After almost three years, we have an update for the Buddha Plus One IDE controller. It does not fix any bugs - no serious problems were reported since the controller was released in fall of 2023, but we decided that two major features should be added:
1) FAT media support
The new software lets you auto-mount FAT-formatted media (harddrives or CF cards) out of the box, without having to install special software. This will make it easier to copy large amounts of data to your Amiga in case you don't have a networking card yet (hint: The X-Surf-100 is available for immediate delivery!). Caution: Auto-mounting FAT-formatted media will only work if the drive really has no remains of an Amiga-RDB. Note that FAT uses the "master boot record" structure, which may not overwrite all possible positions of the Amiga-RDB (the "ridgid disk block"). Should you have the problem that a FAT-formatted medium is not automatically mounted, the first thing you should check for is remainders of an Amiga-RDB. If you are on Linux, just overwrite the first 64k of the medium with DD and re-format it, then this new Buddha software should auto-mount it.
Please note that this is NOT suitable to hot-plug CF cards that are FAT-formatted. It will work if you change the CF card while power is off, but hot-plugging is neither supported, nor recommended.
2) CD auto-mount and boot
If you have a CD drive connected to one of the IDE ports, it can be auto-mounted and if the inserted CD contains an s/startup-sequence file, the system will attempt to auto-boot from it.
Both features need to be enabled in b1tool before they work. We've made them switchable, so the boot process doesn't take too long: There is no point in waiting for a CD if the corresponding port is known to not even have a CD drive, and the same is true for FAT-formatted media.
Flashing the controller will only work if the flash is NOT protected. This is the default delivery status, so your controller will only be protected if you have made the decision to switch on protection. Check with b1tool: If you launch it, it's the box at the very top left. If you have set this feature before, you'll have to un-set it now, click on "save" and power-cycle the computer. Yes, you really need a power cycle, because the write protection cannot be lifted in software once it has been set. It only becomes un-set when the computer is starting from a fresh power-up.
There is no GUI support for flashing the Buddha plus one. Instead, you need to call the GUI tool from a shell, passing the previously-undocumented arguments for flashing:
Again, this will only work if the flash is not protected. After you see the success-message "File written to flash.", you only need to reset your computer. A power cycle may also do, but is not really required. However, there is no way to exchange a device driver in a running Amiga system, so you really won't get around a re-start. It may feel very Windows-like, but
it's one of the very few occasions where there's no other way, even on an Amiga.
Lastly, you may need to copy b1tool into the directory where you keep the configuration tool of your controller.
THANKS
- Toni Wilen for this implementation and patience with me
- Christian Sauer for his permission to use his patch to V42.20 of CacheCDFS
This software update only withs with the Buddha Plus One. It does not work on older versions of the Buddha controller, because there is not enough flash space on them. Download the new archive from our Wiki.
