Just bought GVP HD8+ hard drive!

[AmigaBruno]

@AmigaBruno

Hello there, my apologies for perhaps confusing you with detail, I will try and clear this up for you.  but first if I may, I would not recommend those 80MB SCSI HDD's at that price - it is also touch and go if it fitted within the GVP HD8+ casing.  To be sincerely honest, I would sooner send you a prepared one for postage cost before I let you suffer those prices.

I should also mention that POWER is very important here, the original GVP A500HD8+ provides 4amps on the +5 rail buy ONLY 0.5amps on the +12v rail.  if you try to run a HDD that requires more +12 volt power (like newer SCSI drives) you will destroy the PSU.

Please check your GVP Power Supply, if you are unsure - just take a picture and post it here I am sure either I or a fellow member can help.

_____________________


Now, In ALL my experiments the GVP controller (without GURU-ROM) appears limited to only being able to access 3.67GB of data storage.  It can see larger drives and with HDToolsBox you can even create partitions - however any partition that is outside the first 3.67GB does not mount, nor does any partition that spans past this amount.

I.e. Partition HD3: size of [ 1.1GB ] starting at 3GB to 4.1GB spans past this 3.67GB clipping area.  I am unsure why, I have been informed that this should not be, however I have tried many disks and many GVP controllers and the above holds true for the following -

Geforce - 040 / Combi 040
Impact A2000 HC
Impact A2000 HC Series II
Impact A2000 HC+8 Series II
Impact A500 HD8+ Series II

I have tried the above on various A2000 / A4000 motherboards as well as an A3000 motherboard.

Now, this isn't a problem, after all one could have a couple of disks and that should easily be most Amiga software published - most certainly all of the best software.

That aside, its very easy to set up a large hard disk to only use the first 3.67GB of space.  I would be more than happy to help you - it maybe daunting at first - but once you get the hang of it - it truly is easy.

_____________________


Now, FFS or Fast File System (available with KS2.x) can partition up to 4GB of data in one fat chunk however with the GVP controller this can cause problems, so I would suggest perhaps two or three partitions something like

DH0: 512MB (System) - Workbench Install
DH1: 2.1GB (Games)
DH2: 1GB (Work)

This will certainly give you a great start to getting the most from your A500.  I purchased a couple of PC SCSI cards so I could prepare HardDisks on my PC under WinUAE - its much MUCH quicker - if you would like I can help you with your hard-disk.

_____________________


Now a little more information that I think will help you.

SFS - Smart File System
This allows for VERY large partition, 128GB I believe, it also requires a minimum 020 processor - however CPU aside it is 20% faster access than FFS.

PFS3 - Professional File System 3
Now open source (for the most part) PFS3 supports larger Hard Disks as well as large Partition sizes (about 100GB) - it also has optimizations for stock 68000 CPU's all the way up to 040 and 060 processors.  Like SFS, PFS3 also provides a speed boost in both accessing the device and transferring data.  However this increase is down to the controller, the device and the CPU of the host system.

NSD - New Style Device
This is an older method now - however a lot of devices support this interface (some by a little hacking) to allow direct commands to the device.  this allows for larger disk sizes to be supported.


There, I hope that helps, if there is anything thats too complicated or you would like more detail on, please just ask =)

I think that what's good about the 80Mb SCSI hard drive I posted the link to is that it's old, but unused, the price  is only £15, and postage is free. This is compared to other hard drives costing more, with a classic Mac OS installed, and where the postage is about as much, or even more than the hard drive itself. If you search for "SCSI hard drive 50 pin Mb", then you'll see what I mean. Thanks for your offer of a prepared hard drive for postage only. How much?

My GVP power supply details as printed on the sticky label are as follows.

DVE switching power supply
Model No. DSA1502
Input 100-250V
47-63Hz 0.32A
Output +5V 2A
+12V 0.5A

I hope this tells you something.

[AmigaBruno]

@AmigaBruno

Hello there,  looking at the specification of you PSU (its identical to mine)

5volts at 2amps
12 volts at 0.5 amps

This sadly reduces the options available for what Hard-Disks you can use.  So before you buy make sure you ask the seller what power requirements the device has - should that they exceed either 5 volt or 12 amperage - then you should avoid these devices.

