'060 tower HD probs

[Will-i-am]

Working on the A4KT w/'060 board... the funny home-made by Atlantis/Philips '060 card, not my Cyberstorm. I gave up working with the previous installation as it seemed way too unstable, looking for parts of a previous network etc. So I boot from a 3.1 WB and then I used an Install 3.1 disk which had writen on it "with 68060 library". Said disk came from the previous owner, ie Atlantis. Then I low-level formatted the HD, verified the thing, saved to disk, formatted it and so forth. I go to install 3.1 in happy anticipation of following it up with OS 3.9 and at the "copying utilities.info" notification the thing hangs up. Every time. I tried copying the files by hand and it hangs up. Any suggestions? At one point I got an "error 11" and I have no idea what that means. I am thinking about copying only those files I need to boot the thing up with, like leaving out notepad and some of the utilities I never use. There is one thing, hardwarewise that might be a problem: the clock battery clip broke off at some point so the battery is just sitting there unconnected. Could that be the issue? help!

[amiga1260]

Try to fix the clock clip, I don't know if this is a problem. I always say if it's broken, fix it.

Which revision of the Buster do you have? If the revsion number is lower than version 11, than you can have some problems with A4000. I don't know what the problems were.

But you can try this download this file from www.aminet.net

:68060-V44_3.lha and install these libraries. If this fails, try to lower the maxtransfer in HDtoolbox by deleting some f's.

After that try to install OS 3.9

OS3.9 isn't very stable. I sometimes have crashes with OS3.9 and Amiga 1200 with Blizzard 1260.

[utri007]

Low-leve format is not needed

"On both IDE and SCSI drives, an initial low-level format has been performed at the factory. You should never need to low-level format them again. After partitioning, you *do* need to "high-level" format a hard drive with the AmigaDOS Format command; when used with hard drives, you can specify the QUICK keyword with the Format command to speed up this high-level formatting immensely. "

[Will-i-am]

Yes, well, you see I have formatted this HD using a full variety of low and high levels trying various combinations to see if there was a difference in the final outcome. And essentially, there wasn't. It gets to a point where the various tools indicate that the hard drive is prepped for installation of the OS and then I try to install the OS and it hangs at about 12%, usually (if I recall right) at the "utilities.info" file. It locks up and I have to power off. The only time I thought I had some kind of edge on the why of things was when using Quarterback tools it reported that all the files had dates in the future and should they be changed? To which I said "Yeah, why not?" and that's when I thought about the battery problem. But it simply changed the dates and then announced that the HD was ready for action, as in ready for the OS installation. The thing is I have had a couple of A4K desktops with bad batteries and it never did much of anything as far as booting up or installing an OS. But this beast just seems to get hung up.... so, does the funny board with a funny '060 library maybe have issues with the 'normal' copy command or whatever it is that installs files onto a hard drive? Or do I have gremlins in the house?

[Amiga4k]

You need to fix the battery problem NOW. A date in the past is not a problem, but a future date spells disaster.

[Will-i-am]

Future date spells disaster? YIKES! That doesn't sound good at all. Well, the good news is that I know a repair shop that cheerfully solders onto motherboards. They helped a buddy out with his fat agnus and battery issue and I suppose this is something he can handle. Here's a question, though, what means the battery thingy over by the "A4000T" logo? Looks like three out of four jumper pins sticking up. That is to say there are four points with only three pins sticking up. (Make any sense?) I thought I remembered someone saying there was a place where you could wire up a battery holder off the mobo to solve the problem of a leaky battery. Should I even be looking there or should I just have someone solder up a replacement clip-like battery holder? Oh, yeah.... and what kind of disaster are we talking about? The "smokes pours out of the back of your miggy and your house gets sucked into a black hole" or just a "all your files refuse to be read until the year 2500AD"?

[Will-i-am]

Well, things are looking up. In my colection of old computers I have two Intergraph CADD workstations, dual cisc or risc processors, I forget which. They used SCSI HDs so I pulled one out and plugged it into the tower. I was able to make a clean boot from a floppy, format the HD and install WB 3.1, including the required 68060 library. It now boots nice and easy off the IBM HD. The trouble now is that the HD is pretty darn tiny and won't do for much in the way of files and progs, so what I am going to try to do is format the beat-to-crap HD that's been giving me troubles, using the antique IBM HD I just set up. If it still doesn't format correctly I have to assume that the hardware is no good, right? And then I'll be in the market for a nice large SCSI HD for my animation software and files. Anybody have any suggestions as to how to be very sure that this will work out?