A3000D Boot Issues

[Tumbleweed]

Hi all,

After many years in hibernation I fired up my A3000D the other day. I last booted it a couple of years ago and been sat in my office ever since. First problem I encountered the machine wouldnt boot from the onboard scsi drive. This used to happen but I could resolve it by warm resetting after the drive had spun up. Not this time though. Several warm resets and still no luck.

Got it booting off of floppy though and HDToolbox reported the internal SCSI HD and external SCSI CD Rom. Thought problem was due to bad termination. SCSI chain checked out though. There are no resistor packs on the motherboard. Resistors are present on the HD and the CD Rom is terminated. After much fiddling machine booted in to Workbench off the HD. Hey presto all ok. Set up and configured the Picasso II gfx card. All ok. Installed Z3 fastlane; all ok.

Installed Cyberstorm MK11 68060. And then it went pearshaped. Installed CS libs - new 68040 and 68060 libs in Libs. Started getting cheksum errors when installing OS3.9. Was running 3.1 upto that point.

Stopped booting off SCSI HD. Could still boot into WB off floppy. HDToolbox still reporting scsi devices - HD and CDRom but neither of them being seen when booting from Os3.9 emergency disk.

After alot of googling I removed the RTC clock chip. Removed cyberstorm. Removed Picasso and Z3. Machine booted off floppy but cause OS3.9 install failed wouldnt auto boot off HD. Used HDToolbox and prepped HD again. Seemed ok.

Installed Cyberstorm; Z3 and Picasso. Started to install OS3.9 and gain checksum error. Install failed.

Warm reset. Emergency floppy in drive. Booted then couldnt see HD or CD Rom again.

Removed Cyberstorm; Z3; Picasso; Switched on. Floppy light came on and then Kickstart screen. Insert floppy - WB3.1 install disk. Now wont see the disk. Switch off. Left disk in floppy drive. Switch on - boots to WB but wont detect disk changes or recognise when there is no disk in floppy drive - DF0. Also floppy no longer clocks which makes me think the system is not polling the floppy drive - problem with Denise?

Machine had barrel battery replaced by previous owner. I removed the replacement battery. Area around battery looks okish. Couple resistors look not too good. R469 looks to have corrosion. See pics. Agnes also gets warm - makes me think Ive damaged something when I removed the RTC chip.

Anyone got any ideas as to what the prob could be?

[Tumbleweed]

"Your problems seemed to start when adding all your cards".

Got it sorted! Plugged an old external floppy drive in. Booted off it. DF0: showing on workbench. Check the cables plugged into internal drive. There was the problem. I had dislodged the ribbon cable out of the floppy when I had removed the cards.

Now to see if I can get the SCSI working.

Thanks for your help much appreciated.

Weed

[Tumbleweed]

Cheers Matt.

Ive had a look at that utility. Problem I have is how do I get it onto a 3.5 inch floppy the A300o will read? I can download and unpack using WinUAE and then write to CD on my PC but I cant get the SCSI CD Rom to work to then write it to the 3.5 inch floppy.

I can write it to a USB stick and then use my Deneb card to read it but I cant get the Deneb working till I get the A3000 SCSI drive working to then install Poseidon.

I don't have a PC with a 3.5 inch floppy drive to be able to use cross dos.

Its a bit of a tricky one.

Best.
Weed

[Tumbleweed]

Hi all thanks for the ideas. I have tried connecting the CDRom to the Z3 but no joy. Reckon thats cause I dont have the z3 SCSI device. I could create a boot disk using Workbench and adding the Z3 Scsi devise to that but I still need to get "3Scsi device on the floppy. I dont think Ive got the install disk for the Z3. So back to square one.

What I have stumbled across is the Gotek drive. Ive ordered on and will connect it as a second floppy in the A3000 drive bay and then I can use a USB stick to get .adfs from the PC to the Amiga. Gotek was reasonably priced but it'll take about a week to arrive.

Fingers crossed that will work. 

Best.

Weed

[Tumbleweed]

Just tried to use the Z3 to access the CDRom Drive. A3000 wont boot with drive plugged into Z3. I get a black screen. A3000 boots with Z3 in place but without CDRom drive plugged into it.

Couple of questions:

1. The Z3 has the terminating resistor packs in place - should these be removed? The onboard SCSI has the packs removed with them located on the SCSI drive.

2. When using HDToolbox it reports two SCSI devices. SCSI.Device and 2nd.SCSI.Device. It does not report Z3SCSI.device - should it?

Weed

[Tumbleweed]

Cheers Pat. Machine has 3.1 Roms on the board. I found the german version of the manual for the Z3 - translated to english using google translate. Terminators as you say should ordinarily be in place on the Z3.

