WB2 on A500 with an A590 Hard Drive

[mchaggis]

Hi all,

After recieving your support to find and order 2MB of RAM for my A590; I have continued on with my A500 project.

To date I have found a Rev6a A500 board and a ROM2.04 and now intend to re-format my A590 from work bench 1.3 to 2.0.

I actaully have two sets of work bench 2.0 disks; one set i bought years ago new, and other I purchased recently from eBay. One set is mark WB2.0 another is marked WB2.04. However they both appear to contain pretty much the same software.

When I boot the A500 using the WB2.0 Install disk I use the HD Tools to do a DrivePrep; however WB2 can not recognise the A590 (note it works fine under WB1.3)

I have tried both my versions of WB2, tried without the new RAM on the A590, and even tried with my trapdoor RAM removed.

The A590 just will not be recognised by the WB2.0 Install software.

As a trial i went back to WB1.3 and the A590 Install disk picked up the A590 no problems; so i am confident that the drive is still working.

What can I try?

I have a Rev5a A500 board, should I give that a go?

Should I source a new BIOS for the A590 - I haven't upgraded it and there is discussion on the web about version 7 and 8 BIOS's.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,
Derek.

[mchaggis]

Oh, if only it did work fine...

The WB2 Installs disk refuses to recognise the A590; and after many frustrating attempts along the lines of your suggestion i have found myself at a dead end.

Under kickstart 2 i can use the A590 setup disk to HDPrep and format the A590; but when it comes to writting the O/S; it asks for WB1.3, not WB2 which i used to boot.

I have since started looking through WinUAE and some of the software ADF's that i have on there; and there is a different version of WB Install. When i run this under WinUAE; part of the installation process explicitly notes the installer can be used for an A590. My 'other' real flopyp disk version of WB2 Installer does not have this screen.

I think i have a dud early copy of WB2 Installer.

So how do I get around this? Is there an easy way to convert the ADF file to a realy Amiga floppy?

thanks.

[mchaggis]

Hi all, thanks for the words of encouragement and advice; I eventually got there by installing WB1.3 (I couldn't see any way around that)and then using the WB Upgrade program i first booted using WB2 from floppy, and was able to upgrade the WB1.3 to WB2 that was on the A590.

Bit of a mission, but that's part of the fun.

And for the record, the command version scsi.device returns "SCSI device not found", i suppose this is because the drive is an XT drive in the A590.

Next task is to get the Amiga running through an old LCD panel that I have spare.

ta.

ta.

[mchaggis]

The rules of the forum say that no question is to be ridiculed, this next question might test those rules...

Can I use WB2.1 with my ROM2.04 chip?

[mchaggis]

I've got KS 37.175.

The Kickstart is resident in the ROM chip, right? So are you suggesting that my ROM2.04 is not good enough. I though the only other upgrade at the 2.x level was 2.05 and all that introduced with PCMCIA support on the A600's?