Arcin32 (Blitz) SOLVED

[omx5o]

Hi,

I recently purchased the new Arcin32 card, previously known as Blitz, for the Risc PC. After installing, it correctly finds two drives that are attached to it, however one is greyed out which I assume is because it is unformatted, but the other one keeps showing an empty message window with the title "Message From IDEFS Filer". I was told that this drive was supposed to contain software such as the IDEFS format program etc. This blank message happens whether I click on the icon or select any items from the menu. Anyone have any ideas?

[IanJeffray]

What version of RISC OS are you using?
What happens if you try from the commandline...

Code: Select all

*IDEFS
*.

[omx5o]

What version of RISC OS are you using?
What happens if you try from the commandline...

Code: Select all

*IDEFS
*.

It's on OS 3.70.

Typing in those commands it says "Disc not understood - has it been formatted?"

The strange thing is that if I put the CF card into a reader on my pi400 it works fine and I can see all the Arcin32 tools on there. For some reason the RiscPC doesn't read it.

[omx5o]

I also tried putting a different 512Mb CF card that I know works from a different IDE CF card adapter, into the Arcin32 and that reads ok. So I wonder if it's a problem with the mix of the 4GB CF card and RiscOS 3.70?

[sirbod]

it correctly finds two drives that are attached to it, however one is greyed out which I assume is because it is unformatted, but the other one keeps showing an empty message window with the title "Message From IDEFS Filer"

Are these existing drives you've moved over from the onboard IDE as that might not work.

Some IDEFS implementations require bespoke DiscRec entries to recognize the FileCore area. I don't have this particular card to confirm if that's the case here, but older iterations of its IDEFS implementation do need the drives formatting to work correctly.

If you run Partition Manager (or the latest beta, which can be found here) in debug mode (hold ALT when launching) and then look at !PartMgr.debug/txt it "might" indicate if there's a problem. Run it from RAM: as the debug output can get quite extensive.

From all the reverse engineering of IDE implementations I've done to write Partition Manager, its generally a good rule of thumb to start afresh with a blank drive and format it attached to the new interface.

[omx5o]

All sorted now!

I copied all the utils from it and onto my IDE CF boot drive via the pi400. Then all I needed to do was use the !IDEFormat program from the utils to partition and initialize the 4GB CF and it seems quite happy now. Appears correctly on the desktop and is a usable drive with 4GB free.

A great piece of kit for the Risc PC.

Thanks for the help!

[IanJeffray]

All sorted now! I still don't know why it couldn't read the 4GB card initially

If it had been formatted as RISC OS 4 (F+) format, then RISC OS 3.7 which you say you're using wouldn't be able to read it.