Apollo 1240/40 Causing hard disk blues :(

Well I got my 040 card. It's an Apollo 1240 404/40MHz. I clamped a 16MB SIMM onto it and plugged it in and it works a treat.

There is a problem however. My A1200 is having severe trouble recognising my internal IDE hard disk, a 5GB IBM Travelstar with two 1.95GB FFS partitions. It finds it every so often and does manage to boot sucessfully and run 100% right. Trouble is it takes multiple reboots, which result in either a long pause then the purple screen or just going straight to the purple screen.

Here's what the problem isn't:

1 - Lack of power - nope, hard disk runs fine and powers up al the time. I have a 150W PSU so I don't think that's the issue.

2 - The MaxTransfer for my hard disk- I set it right down to 64 (0xfe0000) and it still hasn't made a difference.

3 - The hard disk is knackered - nope, once evry 10 or so reboots it suceeds in booting perfectly and runs like a dream. Shame it takes 10 resets!!

4 - 1240 jumper settings - set to what they should be - 060, RAM on, SCSI off, 060 off.

I have a 1D.1 rev 1200 mobo,  any known timing issues with those? I also have an IDEFix97 board on the IDE port with a CD-ROM on Channel 2 Slave and the IDE hard disk on Channel 1 Master, are IDEFix97 boards compatible with Apollo 1240s? Everything else is standard equipment.

[Ryu]

Didn't the guys on the IRC channel pass on what I said? I hung around for ages but you never returned. Anyhow try snipping pin 1 of the IDE cable that goes to the HDD.

Ryu wrote:
Didn't the guys on the IRC channel pass on what I said?

Yes, and I tired altering the MavTransfer (see comment in original post) but no luck.

I hung around for ages but you never returned.

Yeh ISPs choose the stupidest mooments to **** up don't they.

Anyhow try snipping pin 1 of the IDE cable that goes to the HDD.

What does that do? I mean I can try it but I wanna know what your motive is frst []

[blobrana]

The spin up of the HD is too slow...
(nothing to do with the  maxtran rate, in-fact increase that number to 120)

Yes, cut the IDE wire (coloured red) , the one next to the HD power port...

Careful not to cut any other wires in the ide cable

Alternatively buy a IDE interface and new HD, AND USE THE OLD HD AS A secondary...(good for backups!)

[Paul_Gadd]

Cut Pin1 on the IDE cable.

Well the hard disk is only 18months old (March 2001) so I'd have expected better. I also don't currently have tha facility to make up a cable for an external 3.5".

Am I right in thinking the 1st pin is the reset/ready signal? If I cut that will it automatically assume the hard disk is ready, wether it is ir not?

[Damion]

 Cutting the cable won't hurt anything, but I'm using a Travelstar
(and Blizzard card) with no problem, so I know that it should
definately work for you. Just another painful experience
along the road of Amiga upgrading!

[blobrana]

yes. ;-)

[Doobrey]

MacMiga wrote:
Am I right in thinking the 1st pin is the reset/ready signal? If I cut that will it automatically assume the hard disk is ready, wether it is ir not?

Close...
Cutting the reset line (pin 1) will stop any reset signals going to the HD. Some old HD`s would spin down then up again on a reset.
 The last drive I had to do this on was a piddly 105MB, every drive since then has been OK for me (although I`ve never used bigger than 4GB in my amigas)

 Anyway, as others have said, it won`t hurt to cut the cable. You`ll still have to do a warm reboot after the the HD has spun up though.

Ooh, silly question, but does your 1200 have the 3.1 or the 3.0 ROMs ?
 I only ask cos the 3.1 ROMs have a longer delay to allow HD`s to spin up compared to the older 3.0 version.

[Damion]

Aha, the 3.0 roms may just nail it...that may
explain why the Travelstar worked fine for me.

I have 3.1 ROMs. Nipping the Reset line did the trick, after 1 reboot, apart from when it crashed then it got a bit confused for a few seconds and lost the hard disk, presumably because the lack of reset meant the drive was halfway through an operation or something. Anyway, it does work a lot better now.

I know it took forever to recognisr the hard disk without the CPU upgrade card in, I wonder if it's just that everything is a lottle faster and so it doesn't get time to detect it. It's funny  that it should do that on such a new hard disk but then it is a 9mm form factor drive that was pulled from an Apple iBook, so I dunno if it was in the fritz in that machine or not.

Anyway, I'm happy now . The exrta RAM has stopped my screen corrupting when I use my homemade VGA adapter and the 'VGAOnly' module in Workbench, shame it only works in Workbench but hey