Apple CFFA3000 Thread

[Goochman]

Ok,

 

So I got my CFFA3000 and want to start using it. IM an Apple newbie and figured Id ask some dumb questions here first before registering for the official board.

 

I have an Apple IIe that was given to me. I fired it up to play Ultima last year and have 2 disk drives connected to the drive card (I presume Slot 6).

 

Reading the CFFA guide it talks about using Slot 6 or 7 and impact for Hard drive emulation, etc.....

 

I presume I can remove my current Disk card in slot 6 and put the CFFA3000 in Slot 7 - therefore I will be able to emulate 2 disk drives like it was in Slot 6 and also a Super Image (hard disk) which would be in Slot 7 correct?

 

Ive also read that the Thumb drive or CF Card must be in FAT32 format - Can I have both attached at the same time or do you need to use a CF or a Thumb Drive?

 

Ive read that subfolders are not supported so all images must be on the root of the card?

 

Anything else whacky with installing/running this I should know? Im basically loading .DSK images on to a CF card at first though forsee using a USB Thumb Drive later with an extension so I can make change easily.

[Hatta]

I presume I can remove my current Disk card in slot 6 and put the CFFA3000 in Slot 7 - therefore I will be able to emulate 2 disk drives like it was in Slot 6 and also a Super Image (hard disk) which would be in Slot 7 correct?

 

Ive also read that the Thumb drive or CF Card must be in FAT32 format - Can I have both attached at the same time or do you need to use a CF or a Thumb Drive?

 

Ive read that subfolders are not supported so all images must be on the root of the card?

 

1) Yes, that will work.

 

2) You can use both at once, and mount disk images from either simultaneously. You can't copy between the two yet, but these are early revisions of the firmware.

 

3) Correct. They did say this was a high priority feature, so hopefully we won't have to wait for too long. I think he said there was a limit of 256 files on the root too.

 

The best thing to do is sit and play with it. Grab the CFFAwhatever.po image from their downloads page and set that up as a disk in the smart port interface. You'll boot right up to prodos and you can do whatever you want from there.

 

I'm wondering if an (in)compatibility list would be in order. I've already found a few images that don't work. Though >95% work for me so far. The Castle Wolfenstein dsk from the TOSEC doesn't work for me, but I found a .nib that works. I couldn't get Galactic Empire to work either.

 

One other limitation I should note is that 800k 2mg images don't work. That's mainly a concern for IIgs owners. It wasn't clear from the specifications, so I thought I'd mention it.

[Goochman]

Thanks Hatta - question, how do I set up the CFFAwhatever.po in the 'smart port' - I guess I need to read more on how to boot this thing first

[Hatta]

Just drop the .po image on the root of the card. In the firmware (press m on boot) use the "Smartport Assignments" option, and in the next screen select your .po image and press enter. Reboot. Voila.

 

All you have to do then is configure the IIe to boot from slot 7. I'm not sure how you do that on a IIe, I have a IIgs.

[+remowilliams]

One other limitation I should note is that 800k 2mg images don't work. That's mainly a concern for IIgs owners. It wasn't clear from the specifications, so I thought I'd mention it.

 

I was using 800K .2MG images yesterday on the IIGS, I just assigned them to a smartport device. Doesn't seem like you can mount multiples and switch between them that way though.

 

Anybody have a nibble copier that will copy between slot 6 and 7 drives? Wanted to try that out, but Copy II Plus looks like it doesn't allow you to change to a different slot for destination.

[+remowilliams]

dupe

[Hatta]

I was using 800K .2MG images yesterday on the IIGS, I just assigned them to a smartport device. Doesn't seem like you can mount multiples and switch between them that way though.

 

Ooh, nice! I did not know that would work. I'll have to try it out tonight.

[Hatta]

I'm getting some strange behavior on the IIgs side. 2mg images don't want to get added to the smart port. Disk ii images are seen by GS/OS but it claims they're not recognized by the FST. It wants to format them, which fails, and gives me a write error next time I enter the CFFA firmware.

 

I'm going to have to sleep on it and figure out if I'm doing something wrong. remowilliams, can you tell me how your slots are configured?

[Goochman]

Got mine running tonight - this thing is the bomb! Prince of Persia didnt work for me but just about everything else did. Ironic enough back in the 80's I talked my parents into buying an Amdek monitor for my Atari 800 - I soon realized it didnt do much for the picture/sound over a regular TV and after a few years I put it away. Fast forward to today and the monitor that was given to me with the IIe was on the fritz - I saw my old Amdek and remembered it was designed for the Apple series - plugged it in and it works great!

 

Havent done anything in the Smart Image arena yet.

 

I do have 1 question - sometimes if I turn the IIe off and back on quickyl it gets into a weird state, I almost need to turn it off for 30 seconds before it will restart correctly (like something stuck in RAM) - if there a 'cold boot' key sequence for the IIe? I can hit CTRL+RESET but that doesnt always restart the machine.

[Hatta]

Ctrl + Open Apple + Reset

[+remowilliams]

I'm going to have to sleep on it and figure out if I'm doing something wrong. remowilliams, can you tell me how your slots are configured?

