@all

Did some more checking - the hard drive is operating in PIO mode. The crashes happen randomly but usually when there is disk activity (loading/shutting down programs, copying files, playing some vid with Mplayer).

I tried to copy the contents of boot partition to another partition but that resulted in constant crashes. I am also getting blockid errors from boot partition (SFS). So I am thinking following theories:

Hard drive has suddenly developed a HW error.
u1A PSU is dying.
There is some setup error now in UBoot.

I will continue my investigations but any ideas what could cause this instability or how to debug it further would be much appreciated.

_________________
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@GrumpyOldMan

Your symptoms sound exactly what happened when my 0680 IDE card and cables just ever so slighty started to shift out of alignment. I ended up rearranging my setup so there was less stress on the cable. And boy did I get a horror of problems before I fixed it up! HD errors. Drive freezing the system due to OS4 not being very fault tolerant of misbehaving devices or fault developing cables. And that is constructive criticism! UBoot started to delay, lossing devices and then the whole IDE bus!

BTW, what controller is your HD on? What's your setup?

With these crashes, are you able to grab a crash log? Do you see the Reaper? Perhaps try and save on a USB stick. You can also run DumpDebugBuffer from a shell after a reboot and see any crash log activity. Then extract any you see. Which will tell what crashed.

Have you tried also to boot the OS4 CD? This can determine if it is just the HD failing or all devices across the board.

To see your drives health status you can use the smartctl command. Use the -h option for help. The -a option is what you need. It will give you a table with any errors.

@Hypex, all

The hard drive (and the DVD-RW drive are connected to the motherboard IDE connector. The cables are nice an loose, but I shall check those anyway.

Yesterday I booted with no startup and tried to run memtest but even that freezed (HD light stays on and I have to reboot the system). I have no spare memory stick so i cannot change the onboard memory.

I need to dig up my original 4.1 CD since the bootable back-up CD I made from current installation (in last November) does not work properly (Workbench looks weird as it has low resolution and garbled graphics).

There are no visible Reapers - if I start a program it just freezes in seconds and the rest of the system becomes unresponsive (mouse is alive though). Sometimes crash also produces a error message claiming the partition (SFS) is unreadable, while Partition Wizard claims it is ok. I'll try the DumpDebugBuffer.

I have now acquired a new hard disk for fresh OS4 install. I have no spare memory stick so i cannot change the onboard memory but will look into that if necessary.

During weekend I will:

Checkout all the connections and also re-seat the memory stick
Try booting from the original OS4.1 CD
Make a fresh install of OS4.1 (with all the updates) to the new hard disk I plan to take into use
Try to rerun the memtest again

Wish me luck

_________________
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@GrumpyOldMan

Have you commented out the boot-process HID drivers in Kicklayout?

Roy Leith

Last edited by royleith on 11-Jan-2013 at 11:21 AM.

@royleith
I don't remember, have to check those when I get back to home. As a one debugging option I was planning to disable the USB completely from UBoot and see if that fixes anything.

_________________
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@GrumpyOldMan

Before you start making too many changes, try a known good power supply. It solved all my disk problems

Rex

@Rex

Good point, I'll try that too during weekend.

@all
I've been wondering - I still have the dead (struck by lightning) A1-XE lying under the table - can I use the memory sticks from that in my uA1? Are they compatible at all?

_________________
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@GrumpyOldMan

Nope, you need a 144pin 133Mhz. SODIMM Ram Module for your µA1

@Fred_AROS

Well, it would have been too good to be true anyway. Thanks for the information

_________________
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@GrumpyOldMan

Good luck!

BTW, you can also do a basic HD test in UBoot. I forget what the commands are off hand. But make sure it is read ony test. You can also do the UBoot system test from menu.

@GrumpyOldMan

I posted an ebay link on the first site of this thread with a working SODIMM module, you may want to have a look at it

@all

Not much progress during weekend I'm afraid

I ran the mtest program from UBoot (simple memory test) and allthought I did not fully complete it (very slow so I had to stop it after one day runtime to do the other experiments) it did no reveal any problems.

Disconnected all the drives and the memory from motherboard and connected them back again - but now (with the new empty hard drive) the UBoot does not recognize the DVD-ROM any more. UBoot does a long scan ("IDE1: ......") but eventually finds nothing. So I cannot even boot from CD now. The connection is the same as before (HDD as primary master, DVD-ROM as secondary master). I checked the connections and cables are nice and loose. Any ideas how to fix this?

As for power - i did not have a suitable PSU at home as the Compaq desktop case housing the uA1 cannot be fitted with standard PC PSU. Can uA1 accept any standard PSU or are there any limitations?

_________________
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@GrumpyOldMan

Quote:

Can uA1 accept any standard PSU or are there any limitations?

