Short: ATAPI PCMCIA CD driver Sony Vaio Author: amiga@aidanholmes.co.uk (Aidan Holmes) Uploader: amiga aidanholmes co uk (Aidan Holmes) Type: driver/media Version: 1.6 Replaces: driver/media/PcmciaCD.lha Requires: A600/A1200 Architecture: m68k-amigaos >= 3.1 Distribution: Aminet Kurz: ATAPI PCMCIA CD driver Sony Vaio $VER: pcmciacd.readme 1.6 (16.07.2025) About ----- PCMCIACD.device is a device driver for the Sony PCGA-CD51 PCMCIA CD-ROM. These drives do not require any additional power to operate and plug directly into the PCMCIA port. Reported working drives - Sony PCGA-CD51 - Sony CRX75A (16bit switch enabled) - Sony PCGA-DVD51 (reported by user, not personally tested) Sony also released the older PCGA-CD5 which may also work, but I couldn't fully verify due to the lasers on these old drives failing. The device driver supports hot plugging of the CD drive during operation. Removal of the card will appear as a normal CD ejection. The pcmciacd.device will work alongside other device drivers such as compact flash, floppy drives (pcmciafd.device) and network cards. Support ------- This driver has been developed primarily for the A1200 and works with AllegroCDFS, CDFileSystem, CacheCDFS, AmiCDFS and AsimCDFS. Execution has been successful on WB 3.1, 3.14 and 3.2. Some limited testing has also been run on a base A600 68000 using AmiCDFS on WB 3.1. Card reset patch is recommended for correct operation due to a bug in the PCMCIA implementation. Without this utility the card could fail to detect if the driver is properly expunged from memory and then reinitialised. This is an edge case for general use so not essential. A work around solution is to eject the card and reinsert to perform a hard reset if the drive stops working without CardReset patch. See Aminet: util/boot/CardReset.lha WB 2.0 is untested, but may work as the code uses only V36 library calls. I cannot support any issues with the underlying file system used, which may have their own bugs or limitations. Please read the documentation that came with the file system to determine supported features and configuration. Unplugging an externally powered drive, such as the CRX75A will upset the driver and associated filesystem. Pull out the PCMCIA card before turning off power to prevent hanging the OS. PCGA-CD51 housing can contain different drives meaning you may get a different experience with some drives quiet and others a bit noiser. Support for Teac and Toshiba variants are supported from v1.3 of this driver. If you have any issues then please provide the drive name as shown in FindDevice application found in the IDEFix 97 package. You may notice difficulties with some PCMCIA network cards. The CD driver will hang on to the device whilst checking to see if it's an ATAPI device. As of 1.4 it should release these sooner but will still take until a time out has happend to do this. I can be improved further by explicitly checking the card type and name. For now I've built this to have wider compatibility with any ATAPI PCMCIA device. Misc Notes -------------- Streaming videos from AmiCDFS using AGABlaster 0.9.91 has issues with the playback. Remove all Control options from the mount file with: Control = "" PlayCD distributed with 3.9 checks the supported standards flags when querying the CD-Drive. Sony ATAPI drives do not report full standard support, but the driver fakes SCSI-2 to allow the player to work. From version 1.4, the driver fakes 48h SCSI command to play tracks. This command is obsolete in newer drives such as the ones used by Sony. The faking isn't totally 48h compatible and may play more or less of a track due to missing the indexing capability. ATAPI implements a subset of SCSI-2 commands or commands which are totally different. Some are faked in this driver to allow expected behaviour, but may not be 100% and cause some odd behaviour like audio playback continuing or stopping early. Workarounds have been made for certain software tools and games, but only fixes these known instances. Please report any problems along with driver version and software being used. CD playback doesn't mix automatically with Paula and therefore will not come out of the L & R audio jacks on the back of your Amiga. You must mix the CD audio from the headphone jack on the CD player with Amiga output. There are many external solutions for audio mixing you can buy online. Driver Install -------------- Copy pcmciacd.device to DEVS: A mount file will need to be setup in DEVS:DOSDrivers. You can use the example mount file included in the archive that requires AmiCDFS or update an existing mount file by updating the tooltips and change to: DEVICE=pcmciacd.device UNIT=0 Only unit 0 exists for this driver on the PCMCIA card bus. See Aminet: disk/cdrom/amicdfs240.lha A newer version than 40.11 of the CDFileSystem is needed to run on WB3.1. If this isn't available then AmiCDFS works for 3.1 and potentially older versions of Workbench Note that other filesystems exist, but these need purchasing and installing according to their own instructions. If a device is required for setup then use pcmciacd.device with unit number 0. Versions --------- 1.6 - 16th Jul 2025: Fix for Trackdisk CMD_READ requests. 1.5 - 11th Jul 2025: Fix issue were 48h requests an end track that doesn't exist. Improved ATAPI device detection - should allow other devices to take over PCMCIA slot. Fixed driver expunge to clean up fully General rework of driver code away from old SAS/C framework. Fixed illegal memory access on start-up. 1.4 - 03rd Dec 2023: Fix card config timeouts to release other card types earlier. Fakes SCSI command 48h enough for games/apps that assume this command exists. 1.3 - 16th Mar 2023: Fix for Teac drive variant of the PCGA-CD51 drive. Changes made to increase wait on startup and interrupt handling. 1.2 - 23rd Jan 2023: Improved detection of ATAPI devices, especially for constant powered drives such as CRX75A. 1.1 - 18th Jan 2023: Fix for divide by zero issue on fast Amigas running PiStorm. Slight increase of read speed from version 1.0 1.0 - 30th Dec 2022: First release. Tested on 68000 A600, 030/060 A1200 IMPORTANT NOTE: --------------- Testing has been conducted with various devices, but there may be unforseen issues with other PCMCIA cards causing crashes or even damage to some types of card or data associated. Whilst this risk should be very low the driver needs to prod and poke devices to determine their function and not all types of PCMCIA cards will react to probing in the same way. Legal Information ----------------- pcmciacd.device is Copyright (c) 2025 Aidan Holmes Redistribution and use of the binaries are permitted as long as the file names are retained, binaries are unmodifed and the above copyright notice is reproduced. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.