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#371821 - 24/03/2019 18:45 Replacement SSD?
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
So, after all of my snarking that PATA SSD drives were still available, they're ... kinda drying up.

And the disk in my spare empeg just died...

The Kingspec ones have a one-month lead time, and the Transcend ones are ridiculously expensive (£108 for 64GB).

What's the story with CF adapters? I found this Syba Best Connectivity adapter which looks like it'll make the physical fitting easy, but (a) I'm not sure of the implication of "dual compact flash" and (b) does it work anyway?

Or should I just wedge one of these from StarTech in there instead?
_________________________
-- roger

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#371822 - 24/03/2019 18:59 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
elperepat
enthusiast

Registered: 11/01/2002
Posts: 211
Loc: Qc, Canada
Aliexpress seems to have quite a few available. But if you take in consideration the shipping time (at least for here in Canada), it might be as long as waiting for a Kingspec somewhere else.
_________________________
Patrick

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#371823 - 24/03/2019 19:17 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: elperepat]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Thanks for that. I just nabbed a couple of the kingspecs at the linked site, purely as backups, hedging against failures. :-)
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#371824 - 24/03/2019 19:52 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: elperepat]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
Originally Posted By: elperepat
Aliexpress seems to have quite a few available. But if you take in consideration the shipping time (at least for here in Canada), it might be as long as waiting for a Kingspec somewhere else.



Estimated Delivery Time:20-40days

...which is roughly the same as Amazon UK is telling me.
_________________________
-- roger

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#371825 - 24/03/2019 20:38 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
BartDG
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/05/2001
Posts: 2616
Loc: Bruges, Belgium
What's the maximum disk size en Empeg can comfortably handle? 128gb or 256 gb? And one disk or two? I forgot...
_________________________
Riocar 80gig S/N : 010101580 red
Riocar 80gig (010102106) - backup

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#371827 - 25/03/2019 08:55 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: BartDG]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
If the disk is the standard 2.5” PATA IDE form factor, and doesn’t involve any adapters, you can put in two disks.

128 will work with the factory kernel. 256 will work with the hijack kernel.

http://www.riocar.org/Drive_Upgrade.html (It’s baaaaaack)

Note: I had to run the builder twice on my Kingspec drive.

Happy upgrading!
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#371829 - 25/03/2019 13:41 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
With player software limitations and the like, it's probably best to stay at 128GB or below, per drive.

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#371831 - 25/03/2019 14:21 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: mlord]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
Originally Posted By: mlord
With player software limitations and the like, it's probably best to stay at 128GB or below, per drive.


Is that the actual drive size? Or the amount of content?

I bought a 240GB mSATA drive and JMicron adapter. Do I need to (somehow) curtail the drive size, or am I OK if I don't fill it up?
_________________________
-- roger

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#371832 - 25/03/2019 18:55 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Asks the person who actually developed the product, of the (admittedly expert) user. smile
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#371833 - 26/03/2019 00:16 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Somewhere on this BBS lies the answer! smile

I just don't remember at this point, but I do know this was discussed extensively in the past for spinning rust drives.

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#371865 - 01/04/2019 21:08 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: mlord]
canuckInOR
carpal tunnel

Registered: 13/02/2002
Posts: 3212
Loc: Portland, OR
Don't forget to use Hijack kernel.

IIRC, the main issue with larger drives was the lack of memory for the large playlists that could result due to the number of FIDs.

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#371925 - 12/05/2019 19:24 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: elperepat]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Originally Posted By: elperepat
Aliexpress seems to have quite a few available. But if you take in consideration the shipping time (at least for here in Canada), it might be as long as waiting for a Kingspec somewhere else.


I ended up getting two of the KingSpec 128's from Aliexpress, from your link. They arrived just fine and then sat around for a bit. But now I'm trying to use one, and having trouble putting it into one of my backup empegs. Anyone know what to do about this? I'm thinking this is something Mark Lord might know about.

Here's the situation:

I believe I did the correct things to use the bigdisk builder image on the drive, and it seemed to complete successfully. Connecting to the serial terminal after the application of the builder image was done, I see a bunch of numbers scrolling by which I think was the hard disk stress test. I powered it off then I applied a Hijack bigdisk 2.0 beta 13 image onto it. Then I applied Hijack v524.hijack.mk2.zImage onto the player. Everything seemed to work correctly.

