Transmeta Crusoe + Hitachi Microdrive = no good?

[The Rob]

Hi group!

I am once again facing the problem with the Transmeta Crusoe processor in
combination with a Hitachi Microdrive 2GB.

I have read a lot of threads in newsgroups about problems with either
Transmeta or Microdrive, but no solutions.

3 months ago I built an image (using SP1) and made two identical drives, one
was delivered and the 2nd I kept.

Board config looked like this back then: IEI Wafer-6820-733 MHz 128MB

Now I´m trying the 2nd drive on a IEI Wafer-6820-800 MHz 256MB, but it won´t
work!

It boots, but freezes just in the beginning of the Windows boot splash
screen before FBA.

When I first made the build there were a lot of problems before I got it to
work. I tried with several builds (added one or two more components each
time) until it finally worked and today I can´t remember exactly which
component made it work (even though I made notes). I also saved the
different builds and have tried them again, but no luck.

The "funny" thing is that it works perfectly with a 512 MB CF from SanDisk,
SDCFB-512-201-80 (and yes, the image is a little different; boot partition
size etc.)

Also, the same MicroDrive works on a completely different platform, IEI
Rocky-3732EV with dual Pentium III.

So, my question is, is the problem Transmeta or Microdrive related? Is it so
that the Transmeta processor is so special I must run TAP on each board with
different cpu speed or RAM size? What components MUST I have for Microdrive
+ Transmeta and which should I NOT have?

Any suggestions are appreciated, this is driving me crazy.

Thanks in advance,

Rob

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Rob,

Could you explain the freeze little closely?
BSOD and numbers on the screen.
Infinite boot.
Progress bar is frozen and nothing happen for infinite time?

Also is this microdrive fixed or removable?

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[The Rob]

Hi Slobodan and thanks for your quick reply!

Progress bar freezes after just a second (the blue bar just moves from left
to the right and freezes there). HDD-LED is litten at all time, but I can´t
see any activity. It can just stay there for hours.
The drive is now, and by default marked as, "Removable", but can be "fixed"
in run-time. I remember that I tried to make it fixed by including drivers
for that before, but then it hung loading that driver.

Any ideas?

BR,

Rob

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Rob,

Progress bar freezes after just a second (the blue bar just moves from
left to the right and freezes there). HDD-LED is litten at all time, but I
can´t see any activity. It can just stay there for hours.

This is very veird and unusual problem in case that hardware (processor,
memory) is non mailfunctioning.

The drive is now, and by default marked as, "Removable", but can be
"fixed" in run-time. I remember that I tried to make it fixed by including
drivers for that before, but then it hung loading that driver.

This is the reason why I asked. Since the highest probability for system
freeze is some third-party driver and my guess was that you put filter
driver for microdrive.
Are you sure that you removed it correctly from registry if it was in your
image?

Any other non-MS drivers in your image?

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[The Rob]

Hi Slobodan,

There are no problems with the hardware itself since it works with CF. I
have also tried other identical boards, same things there.
There are no drivers for microdrive included in the images that I´m testing
now.
The only 3rd party drivers in the image would be C&T 69000 (VGA)
componentized, but should not be the reason for this (?), the same drivers
are used for the CF image. Again, the microdrive works fine on other
platform.

This has something to do with the combination of Transmeta Crusoe TM5800 &
Hitachi Microdrive.
I found some old notes that I made before when I built the working image,
but I can´t seem to find the right combination now.
I get the exact same error regardless how I mix them.
These are some of the components I played with and I know some are critical,
maybe you can see the solution:

Class installer - Processors
Class installer - System Devices
Device : DiskDrive
Device : hdc
Device : Processor
IBM Microdrive
Transmeta Crusoe

Unfortunately this is all documentation I have left (yes, I know that I
should document and keep them in a good place. And I promise I will in the
future.)

Otherwise, are there some ways I can find out what happens? I assume there
will not be a ntbtlog.txt or setupapi.log since it won´t go that far? Is it
worth try debugging? I have windbg.
Please advise.

Thanks in advance,

Rob

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Rob,

Otherwise, are there some ways I can find out what happens? I assume there
will not be a ntbtlog.txt or setupapi.log since it won´t go that far? Is
it worth try debugging? I have windbg.
Please advise.

Debugging or making a clean project that work by useing "minlogon sample
macro" are two separate ways left that you can try.

