a PC.

It is still far from GAME OVER

Things you can try:

Disable DMA on your SCSI to IDE adapter.

Here is another thing which I found on Amiga.org

The stupid R-IDSC-E/R that I got would NOT work unless I set the jumper which was marked as "writable" or something like that (to be used for flashing with newer firmware) to ON. So, even though it made NO sense according to the documents/PDFs that I found (because I also got no instructions with the thing, so I had to Google it), I had to set that jumper in order for it to work. More than that, in certain setups (don't recall now) it wouldn't work at all (even as a read-only device) without setting that jumper. Go figure...

The following links could be of interest to you:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060312054101/http://www.iodata.com/manuals/R-IDSC-E050418.pdf
http://web.archive.org/web/20060312054146/http://www.iodata.com/manuals/IDSC21E-Version2.1.pdf

Could you post a pic of the initial SxSI device autodetection screen ?

Best of luck and keep us posted !

Eidis

[JackLeather]

thanks again for getting back to me.

Your card reader seems suspicious. Here is a link to the one which I am using.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120537570211

I may order another adapter. However i have tried several old and new IDE drives and that made no difference.

If you disconnect the CF adapter from your IDSC and boot your x68k what happens? is it still detected without the IDE device?

Disable DMA on your SCSI to IDE adapter.

Here is another thing which I found on Amiga.org

The stupid R-IDSC-E/R that I got would NOT work unless I set the jumper which was marked as "writable" or something

Yep tried these and every other jumper combination already - no change.

The following links could be of interest to you:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060312054101/http://www.iodata.com/manuals/R-IDSC-E050418.pdf
http://web.archive.org/web/20060312054146/http://www.iodata.com/manuals/IDSC21E-Version2.1.pdf

Well done on finding that PDF! its implies that the first 3 jumpers indeed set the SCSI Id. However jumpers 4,5,6,7 appear to do nothing on the R-IDSC-E. 8 and 9 appear to function the same as the IDSC-21E. So it looks like there's no way to select DMA/PIO or SCSI 1 or 2 on the R-IDSC-E(/R). This PDF is for version 1 or the card my card is version 1.30.9 (just for everyones information).

If the PDF is right then this would start to make sense. Is it the case that the x86k needs SCSI-1? does your device work if you put it in SCSI-2 mode? Could it be that the R-IDSC-E/R is in SCSI-2 mode permanently?

Could you post a pic of the initial SxSI device autodetection screen ?

Here it is:

Now i at least have the quantum hard drive drive running why does it insist on being drive a:? how do i assign c: to the hard disk and let the floppies remain as A: and B:?

[Magic Knight]

Now i at least have the quantum hard drive drive running why does it insist on being drive a:? how do i assign c: to the hard disk and let the floppies remain as A: and B:?

The hard drive is always assigned A: as far as I know, certainly it is on mine. This shouldn't be a problem though, I can't think of any reason why you'd want to change that.

[papa_november]

The boot drive is ALWAYS A: , no matter whether it's a floppy disk or hard disk. There's no way to change it. The PC-98 is the same way.

[eidis]

 I have some good news. Check it out

http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/IDSC21-Without-Storage-Device.jpg
http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/IDSC21-Without-Storage-Device2.jpg

I even tried to torture my adapter by configuring it to SCSI2 mode with DMA and Flash jumpers enabled. And it still worked. My CF card was detected regardlessly of the jumper configuration. I noticed that it doesn't like DMA, but even with DMA enabled it detected my CF and booted from it.

http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/IDSC21-NormalMode.jpg
http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/IDSC21-SCSI2.jpg
http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/IDSC21-SCSI2-DMA.jpg
http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/IDSC21-SCSI2-DMA-FlashEnable.jpg

Best of luck and keep us posted !

Eidis

P.S. Sorry for the cheap-o quality pics

[JackLeather]

All hope may not be lost thanks for performing these tests for me!

I have some good news. Check it out

http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/IDSC21-Without-Storage-Device.jpg
http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/IDSC21-Without-Storage-Device2.jpg

What is the difference between these two pics? The first has no adapter attached. What's happening in the second pic?

If I read these correctly you IDSC behaves the same as mine when no ATA device is attached to it. I must admit I expected it to be detected without an ATA device (IDE hard disk or compact flash).

Have you ever tried a real IDE drive in place of the compact flash adapter? I have tried several IDE drives with no success. I tried old crusty 540mb drives and year old 200gb drives. I expect the x68k doesn't like drives >2gb? I will try all my spare drives and see what happens.

Compact flash cards are not all created equal either. Some work with this kind of project and some don't. What brand and size is yours again? Remember both the adapter and flash card formatted and booted on the amiga.

Magic and papa thanks for your input on the drive letter question. 

[papa_november]

A thought: What is HD_MAX set to in SWITCH on your machine? It should be set to 0. I have a similar setup, and if I change that setting to anything other than 0, it won't boot and will show a screen that is remarkably like yours.

Also, you should leave your hard drive's SCSI ID set to 0, as that's kind of the universal standard (eliminates guesswork when plugging in external drives) and might speed things up by a fraction of a second.

