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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: motorollin on April 11, 2006, 07:50:49 PM
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I have just got my SCSI hard drive set up on my Blizzard 1230, and have migrated all my files from my IDE drive to the SCSI drive.
If I power the system on with the IDE hard drive connected then it starts up fine and boots from the SCSI drive. If I disconnect the IDE cable from the A1200 motherboard then none of the partitions on the SCSI drive show up in the early startup screen.
For now I have turned off the bootable flag on all of the partitions on the IDE drive and hidden them from Workbench, but I would like to remove the IDE drive totally. Any ideas why this is happening?
Thanks
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moto
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That's weird! Does the SCSI part of the Blizzard have a ROM which you can update? I had problems too with my SCSI; an update did the trick.
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No I don't think so. I believe it has the latest version (8.5). Even so, you have to use a patch called SoftSCSI to update on the fly if it's not the latest version, so I don't think the firmware is flashable.
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moto
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There is a hack made called NoIDE on Aminet but I am not sure if it will work on an A1200 as it was writen for an A4000. That may solve your problem. The problem is that the rom searches the IDE first and looks for another bootable device Floppy or other device. The SCSI controler takes longer to start up and thus misses the search. Have you tried doing a soft reset after booting?
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You forgot to put the filesystems to SCSI drive's RDB.
They're currently only on the IDE drive, and thus the SCSI drive can only mount the partitions if the used filesystem is in memory already (from the IDE drive).
Just add the same filesystems with same DOSTypes to the SCSI drive and you'll be able to remove the IDE drive permanently.
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motorollin wrote:
I have just got my SCSI hard drive set up on my Blizzard 1230, and have migrated all my files from my IDE drive to the SCSI drive.
Piru wrote:
You forgot to put the filesystems to SCSI drive's RDB.
but how can you format a disk/partition and move the files in if the disk has not got the rdb? everytime i use hdtoolbox to setup a new disk after the installation of disk hdtoolbox put by it's self the ffs on the rdb. only if you go manualy can change the setup of partitions and rdb to something else.
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@Piru
I did install SFS in the RDB, but I think I may have forgotten to change the DOS type. I guess when I formatted the partition when booted from my IDE disk it was using the SFS DOS type setting from the IDE drive's RDB, but the one on the SCSI disk is different which is why it can't see the partition without the IDE drive connected :crazy:
I tried booting from a floppy with the SCSI tools on it, with no IDE drive connected, and sure enough, the drive did actually show up in unitcontrol, or the other one, forget which... but it was there anyway. Too tired to think about this now... tomorrow I'll reinstall the RDB and install SFS properly.
Thanks :-)
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moto
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and reformat and put files once again :lol:
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There is no need to reformat anything. Just put the filesystem in the RDB with correct DOSType and it will work just fine.
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hmmm, let's hope.
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Too late - I decided to reinstall the RDB to get a fresh start, just in case something goes wrong later on.
Unfortunately when I installed the RDB it only say 1.7GB on the whole drive :-? I'm booting from my 3.9 Emergency Disk. If I use the SCSI tool rather than HDToolBox to partition it then I get an error that reading the geometry failed.
I'm trying a low level format to wipe everything out, then I'll try again. Otherwise, am I stuck now with a 1.7GB disk :-? :-? :-?
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moto
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Just enter the correct geometry in HDToolbox. No need to low level format anything.
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Well you were right, low level formatting made no difference. I'm trying to find the correct geometry (Quantam Atlas, 18.3GB, part no. XC18L011 rev 02-C) but not having much luck.
Is it safe to increase the number of cylinders without knowing what the actuall value is, as long as I don't go over the actual size of the disk?
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moto
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You can enter anything you like into HDToolbox, as long as the total size fits into the real size of the HDD.
You can also use other programs like HDInstTool or HDToolbox from BB2 so that the geometry is read correctly.
Bye,
Thomas
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Thanks Thomas. I did experiment with the number of cylinders so that the overall size of the disk was just below 18.3GB, and was able to create and format partitions. I have emailed Quantum to get the actual values just in case.
I've learned a lesson - write down the geometry before doing anything :-)
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moto
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@ Moto
There's information on a number of Atlas drives a this Maxtor support page (http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.9b6db77e46288dfd979844a791346068/?channelpath=/en_us/Support/Product%20Index) (you probably know they took over Quantum's hard drive division).
