warren@wucs1.wustl.edu (Warren Burnett) (01/31/89)
I recently purchased a GVP 1 M memory/SCSI harddisk controller. I have been very pleased with it thus far, but I have a few questions that I hope someone can answer. BTW by setup is an Amiga 2000, 1 floppy, GVP 1M controller, and an ST-277N hard disk. 1) Is there any way to change the memory location at which the expansion autoconfigs? As it is, mergemem can't merge the memory from the GVP board with the rest of the memory in the system. There is only one jumper on the board (which differentiates between 0 and 1 meg of memory installed). Is there something that needs to be done with software? 2) Is there any way to change the name of a partition after it has been formatted? Right now I have 4 partitions (DH0: through DH3:). I would like to change these to something else (ha: for instance). I have tried changing the device names in the MountList, but that doesn't seem to work correctly. When BindDrivers is run, DH0: through DH3: are automagically mounted. I can then mount ha:, but then I have two device names referring to the same partition. That is not what I want, and is probably not a good idea. 3) Does anyone have any documentation on using the programs in the gvpscripts directory of the installation disk? Specifically, I am interested in manually running (i.e. not from within their script) GVPprepHD and sformat. Any help on any of these questions would be greatly appreciated. Warren Burnett warren@wucs1.wustl.edu
murakami@m.cs.uiuc.edu (02/02/89)
I have a GVP Hardcard with a Conner 3100 100-Mbyte drive that now autoboots, and can relate a good experience in making an existing drive autoboot without reformatting the whole disk. Two days ago, I finally got Amiga 1.3 Kickstart ROMs via mail order. After installing both the Amiga and (previously received) GVP ROMs, I couldn't wait to get the drive to autoboot, so I forged ahead and figured things out myself (by scanning script and dumps of executables). The following steps worked for me, but the standard disclaimers apply and you might want to give the nice GVP folks a call if you want the real instructions (and to drop them a hint about providing documentation for getting an existing drive to autoboot without throwing away all of your data). A) backup everything volatile (in case Murphy strikes again) B) install the ROMs according to the directions C) verify ROM installation using your old boot disk D) print a hardcopy of DEVS:mountlist (for disk/partition configuration) E) run "install.scsi:gvpscripts/GVPprepHD FFS ASKALL" The program already knew about the Connor 3100. With the ASKALL option, it prompts for mountlist information for each partition, and then "preps" your drive by writing appropriate info (probably to track 0), creating a drive that you can now autoboot. Notes: 1) This assumes that you previously chose good paritions and supplied matching low/high track (a.k.a. cyl, CA :-( ) information. 2) The names DH0:, DH1:, DH2:, ... are chosen by GVPprepHD. 3) use Relabel to provide nice names for yourself and workbench display 4) GVPprepHD would not let me use the highest track on the drive (775 on the Conner 3100). I had to (carefully) copy partitions around using manually mounted partitions to clear the last partition, and then reformat it. There are many other options to GVPprepHD, it would be nice to have the documentation.
murakami@m.cs.uiuc.edu (02/02/89)
For disk partitions, the important (individual) parameters are "highcyl" and "lowcyl" (not "track" in my previous posting). Similarly, GVPprepHD wont let me use the highest cylinder (775?) on the Conner 3100 (with 8 platters, 1 cylinder lost is 8 tracks lost :-( ). Sorry about the confusion -- chalk it up to lack of sleep from Amiga hacking. -Gary