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Offline TumbleweedTopic starter

A3000D Boot Issues
« on: April 05, 2021, 10:21:19 AM »
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?





A3000T, Cybervision64, CSMKII 060; A3000D, PicassoII, Z3 Fastlane; A2000D, 040, PicassoII; A4000D, A1200, Blizzard 030 MKIV  (not working - next project)
 

Offline Pat the Cat

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2021, 04:55:36 PM »
Floppy CHNG signal is read by one of the CIA chips, not Denise.

It could be the drive is no longer sending the signal. Ideally, try with a different drive. Also check the cable (pin 2 is the signal for CHNG).

Your problems seemed to start when adding all your cards, has the power supply ever been replaced or even recapped? Because a failing 12V could have lead to your read/write errors on the system drive.

"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

A1200, Vanilla, Surf Squirrel, SD Card, KS 3.0/3.z, PCMCIA dev
A500, Vanilla, A570, Rev 5, KS 1.2/1.3 Testbench system
Rasp Pi, UAE4ARM, 3D laser scanner, experimental, hoping for AmigaOS4Arm, based on Watterott Fabscan Pi
 

Offline TumbleweedTopic starter

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2021, 07:14:23 PM »
"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
A3000T, Cybervision64, CSMKII 060; A3000D, PicassoII, Z3 Fastlane; A2000D, 040, PicassoII; A4000D, A1200, Blizzard 030 MKIV  (not working - next project)
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #3 on: April 08, 2021, 04:04:34 AM »
When dealing with wonky clock/SCSI issues on a 3000, a good first step is SetBatt. Use the amnesia option to clear/reset the settings.
 

Offline Pat the Cat

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #4 on: April 08, 2021, 09:38:24 AM »
Perhaps it might be best to just install processor card and  then install operating system. Leave the other cards off until after you've got a successful WB3.9 install.

That seems to be the step failing which has conspicuously not been happening. Why doesn't the hard drive like it?

I don't know how you are fixed for capacity but you can have multiple bootable partitions.

Also might be an issue with how you are partitioning the drive maybe. That's what throws the install? 3.1 it's OK but not 3.9.
"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

A1200, Vanilla, Surf Squirrel, SD Card, KS 3.0/3.z, PCMCIA dev
A500, Vanilla, A570, Rev 5, KS 1.2/1.3 Testbench system
Rasp Pi, UAE4ARM, 3D laser scanner, experimental, hoping for AmigaOS4Arm, based on Watterott Fabscan Pi
 

Offline TumbleweedTopic starter

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #5 on: April 08, 2021, 06:03:39 PM »
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



A3000T, Cybervision64, CSMKII 060; A3000D, PicassoII, Z3 Fastlane; A2000D, 040, PicassoII; A4000D, A1200, Blizzard 030 MKIV  (not working - next project)
 

Offline Pat the Cat

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #6 on: April 09, 2021, 04:46:49 AM »
Hmmm... OK, if you can get setbatt onto a CD - the issue becomes reading it on the Amiga side.

Is it possible for you to setup a WB 3.1 floppy with z3scsi.device on it, to let you try and mount the scsi CD drive using the Z3 Fastlane controller, to let you access the program on CD and run it to sort out the onboard controller?

I don't know if mounting the hard drive that way is really what you want, what you want is the hard drive being recognized by the onboard scsi controller. But it could be a workaround just to get that program run, and hopefully sort out the onboard controller.

Does this A3000 have real 3.1 ROMs, or is it softbooting Kickstart from original 1.4 ROMs and files stored on the hard drive?

Probably not important. And the Z3scsi.device driver is in the ROM of the card, so you really just need a suitable mountlist entry for CD0 in the devs/dosdrivers drawer of your boot floppy. And a compatible CD filesystem in your L diredctory of the boot floppy. That might just save the day.

A pain in the rear to connect the CD drive that way, but it should work.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2021, 04:56:43 AM by Pat the Cat »
"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

A1200, Vanilla, Surf Squirrel, SD Card, KS 3.0/3.z, PCMCIA dev
A500, Vanilla, A570, Rev 5, KS 1.2/1.3 Testbench system
Rasp Pi, UAE4ARM, 3D laser scanner, experimental, hoping for AmigaOS4Arm, based on Watterott Fabscan Pi
 

Offline TumbleweedTopic starter

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #7 on: April 10, 2021, 07:38:07 PM »
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.  :D

Best.

Weed
A3000T, Cybervision64, CSMKII 060; A3000D, PicassoII, Z3 Fastlane; A2000D, 040, PicassoII; A4000D, A1200, Blizzard 030 MKIV  (not working - next project)
 

Offline TumbleweedTopic starter

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #8 on: April 10, 2021, 08:18:36 PM »
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
A3000T, Cybervision64, CSMKII 060; A3000D, PicassoII, Z3 Fastlane; A2000D, 040, PicassoII; A4000D, A1200, Blizzard 030 MKIV  (not working - next project)
 

Offline Pat the Cat

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2021, 08:47:16 PM »
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

1.Usually not. The convention is that the first device (controller) and last device on a scsi cable have the terminators.

