Hi guys.

I've been setting up an A4000 I acquired recently. And slowly been building it up to a good machine with the help of a friend.

It had KS3.0, an 040, PicassoIV and A2065 network card. It now has been upgraded to KS3.1 ROMs, a WarpEngine and a 9GB SCSI3 HD. And an IDE CDRW I wanted to put to good use.

When it had KS3.0 it would boot up straight away. But when I put in KS3.1 it caused a delay as it kept reading the CDRW drive, regardless of if a disc was in it. It delays the boot up and drives me nuts! As a friend was saying and I agree with, since a device is on the IDE bus, it shouldn't delay it! I thought KS3.1 would see a device straight away, see it wasn't type HD and skip over it. No! It reads the drive! My A1200 didn't seem to have that problem.

I planned to install OS3.9 and put it on the internet and use it for AGA/RTG games and stuff. As well as testing out programs for my 68k developments. And wanting to use the CDROM with scsi.device. Right now I have to use the atapi.device. But I have had major trouble upgrading it!

First after installing OS3.9, I ended up with the bug where it only installs 4 colours icons. Is this normal? I've installed 3.9 twice on this A4000 and my A1200 and the result is the same. But that wasn't the real trouble. I intended to first install OS3.1 but found you can only do that from the OS3.5 CD so thought I might as well install OS3.9. The HD had a plain OS3.0 install though I thought it would be better to do it fresh. But ended up using the "install over OS3.x or blank HD" option. And trusting that.

So it installed OS3.9 and I reboot it for my new desktop. The machine just crashes straight away! I thought it may be the IDE CDROM driver so I move it out of DOSDrivers and disabled the software leaving it as a bunch of files on the HD. I try again so the OS3.9 install is standard and boom! IT crashes again! I will note here that these crashes are unrecoverable. The machine goes into a crashing loop, with the OS3.9 kernel crashing the machine instantly, in an endless loop.

I look into the situation and decide to try and disable the ROM update in SetPatch, thinking it may be clashing with the WarpEngine or some such. I do so and eureka! The machine boots up!

The ROM update was one of the big points of OS3.9, so a little disappointed I have to disable it. Next I try and set up the CDROM. Darn it! Without the patch scsi.device can't see my CDROM! Entering endless loop here!!

After pondering I realise it may be the 68040.library. I never got to use an 040 much on my A1200 since the 040 card I bought for it slowly died later at the time so not used to these libraries. But, I tracked down the WarpEngine software and installed the card's proper 040 lib thinking that was the problem. I re-enable the patch and boom! The mongrel is crashing again!! At this stage I'm getting real sick of the A4000!! Certainly glad I hadn't paid $4,000 bucks for it in it's day!

After talking to a friend he said both the BoingBag updates are crucial. So I decide to install these and wonder how OS3..9 was released at all if it crashes on such good hardware instantly!!

Okay so I do this and the machine boots up. Aha! No crash! But, I see the first reboot and then, nothing else. I wait and nothing else happens. No crash but the machine has still locked up somehow. I try a boot without start-up since I can still get to the early startup screen but the shell never comes. :0-? Where'd it go?

At this stage I think it may be the FFS on my RDB, really thinking here. So I put FFS 45.13 on the RDB and try again. Bad move! It made it worse! Instant crash all over again!! Oh no way!

Okay managed to rip that FFS off the HD and get it back to normal disabling the ROM patch but still unhappy as you can see!

Now, after all this, can OS3.9 be easily installed to a WarpEngine'd A4000D? I have had so much trouble as you know.

Is this normal? Or has the IDE CDROM been crashing my machine and unlike the A1200, it simply cannot be done.

What should I do? Will it only work with a SCSI setup or is there something deeper at work here? Okay enough questions, see you guys later.

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: Hi guys.

Hi Hypex - and a happy new year.