[eidis]

JackLeather

The difference in those two former pics is only the angle of SCSI to IDE adapter and that in the second one there is a disconnected card reader.

So on to the update.  I tried three different hard drives with my adapter. All were detected flawlessly.

Quantum Daytona 256MB
Toshiba 814MB
Toshiba 30GB

http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/X68000-HDD.jpg
http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/Disk1.jpg
http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/Disk2.jpg
http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/Disk3.jpg
http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/Whole-Lot.jpg

As I have noticed, this adapter is not picky about hard drives and  somehow I think it will be easier to successfully connect a hard drive at first and then move on to CF. Unfortunately I have run out of ideas. If nothing will work, maybe your adapter indeed is not compatible with X68000.

Best of luck and keep us posted !

Eidis

[JackLeather]

Eidis, can you post a screen shot of your SWITCH.X setting?

[eidis]

Here it is:

http://foto1.inbox.lv/eidis/X68000/switch-x.jpg

Eidis

[JackLeather]

OK. i tried a stack more hard drives (IDE) - no joy 

Conclusion : the R-IDSC-E/R 1.30.9 doesn't work with the X68000 ACE HD (SASI) machine.

So to everyone hovering over that 'buy it now' button - think twice before you buy the R-IDSC-E/R 1.30.9. it could be my SASI ACE HD that has the problem. However the seller of the IDE-SCSI interface on ebay above has radically increased the price since they added the listing some time ago. i read that originally it was $20 with shipping. now its much higher and probably not worth the risk. Basically i'll take one on the wallet for the x68k team!

Eidis, thanks for all your help!

Eidis, I have a SCSI disk with parity enable/disable jumper (Yay!) its 4.6Gb. i have scsiformat(ed) it and created one 4.6Gb partition. is this wise? should i stick to several smaller partitions?

Secondly, i was considering trying to copy your hard disk image over to the SCSI drive in the x68k using a serial link - do you or anyone else have any experience of this or other method of transfer?

[JackLeather]

Secondly, i was considering trying to copy your hard disk image over to the SCSI drive in the x68k using a serial link - do you or anyone else have any experience of this or other method of transfer?

http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3914.0

[JackLeather]

I was wondering if adding a 'parity faker' to the R-IDSC would make any difference?

http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=3088.msg20692#msg20692

the R-IDSC PDF above mentions that it has a parity function. but is it enabled? there's no indication of how to change this.

to be honest i dont really understand why parity is/isnt needed for drives to work on the X68k.

[papa_november]

The Yamaha V769970 can have it's parity disabled; it's what I use on mine. Problem is, they're rare and by rare I mean fucking rare. Haven't even seen one on eBay in the past 4 months.

As for your IDSC problems, maybe you could arrange for a trade with someone who has an earlier/later version that would work on an X68000?

[JackLeather]

The Yamaha V769970 can have it's parity disabled; it's what I use on mine. Problem is, they're rare and by rare I mean fucking rare. Haven't even seen one on eBay in the past 4 months.

As for your IDSC problems, maybe you could arrange for a trade with someone who has an earlier/later version that would work on an X68000?

I have another SCSI-IDE bridge on the way so lets see. it the ACARD AEC-7720U. fingers crossed. must admit i dont have much hope. 
I do have my Quantum drive running nicely so i am ok for now.

Trade the R-IDSC. it should work fine on a SCSI X68k. It cost me a small fortune so i am not sure what i would trade it for. For a start i wouldnt mind a grey 'matching' keyboard for my ACE, i have a black one right now. Maybe a gadget to scan convert the x68k output to run both modes via VGA (lcd). however the sharp monitor is just so good! if anyone wants to trade PM me and i will consider your offers.

[eidis]

Eidis, thanks for all your help!

You must be joking ! I'm the one that got you into this mess, remember ?

Eidis, I have a SCSI disk with parity enable/disable jumper (Yay!) its 4.6Gb. i have scsiformat(ed) it and created one 4.6Gb partition. is this wise? should i stick to several smaller partitions?

Human OS has 1GB limitation so I would advise you to not exceed it. The limitation is for the whole drive, not the partition.

Secondly, i was considering trying to copy your hard disk image over to the SCSI drive in the x68k using a serial link - do you or anyone else have any experience of this or other method of transfer?

The image is made with a PC so serial link is a no go. I once tried transferring files through a serial link. If I remember correctly, the maximum speed was 9600 bps so don't bother. There are more faster and better ways of doing it. Grab yourself a copy of Active @Disk Image v4.0.4 or newer from the usual places, connect your SCSI drive to PC and use the restore function. When combined with DiskExplorer it is a neat way to transfer files between X68K and PC. Files can be added to image with DiskExplorer and the whole image then can be restored to physical hardware and vice versa.

One more thing which you should know. It is important to disable DMA or there can and probably will be data corruption when sometimes writing data. When writing my wiki article I was unaware of it. I should probably update it with the latest info and thanks for contributing valuable info about your adapter.

I was wondering if adding a 'parity faker' to the R-IDSC would make any difference?

Imho the adapter must have parity and termination enabled to work so this could be a nice project.

Best of luck and keep us posted !

Eidis

[JackLeather]

here are a couple of pics of the  R-IDSC-E/R i used;