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CFFA & CiderPress - I simply don't get it

D

Drken

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 13, 2009
Messages
306
Location
Charlotte NC
I sat down today to start work on getting some of the 485 disks that Neil Shapiro (of CompuServe fame) donated to A2OL this week. I have two CF cards - one 128 MB, the other 256 MB, that have been having serious problems in getting them to function on the CFFA3K. I'm hoping someone can give me step-by-step guidance on how to format the CF cards so that I have ProDOS volumnes on them in which I can use "i'm fEDD up" to archive the disks to.

I have both CF cards formatted on my PC. I then insert one of them into the CFFA3K card, turn the Apple IIe ON and press M to get to the menu. At the Main Menu, I select "6. New Blank Disk Image" and on the next screen, I set New Disk Image Size to 128 MB and press RETURN. It then gives me the following message, "Insert CF or USB media, or Press ESC". Here's the first problem. I have the CF card already in the CFFA3K, so I simply press RETURN and nothing happens. The only thing that I can do is "or Press ESC". It doesn't tell me to insert the CF media AND press ESC, it insert the CF media OR press ESC. What am I supposed to do at this junction? The manual is of no help... at least I can not find anything in the manual, so if I am missing it, please give me the page number. The paragraph on Pg 12-13 just doesn't do anything for me. I know, I know, I am exceptionally dense.

After I press ESC, I am back at the Main Menu. I then selected "7 Other Settings" and the only thing there that is CF card-related is "2 Raw CF Card Settings". If I then select "3 Erase CF for Raw Use" and type "YES" at the next screen, and apparently it erases the MBR.

I then try the card in CiderPress, and when I try to Open the Volume, I get an error message, "Unable to identify filesystem on 'P:\'.

I then go to CiderPress File menu, select New Disk Image to get the Create Disk Image window. I select Filesystem ProDOS, New Disk Size 32 MB and put the ProDOS Volume Name as TRANSFER1 and then press OK. The New Disk Image window comes up and I am asked to enter where I would like to save the new file. I select the CF card (my PC's drive 'P'), type in the File name: TRANSFER1.PO and select Save as Type "ProDOS-ordered image (*.po)" and that is when all of a sudden, I get the names of previous attempts popping up at being on the CF card - NEWDISK, NEWDISK1 and TRANSFER1. If I then press Save a pop-up box comes up and says "TRANSFER1.PO already exists. Do you want to replace it?" I select YES and then CiderPress shows me the contents of I:\TRANSFER1.PO. I still can not Open Volume for the CF card.

I've been going around in circles today for the past 7 hours, and have gotten absolutely no where. All I want to do is to create one 32 MB volume on the darn CF card to capture the disk archives I'm trying to make using 'im fEDD up'.

If anyone can help me with a Directions for Idiots, I would be most grateful!

Ken
www.Apple2Online.com
 
For the CFFA3k, use FAT32 to format the flash card.

If I remember correctly, you DON'T want to have a partition table on the CF card, it needs to be treated as a directly formatted flash storage device. You may have to zero the first few blocks of it to remove the partition table, Windows will transparently treat it as partitioned. I'm not sure if there's any way to fix it directly in Disk Manager under Windows. Format it as FAT32 without the partition table and it should be good.

Then you should be able to create your empty volume with Cider Press on whatever drive letter your CF card shows up as.
 
Fat32 for the CF Card, then make a empty 32meg Virtual Disk file for prodos to use.

What you are trying to do was what the original CFFA, not the 3k, needed.

You can also just use the cffa3k to image the disks.

Here's a link to the manual.

http://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20Project/Interface%20Cards/Storage/CFFA3000%20Card/Manuals/CFFA3000%20Reference%20Manual%201.0.pdf

Look at page 15. No other program needed, just boot your system with a formatted CF or usb flash drive attached, and then start feeding it floppies.

Later,
dabone
 
Many thanks, folks. I did format the card with Fat16 and FAT32, both of which are fine for the CFFA3K. I also tried a CF card I have formatted for use in my MicroDrive Turbo unit, and when I wrote files to it while it was installed in the 3K, the 3K hashed the files and the volumes.

I couldn't get a CF card to be recognized in the 3K no matter what I was trying to do. I would get to the end of Page 15, and then the unit would hang, asking me to insert a CF or USB device rather than give me the screen on the top of Page 16.

A very long story short, I am sending it back to Rich for him to troubleshoot, as I am convinced that it is a bad card. I've been having problems since Day 1, and I thought it was me being overly dense... but I followed the manual today to a tee, and basically the card is not recognizing any CF card installed in it. The same CF cards I was using in the CFFA3K, I took over to my MicroDrive Turbo, used it to format the cards into several volumes, and then they all worked just fine under CiderPress.
 
