Amiga 3000 boot issues

[Pat the Cat]

If the hard drive has packed up then the onboard ROMs are just giving you the initial "Load Kickstart from floppy" options. I guess that means the machine has a ROM tower?

And also, the Kickstart 2 floppy disk has a read error and the Kiskstart loader can't read it in to memory.

This is not too bad, but it looks like your mechanical hard drive, after many years of spinning, has bit the dust.
v
Make a careful note of the ID the hard drive is set too. That would be my first step.

Next, you have to setup a replacement hard drive or scsi2sd or Rascsi. That has to be partitioned just so, in that the contents of the floppy Kickstart disks onto the relevant "Kickstart only" areas. With the right scsi ID number so the motherboard ROMs can detect it and load the Kickstart file into fast memory.

I can't remember whether the A3000 had any non-volatile RAM to store scsi information in. Might have been the A3000T. If the battery backed up RAM stored the settings that might be a problem. I don't think so though, otherwise it wouldn't have ever booted from when you took the thing out.

I'll have a delve and see what I can come up with that's more specific.

Pretty sure size of the hard drive isn't an issue. Could be wrong on that, but usual 4 gig full size 2 gig full compatibiity on partition sizes.

Break out of the boot with ctrl-c and edit, comment out the setclock on the WB 1.3 floppy. Then you need a compatible HD Toolbox to set up the new hard drive.

[Pat the Cat]

Are you trying to boot a "new" hard drive? I've found that the 1.4 ROMs have very specific/unusual behavior when it comes to booting from floppy vs. hard drive.

First, the drive must have the correct partition layout. The 1.3 partition must have the device name (in HDToolbox) as WB_1.3: and the 2.0 partition must have the name WB_2.x:. The file Devs:Kickstart must exist on each partition in order for the 1.4 ROMs to boot the respective OS version.

The 1.3 partition will be hidden if booting 2.x and the 2.x partition will be hidden if booting 1.3. I semi-remember the partitions being hidden in different ways if you load SuperKickstart from floppy instead of hard disk.

Very indepth "how to" in part 1

http://amigax1000.blogspot.com/2019/08/my-amiga-3000-build-part-1.html

Part 3 of the same blog contains the file system type, it's usual FFs mask 0X444F5301 but odd version number (Earlier than 2, V35. 22412 bytes long.

The kickstart partitions are seperate from the Workbench partitions (detais on Part 3 again). God knows why, but I guess it keeps the Kickstart partitions from being taken out by software causes.

Estimated mean time between failure, less than 2 years. The previous hard drive did very very well.

EDIT: Is it confirmed that the dead drive is the drive that had the hidden Kickstart partitions? It might not be so. You could try them both seperately with correct cable termination.

[Pat the Cat]

Grey is not so bad on an A3000. Usually means lack of access to boot ROM.

I thought the image for WB_2.x was bigger than the 1.3 image?

If so, the reason why one works and the other didn't would point to either the floppy corrupting the reading, or maybe a faulty fast RAM chip. those ZIP scRAM chips are HUGELY sensitive to static, most easily damaged component I've encountered on Amiga (even worse than CIA chips)

I guess if you had an adf of a super kickstart disk, you could try that on a Gotek? Faulty floppy drive is most likely explanation.

I guess if you got the Amax card and the Mac drive is OK, at least can plug that into different machine.

It could be that WB2.04 doesn't work with the earlier A3000 kickstart. But you did say that games didn't like it either for some reason, caused crashes.

A thought - have you checked the power rails? Perhaps the power supply is dying, taking out hardware with wobbly supplies.

[Pat the Cat]

Looking more like software problem, incompatible with later Workbench 2.04 floppies than hardware i guess.

Is Envarc: created or assigned at that point? You could try assigning it, maybe difference between your Kickstart ROM disk Oand a 500 Plus kickstart ROM.

Or you could try ctrl-c again and go for a quick n ditry boot;-

Binddrivers
LoadWb
Endcli

If you want to check hardware, memory, adf for a test kit can be download for that, should work in 1.3. It's zipped up.

https://github.com/keirf/Amiga-Stuff/releasest

[Pat the Cat]

Corrected link to Amiga test Kit download (1.6 latest at present);-

https://github.com/keirf/Amiga-Stuff/releases

Quite thorough comparisons of all Amiga Kickstart releases and memory maps (A3000 is 2nd column from right, rightmost is A4000);-

https://amigacoding.com/index.php?title=Amiga_memory_map

You can't mix static column ZIP chips and FP (fast page) ZIP chips (1MB x 4 size) so do check any spares to make sure they match the type of what is on there. It won't work. You to have google the part number and "datasheet" to ffind a pdf of an old datasheet that will tell you if it's static column or not (preferred on the A3000 because it's faster with an 030 in burst mode).

And DO earth yourself when touching these chips or you'll blow 'em.

My guess from memory on which one... if you look at the board with chip RAM beneath the fast RAM... the RAM builds up in layers of 2 chips on each row for each bank. The suspect chip would be on the top row furthest from the chip RAM, but I'm not sure on the left side or right side or which position exactly. Probably third from the left on a 12mb A3000, but that's a guess.

It depends how the ROM is mapped, to the very top and end of fast RAM or the beginning. Usually it's the end on an Amiga, hence my guess.

[Pat the Cat]

I was wrong about how RAM i laid out, but not too much.

Here's a video of somebody swapping out 4MB of fast page mode for 8MB static column RAM on an A3000.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUEt_7I12vU

When you finally get a memory checker, should help you work out which chips are dead,

At the very least it should help to get a 4MB bank working which lets you boot WB2.04.

EDIT: A bit of good news if you are prepared to invest in a build and sell your spares.

https://www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/Amiga_3000_Desktop_SIMM_ZIP_Ram_Adapter.html

[Pat the Cat]

Or this version, has the simms mounted vertically. I think this too tall for A3640, hence low profile one above.

https://www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/Amiga_3000_Tower_SIMM_ZIP_Ram_Adapter.html

The 10% speed difference is only for memory access, not for overall system speed (more like 0.1% of that).

[Pat the Cat]

I can't say I'm surprised scuzz. Your freewheelin' "Romany" spirit is alien to the idea of "master disks".

Also not surprised you change the subject when the idea of "upgrades" are introduced into the conversation.

Anyway, hopefully you'll at least have a working Mac working again,,. Fingers crossed, I'm rooting for you.