Amiga 2000

[Tenacious]

Hi Brian

You do have an A2091 HD SCSI interface, right?

Anyway, Quantum may be the easiest brand of hard drive to find.  I think Macintosh used these almost exclusively.  They range in capacity from a low of about 20MB (rare) upto about 4GB.  4GB is a sort of a default ceiling for Amigas, but there are ways to make larger HDs work. OTOH, 4GB is a virtual ocean of capacity because Amiga files are small and tight compared to modern machines.  In truth, a usuable system can be had with any drive greater than about 100MB (room for the OS, a few dozen favorite Apps, and space for some user files).  YMMV.

In addition, Quantum drives kept their jumper option scheme pretty simple.  There were usually 3 jumpers to determine SCSI address (0 thru 6) and 1 labeled TE (Terminal Enable, set for the last drive in the chain).  That's about it.  Other manufacturers often included a mind-numbing selection of other jumpers that had to be set correctly to work.  It was often difficult to find published Amiga HD requirements versus the options on the drive (parity, error checking, delayed spin, terminal power, etc)  

I would guess that about any 50-pin SCSI drive less than 4GB made by Quantum should be pretty painless, provided it still functions.

[Tenacious]

Hi I managed to buy this off ebay I hope its the right one
 Quantum - SE21S011 - 2.1GB SCSI 50PIN 5400RPM 3.5" Hard Drive ( 361096154657 )

Looks good to me, especially if it works.

Now, you have to decide whether to partition or not.  If yes, how many partitions and what should their purpose be?  Which is your favorite file system?  There are worse problems.  

[Tenacious]

Hey please tell me you are joking lol  because I was going to partition it exactly like my A1200 and A600 but using one less partition ,so it would be
    350mb for workbench
    350mb for work
    and what evers left over Games/music lol and you are going to tell me I cant do that lol  

Do you use directory utilities like Dopus, DirWork, Ordering, etc?  Keeping the same hard drive partitioning conventions across multiple Amigas may allow you to NOT have to maintain unique Dopus config files for each machine.  This tactic helps prevent varied startup-sequences, too.

Some other thoughts:

If you are tempted to try some system enhancements (BetterWB, icon schemes, etc), you may find it useful to make several 100MB partitions as alternate Workbench boot partitions.  If you try a package, but, later decide you don't like it, you can swap the boot priorities and use the alternate partition to boot.  This can serve as a safety net for experimentation and a back-up plan, too.

Also, small partitions can be a useful place to send temporary browser files, email files, etc without junking up your application or system partition.

Many install scripts look for a partition named WORK:.  Upon finding it, some that are poorly written decide how the installation is to be organized without much user input.  If this bother you, don't name any partition WORK.  If they can't find WORK:, install scripts then become more interactive with the user.

 and another thing has just crossed my mind how do I get some of the larger files in to my Amiga unless the cd player that's fitted will accept a disc made up on my A1200 and I can transfer them that way ,or is that a no no lol ,thanks again for your help ,very best wishes Brian.

CDs certainly work.  Also, Zip disks can be useful to move files between Amigas and other platforms.  It is easy to find Zip drives that have either SCSI, IDE, and USB interfaces.  A PC formatted Zip disk doesn't care which interface it is.  

[Tenacious]

LOL
Calling it warning just reminded me of this http://youtu.be/jfh-YY465HA where the Robot
kept saying warning,warning and this was years ago when I were a lad

nothing to do with A2000 but we in England loved this show LOL
LOST IN SPACE LOL best wishes Brian:laughing:  oops after watching the clip I don't think he said warning as much as I thought, but still a great show .

Strange!  MeTV was showing the premier episode of Lost in Space (in Black and White!) while I was typing the message above.  I like DR. Smith better as villian rather than a coward.

[Tenacious]

Wow where did all the good programs   go ,I loved "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", and now in the uk  we get cooking programs and folk in the jungle eating disgusting creepy crawlers ,yuk .

Your Dr Who is a big hit over here, the new episodes and Retro is currently on the 3rd Doctor.

[Tenacious]

Hi Brian

I sure hate to see you loose hope for your A2091.

I'll admit that SCSI has more of a learning curve than other interfaces, but, once you understand it, it pays off!  The links Dan Beaver left (post #93) are excellent.  The first 2 really layout everything an Amiga user needs to understand the SCSI topography and rules of the road.  If something in those articles needs explanation, ask in this forum!  The 2nd link also talks about the long life of SCSI hardware.  This makes sense considering the age of some of my stuff, perhaps, made before companies had learned that most consumer hardware would be replaced in only a few years!

