Dreamcast G1-ATA Hard Drive Testing

Discuss modifications you have done or plan to do to your Dreamcast or any other hardware, or discuss devices you want to build. If your console does not work or is acting up, ask about fixing it in here.
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|darc|
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Dreamcast G1-ATA Hard Drive Testing

Post by |darc| »

Note: This discussion was split from this previous topic.

I got an old 160GB ATA HDD wired up and it appears to be working when running KallistiOS:
atatest.c wrote:Starting G1 ATA test program...
g1_ata_scan: found device with LBA48: 312581808
Looking for first partition...
Reading 1024 blocks by DMA!
DMA read took 47 ms (11.155064 MB/sec)
Reading 1024 blocks by PIO!
PIO read took 149 ms (3.518711 MB/sec)
Both buffers matched!
But it doesn't detect in DreamShell, probably because it's NTFS-formatted. My IDE-to-USB adapter appears to be broken and I don't have a computer with an IDE controller handy, so I can't format the drive or copy any GDIs to it. :( Waiting for a new adapter to come in from Amazon and then I'll show off some gameplay. :)

EDIT: Got it formatted to ext2 using KallistiOS. Will work on getting some games ripped now :)
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Re: Testing Marcus Comstedt's dc-virtcd

Post by |darc| »

Well, DreamShell crashes whenever I try to dump any GD-ROMs to the HDD. I copied dumps to an SD card and then used DreamShell to copy over the tracks, but I can't copy over the .GDI file because DreamShell's file manager won't let you select supported filetypes, if you try to select it, it just asks if you want to execute from the SD card, which I don't. I renamed the GDI file to GDX on my PC so it would no longer be a supported filetype, but when I copy over that file and try to rename back from GDX to GDI in file manager, that also crashes DreamShell.... :|

So basically I have a working detected 160GB IDE drive formatted with ext2 that appears fine in DreamShell but I can't do anything with it until Tuesday or Wednesday when I get an adapter in :(
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Re: Testing Marcus Comstedt's dc-virtcd

Post by SWAT »

In any case Ext2 filesystem doesn't supported by loaders, so you need only FAT32.
Also Ext2 works only in PIO mode in the Core. FAT32 works in DMA mode. You can see big difference at speed testing via speedtest app, this test speed of filesystem, not IO as in KOS example.
I do not focus on Ext2 because it is not my implementation and I think it's not need in general because the loaders support only FAT.
About the selection of files in the file manager - I'll check it, thanks for report.
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Re: Testing Marcus Comstedt's dc-virtcd

Post by |darc| »

SWAT wrote:In any case Ext2 filesystem doesn't supported by loaders, so you need only FAT32.
Also Ext2 works only in PIO mode in the Core. FAT32 works in DMA mode. You can see big difference at speed testing via speedtest app, this test speed of filesystem, not IO as in KOS example.
I do not focus on Ext2 because it is not my implementation and I think it's not need in general because the loaders support only FAT.
Ah, I understand. Thanks for the information. I was only using ext2 because I had to format using the Dreamcast and KallistiOS already has an example program for mke2fs that is easily changed to format the HDD instead of the SD card. I guess I'll have to be patient and wait for the IDE-to-USB adapter before I do anything else.

On a related note, your blog has said in the past that SATA drives might be possible to use with SATA-to-IDE adapters. I have also purchased one of these (one that is capable of switching between master/slave via jumpers). Has anyone tried these yet? My ultimate goal here is to install an eSATA port on the Dreamcast so GDIs can be loaded from an external eSATA hard drive. :)
SWAT wrote:About the selection of files in the file manager - I'll check it, thanks for report.
No problem, it looks like the first time you select a file it will let you choose it and perform operations -- but if you click on something with a supported file extension again, it only asks if you can open it, and you have to restart in order to get it to let you click and perform operations again.
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Re: Testing Marcus Comstedt's dc-virtcd

Post by SWAT »

|darc| wrote: On a related note, your blog has said in the past that SATA drives might be possible to use with SATA-to-IDE adapters. I have also purchased one of these (one that is capable of switching between master/slave via jumpers). Has anyone tried these yet? My ultimate goal here is to install an eSATA port on the Dreamcast so GDIs can be loaded from an external eSATA hard drive. :)
I tested different adapters. I can say that I never managed to get work of SATA and not only me. Also not work dualSD->CF adapter too.
I think that the main problem here is software adapters, it is works very bad. Maybe you'll have better luck.
What can I say, I have some not working IDE->CF adapter, although that could be easier? Works only the easiest adapter where nothing is superfluous.

