Dreamcast IDE Problem

Hey guys, so I've got a chip board that replaces the GD-ROM drive with a 44-pin IDE connection, got a jumper on the HDD, have a BIOS chip replacement mod done (with Dreamshell BIOS flashed), when starting up the DC I get this message:

Checking for G1 ATA devices...
g1_ata_scan: found device with LBA8: 23444
Unknown filesystem: 0x07
Unknown filesystem: 0x07
Checking for SD card...

And then it loads the boot from RAM/CD BIOS menu.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Sounds like I may have put some files in the wrong place.

 

That looks like your drive is formatted in NTFS and not FAT32

 

Connected the drive to my PC and it says it's formatted it in FAT32... Could I have done anything wrong in the formatting process?

 

I used to format an HDD in FAT32 using format.com (in CMD mode), but if you prefer a friendly GUI program I recommend FA32 Format GUI. Use at least 32K cluster size.
edit: Important: Make sure that your FAT32 partition is set as Primary instead Logical.

BTW, that problem you having can be also due to the wiring , specially because of the length of the wires.

 

Also make sure the partition type is set correctly; what it's marked as and what's actually on it may be two different things entirely. 0x07 is "HPFS/NTFS/exFAT", you probably want 0x0b "W95 FAT32" or 0x0c "W95 FAT32 (LBA)".

 

That's strange, since that 0x07 partition type is NTFS. Do you know if that drive was ever used as a boot drive in a PC? Its possible that the type flags in the MBR no longer match the actual format.

Try connecting it to a PC and running DISKPART

Do LIST DISK and find the drive in the list

SELECT DISK x (where x is the number from "Disk x" in the list)

DETAIL DISK

You will get a list of partitions on the drive. Check to see if the "Fs" column says "NTFS"

 

Ooooooookay I think I see what the problem was.

Basically it had formatted as FAT32, but there was a System Reserved partition of 100MB that was NTFS - the DC was obviously defaulting to this partition.
It's working now. None of the games I uploaded (optimized GDIs) seem to work, but I'll sort that out hopefully.

Thank you so much for all your help.

 

Hi Could I ask where you got it from please? I've been thinking about soldering in an IDE cable, but this sounds much easier. Thanks in advance!

 

I bought from XCKDIY on Taobao. You'll need to use a buying agent like Yoybuy (or any buy from China agents) because he doesn't speak English, so can't write the address.

I recommend getting one of his actual boards instead of this cable thing. While the cable is cheaper and it does work, the boards are better.

 

Thank you very much for all the information! I'll certainly be buying the board