Short: DVD-RAM FFS/SFS DOS Drivers. Author: sndev@bigfoot.com (Steven Norburn) Uploader: sndev@bigfoot.com (Steven Norburn) Type: disk/misc Requires: DVD-RAM drive. Version: 0.6 Features: --------- · This is the first version [Freeware], but it works ! · Uses 100% of the storage available on a DVD-RAM disc. · There are DOS Drivers included for up to 4 partitions per disc. Yes, you can now use DVD-RAM drives on an Amiga, it works fine with both FFS or SFS. This will allow a 2.6 GB per side DVD-RAM discs to be used with the Amiga, all the DOS Drivers have been tested. I have also tested multi-partitioned discs with DiskSalv2, this also works, DiskSalv2 however cannot handle a full sized disc partition because it's larger than 2 GB. This released is still a beta version, even though it works well, this is to allow for any unforeseen improvement or changes that maybe needed, which could make these current DOS drivers incompatible with a future release. This Distribution: ------------------ DVD-RAM_2.6/SFS_DOSDrivers/DVD_SFS ; 1 full disc SFS partition, 2380.8 MB. You will need to have a working installation of Smart Filesystem by John Hendrikx for this driver to work, I used Smart Filesystem 1.84 (30/10/1999). WARNING ======= The Smart Filesystem is still a BETA -- this means it is NOT finished and is NOT intended for normal use. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK ! SFSalv does NOT work on DVD-RAM discs. DVD-RAM_2.6/FFS_DOSDrivers/DVD_FFS ; 1 full disc FFS partition, 2380.8 MB. These split one disc side into 2 FFS partitions, 1190.4 MB each. DVD-RAM_2.6/FFS_Partitions/2_DOSDrivers/DVD1of2_FFS DVD-RAM_2.6/FFS_Partitions/2_DOSDrivers/DVD2of2_FFS These split one disc side into 3 FFS partitions, 793.6 MB each. DVD-RAM_2.6/FFS_Partitions/3_DOSDrivers/DVD1of3_FFS DVD-RAM_2.6/FFS_Partitions/3_DOSDrivers/DVD2of3_FFS DVD-RAM_2.6/FFS_Partitions/3_DOSDrivers/DVD3of3_FFS These split one disc side into 4 FFS partitions, 595.2 MB each. DVD-RAM_2.6/FFS_Partitions/4_DOSDrivers/DVD1of4_FFS DVD-RAM_2.6/FFS_Partitions/4_DOSDrivers/DVD2of4_FFS DVD-RAM_2.6/FFS_Partitions/4_DOSDrivers/DVD3of4_FFS DVD-RAM_2.6/FFS_Partitions/4_DOSDrivers/DVD4of4_FFS DVD-RAM_2.6/DVD-RAM.doc ; This file. DVD-RAM_2.6/TrackSize ; An REXX program to show good track size values. About DVD-RAM: -------------- DVD-RAM is great if you want a cheap way to optically store 2380 MB, it can re-write each disc block about 100,000 times with access times and data transfer rates compatible with DVD-ROM (about 1385 KB/s or x9 in CD terms). DVD-RAM discs come in cartridges like a 3.5" floppy or a ZIP disk, with a handy sliding write protect tab. If you have ever had any experience with DVD discs, you will know that this is a good thing, however they only look cool when the cartridges are transparent. Because the discs are in cartridges, they will not play in a standard DVD-ROM player, there are supposed to be players in the future that will be able to read these discs. Double-Sided (Type 1) DVD-RAM disc = 5.2 GB You currently have to eject and turn over the Double-Sided discs. Single-Sided (Type 1) DVD-RAM disc = 2.6 GB You can also get Single-Sided (Type 2) DVD-RAM disc which can be removed from the cartridges but these may still cause problems to some DVD-ROM drives that don't understand the DVD-RAM format. These discs are not MO (Magneto-Optical), but are the direct descendant of the Panasonic Phase-change optical PD discs. Panasonic DVD-RAM drives can also read and write 650MB PD discs. A standard filesystem for DVD-ROM is UDF (Universal Disk Format), this is very good filesystem when you need to store big files, like DVD films, but it's not so good when storing lots of small files. To the best of my knowledge the Amiga only has only one UDF filesystem available, a commercial read only UDF filesystem called Allegro CDFS. You don't however have to use UDF, you can just format it with your favourite filesystem just like any normal SCSI drive, the only difference is it has to use a block size of 2048, a normal hard disk drive has a block size of 512 bytes. It also uses virtual blocks, if a block is bad or has be re-written about 100,000 times so it can no longer be used, it's added to a bad block list and another spare block is mapped into it's place. This is done with all the blocks on the drive and is transparent to the computer so there are always 1218960 good blocks available. This is probably why not all the blocks on the disc can be used by the filesystem, the others are spare blocks and are used as replacements when bad blocks are found. When all the spare blocks have been used, the disc will become read only. This shouldn't be a problem as there are lots of spare blocks. A better kind of filesystem for this type of drive would reduce the number of times each block is changed. Most filesystems are designed for magnetic storage and therefore use the same blocks for storing things like the bitmaps, these then have to be changed every time a new file is written or deleted. About the Amiga and DVD-RAM: ---------------------------- DVD-RAM is a good low cost large storage and backup device. To the Amiga it's just like a slow SCSI MO drive or