A5000 HDD preparation

[Sanxion]

Morning all

After yesterday's successful attempt to resurrect my A5000 - thanks to you guys - today I will prepare a new hard drive for the machine. I have read quite a number of posts about this which has unfortunately left me slightly confused as to the best way forward.

In summary, I have already have a working 4GB 3.5" HDD and a 4GB compact flash card with IDE adaptor. My A5000 is not connected to a network so all file copying would have to be done between a PC and the A5000.

The objective is to fill the drive with the classic Archimedes games and applications.

Could someone therefore advise regarding the best approach or point me to a definitive guide?

[flaxcottage]

4Gb is too big for an A5000 hard drive without having a Whizzo ROM fitted or doing something else esoteric. 2Gb is the maximum that can be handled.

!HForm will be needed on floppy disc then to format the hard disk.

[DutchAcorn]

If you have a Linux PC with an IDE interface you can prepare the whole disk image first on an emulator and then write the image to the IDE device using the Linux DD command.

That will save you hours of transferring between PC and A5000.

[Sanxion]

My 512MB flash card arrived today.

Is this the process I now follow?:

1. Connect the card to the IDE interface
2 Start the machine holding the Delete key down
3. Add the card via the iConfiguration tool
4. Format the card

Please correct me if my assumptions are wrong.

[IanJeffray]

2 Start the machine holding the Delete key down

Only if your CMOS RAM chip / battery / etc is broken. DEL resets the configuration of the entire machine and isn't a required step if your machine's working normally.

[Sanxion]

OK...I connected the card via an IDE adaptor, attached the power cable and turned the machine on: a white background.
I then removed the card: black screen.
I then removed the IDE adaptor: back to normal (thankfully)

My A5000 doesn't seem to like an IDE compact flash card adaptor being connected.

What would you guys suggest?

[IanJeffray]

Are you sure the IDE cable is plugged in the right way round? A5000 is the one machine I don't own, but EVERY other machine I've put a CF in has been fine, so I'd be pretty darn sure it's an issue with your preparation / adaptor, not the machine "not liking" CF adaptors. CF adaptors are, fundamentally, just wiring - no active components - having the adaptor installed (no CF card) should make NO difference to the machine operation.

[Sanxion]

I am connecting the adaptor the same orientation as the hard drive was connected.

The adaptor does have 2 jumpers with some configuration information.

[DutchAcorn]

JP2 seems to be set for 3.3V. You need 5V.

I can’t make out the setting of JP1, the jumper for JP1 needs to be on the left two pins to set it to master.

Note that it needs the power supply attached to work (the floppy drive type power connector on the interface).

Also note that the A5000 is very fussy when it comes to CF cards. You can be lucky with the card you got (what brand is it?) but many will simply not work.

Have a look at this thread for details and options:
https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopi ... 48#p268132

[IanJeffray]

JP2 seems to be set for 3.3V. You need 5V.

I can’t make out the setting of JP1, the jumper for JP1 needs to be on the left two pins to set it to master.

Note that it needs the power supply attached to work (the floppy drive type power connector on the interface).

Also note that the A5000 is very fussy when it comes to CF cards. You can be lucky with the card you got (what brand is it?) but many will simply not work.

This is all true, however has no relevance if the A5000 doesn't even work when this adaptor alone (no CF card) is connected.

[Sanxion]

I agree with that!

I'm afraid I have tried both ways. The side I would expect it to work shows what I mentioned earlier. The other side produced a magenta screen which terrified me as it stayed like that after several restarts. Fortunately the old Delete down and power on brought it back.

[DutchAcorn]

This is all true, however has no relevance if the A5000 doesn't even work when this adaptor alone (no CF card) is connected.

Fair point. I tried to get it not to boot with a similar interface card but it would boot in any configuration.

The correct orientation:

[Sanxion]

I am making progress - I think.

I have managed to boot into the OS with the adaptor and flash card attached. I have added an IDE drive in iConfiguration. However, when I attempt to format the drive, that option is greyed out.

I also receive the attached error message when I press the first and third mouse button.

[IanS]

You need a copy of !hform, the option in the menu is never enabled for IDE disks.

[Sanxion]

Thanks...now I have the unenviable task of copying !hform from a PC onto a 3.5" disk!

[IanJeffray]

I have managed to boot into the OS with the adaptor and flash card attached.

What did you change to allow this?

[Sanxion]

Once I connected everything and turned the machine on, I was greeted with a magenta screen. However, this time I restarted and pressed the Delete key and found that it booted into the desktop.