If I recall, the A2091 needs a newer rom (version 6.6 or 7.0 (newest)) to work with larger HDs and CD drives.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong.  Which Rom version on the A2091?

Finally, I recommended the Quantum drive because I have easily had the best luck configuring them. TE is Terminate Enable, jumper this ONLY IF the HD is physically the last drive at the end of your internal SCSI ribbon cable.  On a HD only system, the Quantum HD has to be at the end of the ribbon cable.  A0, A1, and A2 need no jumpers (The HD will then have a SCSI address of 0.  The A2091 has default address of 7, I think.  So, no conflicts.)

Lots of folks are pulling for you.  Don't give up.

[Tenacious]

I didn't say anything original.  I just don't want him to loose hope.    The A2091 really is one of the better peripheral interfaces and it is a Commodore original, if that's important.

I started out with A500s and then A3000.  When I later began updating my first A2000, I was put off by the fact that there was a Kickstart rom AND scsi controller (A2091) rom that had to be considered (usually non-issues with 500s and 3000s).  After getting up to speed, the A2000s may now be my favorite everything-in-one box Amiga.  My A500 and 3000 have sidecars, auxiliary boxes, and lots of cables and PSes to make complete systems.

[Tenacious]

Unless something is badly wrong with the drive, he should be able to pop in a wb3.1 install disk and it should boot the floppy, then he can use hdtoolbox to redo the HD,then reinstall workbench maybe.

I have an A2000 that used to take over a minute to start the boot process.  For that first minute it simply looked dead.  While I attributed this to the accelerator (Supra Turbo28), I never did figure out the delay.  Eventually, it started booting faster on its own, or I have become more patient (NOT).

Point is Brian, if you think you have everything configured correctly, give it a minute (Unless you smell the smoke leaking out.  )

[Tenacious]

Just a wild thought... is the A2091 in the first expansion slot left of the power supply? If not, insert there and try again...

Maybe that was my delay!  Doh!

[Tenacious]

Okay, so, the 5.92 ROM's in the A2091 are pretty old. I can't remember the exact details, but it may be that they don't work with Kickstart 3.1. It sounds like the card itself is working, though, since it shows up in the Early Startup menu, correct?

You can get a set of the latest 7.0 boot ROM's over on Amibay for around $20, or they show up on ebay pretty frequently. Might not hurt to have "the latest and greatest".

Like the others have suggested though, download a copy of SysInfo and try running that. It might help avoid ambiguity if you're able to post pics of some screenshots (even just point a camera phone at the screen might help, LOL).

I found some more details.  Version 7.0 roms are needed for drives over 1 Gig in size.  This page has some more info including jumper config:  http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=1161

[Tenacious]

Hi I hope you are right but I do have a harddrive that was fitted when I bought the A2000 which is spinning up ,but I am afraid that does not show up, and that one is a DSAS-3360 350MB Its the one that appeared dead but came back to life probably because the jumpers were not right ,best wishes Brian. ps I have pm mechy

I haven't searched for the revision history of your version 5.92 rom for the A2091 (you can probably find it!), but, I'd be willing to bet that it dates back to the early days of hard drives, before 2.1Gig or maybe even before 350MB sizes were available or common.  Remember, it took V7.0 to allow enough address range to access drives larger than 1Gig (1000MB).  Besides, you described the drive as "IBM DSAS-3540 84G8396 Apple ROM 350MB 3.5 50 Pin SCSI Hard Drive".  It appears that drive was latter brought over from a Mac (and interfaced to the accelerator?) by the previous owner.  I really doubt it was the drive originally sold with the A2091.

On the bright side, after you get the new roms, you will have 2 drives that can be run in your A2000 (if there is space in the machine, and, you jumper each to unique SCSI addresses).  Also, don't be too fast to reformat that 350MB drive, it probably has some applications that you don't already have.

Just for grins, did you get an accelerator with this A2000?  Which one?  Do you intend to re-install CD drive?  What other cards, peripherals came with it?

[Tenacious]

I see your A2000, Gizmo, and I raise you a second one.  If I ever have time for it.  

Hi Mike

Since Brian is off on a priority plumbing project,  I was curious about your 2nd A2000.  Do you intend it to be a mirror of the 1st one, or, are you going to expand it differently for some other purpose?