Hopefully when I can make more progress when the Gotek arrives.

Best

Weed

[Tumbleweed]

Hi pat  the Gotek finally arrived. A really great piece of kit. Came with a ready to go USB and DVD with tons of software - all my old fav games from the 90's.

After a bit of fiddling around I managed to get SetBatt onto the A3000. Ran it and I get this:

"logical SCSI units above 0 are not accessed" etc - is this 'normal'? What should it be if not and how can I use SetBatt to fix it?

Any guidance very much appreciated.

Weed!

[Tumbleweed]

Cheers Matt.

I got it working! Booted using the Gotek. Ran SetBatt A. Powered off. Reconnected the SCSI drive. Booted using the Gotek with Install 3.1 and then used HDTools to reconfigure the SCSI drive. Rebooted and bingo my Workbench and Work partitions are back. Just need to reinstall the OS and should be back in business. 

Thanks to all on the thread that helped me! Very much appreciated.

Weed

[Tumbleweed]

That part begins this weekend!

On a slightly different but related note. The A3000 has 3.1 roms and I have WB 3.1 and OS3.9. Which one is better to install?

When I last had it working I was running O3.9 with Boing Bags 1 and 2 plus the unofficial ones 3 and 4 installed. I also had some other patches and upgrades to libraries. With the CSMKII and Picasso II installed OS3.9 is my thinking. That said I see 3.1.4 is out but needs a rom update. Is it worth it? 3.1.4 vs 3.9 plus boing bags? What's folks views?

Weed!

[Tumbleweed]

Cheers for that Matt. I'll install 3.9 and se how I go!

Best.

Weed!

[Tumbleweed]

Looks like I was counting chickens.

Last night I partitioned the drive into three. DH0: Dh1 and DH2:

On DH0: I installed Workbench 3.1 and on DH1: I installed OS3.9. DH2: I left empty.

I installed the Z3 board between installing WB3.1 and OS3.9.

Everything ok.

Tonight, fired up the Amiga - no boot from HD. Back to insert WB disk screen. Booted off the Gotek. HD not showing.

Redid what I did last night. Ran SetBatt. Same output as I had last night - memory loss. So ran SetBatt A and did same as I did last night. HD still not showing.

Have removed the Z3 but makes no difference. HD still not showing.

Thought I had it sorted but now looks like IM back to where I started! 

[Tumbleweed]

Matt thanks for the tip.

I had no joy with the Z3. The A3000 does not have Buster 9. I think its 7. Z3 with the drive attached led to a black screen. I then dug out an old GVP II HC+8 that was in my Amiga 2000 (also not working  )

Fitted it in A3000. Set it up using FAASTPREP and all is good. A3000D is happily booting off the HD on the GVP card. External CD Rom is also working via the GVP card.

I now have a funny issue with the expansion cards. The PicassoII wont work in the lowest Zorro slot. It used to. I can get it working if I put it in any other slot though. The set up I have now is as follows:

GVP HC in the lowest Zorro slot. SCSI drive connected to it. Card has 8 MB Ram. CDRom plugged into GVP card.
Next Slot up Empty
Picasso  II in the next slot
Z3 in the top slot. SCSI doesn't work (cause of the Buster being 7 not 9) bit it has got a decent amount of RAM on it which does work.

I have probs installing OS3.9 - resource.library missing. Looks like install from OS3.9 CD isnt working correctly. It might be because of a 68040 library issue. I had this and the 68060 library for the CSMKII. Have read this can cause probs with resource.library.  Now trying a clean install.

Weed!

[Tumbleweed]

Drive seems to be OK. Have now got eh MKII installed and OS3.9 running. PicassoII is working ok. I need to set up the screen modes correctly using Picasso Mode (I forgot how fiddly this can be!).

Os3.9 HDToolBox tools shows all three scsi devices: Scsi.device; gvpscsi.device and z3scsi.device.

Got WHDLoad installed and running populous II ok. Takes me back to my youth.

I'm tempted to leave it as is as its working but it irks me that the SCSI drive is not on the native controller as I've lost a Zorro slot which I was going use for my network card to get it back on the .net. I could swap out the Z3 as the MKII has 128MB Ram so dont really need the memory on the Z3.

The other thing Id like to do is put it back together with original screws. Ive got them but cant remember which ones go where. Id like to get it back to original or as close as I can.

Weed.

[Tumbleweed]

The SCSI chip is WD33C93A-PL, pic attached. I have a buster 11 in my A4000D (which is also not working!). Could salvage from that.

I plan to give the board a proper clean with https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD40D-N-A-Contact-Cleaner/dp/B006UCJ5WQ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=isopropyl+alcohol+wd40&qid=1619458728&sr=8-1.