Commodore Remix

Hi all.

Just bought me an MMC64 (YUM!) and first port of call, after a few trials just to see if it was working, was to dump the entire HVSC onto my 1GB SD card

Ummm, well that appears to be too much of the good stuff for my 1GB SD card 'cos now it won't fakkin work I wouldn't mind, but I can't even format the damn thing. When I go to it in explorer and click on removable drive, it proudly states:

"H:\is not accessible. The semaphore timeout period has expired."

Oh... Umm, good...

Right, anyone know how to format an SD card other than the right click in windows explorer? I think I may need some 'special' software to kinda 'brute-force' a format (I think windows is tripping up on the number of files/directories in the HVSC), but I'll be buggered if I can find anything on the interweb...

Any ideas would be gratefully received and tried (and no, I don't have a camera with an SD slot, so can't try 4matting in that).

Cheers guys.

Tonka

I did a bit of research and reading into this error, and although it can be connected to network settings, it's also a known issue with SCSI and USB2 external disk drives, especially if using them for backup.

Do you have a card reader plugged in to your PC internally or externally? And what chipset is your USB controller? Certain motherboard USB chipsets are known to be less reliable than others.

You can format a SD card differently in Windows: if you have access to a copy of Norton Ghost there's either a DOS command line gdisk, or there's gdisk32 for Windows Command prompt. Using gdisk32 I can format large hard drives as FAT32 so they work on both Windows and MacOS at work - and it'll recognise external USB devices.

However, read the docs before you do so, as it's a very powerful tool. I use it to completely zap hard drive partitions and create new ones with a few keystrokes.

PANIC OVER!

Just formatted it with a command prompt:

format h:

Too simple to be true, really

It took ages pissing about, so I went and grabbed a coffee, then when I got back it was done

Right, back to that HVSC...

Tonka

@ Waz.

Thanks for the input Waz (I think we were posting at the same time)!

I do wonder now if the £6.00 USB card reader off Ebay may have been the culprit in creating a read error or 100!

Is it actually possible to get the HVSC on an SD card? Seems like the more files and directories I get on there, the more it struggles to read and index...

I'll try again and transfer the collection over a few folders at a time, giving the card a chance to cool down a bit between each write!

Thanks again for your input (useful to know about that Ghost DOS command, too)

Tonka

Tonka wrote: Is it actually possible to get the HVSC on an SD card? Seems like the more files and directories I get on there, the more it struggles to read and index...

I have heard of several people who have successfully copied the HVSC to a SD-card, so it should work. I tried to do it a while ago and it seemed to take a while so i aborted it, since i needed the card the next day for my camera (i have only one card ).

In your case it could still be a problem with your card reader or the card itself. Usually the formatting should take a few seconds...

EDIT: You could try to clean the contacts of the SD-card and the reader.

I have an SD card (512Mb) with the HVSC on it.. Works like a charm..

It's needs to be formated FAT16 for the MMC64 to be able to read it

So maximum of 4GB (FAT16 won't go bigger)

As for larger cards, like your 1GIG one should work too.. I have tried up to 2GB myself.. and all work.. as long as you format FAT16 !

Tonka, remember to check out http://rrforum.ath.cx/ if you want to do anything fancy with your MMC64..
And the handy (german, but little text, much links) http://www.c64-wiki.de/index.php/MMC64 for all plugins etc..

Thanks guys

As long as I know it's possible, I will keep trying before I change my card/card reader.

@ Jinx - Out of interest, how long does it take to index the HVSC when you first put the card in? After the files had copied over, I took the card out in the morning and didn't try it until later that day. When I put the card in, it just seemed to take ages for anything to happen (well, 60 seconds or more), so I took the card back out, which is what might have corrupted the data, I guess...

Surely it shouldn't take that long though? And yes, it's fomatted as FAT16 (which is just FAT on XP, right)?

Thank you all for your advice

I have been to the plugin sites listed and there is some cool stuff there! I haven't had much luck with the DFI (multiload) disk reader beyond the initial Elvira demo though Just wanna play Creatures!!!

Tonka

Tonka wrote:@ Jinx - Out of interest, how long does it take to index the HVSC when you first put the card in? After the files had copied over, I took the card out in the morning and didn't try it until later that day. When I put the card in, it just seemed to take ages for anything to happen (well, 60 seconds or more), so I took the card back out, which is what might have corrupted the data, I guess...

Couple of seconds.. (just tried it on my wife's XP laptop) I see the [########## ] thingy scanning the thing and then it opens a 'what would you like to do' menu type doodah..

Copying the data to it _did_ take some hours (for the 2 GIG card) !!

SD sizes of 1,2 and 4 gig SD cards for my PDA, HVSC and a bunch of mp3's ogg's and miggy mod's go on without any fuss at all. Never had to format an SD card, sorry to hear about that. MAME works fine on it too btw.

External card readers (imho) are far better than hooking up your device and writing that way. Some units cant handle the bigger SD cards either - worth asking before you buy.

1 gig cards go for about £15, £30 inc P&p for 2Gb, £60ish for 4 gig.

MM64 - GENIUS that Everything 64 virtually built in, like having a huge hard drive bolted on. 4Gb SD must be like the PC equiv of say, a 500Gig HD considering the k'scale of the data. Ie: PC stuff is HUGE, so you need big drives.

I think I now have some 2.2 Gig of C64 data.. HVSC on a 512 Meg and GAMES, DEMO's and TOOLS on another 2 Gig card..

It loads really fast (single load .prg stuff)..

I've found that copying data to the SD card is faster on linux (external USB2 multi-card-reader) then on windows (build in card reader in wife's laptop)..
Might have to do something with 'safe writing' settings ..