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BlizzardPPC scsi

Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2015 8:07 pm
by MMikhail
Since blizzardppc scsi is still unsupported, this causes a few problems.
If you have only a scsi cd drive, it becomes complicated to install 4.1 FE.

1. CD self installs it's file system on inserting CD, even when your drive is not mounted. This is a cool feature, but sadly it has a very nice tendency to crashing when doing so here.

2. Any easy method to install the system properly with installer but without CD, since it becomes absent when scsi goes off with kickstart 4 in ppc only mode?

Re: BlizzardPPC scsi

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 8:07 pm
by MMikhail
Just wondering...
Since we have 68K emulation, and it works for some legacy parts of the OS like CNET ethernet cards, would not the same method work for blizzardppcscsi.device ?
Ok this would not allow booting, but at least mounting the drives later after the OS has loaded and giving you access to all your storage and device.

Re: BlizzardPPC scsi

Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 8:15 pm
by DarrenHD
MMikhail wrote:Just wondering...
Since we have 68K emulation, and it works for some legacy parts of the OS like CNET ethernet cards, would not the same method work for blizzardppcscsi.device ?
Ok this would not allow booting, but at least mounting the drives later after the OS has loaded and giving you access to all your storage and device.
I don't think it's technically possible because the device driver is in the ROM of the Blizzard card, and my understanding is access to this ROM is not possible when the 68K processor is disabled (after OS4 kernel loads and the system reboots). So it's technically not accessible anymore once Kickstart has loaded. Which is why you need a native driver at that point.

Darren

Re: BlizzardPPC scsi

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 5:32 am
by MMikhail
The driver can be extracted as a file, so in theory it's just another 68K driver like any other.
The other question is will the needed memory space be accessible.

Talking of drivers, why no one ever looked at the driver in the apus distribution ?
It's native ppc code and adapting it should be very similar to CS version.
And the source was available.

Re: BlizzardPPC scsi

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:51 am
by Gregor
MMikhail wrote: 2. Any easy method to install the system properly with installer but without CD, since it becomes absent when scsi goes off with kickstart 4 in ppc only mode?
Do not know if it is 'easy', but there is a workaround which did the job at least with CSPPC... Though there is support for the onboard SCSI controller, the CD drive I have (CyberDrive 24x) is not supported (=not bootable under 4.1) for unknown reason. That's why I had to originally install AmigaOS 4.1.2 using this trick.

Do you have a bootable OS3.x partition in your system, and can you access the FE CD there? The trick is to make first a hard disk partition which is bootable both from 3.x and 4.1 (=use a file system that is supported by both, e.g. SFS 0). You may have to take the needed filesystem file from OS4.1 disk (or from Aminet), unless you do not have it already mounted in RDB of your hard disk.

Then you should copy the contents of your 4.1 CDROM to that partition, and rename it to the same as the CDROM. (Be also sure that you have chosen 'bootable' and 'automount' in HDToolbox!). After that you should be able to boot from that partition and install 4.1 as if you had booted from the CDROM. (Have not tried that with FE and BlizzardPPC, though!).

Re: BlizzardPPC scsi

Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 1:33 pm
by MMikhail
Yes, that's a possible work around. The CD is basically a direct copy of a special bootable hdd partition.
The only tricky part is to disable it from auto mounting here, otherwise the bootcd what ever is loaded there likes to crash here, you get to see the CD contents, but can't do anything, systems is half dead, so no file copying.
The next problem is I can't use the OS4.1FE bootmenu, it works in AGA now, but does not allow to boot from a selectable drive or without startup sequence, I only get a black screen on all video outputs.