SCSI HDD not seen unless IDE HDD connected

[motorollin]

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

[motorollin]

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

[motorollin]

@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

[motorollin]

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

[motorollin]

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

[motorollin]

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

[motorollin]

@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

[motorollin]

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

[motorollin]

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

[motorollin]

No, I was hoping to use SFS. Why would FFS be better than SFS?

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moto

[motorollin]

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

[motorollin]

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

[motorollin]

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

[motorollin]

Yes there is an active terminator at the end of the chain.

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moto

[motorollin]

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