My not working CF adapter:
http://www.dc-swat.ru/forum/thread-2111 ... l#pid26570

My working CF adapter and not working SD->CF:
http://www.dc-swat.ru/forum/thread-2111 ... l#pid26971

My not working SATA adapter:
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Other not working SATA adapters:
http://www.dc-swat.ru/forum/thread-2111 ... l#pid26959
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Re: Dreamcast G1-ATA Hard Drive Testing

Post by |darc| »

Success with a SATA adapter! Only one left in stock at the moment...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ZLM9IA

I'm using an old 120GB 2.5" Fujitsu SATA hard drive, with the jumper on the adapter board set to slave.

Code: Select all

Starting G1 ATA test program...
g1_ata_scan: found device with LBA48: 234441648
Looking for first partition...
Reading 1024 blocks by DMA!
DMA read took 65 ms (8.065969 MB/sec)
Reading 1024 blocks by PIO!
PIO read took 155 ms (3.382503 MB/sec)
Both buffers matched!
Sonic Adventure (NTSC-US) runs great!

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Re: Dreamcast G1-ATA Hard Drive Testing

Post by SWAT »

Good job with SATA adapter. You are lucky as I and hoped :))
I also order it for yourself :) But I see, the speed in DMA noticeable worse than on Native IDE (up to 4 MB/s less)... And PIO mode too, but not much (there may be a delay in requests).
Your adapter based on Marvell 88SA8052, maybe another adapters on this chip and slave support can be success.

BTW, for this game (and part 2) you can use DMA transfer, just setup checkbox for it on settings page of this application.
It's can be work even better. Yeah, really better :)
Very sorry that I have not been able to do DMA support for all games, I still do not know the reason for not works it in most games, so while I added this option.

My videos - http://www.youtube.com/user/lllSWATlll/videos
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Re: Dreamcast G1-ATA Hard Drive Testing

Post by bobnickelson »

Hey, I got a question for you guys.

First off thanks SWAT for DreamShell. It has been awesome seeing it from its basic release to the tool it has become. I made a SD card internal SD card adapter a while back and I have finally gotten around to making the HDD cable which brings me to my current issue:

I can not use the GD Ripper application(Did you manage to fix your issue darc?). The drive is formatted FAT32. When i open the app, it can grab the name of the game, and it starts to read the game but it crashes and produces an error after i hit start. I have attached a screen shot of the error. All this happens in about 5-10 seconds. It barely writes anything to the hard drive. Once i do a reboot and get back into DreamShell, I can see the folder it created with the name of the game and a track1 file but that is it.

I connected the drive to computer and transferred GDI's to it and it runs fine off the hard drive no issues. While I had the IDE cable plugged in I tested all the pins from the IDE side to the its corresponding pins on the ATA board and all the pins test out fine. It is possible that I may have loosened the cable when finally assembling the unit back together, however reading is working perfect, and writing appears to start to work but crashes.

I really dont need the write function, but it maybe more useful down the line, i would like to do some dev work on the dreamcast and it would be nice to write debug info to the drive. Is there a read/write test application that you have that I can use to test the drive (already compiled, i still need to get my dev enviroment up and running)? Thanks again.
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Re: Dreamcast G1-ATA Hard Drive Testing

Post by Calavera »

darc that is a nice monitor you have there 8-)
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Re: Dreamcast G1-ATA Hard Drive Testing

Post by XC_3730C »

How does KallistiOS differ from Dreamshell? I currently have a 320gb IDE HDD (formatted to FAT32) connected to my DC (40 pin cable wired to the board)?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk
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Re: Dreamcast G1-ATA Hard Drive Testing

Post by |darc| »

XC_3730C wrote:How does KallistiOS differ from Dreamshell? I currently have a 320gb IDE HDD (formatted to FAT32) connected to my DC (40 pin cable wired to the board)?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk
KallistiOS is a development library that people use to build Dreamcast applications and games. It is the foundation upon which the vast, vast majority of Dreamcast homebrew software is built. It's not really an "operating system" in the sense that you can load it up to a user interface and do stuff with it as a user.

Dreamshell on the other hand is a shell/user interface built on top of that KallistiOS foundation.
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