I would be happy to prepare you a 4.1GB Viking - free just the cost of postage which would be under a £5 for shipping within the UK.  I could possibly throw in a spare SCA80 adapter as well for cost - i.e. you can just refund me the ebay price for a new one.

I will say that the Drive I have here requires more amps on the +12 volt so might not be good for you at the moment - alternatively you could look at upgrading your GVP A500HD8 power supply to an ATX or mATX PSU.



This is the pin-out for the GVP A500HD8+ Power Supply / Cable, if you have a few moments with a soldering iron - one can easily interface this with an ATX or mATX power supply.

I hope that helps.

Well, I'm a bit confused by this offer now. Before I post details of some more error messages and readings from the GVP software at the end of this message, I need to ask you a couple of questions. First of all, you say that your PSU for your GVP unit is the same as mine. You have offered me a 4.1Gb Viking hard drive for just the cost of postage, which you say is £5 or less.  Unfortunately, I also need an SCA80 adaptor, because it hasn't got a 50 pin connector. You don't say how much this will cost me, though. Here's one http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SCSI-SCA-80-Pin-F-to-50-Pin-M-Internal-Adapter-K-/320597027825?pt=UK_Computing_Drive_Cables_Adapters&hash=item4aa5126bf1 and here's another one http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SCSI-SCA-80-Pin-F-to-50-Pin-M-Internal-Adapter-/330436901004?pt=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item4cef92f88c , but I don't know if either of them is compatible. You then go on to say that "the Drive I have here requires more amps on the +12 volt", so it might not work unless I upgrade my PSU to an ATX or mATX PSU, but you don't say how much it would cost to buy or adapt one which is compatible with this unit. How much? I feel I've already spent about enough on this thing, which only worked for 5 days and caused some hardship. It's starting to look like a bottomless pit  which could just cost me more and more money.

As for the GVP installation software, here are some more error messages and data.

FastPrep says "This drive was prepped under the old system which wasn't correct! Do you want to Re-Prep it?"

ExpertPrep gives the following details on Page2

Hard Disk Drive Info
Name: QUANTUM
Size: 0Mb
ID/Rev: CTS40S 3.09

I'm not sure what all of this means, but I think that to sum up, something is being detected while something else isn't. This may indicate that a particular component has blown out. This component could cost next to nothing, then my main expense would be a soldering iron and solder. I would then have access to all my hard drive data again, so long as I haven't accidentally wiped it when I tried to reformat, but didn't get any messages that the format had failed. Earlier on, I did get messages saying that it couldn't format the hard drive.

[AmigaBruno]

@AmigaBruno

I am sorry to confuse you - sadly I have a lot of data in my head that I try to make easy to read - sadly I fail sometimes.

1. I have a spare 4.1GB Viking SCSI hard disk.
2. This Hard Disk has an SCA80 connector - thus needs an adaptor to work with the GVP
3. I *may* have a spare SCA80 to SCA50 / SCA68 that you can have - but I would like a replacement for it.  The SCA adaptor I linked to above is the same adaptor and would suffice as a replacement.
4. I would be happy to prepare this Hard Disk for you and you can have it free - just the cost of postage - which in the UK is £5
5. To use larger / newer Hard Disks you will most likely need to upgrade your GVP A500HD power supply - as newer drives use more amps on the +12volt line and your PSU wont be able to supply that demand.


Alternatively

I have here a 200MB or so 50 pin SCSI hard Disk that I have just retrieved from storage - it came out of my other GVP A500HD. it is already configured for Workbench 2.0.  You would be welcome to this for the cost of postage - again about £5.

OK, now we're getting somewhere! Unfortunately, I need to ask you about point 5. which is "To use larger / newer Hard Disks you will most likely need to upgrade  your GVP A500HD power supply - as newer drives use more amps on the  +12volt line and your PSU wont be able to supply that demand". Does this refer to the Viking 4.1Gb hard disk which you're offering me? If so, would I need the following device, possibly with an adaptor or new plug spliced onto it http://www.vesalia.de/d_mstechmsn750val.htm ? It doesn't matter if you don't understand the German description, what does matter is the price of EUR43.99. As for the offer under "Alternatively", that sounds like a much better bet, because I already know that it's compatible with my unit. The £5 sounds like a bargain, or at least money I can afford to waste after spending £70.01 on this unit 2 weeks ago.