 

I've got the CFFA in slot 7 (the Disk II virtual drives configured as slot 7), a real 5 1/4 hooked to the floppy port, and two smartport devices configured. With the II drives empty (physical and virtual) it will boot the 2MG assigned to the smartport.

[Goochman]

I cant get a 2MG image assigned to a Smart Port - I assigned the Disk II to Slot 7 and Smart Port to 7 (maybe that is the mistake) - When I try to assign things to the Smartport I can pick .DSK images but when I try the 2MG one it doesnt get added to the RH panel - if I hit return again it says its already assigend to a smart port????

 

What is the advantage to having .DSK files assigned to the Smartport? Im not quite sure what the Smartport is?

[Hatta]

That's the behavior I saw too Goochman. I have my Disk II assigned to slot 6 and smartport to slot 7. I don't think there's any reason to assign DSK images to the smart port instead of the virtual Disk II.

 

I haven't fiddled much with this card this week. I'm afraid the CFFA is taxing the power supply on my IIgs. I get occasional screen flickers with the CFFA inserted and sometimes it causes my USB disk to stop working. I may have to get a LittleJohn power adaptor and an ATX power supply before I do much else with it.

[magnusfalkirk]

That's the behavior I saw too Goochman. I have my Disk II assigned to slot 6 and smartport to slot 7. I don't think there's any reason to assign DSK images to the smart port instead of the virtual Disk II.

 

I haven't fiddled much with this card this week. I'm afraid the CFFA is taxing the power supply on my IIgs. I get occasional screen flickers with the CFFA inserted and sometimes it causes my USB disk to stop working. I may have to get a LittleJohn power adaptor and an ATX power supply before I do much else with it.

 

I'm curious as to how many cards you have in your GS Hatta. I've got a CFFA3000 on order, should have it by the end of the month at the latest I hope, and I'll be putting it in a ROM 01 GS. Other than a 4MB memory card the only other thing I'll have in there is a SoundMeister stereo card I got through eBay a month ago. My question is will the CFFA3000 tax my power supply as it seems to be doing to yours?

[Hatta]

All I have is the CFFA3000 and Bill Garber's RAM4GS. I wouldn't think that would draw a whole lot of power, but these power supplies are old and any little extra may push it into flakey territory. I'm not certain it's a powersupply issue yet, but that seems like the most likely candidate. I'm going to take a video of the behavior this weekend, and send it to them and see what they think. Now that I think of it, I may yank the RAM card and see if that improves anything.

[+remowilliams]

Here's the config for my system set to boot the 2MG from the smartport. This is a ROM01 IIGS with 4MB expander, parallel card and of course the CFFA

 

[Hatta]

I believe I fixed my problem. I reseated the power supply connector on the motherboard and it appears to be running solidly.

[Hatta]

I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but I see there's a new bios that properly supports Disk II images under GS/OS. I'll probably test it out Friday and see how that goes.

[magnusfalkirk]

Let us know how it goes. I just got my CFFA3K in the mail today and plan on putting it into my ROM 01 GS this weekend. I've also got a SoundMeister card that I got from eBay that I'll be adding at the same time. After this all I need to make my GS perfect, as far as I'm concerned, would be an accelerator. Of course as rare as they are I don't see that happening any time soon.

[+remowilliams]

I haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but I see there's a new bios that properly supports Disk II images under GS/OS. I'll probably test it out Friday and see how that goes.

 

Is there? Because I don't see that change in 3.0.1

[Hatta]

I just uploaded the first small firmware update v3.0.1 (non beta) release to the "File Downloads" page. This fixes an issue with GS/OS accessing Disk II floppy disk images and corrupting them. This doesn't affect smart port mounted images' date=' just disk II mounted images. [/quote']

[+remowilliams]

Yes, there was a bug fix to the 5.25 handling. I was thinking more along the lines of 2MG image mounts.

 

 

* Fixed a problem where the GS/OS AppleDisk5.25 driver caused CFFA3000 to mistakenly write a nibble to the virtual disk,

flagging a track write error even though no writing was attempted

[magnusfalkirk]

One interesting thing I've noticed, since I got my CFFA3000K, is that it seems it won't mount a 2mg disk image if it's named "Harddisk". It claims the image is mounted, if you try a second time to mount it, but it doesn't show up in the list on the right as mounted in the Smartport. Could my problem be because these are 32 mb images? I'm going to edit the names of the images to something else and see if they will mount then.

[Hatta]

There's definitely something iffy about the 2mg support. I have several 800K 2mg images that exhibit the same behavior. But then I have others that work fine. I've had the best luck with the TOSEC images, FWIW. Magnusfalkirk, you think it's connected to the filename? Did the same file work when you renamed it?

 

From the files I've tried, it looks like most software looks for multiple disks in a set by label and not device. So you can assign each disk in a set to a smart port device and it should "just work".

[magnusfalkirk]

Renaming the file didn't do any good. I created a 20 MB disk image, using Sweet16, set it up with System 6 and then loaded it on my flash drive. After booting the GS and assigning that disk image to slot 7 and quitting the CFFA menu the image booted fine. I've also had the same experience with some 2mg images. Silvern Castle won't run but Publish It! will.