Amiga 3000 new owner

[MrChocky]

First of all, I know this is going to be FAQ questions etc, but I'm not even sure what questions I ought to be asking right now. In my defence, I have read this:

https://www.zimmers.net/cbmpics/cbm/amiga/a3000guide.txt

Please send me to any other material I ought to read up front, before even posting here, etc, etc.

I am extremely familiar with Acorn machines and PCs of the era, but my practical Commodore knowledge is very limited.

Anyway, I have just received a Amiga 3000. It boots to kickstart 3.1. What I *don't* have is a workbench floppy. It is trying to boot from the internal drive (the LED is on anyway), but the machine came with a SCSI scanner, CD drive and switch box, so perhaps the termination was changed - I don't know.

One thing I did check was the CMOS battery situation - looks like someone replaced it with some Radio Shack version with some velcro and clips which, and one lead was not particularly attached to the motherboard, so I have removed it for now. I understand some of the SCSI setup is tied up in that. I'm well aware that the SCSI drive might already be dead, or if not, is not likely to last.

The machine was not well packed, and one corner of the chassis was beat up on the corner with the audio out (was able to bend back) - I think it's going to be OK, but it's not impossible there is other damage.

The one single floppy I do have is for the "Advanced Amiga Analyzer". This shows me that the tank mouse I got is not behaving well vertically, although I did take it apart and clean it up a bunch. The memory test crashes. It will also boot to this from an external floppy drive that came with it.

There was a Great Valley IO expander and Video card fitted - I have taken those out for now just in case they are causing problems.

So what ought to be my first port of call here? Should I chase down a Work Bench disk so I can actually try things out?

Thanks in advance.

[MrChocky]

First, thank for your reply. Overall, my experience with the 3000 has not been great, kind of a poor introduction to the Amiga world. Some of this is a matter of circumstance rather than any technical problems. In particular, AmigaKit have yet to ship my October 19th order of a Gotek and battery holder, so that's helped little. The A3000 is complicated, which is not unjustified, but it's not quite the tone I'm after in retro hardware.

On a more practical note, I've since obtained an excellent condition A1000 with apparently all its original material (and a boat load of floppies). After some frustration with floppy swapping, and a talk with Mr Dunklee last week and various promises on YouTube and elsewhere of being "transformative", my Parceiro II is already in the mail, and this is much more likely the machine I will keep long term.

Anyway, for the 3000, I ended up getting a null modem cable, and after quite a bit of pain, able to boot strap the 3000 from 1.3 workbench into 3.2 and get some other tools onto floppies.

I have not exhaustively been through the test tools, but to date, I have spotted anything at all of note - everything seems to be working fine, apart from the SCSI (possibly the floppy could use some maintenance).

In fact, the instability in the system appears to be 100% attributed to when the SCSI drive is connected. I see this is a fair bit of grief for 3000 owners, but I have not been able to find my exact problems:

Workbench 1.3.2 boots fine. I can run HDToolbox (I tried a few versions, including the one from the Workbench 3.2 install disk. It will find the drive, and validate blocks OK, but there do not seem to be any partitions. Attempts to partition result in a crash.

Workbench 3.2 will not boot with the drive connected (sorry, not sure about images and attachments here), result in the red crash screen - "Software failure".

If I try to run from Workbench 1.3.2 the 3.2 install program, then it'll crash as well - "Program Failed (error #80000004)".

So, is this a termination problem? As I think I mentioned, the drive was loose when I got it, so perhaps there was some previous attempt to replace it.  I know that messing with old SCSI drives might in the end be futile, but I'd still like to see if I can get it working.  Are there any other tools worth trying here, or diagnostics I can provide?

Thanks again.

[MrChocky]

Workbench 1.3.2 and  3.2 aren't compatible. And which kickstart do you have - it defines the Workbench version to be used.

Well, yes. But 3.2 crashes with the SCSI drive attached. I have kickstart 3.1.

[MrChocky]

Thank you, this is helpful background information.

I understand about the mismatched KS vs WB, but it remains that with KS 3.1 and WB 3.1 (Sorry, I had said 3.2), WB consistently crashes at start up if the drive is attached. This would
seem to preclude much in the way of software investigation/configuration. The KS 3.1 plus WB 1.3 combo at least let me verify the drive, even if it is "wrong". Maybe investigation in this
direction is ultimately pointless, but I mention it for completeness.

Anyway, the drive itself is an internal Quantum 525S. Maybe it's a replacement, who knows. I have verified its termination jumper is set. Also supplied with the machine are an external SCSI scanner and CD drive, so who knows what the full setup of this machine was previously. I connected those yesterday to see if the effect was the same, and it was.

As noted in this thread:

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=113367

"This is the 100000000th thread about this topic"

In fact, although there are lots of A3000 motherboard pictures, I can't find a good one of the termination resistors. I was waiting until my coin cell holder (still not shipped!) came before stripping the machine down and taking a proper look.

Perhaps the drive is just faulty, or there's some termination configuration I need to try, or some other incantation. I welcome suggestions on other things to look at.