Quote:

Hypex wrote: I've been setting up an A4000 I acquired recently. And slowly been building it up to a good machine with the help of a friend. It had KS3.0, an 040, PicassoIV and A2065 network card. It now has been upgraded to KS3.1 ROMs, a WarpEngine and a 9GB SCSI3 HD. And an IDE CDRW I wanted to put to good use. When it had KS3.0 it would boot up straight away. But when I put in KS3.1 it caused a delay as it kept reading the CDRW drive, regardless of if a disc was in it. It delays the boot up and drives me nuts! As a friend was saying and I agree with, since a device is on the IDE bus, it shouldn't delay it! I thought KS3.1 would see a device straight away, see it wasn't type HD and skip over it. No! It reads the drive! My A1200 didn't seem to have that problem. I planned to install OS3.9 and put it on the internet and use it for AGA/RTG games and stuff. As well as testing out programs for my 68k developments. And wanting to use the CDROM with scsi.device. Right now I have to use the atapi.device. But I have had major trouble upgrading it!

Assuming you have an UW-SCSI host adaptor, I'd like to suggest to use one of THESE to connect your IDE-CD-ROM to your SCSI host adaptor.

As a next step you might want to disable your internal IDE in your A4000 with "NoIDE13.lha" from Aminet.

That's the way I did it in my A4kPPC - I'm online with my A4k within 60 seconds after a cold start.

Quote:

Hypex wrote: First after installing OS3.9, I ended up with the bug where it only installs 4 colours icons. Is this normal? I've installed 3.9 twice on this A4000 and my A1200 and the result is the same.

Can't remember to have ever experienced something like this when installing OS 3.9.
Have you equally installed BB's I & II for OS 3.9?
Perhaps installing the BoingBags solves your prob...

Quote:

Hypex wrote: But that wasn't the real trouble. I intended to first install OS3.1 but found you can only do that from the OS3.5 CD so thought I might as well install OS3.9. The HD had a plain OS3.0 install though I thought it would be better to do it fresh. But ended up using the "install over OS3.x or blank HD" option. And trusting that. So it installed OS3.9 and I reboot it for my new desktop. The machine just crashes straight away! I thought it may be the IDE CDROM driver so I move it out of DOSDrivers and disabled the software leaving it as a bunch of files on the HD. I try again so the OS3.9 install is standard and boom! IT crashes again! I will note here that these crashes are unrecoverable. The machine goes into a crashing loop, with the OS3.9 kernel crashing the machine instantly, in an endless loop. I look into the situation and decide to try and disable the ROM update in SetPatch, thinking it may be clashing with the WarpEngine or some such. I do so and eureka! The machine boots up! The ROM update was one of the big points of OS3.9, so a little disappointed I have to disable it. Next I try and set up the CDROM. Darn it! Without the patch scsi.device can't see my CDROM! Entering endless loop here!!

I have a weak reminding that I had to use "SKIPROMUPDATE" somewhere in the startup-sequence to disable something - but I can't remamber precisely here at work.
I have to look at my A4kPPC-startup-sequence at home once I succeeded to "repair" my HD.
Currently it refuses to boot.
I use PFS3 on this harddisk and "diskvalid" from the PFS-CD's "Tools" drawer reports the following:

ERROR: read error - on block 0
ERROR: bootblock could not be loaded
encountered 2 errors

I repeated the procedure using the FIX Option - just like the documentation suggested.
Result:
checking reversed tree
getting rootblock
ERROR: read error - on block 0
ERROR: bootblock could not be loaded
encountered 2 errors of which 0 were fixed

Finally I repeated the procedure using the ANALYSE Option - according to the documentation.
Result:
checking reversed tree
getting rootblock
ERROR: read error - on block 0
ERROR: bootblock could not be loaded
encountered 2 errors

ANALYSE RESULTS

number of files.............0
number of directories.......0
number of soft links........0
number of hard links........0
number of rollover files....0
number of fragmented files..0
anodes used.................0
reserved area size..........25
reserved blocks free........1376


Today I got the idea to delete the "Filesystem" entry in the HD-Toolbox, save and then to re-enter it - perhaps PFS "shot" itself in the booblock and re-entering it solves the prob.
If not, I might end up in having to buy a new HD.
In this case my next reply might take a while...