But now that I'm trying to boot the player directly, and work with the drive, any time I have this drive plugged in (either by itself or in combination with another disk drive) it keeps saying "no primary hard disk" and "no secondary hard disk".

I don't know what the jumpers should be set to on these things, there's no dox. When trying to configure it as the solo drive in the player, I've tried configuring it with no jumpers, and with jumper on 1+2. When trying to configure it as the secondary drive in the player, I've tried configuring it with jumpers on 3+4. There's also some notes here which seem to indicate that "1+2" is "Cable Select" mode but I'm not so sure. I'd expect no jumpers to be cable select mode. Then again, different drives might be different.

Anyway, here's a boot log if this can help with diagnosis. Thanks in advance for any help or advice you can offer!

Code:
empeg-car bootstrap v1.02 20001106 ([email protected])
If there is anyone present who wants to upgrade the flash, let them speak now,
or forever hold their peace...it seems not. Let fly the Penguins of Linux!

e000 v1.04
Copying kernel...
Calling linux kernel...
Uncompressing Linux...................................... done, booting the kernel.
Linux version 2.2.17-rmk5-np17-empeg55-hijack-v524 ([email protected]) (gcc version 2.95.3 20010315 (release)) #2 Fri Dec 15 08:52:50 EST 2017
Processor: Intel StrongARM-1100 revision 11
Checking for extra DRAM:
c1000000: wrote ffffffff, read e28cc001
NetWinder Floating Point Emulator V0.94.1 (c) 1998 Corel Computer Corp.
empeg-car player (hardware revision 9, serial number 40104196) 16MB DRAM
Command line: mem=16m
Calibrating delay loop... 207.67 BogoMIPS
Memory: 14992k/16M available (1000k code, 20k reserved, 368k data, 4k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 2048 (order 2, 16k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 16384 (order 4, 64k)
Page cache hash table entries: 4096 (order 2, 16k)
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 16384 bhash 16384)
IrDA (tm) Protocols for Linux-2.2 (Dag Brattli)
Starting kswapd v 1.5
SA1100 serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0xf8010000 (irq = 15) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS01 at 0xf8050000 (irq = 17) is a SA1100 UART
ttyS02 at 0xf8030000 (irq = 16) is a SA1100 UART
Signature is 67706d65 'empg'
Tuner: loopback=0, ID=-1
show_message("Hijack v524 by Mark Lord")
empeg display initialised.
empeg dsp audio initialised
empeg dsp mixer initialised
empeg dsp initialised
empeg audio-in initialised, CS4231A revision a0
empeg remote control/panel button initialised.
empeg usb initialised, PDIUSBD12 id 1012
empeg state support initialised 0089/88c1 (save to d0005280).
empeg RDS driver initialised
empeg power-pic driver initialised (first boot)
RAM disk driver initialized:  16 RAM disks of 4096K size
empeg single channel IDE
Probing primary interface...
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x0000
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0x0000
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0x0000
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x0000
hda: PA25-128, ATA DISK drive
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x044a
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0x3fff
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0x044a
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x3fff
hda: PA25-128, ATA DISK drive
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x044a
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0x3fff
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0x044a
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x3fff
hda: PA25-128, ATA DISK drive
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x044a
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0x3fff
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0x044a
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x3fff
hda: PA25-128, ATA DISK drive
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x044a
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0x3fff
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0x044a
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x3fff
hda: PA25-128, ATA DISK drive
ide_data_test: wrote 0x0000 read 0x044a
ide_data_test: wrote 0xffff read 0x3fff
ide_data_test: wrote 0xaaaa read 0x044a
ide_data_test: wrote 0x5555 read 0x3fff
hda: PA25-128, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x000-0x007,0x038 on irq 6
hda: PA25-128, 121082MB w/1kB Cache, CHS=15435/255/63
empeg-flash driver initialized
smc chip id/revision 0x3349
smc9194.c:v0.12 03/06/96 by Erik Stahlman ([email protected])