I would first take a "minlogon sample macro" in empty project aproach. If
this do not work then I would use debugger on this small new image.

Debugging freeze problems can be difficult but you could see at least what
driver froze.

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[The Rob]

Slobodan,

Debugging with Windbg shows that XPe hangs at CLASSPNP.SYS, does this
explain the problem?

This is what I can see now, the microdrive has been running complete FBA on
a different platform (mentioned earlier), so at this moment I can´t debug it
where it froze before FBA.
This is also what I saw when "trying" to boot in safe mode before testing
the drive elsewhere (I know it doesn´t work, but at least I could see some
drivers being loaded).
Now I´ll copy the image once again and debug it to see what happens before
FBA, but I guess it will be CLASSPNP.SYS
Can there be some conflict between CLASSPNP.SYS and the Microdrive +
Transmeta? I mean, this file is loaded without problems on XPP + HDD, XPe +
CF and on other platforms?
I will also try the other method you described, but I would like to
understand the problem -not just fix it.

Thanks for your help.

BR,

Rob

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Rob,

I will also try the other method you described, but I would like to
understand the problem -not just fix it.

The other method is the way for understanding the problem. Try dividing your
image to smalest working/non-working image without any extra drivers.

disk.sys/classpnp.sys basicaly make one driver. classpnp.sys is just a
function library similar as dll in user mode. But it tell us nothing about
the problem :-(

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[The Rob]

Hi Slobodan and many thanks for your help,

It works (somewhat).
I simply moved the MicroDrive from the CF-holder to an "CF to standard IDE
interface" and there are no problems.
The CF-holder should run in True IDE Mode and be compatible with an IDE disk
drive and it has worked before.
When connected to CF-holder it is detected as "Secondary Master" and when
connected to IDE as "Primary Master" (that is pretty normal behaviour).
Now we know that the disk is OK, the board has no problems booting from
CF-holder.
What am I missing here?
Any components needed to be added/removed in order to use the Microdrive in
the CF-holder?

Thanks again!

BR,

Rob

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Hi Rob,

I simply moved the MicroDrive from the CF-holder to an "CF to standard IDE
interface" and there are no problems.
The CF-holder should run in True IDE Mode and be compatible with an IDE
disk drive and it has worked before.
When connected to CF-holder it is detected as "Secondary Master" and when
connected to IDE as "Primary Master" (that is pretty normal behaviour).
Now we know that the disk is OK, the board has no problems booting from
CF-holder.
What am I missing here?
Any components needed to be added/removed in order to use the Microdrive
in the CF-holder?

If it was missing driver then you would have seen BSOD.

This problem apear to be purely hardware in nature, no idea though what it
is :-(

Regards,
Slobodan

 

[Mark K Vallevand]

Is XPe treating this as a removable drive?
Maybe you need to get the cfadisk.sys driver from xpefile.com.

--
Regards.
Mark K Vallevand (e-mail address removed)

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
- Benjamin Franklin


THIS COMMUNICATION MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL AND/OR OTHERWISE PROPRIETARY
MATERIAL and is thus for use only by the intended recipient. If you received
this in error, please contact the sender and delete the e-mail and its
attachments from all computers.

 

[The Rob]

Mark,

Yes, XPe is treating it as removable, both when connected directly to the
CF-connector of the board and when connected to the IDE-interface through an
"CF to standard IDE interface".
In my previous working image, I installed the cfadisk.sys post-FBA to set
the drive as fixed.

This one hangs during loading CLASSPNP.SYS when placed in CF-connector, but
doesn´t hang at all when connected to IDE-connector!?!?!?!

Any ideas??

BR,

Rob

Is XPe treating this as a removable drive?
Maybe you need to get the cfadisk.sys driver from xpefile.com.

--
Regards.
Mark K Vallevand (e-mail address removed)

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
- Benjamin Franklin


THIS COMMUNICATION MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL AND/OR OTHERWISE PROPRIETARY
MATERIAL and is thus for use only by the intended recipient. If you
received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the e-mail
and its attachments from all computers.

Hi Rob,

I simply moved the MicroDrive from the CF-holder to an "CF to standard
IDE interface" and there are no problems.
The CF-holder should run in True IDE Mode and be compatible with an IDE
disk drive and it has worked before.
When connected to CF-holder it is detected as "Secondary Master" and
when connected to IDE as "Primary Master" (that is pretty normal
behaviour).
Now we know that the disk is OK, the board has no problems booting from
CF-holder.
What am I missing here?
Any components needed to be added/removed in order to use the Microdrive
in the CF-holder?