I think your drive is covered there, but don't know if their documentation provides the particular data you are after. Several years ago I had to email Quantum about specs for an ancient 250MB drive, and they sent me documentation which was not provided on their website. Don't know if Maxtor will provide the same level of support though.
Good luck.
P.S. Maybe you can plug the drive into a more modern PC/Mac SCSI controller and get the specs from a drive utility.
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The only value you need is the "total number of sectors". All other values are calculated anyway.
total = heads * sectors * cylinders
sectors per cylinder = heads * sectors
sectors = sectors per track
heads = tracks per cylinder
block = sector (these are used as synonyms, although they should mean different things. Terms liks "sectors per block" do not make sense if you use the words as synonyms. But even AmigaDOS itself sometimes says "block" where it should actually say "sector")
capacity of the disk = total number of sectors * sector size
sector size = 512 bytes
Bye,
Thomas
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Hi Thomas,
Can you actually use that calculation to determine the number of sectors?
disc capacity is rated as 18,300 x 10^6 Bytes
sector size = 512 Bytes
=> #sectors=18,300x10^6/512 which is not a whole number.
How do you use this calculation accurately? Also, is the listed format capacity the available space to store user data, or does it include the space required for the additional information present on the disc?
Cheers
Oli
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@Oliver
Thanks for the link. I actually called Quantum and they told me I needed to speak to Maxtor. I called them and they directed me to the correct part of the page, so I now have the geometry information.
@Thomas
Thanks for the info! I should be able to input the correct details now. I'm going to try HDInstTool anyway as I would prefer for the geometry to be detected rather than manually entering it (feels "safer" somehow). Is it HDInst.lha on Aminet? Is 6.9 the latest version?
Thanks
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moto
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motorollin wrote:
@Oliver
Thanks for the link.
My pleasure.
I called them and they directed me to the correct part of the page, so I now have the geometry information.
Cool. Sounds like they're continuing the good customer service. Kind of rare these days.
Oli
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Can you actually use that calculation to determine the number of sectors?
I would prefer to do it the other way (get the number of blocks from the data sheet and use the capacity to check if my calculations are right), but yes, it should work this way, too.
=> #sectors=18,300x10^6/512 which is not a whole number.
Yes, but it is almost a whole number. The result is 35,742,187.5. I guess the disk has 35,742,188 blocks, then the capacity is 18,300,000,256 Bytes, which is little more than 18,300 million or 18.3 billion.
Bye,
Thomas
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@ Thomas: Thanks for that. I've not been brave enough to approximate the settings that way before. Always gone the extra yard to get the manufacturers settings (sometimes worked backwards just to check the calc as well). I was always curious if I had missed some clue as to how to use the calc.
Oli
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Well I used HDInstTools which correctly determined the settings, and installed the RDB. When I installed SFS in the RDB, I was unable to select it as a filesystem to use! So I just wrote down all the geometry settings from HDInstTools, then reinstalled the disk with those settings in HDToolBox, reinstalled SFS, partitioned, and I was able to format the partitions successfully. About to start copying data over - fingers crossed! :-)
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moto
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Ok I think I'm getting there. I installed SFS in the RDB of the SCSI disk, partitioned and formatted it, and copied my data over from the IDE drive. Now when I cold boot with just the SCSI hard drive connected the partitions are seen in the Early Startup screen. If I cold boot the system, it boots and setpatch reboots the machine, but then I just get a black screen with no HDD activity or floppy clicks.
I cold booted again, and booted with no startup-sequence. I could see the contents of both partitions. I typed setpatch and allowed the system to reboot, and then tried to get back to the early startup screen. Still just a black screen with no activity from the SCSI hard drive or the floppy drive. I left it well over 30 seconds to allow the IDE search to complete.
Weird thing is, if I have the IDE drive connected, I can boot from the SCSI drive fine!
Losing patience and ideas now :-(
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moto
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Have you tried using FFS?
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No, I was hoping to use SFS. Why would FFS be better than SFS?
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moto
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Well it wouldn't be better, but it may work. I rad here somwhere that putting SFS on boot partitions could cause trouble.
