User avatar
nathanielh

Posted Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:31 pm

wow, something developed for the A1000 36 years after introduction! My A1000 has been in the box for a decade. Maybe I should dig it out...

User avatar
Seb132
Gold Coast, Australia

Posted Sat Jan 30, 2021 12:42 am

I was interested in the Parceiro at first for my stock A1000 PAL, but after reading this thread I believe it is a bit too much of an "old school" extension for me and I'll go for a kickstart switcher 1.3/3.1.4 and TF536 accelerator board which combines both memory (64MB), 030 acceleration, and IDE storage capacity...

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sun Jan 31, 2021 1:09 pm

One of the things about the original Parceiro setup that was baffling me was how it displays results in the CLI or Shell when performing a LIST command.

Normally, we like to see something like this:
goodList.jpeg

But what the Parceiro does looks like this:
badList.jpeg
I went through every single config file I could think of, line by line, trying to determine where that was coming from. While interesting data, it's way overkill on the native resolution of an A1K, forcing each result to wrap to two lines.

For me, it made reading and scanning directories a real PITA.

Finally I threw in the towel and asked David Dunklee about it, and if he knew where I could adjust that output.

Come to find out, it is in fact the FAT95 driver that gets installed in the beginning which creates that expanded directory output. And, it so happens David had already found a fix with an updated FAT95 driver, which he sent me.

Dunklee:
For FAT95, I recompiled making the default to “off” versus “on”; I also updated the English to German translations correcting for grammar/formatting. Other than that, it’s the same FAT95 as in the source code.
If you own a Parceiro and want your directory listings to go back to what you're used to in nice little tidy 1-line columns, you can download the updated driver here.

Remember, you will need to copy it on top of the file on your SD card and also the boot floppy disk in the L folder.

User avatar
andreaspv

Posted Tue Feb 02, 2021 7:06 am

where i can buy a PARCERIO SD card?

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Feb 02, 2021 10:13 am

where i can buy a PARCERIO SD card?
When you buy a Parceiro, it comes with an SD card for you.

User avatar
rjd324

Posted Wed Feb 17, 2021 2:07 pm

Anyone got this imported int UK? I have to pay what I feel is an unreasonable customs duty. I will pay it, but don't like being ripped off.

I bought the to-be-soldered kit to save money. I thought it would be 20% + holding fee (parcel force from Ups). I expected 20% of the total fee I paid but they are charging more than that. I think it is 20% of the total fee which includes the delivery charge?

Regards.

User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Tue Mar 02, 2021 5:27 pm

I have an update to report that is very, very cool.

You know how after Workbench boots where you shouldn't attempt to do any writes? This is because the Parceiro is validating all that 2GB's of space. But, unlike a lot of other Amiga large HDD solutions you can at least use the machine while that validation is going on, no big deal. You know it is over when the little red LED light is done flickering .

David determined a way to essentially make that validation process go away from a user's perspective.

If you follow these steps, you can eliminate that 20 seconds after boot-up. I just did this myself, and it works beautifully (it also gave me an excuse to backup my SD card in the process).
  1. Use a Windows computer. (I could not do this on a WinXP box, I needed to use Windows 10. However, I'm sure 7 or something else fairly recent would be fine.)
  2. If working with an existing SD card with data on it; then copy that data to a temporary directory on the Windows PC.
  3. From Windows Explorer, right click on the SD cards folder, then select FORMAT
  4. In the Format dialog window, ensure settings are as follows: File system = FAT32, name= “SD”, “File Allocation Unit” or “Cluster size” = 16K (16384 bytes). ** This is the key **. Then, hit OK to format.
  5. Copy data onto the newly formatted drive.
Once you do that, you'll have both a nice little handy dandy backup of your drive AND a fresh SD card that won't make you watch that LED flash after booting up anymore.

David Dunklee:
There should be a slight hit on storage since each file will now take up a minimum of a multiple of 16KB, but with a 2GB or 4GB SD on a system where 20MB was huge, I suspect there wont be much of a concern. So far, the 2GB SD which was formatted with the smaller 4KB FAU is taking up the same amount of space as the new SD with 16KB FAU. (Generally you format a drive with a FAU near the average size of the files stored within it. Therefore it looks like the average size of all the files on my drive is about 16KB.)

Bam!

User avatar
miraco
Louisville Ky

Posted Sat Mar 13, 2021 8:07 am

Thanks for this update! I was just working on creating a backup SD so this was timely :D

User avatar
JoeUser
Dallas, TX

Posted Tue Apr 20, 2021 7:06 am

Just ordered the Parceiro from David!

Hopefully, his SD card that's supplied will incorporate the changes you mentioned, re the formatting.

Man, I'm looking forward to plugging that bad boy in and getting some more RAM and having a "hard drive"!

User avatar
Mr.Toast
Roseville, CA

Posted Mon Apr 26, 2021 11:01 pm

intric8 wrote:
Tue Mar 02, 2021 5:27 pm
I have an update to report that is very, very cool.
..
Once you do that, you'll have both a nice little handy dandy backup of your drive AND a fresh SD card that won't make you watch that LED flash after booting up anymore.
Very glad I checked back in on this thread. THANK YOU!





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