If it was missing driver then you would have seen BSOD.

This problem apear to be purely hardware in nature, no idea though what
it is :-(

Regards,
Slobodan

Thanks again!

BR,

Rob

"The Rob" <therob88@[hotmail].com> skrev i meddelandet
Slobodan,

Debugging with Windbg shows that XPe hangs at CLASSPNP.SYS, does this
explain the problem?

This is what I can see now, the microdrive has been running complete
FBA on a different platform (mentioned earlier), so at this moment I
can´t debug it where it froze before FBA.
This is also what I saw when "trying" to boot in safe mode before
testing the drive elsewhere (I know it doesn´t work, but at least I
could see some drivers being loaded).
Now I´ll copy the image once again and debug it to see what happens
before FBA, but I guess it will be CLASSPNP.SYS
Can there be some conflict between CLASSPNP.SYS and the Microdrive +
Transmeta? I mean, this file is loaded without problems on XPP + HDD,
XPe + CF and on other platforms?
I will also try the other method you described, but I would like to
understand the problem -not just fix it.

Thanks for your help.

BR,

Rob

"Slobodan Brcin (eMVP)" <[email protected]> skrev i meddelandet
Rob,

Otherwise, are there some ways I can find out what happens? I assume
there will not be a ntbtlog.txt or setupapi.log since it won´t go
that far? Is it worth try debugging? I have windbg.
Please advise.

Debugging or making a clean project that work by useing "minlogon
sample macro" are two separate ways left that you can try.

I would first take a "minlogon sample macro" in empty project aproach.
If this do not work then I would use debugger on this small new image.

Debugging freeze problems can be difficult but you could see at least
what driver froze.

Regards,
Slobodan

Hi Slobodan,

There are no problems with the hardware itself since it works with
CF. I have also tried other identical boards, same things there.
There are no drivers for microdrive included in the images that I´m
testing now.
The only 3rd party drivers in the image would be C&T 69000 (VGA)
componentized, but should not be the reason for this (?), the same
drivers are used for the CF image. Again, the microdrive works fine
on other platform.

This has something to do with the combination of Transmeta Crusoe
TM5800 & Hitachi Microdrive.
I found some old notes that I made before when I built the working
image, but I can´t seem to find the right combination now.
I get the exact same error regardless how I mix them.
These are some of the components I played with and I know some are
critical, maybe you can see the solution:

Class installer - Processors
Class installer - System Devices
Device : DiskDrive
Device : hdc
Device : Processor
IBM Microdrive
Transmeta Crusoe

Unfortunately this is all documentation I have left (yes, I know that
I should document and keep them in a good place. And I promise I will
in the future.)

Otherwise, are there some ways I can find out what happens? I assume
there will not be a ntbtlog.txt or setupapi.log since it won´t go
that far? Is it worth try debugging? I have windbg.
Please advise.

Thanks in advance,

Rob


"Slobodan Brcin (eMVP)" <[email protected]> skrev i meddelandet
Hi Rob,

Progress bar freezes after just a second (the blue bar just moves
from left to the right and freezes there). HDD-LED is litten at all
time, but I can´t see any activity. It can just stay there for
hours.

This is very veird and unusual problem in case that hardware
(processor, memory) is non mailfunctioning.

The drive is now, and by default marked as, "Removable", but can be
"fixed" in run-time. I remember that I tried to make it fixed by
including drivers for that before, but then it hung loading that
driver.

This is the reason why I asked. Since the highest probability for
system freeze is some third-party driver and my guess was that you
put filter driver for microdrive.
Are you sure that you removed it correctly from registry if it was
in your image?

Any other non-MS drivers in your image?

Regards,
Slobodan

Any ideas?

BR,

Rob

"Slobodan Brcin (eMVP)" <[email protected]> skrev i meddelandet
Hi Rob,

Could you explain the freeze little closely?
BSOD and numbers on the screen.
Infinite boot.
Progress bar is frozen and nothing happen for infinite time?

Also is this microdrive fixed or removable?

Regards,
Slobodan

Hi group!