Quote:

Hypex wrote: After pondering I realise it may be the 68040.library. I never got to use an 040 much on my A1200 since the 040 card I bought for it slowly died later at the time so not used to these libraries. But, I tracked down the WarpEngine software and installed the card's proper 040 lib thinking that was the problem. I re-enable the patch and boom! The mongrel is crashing again!! At this stage I'm getting real sick of the A4000!! Certainly glad I hadn't paid $4,000 bucks for it in it's day! After talking to a friend he said both the BoingBag updates are crucial. So I decide to install these and wonder how OS3..9 was released at all if it crashes on such good hardware instantly!! Okay so I do this and the machine boots up. Aha! No crash! But, I see the first reboot and then, nothing else. I wait and nothing else happens. No crash but the machine has still locked up somehow. I try a boot without start-up since I can still get to the early startup screen but the shell never comes. :0-? Where'd it go? At this stage I think it may be the FFS on my RDB, really thinking here. So I put FFS 45.13 on the RDB and try again. Bad move! It made it worse! Instant crash all over again!! Oh no way! Okay managed to rip that FFS off the HD and get it back to normal disabling the ROM patch but still unhappy as you can see! Now, after all this, can OS3.9 be easily installed to a WarpEngine'd A4000D? I have had so much trouble as you know. Is this normal? Or has the IDE CDROM been crashing my machine and unlike the A1200, it simply cannot be done. What should I do? Will it only work with a SCSI setup or is there something deeper at work here? Okay enough questions, see you guys later.

Hmmmmmm - As I wrote above - I used PFS3 - since early 1998. This is the first serious problem in 11 years - so it had been really reliable up to now.
But now I have to find a tool that can repair the PFS3-HD like with "diskdoctor" or "disksalv" in case of an FFS/OFS system.

Maybe going SCSI exclusively by connecting your CD-ROM via an ACARD bridge to the SCSI host and disabling the IDE entirely can solve some of your probs.

Annother thing that just jumps to my mind is a weakness I experienced with my A4kPPC already several times.

The contacts in the connectors between CPU board and motherboard tend to coorode and can prevent the machine from booting.

I normally use commercial contact sprays to clean them and to fix the prob - happens every 1 - 1.5 years.

Luckily it's just corroded/dirty contacts and not the "Reballing-Problem" some were suspecting.

Last edited by Dandy on 05-Jan-2009 at 01:04 PM.
Last edited by Dandy on 05-Jan-2009 at 01:03 PM.

_________________
Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@Dandy

"But now I have to find a tool that can repair the PFS3-HD like with "diskdoctor" or "disksalv" in case of an FFS/OFS system."

Have you applied the latest (and actually the last) patch to your PFS3 components?

http://aminet.net/biz/patch/PFS3_5153.lha

Then try to use PFSDoctor 1.6

EDIT- before to apply the REPAIR option, "check" the partition first in PFSDoctor ... (don't remember the right term now)

Last edited by Framiga on 05-Jan-2009 at 02:09 PM.

_________________

@Framiga

Quote:

Framiga wrote: @Dandy "But now I have to find a tool that can repair the PFS3-HD like with "diskdoctor" or "disksalv" in case of an FFS/OFS system." Have you applied the latest (and actually the last) patch to your PFS3 components? http://aminet.net/biz/patch/PFS3_5153.lha

As far as I can remember I installed PFS3 from my CD back in early 1998 and that was it - no updates since then. As soon as the "Read error on block0"-issue is solved, I will check my PFS version and update it, if necessary.

Quote:

Framiga wrote: Then try to use PFSDoctor 1.6

Is that also available from Aminet?

Quote:

Framiga wrote: EDIT- before to apply the REPAIR option, "check" the partition first in PFSDoctor ... (don't remember the right term now)

I will.
Thanks for the hints!

_________________
Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@Dandy

the above mentioned archive, is an important patch that fixes various issues, updating also PFSDoctor to v.1.6 (the older version is already onto your PFS3 CD or in the pfs3 directory where the installer copied it) pfs3:tools/PFSDoctor

Anyway apply the patch ... its important

_________________

@Dandy

Quote:

Hi Hypex - and a happy new year.

Hi Dandy. Oh yes. Happy New Year to you too and everybody.

When I'm on Amigawoirld.net the world can pass me buy.

Quote:

Assuming you have an UW-SCSI host adaptor, I'd like to suggest to use one of THESE to connect your IDE-CD-ROM to your SCSI host adaptor.

I was thinking about one of these. But it is pricey, worth more than my CDRW drive! If I wanted to connect a DVDRW drive I would consider it but then again coudl I burn DVD's?

Quote:

As a next step you might want to disable your internal IDE in your A4000 with "NoIDE13.lha" from Aminet.