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Flashlab wrote:
I rad here somwhere that putting SFS on boot partitions could cause trouble.
i use only sfs at both of my amigas in ide and scsi disks with no problem at all :-)
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Me too, but it seems some people have trouble with it...
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Well it has been fine on all partitions on the IDE disk, but I'll give FFS a try just in case.
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moto
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waste of time but... it's your decision
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If I cold boot the system, it boots and setpatch reboots the machine, but then I just get a black screen with no HDD activity or floppy clicks.
This happens on my A4000 after a fresh OS3.9 installation, too. It boots fine when I press Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga on the black screen, though. This is fixed by installing Boinbag 1 (for me at least).
SFS on the boot partition is fine. FFS should make no difference. If SFS causes trouble on the boot partition, it causes trouble everywhere else, too. There is no difference if SFS is used on the boot partition or on any other partition.
Bye,
Thomas
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@Thomas: what is your opinion on sfs v2x? have you try it?
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Ok, Dumb question but you do have SFS file system files installed on the new SCSI's system (boot) partition and are using the SCSI drives HDToolbox to set up your new drive? Because if its still set up to look at the IDE drives system partition to find the SFS files it will not work.
The best thing to do is copy over all of the IDE's system partition over to the new SCSI system partition. Make sure you have the SCSI drivers installed as well on the new SCSI drive.
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if you install in rdb a file system (any file system) any program that need it can use it from rdb, no need to search for L: directory. the meaning of ''go to L: to load the file''
is just for the installion at the begining, i think.
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amije wrote:
@Thomas: what is your opinion on sfs v2x? have you try it?
I never trusted SFS and I never will, no matter which version number it has. I'd never entrust my data to a file system which is under such heavy development as SFS. I use PFS3 for years and I am very satisfied. The only advantage of SFS which PFS cannot beat is that it's free.
But I think this is not what you wanted to hear :-D
Bye,
Thomas
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i have no problem to buy it if it's realy the best and if i can find any site/saler where i can buy it :-)
anything to suggest?
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Well here's something weird. If I boot from my OS3.9 boot floppy with just the SCSI drive attached and allow setpatch to reboot the system, then it reboots ok, and I can boot the system (well, at least I can see the early startup screen. I didn't actually try booting Workbench as I didn't have time).
This suggested to me that there was something in the ROM Update on my hard drive that my SCSI controller doesn't like. So I copied the ROM Update and NSDPatch.cfg from the floppy to the DEVS: drawer on my hard drive (the version was different before I did this) but it made no difference :-(
I'm going to try reinitialising the disk and using FFS just to take that out of the equation.
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moto
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So I copied the ROM Update and NSDPatch.cfg from the floppy to the DEVS: drawer on my hard drive
Did you actually compare the files before you copied them ? Replacing the files by the same versions cannot have any effect.
Additionally, after replacing the ROM Update file you have to switch off the computer to remove the existing copy from RAM. Copying the file without activating it has no effect either.
Did you try to Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga when it hangs as I suggested above ?
Did you install Boingbag 1 or even BB 2 as I suggested above ?
I'm going to try reinitialising the disk
Aren't you getting sick of this, doing one step forth and two steps back ? Don't you think it is time to investigate systematically what is going wrong rather than this trial-and-error method ?
Bye,
Thomas
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Just to check - you don't have an absolute device reference in your startup-sequence do you? Such as "assign sys: dh0:blah-blah.." which point to the IDE device name rather than the partition label.
Too obvious I know...
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Thomas wrote:
So I copied the ROM Update and NSDPatch.cfg from the floppy to the DEVS: drawer on my hard drive
Did you actually compare the files before you copied them ? Replacing the files by the same versions cannot have any effect.
Yes I did. The version on the floppy was slightly older than the version on the hard drive.
Thomas wrote:
Additionally, after replacing the ROM Update file you have to switch off the computer to remove the existing copy from RAM. Copying the file without activating it has no effect either.
I copied the file after cold booting with no startup-sequence, so setpatch had not yet loaded the ROM image.
Thomas wrote:
Did you try to Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga when it hangs as I suggested above ?
Yes. The power light dimmed then brightened, but the screen stayed black.
Thomas wrote:
Did you install Boingbag 1 or even BB 2 as I suggested above ?
