So, you're up and running but you only have 80MB of your hard drive space? I suppose that's better than nothing, but let's see if we can get you running with the full drive.
I suspect the main issue complicating your setup as you swap the 590 between machines is the Kickstart 1.2 ROM. Forgive me if I missed this in an earlier post, but because 1.2 can't autoboot, the ROMs onboard the 590 need to be disabled via one of the DIP switches on the back of the unit. So you'll need to boot initially from a floppy that contains the 590 driver in SYS:Expansion--like the 590 install disk. Once the hard drive is configured and the system is installed you can use MakeBootDisk from a copy of the install floppy to turn it into a boot disk that enables the 590 and then transfers control of the system to the hard drive.
While you can use HDToolbox from 2.x or 3.x to prep the drive, it might be easier to do so from the version on the 590 install disk because the correct version of FastFileSystem is located in that disk's L directory. The UI is a bit clunkier than the newer versions but it's fundamentally the same, functionally.
I think you've done these steps already, but try running through them again (and maybe this guide will be useful to someone else in the future). If you want to use PFS you'll have to adjust accordingly, but here we go:
1. Assuming you've got the 590 connected to your 1.2 system--with the autoboot DIP switch set to disable the 590's onboard ROMs--boot from a copy of the 590 install disk (it needs to be write-enabled) and run HDToolbox.
2. Click "Change Drive Type."
3. Ignore the list and click "Define New Drive Type."
4. Click "Read Configuration from Drive" and "Continue" and it should pull in the geometry for the drive.
5. Click "OK" then select your drive from the list and click "OK" again, plus any confirmations. This will define the drive's basic RDB structure.
6. You should be back on the main HDToolbox screen. Click "Partition Drive."
7. You should see the partition window with 2 equally sized partitions. If no partitions are visible, click "Default Setup."
8. Click a partition bar to select it. Once selected you can use the orange triangle gadget to resize it. You can also drag the partition bar to move it around within the drive geometry if there's any empty space. If you want more partitions, select some empty space and click "New Partition."
9. Once you have the size and quantity of your partitions set, define their device names. Since you have a Conner drive they'll probably default to CDH0 and CDH1. Presumably you'll want them to actually be DH0 and DH1 (and the scripts on the 590 disk require these names). Make sure DH0 is marked as bootable (it should be, by default). Make sure DH1 isn't marked as bootable.
10. Now click "Advanced Options" and "Add/Update File Systems."
11. I think the new screen that appears will be blank by default. (If there are file system entries there already, delete them first.) Click "Add New File System."
12. Since you booted from the 590 install disk, the default values on the window that appears should be fine. Click "OK" and then "OK" again. You should be back on the main partitioning window.
13. Select one of your partitions and click "Change File System for Partition."
14. Make sure "Fast File System" is selected and automount is set to "Yes." The other values should be fine at their defaults. Click "OK" to go back to the main partitioning window.
15. Repeat steps 13 and 14 for any other partitions.
16. Click "OK" to go back to the main HDToolbox window.
17. Click "Save Changes to Drive" and any associated confirmations. This will commit the RDB to the drive.
18. Reboot (still from the 590 disk).
19. Format the partitions, either from the Shell or Workbench. Note that if you use the FormatHD script from the 590 install disk it will only format DH0:. You'll have to do DH1 by hand.
20. Once the partitions are formatted, if you didn't run FormatHD, run InstallHD. (If you did run FormatHD, it automatically starts InstallHD.)
21. Use your Workbench and Extras floppies to complete the installation.
22. Run MakeBootDisk from the *copy* of the 590 setup disk--it will turn itself into the boot disk that mounts and then transfers control to the hard drive.
I think that will do it, BUT I noticed something while I was putting this together:
There are 3 main 1.3-era Commodore hard drive prep disks floating around the internet--the 590 disk, the 2091 disk v1.27, and the 2091 disk v1.30. I previously set up a (WinUAE) A2000/2091 1.3 system using the 1.30 disk, which contains a newer version of HDToolbox than the one on the 590 disk. Using the HDToolbox from the 590 disk for my tests just now kicked up all sorts of errors. I'm not sure if that's due to the peculiarities of my emulated system, but you may want to try the 2091 disk instead. I think they are 100% compatible, but I'm not certain. If not, boot from the 590 disk, swap in the 2091 disk, drag/copy its HDToolbox to RAM Disk, swap back to the 590 disk, and run the RAM Disk version of HDToolbox instead.
The "version" command is hit-or-miss under 1.3, but you can tell the versions of HDToolbox apart by their window title bars - the version from the 2091 disk v1.30 contains the text "Version 2.0" and the version from the 590 disk does not. The file timestamps--if they are accurate on my copies--put version 2.0 as almost 2 years newer, so there are probably a lot of internal bugfixes.
Finally, the last version of the 2091/590 ROMs was 7.0, but Commodore only released a disk-based driver up to, I think, 6.6. Some folks in the community managed to assemble a disk-based version of 7.0, although I can't remember who or where it can be found. Point being, you may want to track that down to replace the version in SYS:Expansion on the boot floppy. Again, I think it's fully compatible with the 590, but I'm not certain.