SMC9194: SMC91C94(r:9) at 0x4008000 IRQ:7 INTF:TP MEM:6144b MAC 00:02:d7:28:10:64
Partition check:
 hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initempeg init 0.8
I see this is a developer image!
Mounting proc
Mounting first music partitiVFS: Can't find an ext2 filesystem on dev ide0(3,4).
on
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as reiserfs but got error 19
Tried to mount /dev/hda4 as ext2 but got error 22
Error mounting partitions (possibly already mounted)
Remounting first music partition read-only
No primary hard disk
Remounting second music partition read-only
No secondary hard disk
Press 'q' now to go into development mode. You Have Zero Seconds To ComplyîStarting player
Timezone: Atlantic/South_Georgia

! tags.cpp          :  61:Failed to open tags (0xc0041002).
Prolux 4 empeg car - 2.1434 Jul 24 2002

q
Restored terminal settings
Remounting first music partition read-only
No primary hard disk
Remounting second music partition read-only
No secondary hard disk
Player exited normally: 0
Switching to shell-player loop
Starting bash.
empeg:/empeg/bin# cd /
empeg:/# ls -al
total 25
drwxr-xr-x   15 502      220          1024 Jul 24  2002 .
drwxr-xr-x   15 502      220          1024 Jul 24  2002 ..
drwxr-xr-x    2 0        0            1024 Jul 24  2002 bin
drwxr-xr-x    2 0        0            1024 Jul  4  2000 dev
drwxr-xr-x    2 0        0            1024 Jul  6  1999 drive0
drwxr-xr-x    2 0        0            1024 Jun  2  1999 drive1
drwxr-xr-x    4 0        0            1024 Jul 24  2002 empeg
drwxr-xr-x    3 0        0            1024 Sep 15  1999 etc
drwxr-xr-x    2 0        0            1024 Feb  9  2000 lib
drwx------    2 0        0           12288 Jul 24  2002 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x    2 0        0            1024 Jun  2  1999 mnt
dr-xr-xr-x   19 0        0               0 Aug 31 23:54 proc
lrwxrwxrwx    1 0        0               3 Jul 24  2002 sbin -> bin
lrwxrwxrwx    1 0        0              10 Jul 24  2002 swapfile -> ./dev/hda6
drwxr-xr-x    2 0        0            1024 Apr 13  1999 tmp
drwxr-xr-x    4 0        0            1024 Feb  6  2000 usr
drwxr-xr-x    3 0        0            1024 Aug 28  1999 var
empeg:/# cd drive0
empeg:/drive0# ls -al
total 2
drwxr-xr-x    2 0        0            1024 Jul  6  1999 .
drwxr-xr-x   15 502      220          1024 Jul 24  2002 ..
empeg:/drive0#
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#371926 - 12/05/2019 19:38 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: tfabris]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5680
Loc: London, UK
http://blog.differentpla.net/blog/2004/0...music-partition

I'd guess that you're missing the '/drive0/fids' and '/drive0/var' directories.

Just to check that the builder worked properly, can we see a 'cat /proc/mounts' and an 'fdisk -l /dev/hda' (lower-L) as well, please?
_________________________
-- roger

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#371927 - 12/05/2019 19:53 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Aha, so you're saying the thing that says "No Primary Hard Disk" and "No Secondary Hard Disk" just means that the folders didn't get created yet? Maybe the disk is functioning fine?

Code:
No primary hard disk
Remounting second music partition read-only
No secondary hard disk
Player exited normally: 0
Switching to shell-player loop
Starting bash.
empeg:/empeg/bin# cd /
empeg:/# cat /proc/mounts
/dev/root / ext2 ro 0 0
none /proc proc rw 0 0
empeg:/# fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 15435 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1             1         5     40131    5  Extended
/dev/hda2             6        10     40162+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3            11        13     24097+  10  OPUS
/dev/hda4            14     15435 123877215   83  Linux
/dev/hda5             1         3     24034+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6             4         5     16033+  82  Linux swap
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#371928 - 12/05/2019 21:45 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Disk is very much functioning fine. So perhaps the builder didn't finish formatting or populating the filesystems?

I suppose I really ought to get one of these drives -- I have the 64GB one, but not a 128GB yet. Someday. smile

EDIT: Ordered one, Amazon, should be here tomorrow. smile


Edited by mlord (12/05/2019 21:49)

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#371929 - 13/05/2019 12:22 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: tfabris]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Originally Posted By: tfabris
I don't know what the jumpers should be set to on these things, there's no dox.