From my own experience I can advise to avoid "Dell" power supplies.
They have been known to use standard connectors and wire colors, but to reassign a lead or two to their own private needs. On my last job my boss replaced a PS in a Compaq with a new-in-box "standard" Dell supply. It would boot up (usually) but never run more than three minutes before odd random shutdowns. Later testing showed the supply to work great only in Dell machines, and the Compaq ran great once we got a new, non-Dell supply installed.

While on the subject, some (all?) Dell CPU cooling fans use the standard 3 pin connector, +12 and Ground match, but the digial fan tach signal may have been replaced with an analog temp sense signal. You can guess how happy your motherboard will be trying to count pulses from an analog signal to tell if the fan is spinning.

Kind of reminds me of a computer company some years ago that used a 23 (not 25, but 23) pin connector for it's monitor. I'll not mention any brand names, but a lot of people got good at filing the end of a DB25F connector down a bit.

Good Luck,
LyleHaze

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@GrumpyOldMan

I didn't think the mtest took that long. In any case I've found it has never detected errors that memtester picks up.

How old are your cables? Perhaps due to be replaced by new ones? Also make sure you have the proper end on the IDE port and drive. I once accidently reversed it and got trouble. But I have slave devices so it was more pronounced.

Perhaps you could try setting the CDROM as slave and attach it to the HD IDE bus. Or, try swapping the cables on the IDE ports. To test if both ports work.

You could also try the UBoot option to swap ports so it scans the second bus first.

AFAIK the µA1 acccepts a standard PSU but like a Sam is put into a desktop case which means you might need a smaller micro ATX PSU. Got the instruction book?

@all

Yesterday I connected both devices (the new hard drive and CDROM drive) into primary IDE bus and edited the UBoot variables to disable the secondary IDE. Hard drive is configured as master, CDROM as slave. This seems to solve the long scan problem and I can now boot from CDROM. This also hints that the IDE cable I used for secondary IDE might be somehow faulty.

The problem now is that I cannot get the OS4.1 Update 1 CD to boot properly. It loads the Kickstart files and the the OS4 splash screen comes out but after all I get is the 'insert disk' screen. I think the HW should be okay now as I tried to install OS4.0 from its original CD and that worked ok - I was able to partition the new drive and install OS4.0 in it. But the OS4.1 Update 1 CD always stops after loading Kickstart. Same kind of problem occurs if I try to boot from the backup OS4.1 CD I created from my original hard disk last November.

I tried two different 4.1 Update 1 CDs - one burned in Windows 7 machine and another burned with MakeCD in my trusty old A1200. Both disks fail the same way.

Any ideas how to fix this? Is this somehow a UBoot problem yet? Or do I need to install the standard OS4.1 (from the original CD) first?

_________________
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." (Groucho Marx)

@GrumpyOldMan

There is two possibility’s the RDB boot priority flags are wrong on your HD, or the DEVICES connected to your controller is wrongly defined in uboot.

If you do printenv you get a long list, where some of vars are _conf and _xfer, the _conf defines what the device is, and _xfer defines the speed of the device.

When you select boot from CD, it sets the device that it thinks is the CD to Highet boot priority, but if you have you hd to higher boot priority then that it try to boot from HD.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Both new HDD and CDROM drive are now in primary IDE bus, HDD as master. I modified a1ide_conf to "1200" and set a1ide_maxbus to '1' (disabling the secondary IDE). "a1ide_xfer" is "0000" as it has always been in my system.

I have set boot1 to 'cdrom' in UBoot, and it starts to boot from CDROM correctly (UBoot tells it is booting from OS4.1 Update 1 image, then starts to load KickStart files from the CD). After loading those files it launches the Kickstart, OS4 splash screen appears and then everything stops, and the "insert disk" animation appears.

I remember HDD has a boot priotity of -128 or something, cannot remember the boot priority of the CDROM. It is interesting that the OS4.0 CD has no problems booting up, but the OS4.1 update 1 (and omy old backup boot CD) won't get past the splash screen.

edit: just read from old amigans.net thread that having a low (-127) priority on you boot HDD partition can prevent the CD boot. I wonder why the OS4.0 CD still boots...

Last edited by GrumpyOldMan on 15-Jan-2013 at 01:43 PM.

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"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." (Groucho Marx)

@GrumpyOldMan

0 is not connected
I don't know if its 1 or 2 that is HD, but if 1 is HD then 2 is CDROM.
Number positions correspond to connector number.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

I have understood 'a1ide_conf' consists of four digits, one for each device in both IDE buses (order being primary master, primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave). So since both devices are in primary bus (HDD(1) is master, CDROM(2) is slave) i understood that "1200" would be the correct number - have I misunderstood something here?

_________________
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." (Groucho Marx)

@GrumpyOldMan

Something like that, assuming 1 is what think 1 is.
you might look it up on intuitionbase, they have more detailed information.

The reset of the stuff, you can configure from UBOOT menu.
the boot order etc.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 15-Jan-2013 at 03:02 PM.

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