Please can you tell me anything about the error messages I listed in my last post? What do they indicate?

[AmigaBruno]

@AmigaBruno



Yes the Viking 4.1GB HDD that I have offered requires more power than the standard GVP A500HD Power Supply can provide.



That power supply is some what over kill, you could use any mATX or ATX PSU.

Evo EM-400 SFX (mATX) £15.49 (inc postage) ebay BIN


You can use any ATX / mATX power supply - even a reclaimed one from a PC.  you will have to wire up a power-swtich and obviously the cable to the GVP A500HD+8

Also I should point out even a 100watt PSU would have enough power to provide the A500 and the GVP side card with all that it needs.



I like to help were I can, I have no need for this Hard Disk and its only sitting on a shelf now - so its yours for postage instead of collecting dust - I think its a 240MB HDD off the top of my head.



I found that Faaastprep is not all that good a program to be honest.  I would suggest the use of HDTools / HDTools Box to configure a HDD, even a SCSI one on a GVP product.

You should be able to use a Workbench 3.0 install disk - this has HDToolsBox program available - I dont believe it needs 3.0 Kickstart - I will test this under emulation later to see if this is the case.

I hope that helps.

OK, fine! I'll have the hard drive which is sitting on your shelf gathering dust. I hope it will bring my GVP unit back to life, but I'll also check the resistors, which may be all I can do. I'll send you a Personal Message with my address. You tell me how you want me to pay you the £5 or less for postage.

[AmigaBruno]

I have the 6 slot scsi card readers in stock here guys:

http://a4000t.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=66_73&products_id=250

I also have scsi to ide bridges(acard 7720U) here:

http://a4000t.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=66_74&products_id=251

Mech

What a shame they're so expensive! If only someone made a cheaper card reader which only read one type of card and was almost guaranteed to break down after a certain period of time, like a piece of Amstrad equipment, then I'd buy one.

[AmigaBruno]

Thanks for all the advice and offers of help on here!

Unfortunately, I'm still waiting for a reply to a personal message to Zetr0, which I sent a few days ago.

Zertr0, I asked you if you'd already sent the SCSI hard drive, an email address to send payment to and how you'd sent it. Please get back to me about this.

[AmigaBruno]

I've just taken the GVP SCSI HD8+ unit apart to try looking for faults and here's what I found. I'll upload and post some pics later.

I should point out that I don't know much about electronics and I'm just trying to get into it again for the third of fourth time. There was only one component which looked like a resistor. I checked it with my multimeter, but I got a read out, which was fluctuating, so obviously this was within a certain tolerance range. This means it hasn't blown out. There were other components marked as R followed by a number, but they didn't look like resistors to me. I tried and failed to get readings from them.

I unplugged the cable connecting the SCSI drive to the main board. I noticed that part of it was bent and that one or two wires may be broken. I played with it in my hands, trying to bend it in the opposite direction, in case this may bring the possibly broken wires in contact again.

After all this, I reassembled the whole unit and slotted onto the side of the A500 Plus again. This is a very delicate and frustrating job, which I feel may well break the connector on one or both units. After turning on the GVP unit, waiting for it to spin up, I turned on the A500 Plus to see what happened, but there was no change. The drive still spun, the drive light came on, but it failed to boot up. It tried to boot three times, then fell back to df0: as the boot drive. I also tried using the drive disable switch and when I did, it made no attempt to boot from hard drive, exactly as it should do. I then flicked the switch to re enable the drive and it tried unsuccessfully to boot again.

Obviously, my next step should be to get hold of a compatible cable. I'm not sure if an old PC bought in 2000 would have one fitted, but I'll check. If not, it may be a few days until I can get hold of one.

[AmigaBruno]

Here's the latest developments in the saga of my GVP unit which only worked for 5 days.

First of all, Zetr0, I hoped to have received your hard drive by now after you told me you'd received £5.00 from me via PayPal. I sent you another PM. Have you posted it? If so, then when and how?