They are both already installed on the hard disk (The SCSI disk contains the contents of the IDE disk which already had BB1 and BB2 installed).
Thomas wrote:
I'm going to try reinitialising the disk
Aren't you getting sick of this
Yes :roll:
Thomas wrote:
Don't you think it is time to investigate systematically what is going wrong rather than this trial-and-error method ?
I don't know enough about the problem to resolve it systematically. The only way I can troubleshoot this is to keep trying different things until something works. If you know of a better way to fix it, please let me know :-)
@Boot_WB
No there are no volume-name specific assigns. Not really relevant though, as I can't even get to the early startup screen once setpatch has run.
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moto
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I just thought of another possibility. Do you have an active terminator on the SCSI cable? If not this can caus you greif as well.
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Yes there is an active terminator at the end of the chain.
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moto
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Moto,
Have you found out the 1230scsi.device version (using shell> version 1230scsi.device) to make sure yours IS the later version which does not need to be patched using the softscsi tool you mentioned earlier in the thread?
If you have the space, why not do a basic installation of oS3.0 on another partition of the SCSI hard drive.
Since setpatch is much simpler (does it even exist with 3.0? can't remember) the amiga should boot fine straight off the scsi.
- If it works - you know setpatch form 3.9 is patching something preventing you booting.
- If it does not work you know that the scsi controller (or the cable) is not correct. Since you are having problems with the CD rom aswell it may be a scsi controller problem.
Weird that it would work with IDE connected though...
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Yes it is definitely 8.5 (the latest).
I did a clean install of OS3.9 on an SFS partition on the SCSI disk, without the IDE hard drive connected, and the machine now boots to OS3.9 from the SCSI disk without problems.
This is weird, as I didn't allow the machine to boot before, just booted with no startup-sequence and ran setpatch, so I don't see what the difference is. This is also a pain because I now have to get everything back the way it was :-x
At least it works now! Thanks everyone for the replies and support.
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moto
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Just for completeness (I know this is settled): you can query a SCSI drive for its size with any SCSI tool (I remember SCSIProbe, SCSIInfo, ...) giving you the size in total sectors. For SCSI this is all that matters because on hardware level the controller addresses absolute sector numbers only, there are no cylinders, heads, sectors (optical drives and tapes usually supports relative addressing, too).
The geometry in HDToolbox is just a clutch because it was made for various hard disks (e.g. XT drive in A590). It does not matter one bit whether you enter 10000 cylinders with 10 sectors each or 100 cylinders with 1000 sectors, as long as the product does not exceed the number of total sectors.
(E)IDE drives do the very same with LBA addressing.
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motorollin wrote:
just booted with no startup-sequence and ran setpatch, so I don't see what the difference is.
moto
but the ss is not only setpatch it's a lot more. other patches/tools/drivers/ etc. i wonder what did you expect with the use of only setpatch.
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I think you misunderstand. I booted without SS, and ran setpatch (which is the first command in the SS anyway). After this, the machine wouldn't bot at all, so did not have an opportunity to re-run setpatch, or execute the SS, or any patches within it.
I've found out why it's working after reinstalling. Setpatch is no longer patching the kickstart version! The command in SS is just "Setpatch QUIET". The AmigaOS ROM Update is in DEVS:. It says it is patching with 44.something when I run setpatch. But after a reboot, the version is still 40.68 :-?
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moto
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Well, this is working now. I have no idea what was going on. I connected a Compact Flash -> IDE adapter with a 128MB card to the Amiga's on-board IDE interface and created an FFS partition, and then formatted it. I then copied the contents of my IDE hard disk to SFS partitions on the SCSI disk. Now the machine boots OS3.9 off the SCSI disk with just the CF card connected to the IDE interface. Kickstart and Workbench version are also correct.
This is so weird, but it's working so I don't care. The CF card takes up no case space and makes no noise so it's not a problem. It's not bootable and I've hidden it from Workbench, so it won't get in the way :-)
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moto
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I thought autodetect of drive parameters worked on IDE too. I've allways used the change drive option to autodetect the size etc., even with IDE drives. As long as you're using >= 3.5 it should work. 3.1 wont correctly detect drive sizes over 4Gb (as you all know...).