I am once again facing the problem with the Transmeta Crusoe
processor in combination with a Hitachi Microdrive 2GB.

I have read a lot of threads in newsgroups about problems with
either Transmeta or Microdrive, but no solutions.

3 months ago I built an image (using SP1) and made two identical
drives, one was delivered and the 2nd I kept.

Board config looked like this back then: IEI Wafer-6820-733 MHz
128MB

Now I´m trying the 2nd drive on a IEI Wafer-6820-800 MHz 256MB,
but it won´t work!

It boots, but freezes just in the beginning of the Windows boot
splash screen before FBA.

When I first made the build there were a lot of problems before I
got it to work. I tried with several builds (added one or two
more components each time) until it finally worked and today I
can´t remember exactly which component made it work (even though
I made notes). I also saved the different builds and have tried
them again, but no luck.

The "funny" thing is that it works perfectly with a 512 MB CF
from SanDisk, SDCFB-512-201-80 (and yes, the image is a little
different; boot partition size etc.)

Also, the same MicroDrive works on a completely different
platform, IEI Rocky-3732EV with dual Pentium III.

So, my question is, is the problem Transmeta or Microdrive
related? Is it so that the Transmeta processor is so special I
must run TAP on each board with different cpu speed or RAM size?
What components MUST I have for Microdrive + Transmeta and which
should I NOT have?

Any suggestions are appreciated, this is driving me crazy.

Thanks in advance,

Rob

 

[Mark K Vallevand]

Nope. No ideas. Sorry.

--
Regards.
Mark K Vallevand (e-mail address removed)

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
- Benjamin Franklin


THIS COMMUNICATION MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL AND/OR OTHERWISE PROPRIETARY
MATERIAL and is thus for use only by the intended recipient. If you received
this in error, please contact the sender and delete the e-mail and its
attachments from all computers.

Mark,

Yes, XPe is treating it as removable, both when connected directly to the
CF-connector of the board and when connected to the IDE-interface through
an "CF to standard IDE interface".
In my previous working image, I installed the cfadisk.sys post-FBA to set
the drive as fixed.

This one hangs during loading CLASSPNP.SYS when placed in CF-connector,
but doesn´t hang at all when connected to IDE-connector!?!?!?!

Any ideas??

BR,

Rob

Is XPe treating this as a removable drive?
Maybe you need to get the cfadisk.sys driver from xpefile.com.

--
Regards.
Mark K Vallevand (e-mail address removed)

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
- Benjamin Franklin


THIS COMMUNICATION MAY CONTAIN CONFIDENTIAL AND/OR OTHERWISE PROPRIETARY
MATERIAL and is thus for use only by the intended recipient. If you
received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the e-mail
and its attachments from all computers.

Hi Rob,


I simply moved the MicroDrive from the CF-holder to an "CF to standard
IDE interface" and there are no problems.
The CF-holder should run in True IDE Mode and be compatible with an IDE
disk drive and it has worked before.
When connected to CF-holder it is detected as "Secondary Master" and
when connected to IDE as "Primary Master" (that is pretty normal
behaviour).
Now we know that the disk is OK, the board has no problems booting from
CF-holder.
What am I missing here?
Any components needed to be added/removed in order to use the
Microdrive in the CF-holder?

If it was missing driver then you would have seen BSOD.

This problem apear to be purely hardware in nature, no idea though what
it is :-(

Regards,
Slobodan





Thanks again!

BR,

Rob

"The Rob" <therob88@[hotmail].com> skrev i meddelandet
Slobodan,

Debugging with Windbg shows that XPe hangs at CLASSPNP.SYS, does this
explain the problem?

This is what I can see now, the microdrive has been running complete
FBA on a different platform (mentioned earlier), so at this moment I
can´t debug it where it froze before FBA.
This is also what I saw when "trying" to boot in safe mode before
testing the drive elsewhere (I know it doesn´t work, but at least I
could see some drivers being loaded).
Now I´ll copy the image once again and debug it to see what happens
before FBA, but I guess it will be CLASSPNP.SYS
Can there be some conflict between CLASSPNP.SYS and the Microdrive +
Transmeta? I mean, this file is loaded without problems on XPP + HDD,
XPe + CF and on other platforms?
I will also try the other method you described, but I would like to
understand the problem -not just fix it.

Thanks for your help.