On previous occasions, seeing the magenta screen caused me to disconnect the IDE adaptor.

[IanS]

Once I connected everything and turned the machine on, I was greeted with a magenta screen. However, this time I restarted and pressed the Delete key and found that it booted into the desktop.

On previous occasions, seeing the magenta screen caused me to disconnect the IDE adaptor.

Do you have a battery fitted? The config is stored in battery powered RAM, so without a battery, the config will be random values each time the main power is applied. So without a battery you will need to hold DEL every time.

I tried making a self-extracting hform, seems to work for me ( I may need to re-make it with a later version). It's just like the self-extracting sparkplug, extract it onto a PC floppy, read it in the ARC, set type to basic, then run it.

edit: Updated to version 2.48 of hform
edit2: remove RISC OS 3.6 check from !Run file

[BeebMaster]

I wonder if it would be any use in situations like this if somebody could make a small ADFS/IDE disc image just containing !HForm which could then be written to a memory card using a PC before putting it in the Acorn. Then you would have !HForm on the Acorn machine and could use it to format the card fully.

[DutchAcorn]

I wonder if it would be any use in situations like this if somebody could make a small ADFS/IDE disc image just containing !HForm which could then be written to a memory card using a PC before putting it in the Acorn. Then you would have !HForm on the Acorn machine and could use it to format the card fully.

Then again, if you know how to write an ADFS image to a memory card imo it would be a lot easier to fully setup the desired ADFS image using, eg, Arculator and use that image to write to the memory card.

[Sanxion]

Next step...

I have copied the contents of !HForm onto a floppy disk (downloaded from riscos), inserted it into my A5000, browsed the disk and am greeted with:
!Help, iRun, iRunImage,iSprites, iSprites22, Messages

I assume I have done something wrong as I expected to see a !HForm icon?

Thanks

[IanJeffray]

Next step...

I have copied the contents of !HForm onto a floppy disk (downloaded from riscos), inserted it into my A5000, browsed the disk and am greeted with:
!Help, iRun, iRunImage,iSprites, iSprites22, Messages

I assume I have done something wrong as I expected to see a !HForm icon?

It sounds like you've taken the items out of the !HForm folder. Perhaps you're not familiar with how appliactions work on RISC OS - an application is just a folder, with a name starting with !. On your A5000, just create a new folder called !HForm and move the files in to that folder. But actually, you don't really even need to do that -- just double-click the !Run file, and it'll still work.

This is all providing that the file types are correct. If you've managed to remove the files from the folder in the way you describe, it would seem likely that you'll have also lost the file types. It's not clear what you mean by" downloaded from riscos" either -- could you explain just what you did? What did you download? How did you unpack it on to the floppy?

[BeebMaster]

Did you just copy the files from inside !HForm, or did you copy !HForm itself? It looks like you've got the contents of the application directory without the application directory itself.

It's written in BASIC, so you should be able to double click on !RunImage anyway, setting the filetype to BASIC first if it's been lost.

[Sanxion]

I copied the unzipped contents of hform248.zip

What should I have done?

[IanJeffray]

I copied the unzipped contents of hform248.zip

What should I have done?

From this site? You should just put the single file "hform248" out of the zip download here on to a floppy, put the floppy in to an A5000, use the filer to set the file type of the "hform248" to "BASIC", then run it. It'll take a while and you should see a screen like this whilst it's working:

Then you'll see !HForm appear. I've just tested this, it definitely works as I've described.

[Sanxion]

I thought I had cracked it then...

[BeebMaster]

Here's HForm 2.19 I just found on my A4000, this is a Sparkplug archive so it should open on the A5000 but may need the file type setting to &DDC.

[IanJeffray]

I thought I had cracked it then...

Yes, I was quite surprised when Ian updated the archive to 2.48. I use 2.19 on RISC OS 3.1.

[BeebMaster]

P.S. possibly it won't work if Sparkplug isn't in RO 3.1 Apps...so it would have to be made into a self-extracting archive. How do I do that?

[IanS]

The 2.48 from the risc os site is listed as working for 3.1
"Suitable for all versions of RISC OS from 3.10 to 3.71"
But it has a check for RISC OS 3.6, Grrr. So my self-extracting version has the same check.

Hold shift, double click on !hform, to open the folder (instead of running the app).

Hold Shift, double-click the !run file. It should open in !Edit.

Comment/delete the RMEnsure line. Save (F3).

Re-run !hform.