I could, though I'd have no CDROM after that!

Quote:

That's the way I did it in my A4kPPC - I'm online with my A4k within 60 seconds after a cold start.

Sounds good.

Quote:

Can't remember to have ever experienced something like this when installing OS 3.9.Have you equally installed BB's I & II for OS 3.9?Perhaps installing the BoingBags solves your prob...

Yes, they are both installed and I made sure the BB1/2 NSD config is laoded.

Quote:

I have a weak reminding that I had to use "SKIPROMUPDATE" somewhere in the startup-sequence to disable something - but I can't remamber precisely here at work.I have to look at my A4kPPC-startup-sequence at home once I succeeded to "repair" my HD.Currently it refuses to boot.I use PFS3 on this harddisk and "diskvalid" from the PFS-CD's "Tools" drawer reports the following:

Ohhh., that's not good. I hope it wasn't scsi.device.

Quote:

Today I got the idea to delete the "Filesystem" entry in the HD-Toolbox, save and then to re-enter it - perhaps PFS "shot" itself in the booblock and re-entering it solves the prob.If not, I might end up in having to buy a new HD.In this case my next reply might take a while...

Just as well you found out.

Quote:

Hmmmmmm - As I wrote above - I used PFS3 - since early 1998. This is the first serious problem in 11 years - so it had been really reliable up to now.But now I have to find a tool that can repair the PFS3-HD like with "diskdoctor" or "disksalv" in case of an FFS/OFS system.

A good innings there. A friend tells me he wouldn't be without it. Though I found that he had installed FFS when setting up a system and got validation errors. He hates FFS! He can't wait to get PFS working again.

I tried SFS once on my A1200 but just couldn't get it to detect the partitions. They wouldn't mount. AmigaDOS just ignored them. I thought it may have needed OS3.1 which I don't think I had at the time. So I gave up on it and went back my always working FFS.

Quote:

Maybe going SCSI exclusively by connecting your CD-ROM via an ACARD bridge to the SCSI host and disabling the IDE entirely can solve some of your probs.

Well I pulled the IDE cable tonoght and tested it again. It's not the CDROM. It booted up (with expected delay) and activated the patch. Then reset it self again. The HD read a bit and then I am left with a blank screen and the floppy drive clicking. So it is alive.

I think there is something wrong with the screenmode or some such. The system seems there. But won't boot. IIRC the same happened when I tried to boot without startup. The same as with IDE CDROM connected anyhow. But don't have a 15KHz monitor nearby. Except this LCD TV acting as my A1 monitor. Might have to grab my SCART cable and hook up.

If thing thing was a PC it would have been on the trash heap by now!!

Quote:

Annother thing that just jumps to my mind is a weakness I experienced with my A4kPPC already several times.The contacts in the connectors between CPU board and motherboard tend to coorode and can prevent the machine from booting.

Oh no!

My CPU board did come loose recently. Drive me nuts! Thought was everything but.
Quote:

I normally use commercial contact sprays to clean them and to fix the prob - happens every 1 - 1.5 years.Luckily it's just corroded/dirty contacts and not the "Reballing-Problem" some were suspecting.

I'd hope not! Very complicated!

@Hypex

"The ROM update was one of the big points of OS3.9, so a little disappointed I have to disable it. Next I try and set up the CDROM. Darn it! Without the patch scsi.device can't see my CDROM! Entering endless loop here!!"

if you have a CDROM only connected to the internal IDE port, you will get the delay anyway.

AFAIK the system looks for s RDB

Since you are using atapi.device, try to change the SetPatch line in startup-sequence as:

SetPatch SKIPROMUPDATES "scsi.device" QUIET

i have no direct experience with the WarpEngine card but i know that the RAM jumper setting is a bit tricky. (and the 68040.library version as well)

_________________

@Framiga

Quote:

if you have a CDROM only connected to the internal IDE port, you will get the delay anyway.

Well that's useless putting a device there!

Quote:

AFAIK the system looks for s RDB

Thought it wouild be more logical to check the device type since now it knows a device is there! And if there is no disc no RDB!

Quote:

Since you are using atapi.device, try to change the SetPatch line in startup-sequence as:

Oh no! I want to get rid of that thing. It's unreg and only in place till I got OS3.9 scsi.device working. But now it looks like I have to stick with it!