BR,

Rob

"Slobodan Brcin (eMVP)" <[email protected]> skrev i meddelandet
Rob,

Otherwise, are there some ways I can find out what happens? I assume
there will not be a ntbtlog.txt or setupapi.log since it won´t go
that far? Is it worth try debugging? I have windbg.
Please advise.

Debugging or making a clean project that work by useing "minlogon
sample macro" are two separate ways left that you can try.

I would first take a "minlogon sample macro" in empty project
aproach. If this do not work then I would use debugger on this small
new image.

Debugging freeze problems can be difficult but you could see at least
what driver froze.

Regards,
Slobodan

Hi Slobodan,

There are no problems with the hardware itself since it works with
CF. I have also tried other identical boards, same things there.
There are no drivers for microdrive included in the images that I´m
testing now.
The only 3rd party drivers in the image would be C&T 69000 (VGA)
componentized, but should not be the reason for this (?), the same
drivers are used for the CF image. Again, the microdrive works fine
on other platform.

This has something to do with the combination of Transmeta Crusoe
TM5800 & Hitachi Microdrive.
I found some old notes that I made before when I built the working
image, but I can´t seem to find the right combination now.
I get the exact same error regardless how I mix them.
These are some of the components I played with and I know some are
critical, maybe you can see the solution:

Class installer - Processors
Class installer - System Devices
Device : DiskDrive
Device : hdc
Device : Processor
IBM Microdrive
Transmeta Crusoe

Unfortunately this is all documentation I have left (yes, I know
that I should document and keep them in a good place. And I promise
I will in the future.)

Otherwise, are there some ways I can find out what happens? I assume
there will not be a ntbtlog.txt or setupapi.log since it won´t go
that far? Is it worth try debugging? I have windbg.
Please advise.

Thanks in advance,

Rob


"Slobodan Brcin (eMVP)" <[email protected]> skrev i meddelandet
Hi Rob,

Progress bar freezes after just a second (the blue bar just moves
from left to the right and freezes there). HDD-LED is litten at
all time, but I can´t see any activity. It can just stay there for
hours.

This is very veird and unusual problem in case that hardware
(processor, memory) is non mailfunctioning.

The drive is now, and by default marked as, "Removable", but can
be "fixed" in run-time. I remember that I tried to make it fixed
by including drivers for that before, but then it hung loading
that driver.

This is the reason why I asked. Since the highest probability for
system freeze is some third-party driver and my guess was that you
put filter driver for microdrive.
Are you sure that you removed it correctly from registry if it was
in your image?

Any other non-MS drivers in your image?

Regards,
Slobodan

Any ideas?

BR,

Rob

"Slobodan Brcin (eMVP)" <[email protected]> skrev i meddelandet
Hi Rob,

Could you explain the freeze little closely?
BSOD and numbers on the screen.
Infinite boot.
Progress bar is frozen and nothing happen for infinite time?

Also is this microdrive fixed or removable?

Regards,
Slobodan

Hi group!

I am once again facing the problem with the Transmeta Crusoe
processor in combination with a Hitachi Microdrive 2GB.

I have read a lot of threads in newsgroups about problems with
either Transmeta or Microdrive, but no solutions.

3 months ago I built an image (using SP1) and made two identical
drives, one was delivered and the 2nd I kept.

Board config looked like this back then: IEI Wafer-6820-733 MHz
128MB

Now I´m trying the 2nd drive on a IEI Wafer-6820-800 MHz 256MB,
but it won´t work!

It boots, but freezes just in the beginning of the Windows boot
splash screen before FBA.

When I first made the build there were a lot of problems before
I got it to work. I tried with several builds (added one or two
more components each time) until it finally worked and today I
can´t remember exactly which component made it work (even though
I made notes). I also saved the different builds and have tried
them again, but no luck.

The "funny" thing is that it works perfectly with a 512 MB CF
from SanDisk, SDCFB-512-201-80 (and yes, the image is a little
different; boot partition size etc.)

Also, the same MicroDrive works on a completely different
platform, IEI Rocky-3732EV with dual Pentium III.

So, my question is, is the problem Transmeta or Microdrive
related? Is it so that the Transmeta processor is so special I
must run TAP on each board with different cpu speed or RAM size?
What components MUST I have for Microdrive + Transmeta and which
should I NOT have?

Any suggestions are appreciated, this is driving me crazy.

Thanks in advance,

Rob