I googled it, and found this picture:


Attachments
image7.png



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#371930 - 13/05/2019 17:37 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: mlord]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Originally Posted By: mlord
Disk is very much functioning fine. So perhaps the builder didn't finish formatting or populating the filesystems?


As near as I can recall, the builder image refuses to reformat things if it sees them already formatted, or something like that. So perhaps this was the problem here too.. dunno.

I think I will re-spin the bigdisk builder to just nuke everything each time unconditionally, if it doesn't so already. More dangerous, but it's pretty hard to mistakenly flash/run the bigdisk builder "by accident", so probably not much of a concern.

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#371931 - 13/05/2019 18:20 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: mlord]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
I think I will re-spin the bigdisk builder to just nuke everything each time unconditionally


The Drive Upgrade Guide says that if it refuses to nuke the drive, you just rm -r /drive0/fids and then the builder will nuke the drive. Since this was a new drive and would not have contained a "fids" directory when I received it, I don't think it was the nuke protection that was the issue.

So I believe the builder did the correct thing and did indeed nuke the drive, and that it has the correct level of protection. So I don't think you need to change the builder image.
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#371932 - 13/05/2019 18:22 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: mlord]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
I googled it, and found this picture:


Thanks so much! I think that explains the issues I was having with getting two drives working. The jumper configurations are not what I expected.
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#371933 - 13/05/2019 18:26 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Note that the picture was for a different brand drive, but the master/slave/CSEL setups are pretty much always the same across brands. The only one to avoid is the diagonal RPS jumper, which is probably brand/model specific.

Empegs use the Single/Master and Slave positions from the diagram.


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#371934 - 13/05/2019 18:37 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: mlord]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
Attached: A slightly higher rez version of the diagram, thanks to "find visually similar images" in google search. At some point we'll work out how I can get read/write access to the new Riocar.org site and I'll add that diagram to the drive upgrade guide.

I don't know how you found that image in the first place, all my search terms produced either photos of disk drives or diagrams for desktop drive jumpers.

EDIT: This diagram may be incorrect for the KingSpec drives with the red KingSpec logo. In order to get the drive to work as master in a dual drive configuration, I had to put jumpers over pins 1/2. Whereas the diagram says that's "slave".

So it's not the same thing for all the drives out there.



Attachments
laptop drive jumper settings.jpg


_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#371935 - 13/05/2019 20:29 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Heh.. I now have the 128GB drive in hand, and am trying to remember HOW to apply a .upgrade file. From Linux.

Normally I would just use my upgrader tool, except that is for ethernet with an already-working installation on the drive. I don't suppose I or anyone else ever got a basic serial-line upgclient working with USB dongles yet?


EDIT: Ah.. Roger had the same issue/experience recently. Except he did it the easy way, by hand. Whereas I'm trying to test the builder image. smile




Edited by mlord (13/05/2019 20:31)

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#371936 - 13/05/2019 21:21 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: mlord]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Originally Posted By: mlord
Heh.. I now have the 128GB drive in hand, and am trying to remember HOW to apply a .upgrade file. From Linux.


Okay, I gave in and booted my old Linux computer and fired up VMWare on it to run the old Win98se image that has the MS-Win empeg tools installed. Flashing bigdisk v6 now.

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#371937 - 13/05/2019 21:53 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
This is painful (win98 and empeg tools).

Did anyone ever provide info about what commands the bootloader supports? Eg. what is the protocol that upgclient uses when installing a .upgrade over serial?

We already have the linux upgrader tool that parses/installs .upgrade files over ethernet. If the serial port protocol were understood, it would be easy for me to adapt that code to work over serial as well, eliminating the need for MS-Win to run the builder.




Edited by mlord (13/05/2019 21:54)

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#371938 - 13/05/2019 22:04 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: mlord]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Originally Posted By: mlord
Disk is very much functioning fine. So perhaps the builder didn't finish formatting or populating the filesystems?


Okay, I just ran bigdisk-v3-alt, and followed that with v3alpha11. Bigdisk appears to have failed to run, which is why both Tony and I see the various errors afterward.
Code:
Partition check:
 hda: hda1 < hda5 hda6 > hda2 hda3 hda4
RAMDISK: ext2 filesystem found at block 0
RAMDISK: Loading 320 blocks [1 disk] into ram disk... done.
EXT2-fs warning: checktime reached, running e2fsck is recommended
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
empeg-pump v0.03 (19980601)
Press Ctrl-A to enter pump...VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
change_root: old root has d_count=1
Trying to unmount old root ... okay
Freeing unused kernel memory: 4k initsh: error in load


I'm going to try running bigdisk again, after first doing "hdparm --security-erase" on the drive to zero it and delete all partitions.