2. HDToolbox has a tooltype in the icon to set which scsi.device it is working with (and so each controller). It defaults to scsi.device. On an A3000, that is the onboard scsi controller. Different kickstart version to A1200 or A4000, which obviously have IDE controllers onboard.

I suspect the Amigsa is having an issue with booting from the onboard scsi, which again is a default behaviour.

I did ask if the A3000 had real 3.1 ROMs or whether it loads up Kickstart from hard drive (original ROMs). These latter systems need care when changing the hard drive, as they need scsi boot partitions set up, They don't have the usual early startup menu (hold down both mouse buttons on booting), they give a choice of detected operating systems to boot from, and will load superkickstart disks from floppy if they can't find a suitable hard drive using the onboard scsi controller.

Bottom line is - your hard drive is almost dead if not totally dead already. Needs replacing. Might be causing an issue just by being plugged in to the onboard controller.

You can download Diskmasher images of the Z3 controller install floppies (various versions from earliest to most recent);-

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

Even a manual  if you can be bothered to translate it. The text can be copied and pasted so this isn't so difficult.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2021, 08:59:09 PM by Pat the Cat »
"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

A1200, Vanilla, Surf Squirrel, SD Card, KS 3.0/3.z, PCMCIA dev
A500, Vanilla, A570, Rev 5, KS 1.2/1.3 Testbench system
Rasp Pi, UAE4ARM, 3D laser scanner, experimental, hoping for AmigaOS4Arm, based on Watterott Fabscan Pi
 

Offline TumbleweedTopic starter

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #10 on: April 10, 2021, 09:12:39 PM »
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

A3000T, Cybervision64, CSMKII 060; A3000D, PicassoII, Z3 Fastlane; A2000D, 040, PicassoII; A4000D, A1200, Blizzard 030 MKIV  (not working - next project)
 

Offline Pat the Cat

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #11 on: April 10, 2021, 11:27:14 PM »


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


Very handy devices. Take a bit of getting used to though, they do change the game a lot.

If you are doing emulation in a desktop, you might consider putting a scsi card in that. That way you could setup a new drive on an emulator. On the other hand, drives setup that way aren't guaranteed to work on genuine hardware.

I was a bit mystified why you were using onboard scsi when you have a faster Z3. The trick there is to fit just an external terminator to the onboard scsi, so it can quickly check no drives are connected. EDT: Might not work on the Z3 though. In theory you can swap over a scsi hard drive partition with a Rigid Disk Block and access it on any Amiga wiith any HD controller, assuming it's compliant in size with whatever driver is used on the target Amiga. In theory anything done on the onboard scsi shoud be go to go on the Z3, but no guarantees that anything setup on the Z3 will boot on the onboard scsi.

The thing with termination is - "last device on the cable" changes when you have external drives. If it's occasional use, it makes more sense to terminate the internal drive and the external drive. Because sometimes, the internal drive is the last device on the cable, and sometimes it isn't.

Real Kickstart on an A3000 makes drive replacement a lot easier.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2021, 12:30:19 AM by Pat the Cat »
"To recurse is human. To iterate, divine."

A1200, Vanilla, Surf Squirrel, SD Card, KS 3.0/3.z, PCMCIA dev
A500, Vanilla, A570, Rev 5, KS 1.2/1.3 Testbench system
Rasp Pi, UAE4ARM, 3D laser scanner, experimental, hoping for AmigaOS4Arm, based on Watterott Fabscan Pi
 

Offline TumbleweedTopic starter

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #12 on: April 21, 2021, 06:45:09 PM »
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!

A3000T, Cybervision64, CSMKII 060; A3000D, PicassoII, Z3 Fastlane; A2000D, 040, PicassoII; A4000D, A1200, Blizzard 030 MKIV  (not working - next project)
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #13 on: April 21, 2021, 06:59:51 PM »
It just means that LUNs are disabled - perfectly normal, and the preferred running mode for almost all cases. LUNs are sometimes used on multi-CD changers and on SCSI multi-card readers (a different LUN for each slot). Enabling them adds complexity and slows down scanning the bus, so keep them off unless you have a specific use case that requires them.

What you want to do is clear the memory loss condition - I think it's "SettBatt amnesia". If that's not the correct argument, run "SettBatt ?" to get a list. The right argument will be obvious. :)
 

Offline TumbleweedTopic starter

Re: A3000D Boot Issues
« Reply #14 on: April 21, 2021, 07:25:28 PM »
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
A3000T, Cybervision64, CSMKII 060; A3000D, PicassoII, Z3 Fastlane; A2000D, 040, PicassoII; A4000D, A1200, Blizzard 030 MKIV  (not working - next project)