I'll try disabling it then.

Quote:

i have no direct experience with the WarpEngine card but i know that the RAM jumper setting is a bit tricky. (and the 68040.library version as well)

It is tricky. My friend put some RAM in it for me. He said it should be 32MB for a total of 128MB. Whoa! The sticks are 4MB instead and and are not sequential in memory. Each 4MB stick has it's own slot im memory with gaps inbetween. Not good need to fix that!

@Framiga

Quote:

Framiga wrote: @Dandy the above mentioned archive, is an important patch that fixes various issues, updating also PFSDoctor to v.1.6 (the older version is already onto your PFS3 CD or in the pfs3 directory where the installer copied it) pfs3:tools/PFSDoctor Anyway apply the patch ... its important

Yes I will - thanks for the hint!

But now the breaking news first:
My harddrive problem mysteriously solved itself, while my Miggy was switched off since the vainly attempt to cure the prob last Saturday!

Only Amiga makes it possible!


Initially I didn't want to make annother attempt before next Saturday, but yesterday I wanted to switch on my PC and accidently switched on the Miggy and noticed that the HD-LEDs were flickering just as if the Miggy was regularily booting.

So I didn't switch on the PC, but unplugged the monitor from it instead and plugged into the Amiga.

And what shall I tell you?
It had booted without any error!


How weird is that now?

_________________
Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: @Dandy Quote: Hi Hypex - and a happy new year. Hi Dandy. Oh yes. Happy New Year to you too and everybody. When I'm on Amigawoirld.net the world can pass me buy.

I know that - no problem!

Quote:

Hypex wrote: Quote: Assuming you have an UW-SCSI host adaptor, I'd like to suggest to use one of THESE to connect your IDE-CD-ROM to your SCSI host adaptor. I was thinking about one of these. But it is pricey, worth more than my CDRW drive! If I wanted to connect a DVDRW drive I would consider it but then again coudl I burn DVD's?

Well, I have a IDE-DVD-RW connected to the UW-SCSI on my CSPPC via ACARD bridge as well and burn my DVDs and CDs on it using FryinPan.

Quote:

Hypex wrote: Quote: As a next step you might want to disable your internal IDE in your A4000 with "NoIDE13.lha" from Aminet. I could, though I'd have no CDROM after that!

You have to connect it to your SCSI host via ACARD bridge first, of course...
Besides that you can easily replace the CD-drive with an DVD-RW later on, as I wrote above.

Quote:

Hypex wrote: Quote: That's the way I did it in my A4kPPC - I'm online with my A4k within 60 seconds after a cold start. Sounds good.

Yeah - disabling the internal IDE gave a major boost in boot-up time...

Quote:

Hypex wrote: ... Quote: Hmmmmmm - As I wrote above - I used PFS3 - since early 1998. This is the first serious problem in 11 years - so it had been really reliable up to now.But now I have to find a tool that can repair the PFS3-HD like with "diskdoctor" or "disksalv" in case of an FFS/OFS system. A good innings there. A friend tells me he wouldn't be without it. Though I found that he had installed FFS when setting up a system and got validation errors. He hates FFS! He can't wait to get PFS working again. I tried SFS once on my A1200 but just couldn't get it to detect the partitions. They wouldn't mount. AmigaDOS just ignored them. I thought it may have needed OS3.1 which I don't think I had at the time. So I gave up on it and went back my always working FFS.

As I wrote above, the problem mysteriously fixed itself while the Amiga was switched off for five days...

Quote:

Hypex wrote: Quote: Maybe going SCSI exclusively by connecting your CD-ROM via an ACARD bridge to the SCSI host and disabling the IDE entirely can solve some of your probs. Well I pulled the IDE cable tonoght and tested it again. It's not the CDROM. It booted up (with expected delay) and activated the patch. Then reset it self again. The HD read a bit and then

Sounds good so far.
The same behaviour here, if my system is booting normal.
It sounds as if you're just one step away from booting.

Did you follow the instruction to create an emergency disk and boot from it for the installation?

If so, you could try to do an emergency boot from this diskette together with the OS 3.9 CD, add "SnoopDos" to the diskettes startup-sequence (after having backupped the original disk, of course) and make annother emergency boot.

This way you might be able to get a hint from SnoopDos what's going wrong during bootup.