removable HDD with a 2048 byte block size and a total of 1218960 blocks per side. I have found no real problems using the SCSI version with the Amiga 3000. You can not currently use HDToolbox to make it auto boot with a RDB as it doesn't understand that you can write to it ! About the Panasonic SCSI-2 LF-D101 DVD-RAM 2.6 drive: ----------------------------------------------------- The following information is based on the Panasonic LF-D101 DVD-RAM 2.6, but most things should still apply to the 4.7 and other DVD-RAM drives. Power requirements DC +5V (1.4A Max.) DC +12V (0.7A Max.). The Panasonic LF-D101 supports most CD formats including CD-DA reading, so it also works well with MakeCD as a source drive. It has 2 MB buffer capacity and sustained data transfer rate of, DVD-RAM (1385 KB/s, x9 CD x1 DVD), DVD-ROM (2770 KB/s, x18 CD, x2 DVD), PD (518-1141 KB/s), CD-ROM (3000 KB/s Max., x20). Drive orientation can be either Horizontal or Vertical and it has a headphone jack with volume control. Applicable media, Read/Write (DVD-RAM, 640 MB PD), Read Only (DVD-ROM, DVD-R, CD-DA, CD-ROM with XA and PhotoCD Multisession, Video CD, CD-EXTRA, CD-R/RW MultiRead). The DVD-ROM part is RPC-2, so it will region lock after 5 changes (set by DVDRgn, a PC region number setting utility) to the last region set. Some drives have a hacked version of the firmware which will remove this fault in the drive firmware, it may be worth searching the web if this is important to you. The SCSI Interface: ------------------- The SCSI-2 (Fast SCSI) (Supports SCAM Level 1) drive has a 50 pin SCSI-2 internal connector (5 MB/s, 10 MB/s), stereo audio outputs, Termination and a set of SCSI ID jumpers. It has Active SCSI termination as with most modern SCSI-2 devices. I really do recommend making sure that your SCSI bus has Active termination at each end, especially with the A3000 internal SCSI bus. What is RPC-1 and RPC-2 with certain drives ?: ---------------------------------------------- DVD discs have built in region codes (1 to 8 and 0 for no code) which represents the country where that disc is allowed to be sold and used, US DVD discs should only play in US players because of the region number, 1 for the US, 2 for the UK and Japan etc. Before the year 2000, bare DVD-ROM drives could be sold RPC-1 (Region Protection Code 1) which meant a RPC-1 drive could read any DVD disc from anywhere in the world. The region code was set in the video player hardware (video card) or software player program, this was of course widely hacked to remove the region code. After 1999, all bare drives have to be RPC-2, this locks the region in the drive either by allowing it to be changed 'X' number of times (normally 5) or by locking after to the last 'X' number of DVD discs are loaded. Their now exists hacked drive firmware on the Web, so that some of these RPC-2 drives can be made region free by simply being flash upgraded. The drive manufactures are still fighting back, with things like stopping the same version of firmware from being re-flashed. About the Panasonic ATAPI LF-D111 DVD-RAM 2.6 drive: ---------------------------------------------------- This is the ATAPI Interface version of the drive, I don't own one so I can't be sure these DOS Drivers will work correctly with a ATAPI type of drive, I hope they do. If you do own one of these drives and want to provide testing and feedback then please feel free to contact me. New DVD-RAM 4.7 drives: ----------------------- The New Panasonic DVD-RAM 4.7 GB per side is now available in Japan. The LF-D200JD and the LF-D201JD can record 4.7GB per side (9.4GB on a two sided disc). This is the same per layer storage size as current DVD-ROM and DVD film discs ! I hope to add support for the 4.7 when I manage to get some detailed information, if you own one and would like me to add support, then feel free to contact me. Setting up the DOS Drivers: --------------------------- You will probably need to customise some settings in each of the drivers to your own system. I have used the device 'scsi.device' and unit '3' as the default settings. For a DOS Drivers OS (3.0 and above) ... The Device name is simply the name of the DOS Driver file, if you want to change it just rename it, e.g. DVD-FFS to DVD. To change the 'device' and 'unit', select the driver icon, then use the Workbench menu 'Icons -> Information', remember to save your changes. After changing the device name and unit to that of your DVD-RAM SCSI device and ID number, you can now start the device by double clicking the icon or by placing it in Devs:DOSDrivers and then re-booting. For a Mount List OS (below 3.0) ... You can still use these DOS Drivers with an older OS's by converting them into a Mount List file, this can be done by adding your 'Device Name:', 'Device' and 'Unit' just above the 'FileSystem' entry with a text editor. After changing the DOS Driver into a Mount List, you can start it by typing 'Mount from ' from the CLI Shell or by adding that command to your s:user-startup or s:startup- sequence and then re-booting. The mounted DOS Driver will now need formatting to make the storage available to the filesystem. This only needs to be a 'quick' format