I also bought a replacement SCSI ribbon cable connector from Amigakit. I thought I should buy one which was just long enough, instead of one which was far too long. The cable already fitted was 10cm long and most of it was folded and squashed underneath the hard drive, which could have damaged it. I ordered a cable from Amigakit which was advertised as 2cm long, so I thought that that length plus the connectors would be enough. When I got it, I found that the 2cm length included the connectors. It looked just too short, but I eventually managed to connect it to both ends. The end result was that the hard drive still doesn't work, the drive light still lights up, but the GVP software doesn't to detect a Quantum hard drive and may not be detecting any hard drive at all.

My plans now are to order a longer SCSI cable from Amigakit and continue to wait for the replacement hard drive from Zetr0.

I notice that Amigakit is listed on a topic about Amiga repairers, so I wonder if they could repair this unit and how much they'd charge. I'll ask them.

I'll post some pics soon, but personally, I can't see anything that gives me a clue what's wrong with this unit.

[AmigaBruno]

I don't think there's anything wrong with your unit, you've just got a crashed hard drive.  It happens dude, you've got 20+ year old hardware.  A quick search on ebay shows 846 active listings for "50 pin scsi hard drive", many starting at under $20.  Good luck!

I still have that extra 2MB of memory I was going to send you BTW, damned UPS wanted to charge me $30 to send it though, which is pretty ridiculous considering you can probably get it locally for under $10.  If I can ever make it to the post office they might be able to slow-boat it over to ya for a more reasonable rate, in which case I'll shoot it over to ya.  Na Zdorovie!

Please explain exactly what you mean by a crashed hard drive. I'm still waiting for the replacement from Zetr0, anyway.

So, you never sent the 2Mb of RAM! I've been expecting it to arrive any day for weeks now. I didn't think you were going to send it by UPS, just US Mail or whatever it's called. I don't know about any compatible RAM I can buy locally for under $10 or about £7.50. I don't know about any problems you have getting to a post office, as you live in Washington DC. I can walk to a post office in just a few minutes. Over here, a lot of post offices are being closed down. Is the same thing happening over there?

[AmigaBruno]

I work 12 hours a day.  Post offices aren't open at 2am when I get out of the office, and one needs to sleep sometimes.  Sorry, and it sounded like you didn't need it as badly when you mentioned that it already had 2MB in it.  But seriously, you need to put a little more effort into this.  You don't know what "crashed hard drive" means?  Seriously?  Google it!  Use ebay.  Type in "30 pin simm"  There's 134 listings for them!  And didn't your mother ever teach you it's rude to nag people when they're offering you things for free?  Bah, I give up!

As I suspected, the term "crashed hard drive" covers a few different faults. Not only that, but the information I've found doesn't feature SCSI drives or the Amiga, but I'm not sure if that matters.

As for searching for just "30 pin simm", not any type of 30 pin simm is compatible. I was pleased to hear that you had some which was definitely compatible.

At the moment, I don't think I'm any nearer to getting this GVP unit working again. I still haven't received the replacement hard drive from Zetr0 and haven't heard from him either. :huh:

[AmigaBruno]

Good news! I've heard from Zetr0 that he's posted the SCSI hard drive to me, but this was only last Friday, because he's been ill.

I hope this means I'll be able to get my GVP SCSI unit going again and enjoy my alternative Amiga history where I wasn't limited to floppy drives and 1Mb or 2Mb RAM! I'm gonna party like it's 1993. :pint:

Of course, the main reasons I'm using a classic Amiga or an Amiga at all are so that I can do computer graphics again (Windoze and even Linux graphics software put a stop to that, but I thought I needed to persevere) as well as use various applications and play games I missed out on. All of this on REAL Amiga hardware, not on a PC!

[AmigaBruno]

As promised some time ago now, here are some pics of the insides of this faulty GVP unit. I hope someone on here can see something wrong with it that I can't see. I don't know much about electronics. The black circles drawn on both sides of the SCSI cable indicates where I saw the cable bent, before I straightened it out.

[AmigaBruno]

Well, the replacement SCSI hard drive from Zetr0 has now arrived! I don't know much about electronics and I'm now trying to learn again for about the third time, so please don't laugh or criticise me.