Quote:

Hypex wrote: I am left with a blank screen and the floppy drive clicking. So it is alive.

Hmmmm - sounds as if your system gets stuck shortly before the "loadwb" command in the Startup-Sequence.
Monitoring the booting process with SnoopDos might reveal what exactly goes wrong.

Quote:

Hypex wrote: think there is something wrong with the screenmode or some such. The system seems there. But won't boot. IIRC the same happened when I tried to boot without startup. The same as with IDE CDROM connected anyhow. But don't have a 15KHz monitor nearby. Except this LCD TV acting as my A1 monitor. Might have to grab my SCART cable and hook up.

That might help a lot...

Quote:

Hypex wrote: If the thing was a PC it would have been on the trash heap by now!!

Yeah - but it's an Amiga - and so you have a fair chance to get it all sorted out and get a stable working system in the end.


Quote:

Hypex wrote: ... Quote: I normally use commercial contact sprays to clean them and to fix the prob - happens every 1 - 1.5 years. Luckily it's just corroded/dirty contacts and not the "Reballing-Problem" some were suspecting. I'd hope not! Very complicated!

Nahhhh - it's not THAT complicated!
It's just as with all old technique - you have to understand its needs and care for that it always has what it needs...

Last edited by Dandy on 09-Jan-2009 at 07:47 AM.

_________________
Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@Hypex

I have not read this whole thread. Perhaps you might find this helpful.

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/warpengine

I did have a warp engine 4000 a lifetime ago. However I don't recall much about it
except it was fast and reliable. I did use a SCSI CDROM. Yamaha I think.

@Dandy

Quote:

I know that - no problem!

Quote:

Well, I have a IDE-DVD-RW connected to the UW-SCSI on my CSPPC via ACARD bridge as well and burn my DVDs and CDs on it using FryinPan.

I have FryingPan, but registered for my A1. I wouldn't need to burn DVD's. Wouldn't mind trying to mount the OS4 DVDRWQ handler using 68k SFS though.
Quote:

You have to connect it to your SCSI host via ACARD bridge first, of course...Besides that you can easily replace the CD-drive with an DVD-RW later on, as I wrote above.

But even so I found out this wouldn't help as I still can't load the full SePatch which is my main annoyance. It could be causing other drivers to fail. Such as my network. Hmmm...

Quote:

Yeah - disabling the internal IDE gave a major boost in boot-up time...

I made an adaptor for disabling IDE and tested it on my A1200. I didn't know OS3.1 Kickstart could boot so fast! I swear I could almost hear the floppy clicking soo nafter I turned it on!

But a soft ide hack would be fine for me after it boots.

Quote:

As I wrote above, the problem mysteriously fixed itself while the Amiga was switched off for five days...

Good to hear it's back online. Perhaps it just meeded a rest.

Quote:

Sounds good so far.The same behaviour here, if my system is booting normal.It sounds as if you're just one step away from booting.

Yes, that step I never seem to reach.

Quote:

Did you follow the instruction to create an emergency disk and boot from it for the installation?

Not yer. I just found a floppy in my collection I can use. Next think I do on it.
Quote:

If so, you could try to do an emergency boot from this diskette together with the OS 3.9 CD, add "SnoopDos" to the diskettes startup-sequence (after having backupped the original disk, of course) and make annother emergency boot.This way you might be able to get a hint from SnoopDos what's going wrong during bootup.

Good idea, thanks. I set echo on in the startup and it doesn't seem to reach it. Not over RTG anyway.

Quote:

Hmmmm - sounds as if your system gets stuck shortly before the "loadwb" command in the Startup-Sequence.Monitoring the booting process with SnoopDos might reveal what exactly goes wrong.

It would if I could see it.

Quote:

That might help a lot...

Be dragging it over later. What fun.

Quote:

Yeah - but it's an Amiga - and so you have a fair chance to get it all sorted out and get a stable working system in the end.

Yes I do. And I prefer it to an old Windos box.

Quote:

Nahhhh - it's not THAT complicated!It's just as with all old technique - you have to understand its needs and care for that it always has what it needs...

Yes, to avoid the silver pattern baldness.