Just to put in my two cents worth...

I also have a CFFA3000 from the last batch that Rich made. I have only a few CF cards, and they're old, but I also have never been able to do anything with them at all with the CFFA3000. They are recognized and work fine across other computers I have, but I have never had any success at all with getting them to work on the CFFA3000. I simply gave up and I'm using a tiny 4 GB USB memory stick for all my stuff.

smp
 
Had trouble too with CF cards (same as smp, old cards, with small capacity (16mb) for me) and Rich was super-helpful and got me up and running in no time with the following advice/support:
Your CF card probably got formatted with FAT12. It needs to be FAT16. The CFFA3000 doesn't support FAT12 which was mainly used for floppies and small storage devices.

This can be accomplished using format and setting the cluster size smaller so it makes more of them. I think there needs to be more than 16384. But I am not sure.

If you are using windows, find the CF card, right click, and select format. In the format window select the "allocation unit size" of 1024 or maybe even smaller if possible. This will force windows to use FAT16 instead of FAT12.
Click to expand...
 
Exactly - the problem is (much) more likely to be in card formatting than in the adapter card, but you never know. If you send anything to Rich... be sure to send the CF card(s). But surely that can be handled remotely too.
 
I haven't used a CF card on mine yet but I had similar issues with USB sticks. I tried four different ones until I got one that works. I formatted them all the same way on my PC so I don't think the file system was the issue. I also found some incompatibilities with different USB extension cords. One works, one doesn't.
 
Hi Oliver - I use Windows 7 on my PCs here, and format the CF card using FAT32. The other options are FAT (which I think refers to FAT16, not FAT12, but that is just a guess on my part), NTFS and exFAT (which I have no idea what this refers to). Ken
 
My experience has been like yours, Flack - strange as it sounds, I too have had some USB cables work and others not work with specific thumbdrives. I personally don't think thumbdrives are as reliable as CF cards, but I'm in the minority on that!

Ken
www.Apple2Online.com
 
Drken said:
Hi Oliver - I use Windows 7 on my PCs here, and format the CF card using FAT32. The other options are FAT (which I think refers to FAT16, not FAT12, but that is just a guess on my part), NTFS and exFAT (which I have no idea what this refers to). Ken
Click to expand...
exFAT is a newer, proprietary format created by Microsoft. Other than Microsoft operating systems, a few newer non-Microsoft versions of Mac OS and Linux support it, but that's about it. If you're looking for compatibility, you'll want to steer clear of that one.
 
I am betting its the CF cards too, LOTS of CF cards are funny about being put into "IDE" mode, which is how the CFFA's handles them. I would use SanDisk, Delkin, most Lexar, and Hitachi Microdrive's in my CFFA, just about every other "generic" card out there will give you fits. Since you have the CFFA3k, I would just use a USB flash drive, easier, less problem, and more "portable" as in you can plug into just about any PC without an adapter.

And format them all FAT, nothing else!
 
david__schmidt said:
Rich posted a better how-to on adding a MBR to a CF that was once wiped by a hard-partitioning card like the old CFFA, which seems to match this situation:
http://dreher.net/forum1/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=539&sid=a3a0e84e449e6655c18b8c1f0548a1b1
Click to expand...

Every time I try to give a thoughtful reply here, I must be taking too long to compose the message as the system logs me off for taking too much time and then I have to log in and start all over! Frustrating....

The original file I was following had one critical error in it: fs=ntfs rather than the correct fs=FAT.

Rich and I spent several hours on the phone Friday, and I learned more from him during that time than from all the posts I have read, all the emails I received, and countless hours I spent in my refuge trying to work it all out. He really filled in all the gaps I had since the documentation is sparse for dummies like me. I really appreciated that time with Rich!

I have not had the time yet this weekend to continue, but after he and I got off the phone, I spent a bit of time working on my IIe with a 256MB CF card installed, and it kept getting hashed beyond recognition whenever I wrote files to it under ProDOS. Not only filename were corrupted, but even the Volumename.DSK file was corrupted. I also have a 128 MB CF card as well as one of the 128 MB thumbdrives I bought for my webstore, and although all three cards seem to work properly under DOS with .DSK files, I have yet to try the 128 MB devices under ProDOS. I am suspecting that, for whatever reasons, the 256 MB card might have a problem with the CFFA3K card (even though it works fine in the MicroDrive Turbo).


Ken
www.Apple2Online.com
 
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