Edited by mlord (13/05/2019 22:23)

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#371939 - 13/05/2019 22:39 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
It seems to be failing in the flash-based initrd code, never getting to the builder code. Now trying to remember how to look at the internal initrd image. It has been far too long!

EDIT: /proc/flash_b0000 contains the boot-time initrd image, which mainly consists of a pre-compiled linuxrc binary. That's the part that is failing for some reason.

I think this is the code that contains "pump", and otherwise simply exists to mount the "real" root filesystem from /dev/hda5. It probably also looks after displaying the "dead empeg" logo when "No Hard Disk Found" happens.

Dunno how "pump" works (that "bootloader protocol" thing I asked about earlier), but the rest of it should be easy to recreate if need be.

Meanwhile I'll poke around some more and see if I can reverse engineer why it is failing here.

EDIT:
The initrd code seems to be having trouble either mounting or reading from /dev/hda4 (the real root filesystem). Weird. It's the hijack kernel that does all of the low-level accesses, so there's not much that could be wrong here.

Just for giggles, I copied an existing hda4 image onto the drive and booted from it without issue. Then took the drive back to my Linux PC and copied the bigdisk builder contents into hda4, and swapped the drive back into the empeg afterward. It boots up, and successfully runs the disk builder.

So.. just got to figure out exactly which step causes the trouble. Next up: manually copy the hda4 image from bigdisk onto the drive (as opposed to the already working file-by-file copy of the same thing).


Edited by mlord (13/05/2019 23:57)

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#371940 - 13/05/2019 23:57 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: mlord]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
The thing is, I have now bought KingSpec drives twice.

Once a year or so ago, and the casing of the drive looked like this:
https://www.amazon.com/KingSpec-128GB-SM2236-Controller-KSD-PA25-6-128MS/dp/B01461BQWO
(Gray casing and label with red KingSpec logo)

Once recently, and the casing of the drive looked like this:
https://www.amazon.com/128GB-KingSpec-2-5-inch-SM2236-Controller/dp/B0091T4ZWU
(Black casing and label with red Yansen logo)

The older one, though it's currently working fine in my main empeg, I recall having trouble with it at installation time ( ... searches BBS ... ) Aha, here we go. Deja vu? smile
https://empegbbs.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/369021
Note that, in that thread, with the older drive, I was trying to copy from a winchester drive to the new KingSpec SSD (my first SSD in the Empeg.
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#371941 - 14/05/2019 00:26 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Heh.. I just noticed that in your older thread for the first SSD, I kept saying "/dev/sdaX" rather than "/dev/hdaX", which probably wasted a lot of time for both of us there!

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#371942 - 14/05/2019 00:31 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Okay, I figured it out.

The MS-Windows empeg upgrade tool triggers a reboot/reset too soon after writing the /dev/hda5 (root) partition. It doesn't allow sufficient time for the cached writes on the SSD to complete.

Weird eh? One would expect the SSD to be quick enough, but in reality it seems to love to cache large amounts of data before writing it out.

So.. lacking source code for the MS-Windows tool, I don't really have any obvious way to fix this, other than to just replace it with a Linux tool that does the same stuff somehow.


Edited by mlord (14/05/2019 04:07)

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#371943 - 14/05/2019 00:34 Re: Replacement SSD? [Re: Roger]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
Oh.. I wonder if I can work around this by reordering the "chunks" inside the .upgrade file, so that at least one of the flash memory partitions gets written AFTER the hard disk partition. That'll slow it down enough for the problem to "go away".

I'll see about trying this.. depends on whether or not the MS-Win upgrade tool does things in the same order as they appear in the .upgrade file though.

EDIT:
Well, it does seem to process the chunks in the order they appear within the .upgrade file. BUT.. any attempt to move flash chunk(s) to after the hda5 chuck results in "flash erase errors". Whatever that means.

Something fishy going on here..


Edited by mlord (14/05/2019 02:48)

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