Formatting problem w/ Copy2+ and Apple Sys Utils!

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Formatting problem w/ Copy2+ and Apple Sys Utils!

Postby rich » Wed May 29, 2002 1:20 am

To all CFFA ProDOS 2.x users:
Note: this problem does not appear to affect GS/OS users.

Howard Katz has discovered a problem after formatting the 3rd and 4th partitions on a 128MB CF card under ProDOS 2.x on an Apple IIe Enhanced. He noticed that the 4th partition would return errors during a verify using several different programs. From the information provided by Howard, the problem's symptoms appear to be that the partition size is not correct when compared to the actual size report by the CFFA firmware.

I passed this information along to Dave Lyons who immediately found the root of the problem: Both Copy II+ (probably all versions)and Apple System Utilities v3.1 have a bug in them that will not allow them to obtain the proper partition size for remapped paritions when the CFFA card is in slot 7 and possibly other slots. Dave believes that both of those programs were written before ProDOS 2.x.x came out, and they violate the SmartPort slot remapping rules.

On a IIe the incorrect parition size that Howard was seeing was $FC46 (64582) even though the actual parition size for the last partition on a 128MB SanDisk card should be $D400.

2 possible work-arounds:
#1) Use a program that doesn't have the bug!
Dave's Davex Utilities should work fine.
ProSEL may also work (not tested yet)

OR

#2) Move the CFFA card to Slot 5 to do the formatting with Apple Sys Utils or C2+.
Slot 5 is treated differently by ProDOS and uses an older remapping mechinism. Once you format your upper partitions you should be able to move the CFFA to any slot and it should work fine.
(THIS WILL NOT WORK FOR PARTITIONS #5, #6, #7, #8. You will have
to get another tool like Davex)

NOTE: The work-arounds have not been tested yet. I expect to hear something from Howard on them soon. I will make another post when I know more.
_________________
Thanks,
Rich


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: rich on 2002-05-29 20:57 ]</font>
Last edited by rich on Fri Mar 18, 2005 9:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby ncbill » Wed May 29, 2002 1:04 pm

So where do we get this?

Can you post it in the downloads section?

>Dave's Davex Utilities should work fine
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Postby h.katz » Wed May 29, 2002 3:15 pm

FYI--after getting email from Rich this morning, I moved my CFFA to slot 5 in my //e and used Copy II+ ver 9.0 to reformat the 4th partition. A catalog of the partition returned what I believe to be the proper device size, and a verify didn't return any bad blocks (the symptom that pointed to a problem with the format in the 1st place.) I don't have Davex, but as a simple workaround, formatting the CF in slot 5 prior to moving the interface card to slot 7 seems to have worked fine for me.

Later..........Howard
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Postby dlyons » Thu May 30, 2002 12:55 am

Where to get Davex:

http://ground.icaen.uiowa.edu/apple2/ap ... avex.v127/

(BTW, Davex is FREE these days, though 1.27 still contains a Shareware screen. One day soon I will release 1.3, with source code, and clearly labeled as free.)


BTW, Rich gives me slightly too much credit when he says I "immediately" found the problem with Apple System Utilities. :smile: It did take an hour and a half of poking around with a logic analyzer. Cheers,
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Postby luis_desantos » Thu Aug 07, 2003 7:27 pm

Does this mean that the 4th partition is not useable, or just that it cannot be verified? Seems a little extreme to be moving the card around just to appease the verify routineif nothing is really wrong with the partition.
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Postby rich » Thu Aug 07, 2003 10:12 pm

Luis,

It means that you should not "format" the 3rd or 4th partitions using C2+ or Apple Sys Utils in certain slots under ProDOS 2.x.x.
The problems is, the file system does not get set up to use the entire space available and instead it reserves a random amount of space. One solution is to format those partitions in slot five. Then you can move the card to any slot and use it without trouble. It is only the formatting that is a problem. Another solution is to use a tool that doesn't have the formatting bug, like Davex utilities.

The reason slot 5 works, is because of the way ProDOS treats slot 5. It uses different Smart port code for slot 5 and C2+ or ASU don't have a problem in that slot when formatting. The bottom line is: Once formatting is done, you can use any slot.
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Postby rich » Fri Mar 18, 2005 9:13 pm

Hi All,

Here is an update after trying to format partitions #5,6,7,8 on a 256MB card CF card. The trick of putting the card in slot #5 to format partitions > 2 seems to work fine for partitions #3 and #4. But this trick doesn't work for partitions #5, 6, 7, and 8. The problem is that these partitions get formatted to some random size, often very small.

The only solution I know of, is to use a tool that doesn't have a bug in its format routine. I have tried Davex and it works fine for formatting these
higher partitions.
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Re: Davex

Postby Char27 » Mon Aug 08, 2011 10:24 am

dlyons wrote:Where to get Davex:

http://ground.icaen.uiowa.edu/apple2/ap ... avex.v127/

(BTW, Davex is FREE these days, though 1.27 still contains a Shareware screen. One day soon I will release 1.3, with source code, and clearly labeled as free.)

Hi Dave,
Sorry for replying to such an old post...
Just wondering if you have posted davex source anywhere or if you still plan to?
It is usually my prefered boot shell and I am interested in the source if you still plan on releasing it.

btw - for anyone else that does not have davex, the link above does not seem to work but this does;
http://www.appleoldies.ca/davex/index.htm


Thanks,
Rob
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Re: Formatting problem w/ Copy2+ and Apple Sys Utils!

Postby david__schmidt » Mon Aug 15, 2011 6:47 am

Char27 wrote:
dlyons wrote:Where to get Davex:

http://ground.icaen.uiowa.edu/apple2/ap ... avex.v127/

(BTW, Davex is FREE these days, though 1.27 still contains a Shareware screen. One day soon I will release 1.3, with source code, and clearly labeled as free.)

btw - for anyone else that does not have davex, the link above does not seem to work but this does;
http://www.appleoldies.ca/davex/index.htm

I am not Dave of Davex fame, but this link is a mirror of the mighty 'ground':
http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/ground.ica ... avex.v127/
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