All I have to do now is remove some thick, tightly fitted posts which are holding the hard drive itself onto a board which I didn't take any pics of. I think these may be called brass stand offs, as used to insulate PC motherboards from their cases, but I'm not sure. I don't know if I've got a tool I can use for this. I hope everything will suddenly work after I've done that, but I can't help doubting that it will. Other things I could try are:

1. buy a longer cable from Amigakit

2. remove the interface from one end of the original cable, cut it to a reasonable length, then refit the plug and plug in the cable again (I don't know how to remove the interfaces, though)

If these ideas don't work, then I'll have to take send my GVP SCSI controller and hard drives somewhere for repair, but I'm not sure where.

[AmigaBruno]

Some tthings that might increase your chances of success:

1  Get the technical specs of your new HD from the net.

2  Ensure that the SCSI id jumpers are set the same as your failed drive (You didn't change these, right?).  If not, a safe id would be something other than 0 or 7, one of these is usually used to identify the controller itself.

3  The new drive will need Termination, see the docs from step 1.  This is usually a jumper.

There is a very good tutorial about SCSI issues, diasy-chaining, termination, etc, that's been linked in the past.  Anyone still have the link?  Have you Googled SCSI termination?

Reading thru all of this, many folks have stepped forward (some above and beyond).  This is a great community!  

Here's another newsflash! I opened up my GVP SCSI host controller/RAM unit again and slowly managed to remove the poles or stand offs holding the old hard drive in place. I used the tools supplied in a standard PC too lkit. I then screwed in the new hard drive (a Conner HDD), plugged in the power and SCSI cables and screwed the GVP case back together. After a few minutes cursing the Amiga A500/A500 Plus edge connector design and wondering if I was finally going to break it, I managed to finally slide the GVP unit onto the edge connector. I plugged in the PSU, turned on the GVP unit and heard it spinning. I waited for at least several seconds, then turned on the Amiga. I continued to wait, while the drive light flashed rapidly, then went off, but then it started flashing again. The screen was still white. Suddenly, a Shell window appeared then an error message saying it couldn't find something, followed by the Shell window closing and I was faced with a Workbench screen!!!! After all this, I noticed there were two partitions, named DH0: and DH1: .

Tenacious, I'm afraid I don't understand all the advice you've given me which I've quoted above. I don't know if I need to study and follow it. All I know is that I've plugged it in and it WORKS! Does this mean I'm OK to continue using the hard drive as it is now, or what should I do to avoid damaging it?

Unfortunately, recently I found that my ADF transfer kit had stopped working yet again and the cable fell out of the back of the Amiga TWICE while I was using it! I think my Amiga parallel port may have totally blown out now. I suppose I'm lucky the whole Amiga didn't blow up. Unfortunately, I haven't got any other cable or device I can plug in to check my Amiga parallel port. Can someone suggest something I can buy to check it? A printer is the obvious choice, but I don't know if any of those old printers would still work. I also used to use a Digiview device, but they blew out twice and had to be returned to Topeka, Kansas for replacements. What else is still available?

[AmigaBruno]

It sounds like your friend Zetr0 took care of you very well with the HD and it's jumper settings.

The SCSI interface is versatile, but, has a small learning curve.  If you ever hope to get more from this system (CD reader or writer, Zip drive, one of Mechy's card readers, etc), you should read up on SCSI termination, IDs, etc.  I'll bet Wikipedia has some good stuff.    For now, I think you're good to go.

None of the Amiga ports are "hot pluggable" (The power must be OFF to add or remove a cable!).  Most ports will survive a couple of accidents, but, the damage is accumulative.  One day the port will simply stop working.  Fortunately for you, the A500 has socketed chips and can be repaired easily.

The parallel port is particularly useful.  You can get sound samplers (like GVP's DSS8+), hardware MP3 decoders (like MasPlayer), video enhancement (DCTV, GVP's G-Lock), etc.  Many of these take some patience to find today.

I'll read up on the SCSI standard. I hope to get a SCSI CD-ROM drive which may or may not even have been designed for the Amiga! This is something I never had on an Amiga in the past.

I'll look out for sound samplers, genlocks, and video digitisers that use the parallel port, I had all those devices years ago.