and unless you have OS 3.5 is probably best done from the CLI Shell like this, 'format drive name quick noicons' But if you have lots of time (over an hour) and want to give the drive a good test you could do a full format by removing the 'quick' option. Note, this will also work with SFS, but SFS has SFSFormat which has more setting and so would be better to use with a SFS device. It would also be a good idea after you've first copied a large number of files to the drive to check for any corruption. I would use a program called cmp V1.7 by ALeX Kazik which is also available on Aminet to do this, from CLI Shell type, 'cmp all checkd show=~q' This will show any errors in the copied data that where introduced by an unstable system, NO errors are acceptable ! If you do have problems, I have included some values in the icons for MaxTransfer (0xFFFFFC) and Mask (0xFFFE) which should work on every device, just remove there brackets with Workbench menu 'Icons -> Information' of the DOS driver to enable these values the next time they are mounted (see also About the DOS Drivers). If this does not help, then it would appear to be a problem with your hardware, connections or SCSI termination. About the DOS Drivers: ---------------------- The only really important thing that the driver needs to know is the total number of blocks of the device. TotalBlocks(1218960) = Surfaces(1) * BlocksPerTrack(60) * Cylinders(20316) TotalBlocks(1218960), This is set by the drive and type of disc used. Surfaces(1), Well it only has one surface, the same as a ZIP drive, but I have seen ZIP drivers with 2 surfaces so that badly written program can still understand it ! I have not used 2 because if a program gets confused with 1 surface then it will probably not understand a block size of 2048 bytes. Some disk monitors also expect a device with 2048 bytes per block to be a 1 surface CD type device. BlockSize(2048), also later known as SectorSize, Each block has 2048 bytes, the same as used by CD storage. BlocksPerTrack(60), also later known as SectorsPerTrack, I have included a REXX program 'TrackSize' to show some good sizes. Their is no real right or wrong value, 60 was a compromise value after testing lots of different values to try and get the best results on the most amount of systems. Why not just use 1 ?, well, it would work but it's not very efficient as the filesystem may then only be handling a few blocks at a time. Too high a value and some programs will not work though lack of memory because they use a whole track at a time. This value was also chosen because it allows a disc to be split into a number of partitions, it's even a good value for using with a RDB. 1693 does seem to be good choice for the maximum number of partitions, but it was not chosen because of the possible memory usage and the large future RDB size. The RDB normally takes 2 cylinders, so, 2 * 1693 * 1 * 2048 = 6.6 MB just for the RDB ! With a value of 60, 2 * 60 * 1 * 2048 = 240 KB, a much better RDB size in my opinion. It's not even faster, when doing a full format with a value of 1693, a quarter of the disc take 17 Mins 30 Secs, but with a value of 60 it takes 16 Mins 22 Secs !, this is probably because 1693 is larger than the drives 2 MB internal cache. A DOS Driver with Blocks Per Track of 1693 could still work on a disc which had already been using 60 as long as the Total Blocks remain the same. Cylinders(20316), This is just found by, TotalBlocks(1218960) / Surfaces(1) / BlocksPerTrack(60) The other entries are all standard values, I should just mention that some old controller devices can only use part of your memory, so they need to have a Mask set, 0xFFFFFC should work with any device. If your using a IDE drive, you may need to reduce MaxTransfer to about 0x1FFFE (128K-2) or even 0xFFFE (64 KB-2) to make it work correctly. The SFS.guide from SFS_beta.lha has a really good explanation on how to set the best values for your device. Things to Do !: --------------- This is all a bit of a rush job, so lots ... Thanks To: ---------- Phil Vedovatti - The nice NewIcons. John Hendrikx - For Smart Filesystem. Some useful programs in my opinion ... DiskMonTools 3.13 (18/01/1999) by Jörg Strohmayer Some other great programs in my opinion ... DirII v3.3a © 1995 S.Davies [Freeware]. Visage 39.22 (31/10/1998) - By Magnus Holmgren. cmp V1.7 (25.01.00) © by ALeX Kazik. Some Final Thoughts: -------------------- I like to write programs but I really don't like doing the documentation ! I've have taken a lot of time and trouble to make these the best DOS Drivers I could and also to be as accurate as I can with all the information, taken from lots of different sources. If their is anything you could improve or know to be incorrect, please feel free to send any helpful information or corrections for the next update. This is all Freeware, so use it and I hope you enjoy it ! If you have any problems, also feel free to contact me. It would optionally be nice to receive any comments, help, or gifts. Regards, Steven Norburn Legal Stuff: ------------ License: -------- This is released under the concept of freeware. 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