@Mechanic

Thanks. I have seen the site but it did remind me. I don't know what my wait state should be. I did enable 040, MMU and cache AFAIK. My friend thought he had given me four 32MB simms for it but they tunned out to only be 4MB. So the memory is all split into different chunks. I will need to fix that.

This could be the cause of all my problems! Imagine that, a hardware configutation error.

Last edited by Hypex on 14-Feb-2009 at 05:41 AM.
Last edited by Hypex on 13-Jan-2009 at 01:20 PM.

@Hypex

The software fix for the 3.1 long boot delay only works after the software's been loaded so it will help for the second reset and subsequent resets, but there'll still be a 30 second wait at the very start.

There are at least 3 ways to get rid of it totally:

1) Attach an old unused IDE hard disk to the internal port

2) Build a simple piece of hardware by soldering some resistors to an IDE header. (I think the instructions for this are on aminet somewhere, but sadly you can't do this and connect a CDROM to the IDE port).

3) I had success by setting an internal CDROM drive to SLAVE rather than master. Might be worth a try.


Regarding your problems with partition errors which suddenly fix themselves... make sure that your SCSI chain is properly set up with active termination. If the termination is dodgy, this can cause errors when reading from the hard disk and can cause all manner of occasional problems.

@dangerman

Thanks for slave CDROM trick. Looks like it has worked to speed up my boot up.

And @anyone

I now have 128MB of 60ns RAM on my WarpEngine. So I have disabled the wait state and it all seems stable.

But, I did some testing last night and still can't shake the main problem off! I've got the WarpEngine 68040.library in there and both BoingBags installed. I made sure the patch files are in there and activated in start up. But to no go.

It always ends up the same. The patch installs, reboot ands the machine sits there with the floppy drive clicking. As if it if started booting and then lost the drive. The HD light flashes briefly before this happens.

Now it looks like the early startup screen is still "there" as when I hold down the mouse buttons the LED flickers. Like it does when it comes up. But there is only a blank display. Nothing on my PicassoIV VGA out nor the RGB. And without key shortcuts I can do nothing.

I'm totally lost here. I just don't know what do to. I wish I had this problem when we were still using our Amigas as the main machine. Sigh...

@Hypex

To me it sounds like something might be crashing during startup. remove the QUIET from setpatch and see how far it gets .

_________________
C= Amiga addict
,,,
(Oo)
⎛☮ໄ
ﮑὠՀ
Couldn't care less what other people think, seeing that there's concrete evidence they don't.

@mike

That's the thing. SetPatch runs fine. I can run it from the CLI even . Everything adds in, then it reboots, then after that it gets stuck.

It's after all the patches have been made and the reset that is has problems. I did some searching and found that not all updated OS3.9 files are installed due to bugs, so might have to check my versions. I also thought I might have to install the OS3.9 FFS into my RDB, but I'm afraid to do that again as the last time I tried, it just made the machine crash. Ridiculous!

The only other thing is that maybe I should try the OS3.9/Commodore 68040.library but don't I need the Warp version? Why does the Amiga have to be so complicated?!

@Hypex

I use to have a warp 040 board in my 3000T system. OS 3.5 would not work.
They never told anyone for fear other people would not buy it.

Not sure if the boing bags fixed that problem.
After spending 2 weeks trying to get OS 3.5 to work went back to 3.1 and use it today.

@Jsixis

(This probably won't help but... )

I too have a A4000 + WarpEngine, Kickstart 3.1, OS 3.5, one IDE HD (cold boot) and a SCSI HD (main).
I don't remind having to tweak anything or run a WarpEngine specific patch (except to use the warpdrive.device for the SCSI HD). Maybe I kept the IDE disk either because I had it spare or because of a trouble to boot straight from the SCSI disk (I think I had to run a patch when I had no IDE, but then, it was when my A4000 was equipped with a CyberStorm PPC).

My A4000 is running fine 24/24 since at least the last five years.
(I'm pleased with the WarpEngine; I find it more solid/stable than the CyberStorm.)

@Jsixis

I also had OS3.5, but used it on my A1200/030. So it looks like you ended up with a nice box.

3.1! Wow. I remember in the day that OS3.5 was "recreated" by those who didn't buy into it by just applying patches off Aminet. Nowdays OS3.9 seems to be a minimum standard. Thanks to emulation and all.

I'd recommend setting up a test partition and installing OS3.5 into it and the boing bags.