The question is: is anybody using OS4 with A1200 and with HD directly connected with the mobo (and with two units attached to the cable)?
Yes I can confirm that this works. AmigaKit made me a custom cable with a 44 pin female connector on one end (to go the A1200 mobo), and two 40 pin female connectors (one to go to the HDD and one to the CD drive). I was able to install OS4 from CD to HDD with that setup.
And with IDEFix (or similar HW)?
Well, the reason why I had to use that cable was because the buffered interface was preventing the machine from booting OS4, causing exactly the symptoms you describe (repeatedly cycling through the red/blue/magenta boot colours).
If so, are there some special settings to do?
IIRC there's something you can edit in startup-sequence to enable the buffered interface to work. If you can edit your OS4 startup-sequence from OS3.9 then you might be able to do it. Otherwise, you'll have to reinstall without the buffered interface, edit startup-sequence, then re-attach the buffered interface.
Edit -
Link to the thread where I was helped by several people to solve this problem. In particular, the post by Framiga on the bottom of page 3:
Once you have installed the whole AOS4, you can use your buffered interface.
It "seems" that the problem arise only during the installation (on some machines)
Theres a option to enable it.
look at the file SYS:Kickstart/KickLayout-A1200 at the line
; The IDE scsi.device can not autodetect IDEFix/IDEFix97/IDEFix Express
; IDE port doubler hardware. When you have such hardware installed,
; uncomment the following line by removing the leading semicolon,
; then the IDE scsi.device can use IDE drives on the second IDE port.
; CAUTION: Dont forget to add the semicolon again before removing the
; IDEFix or compatible IDE port doubler hardware or your machine may
; not boot anymore!
;
;MODULE Kickstart/A1200/ATAPIismajik
uncomment "MODULE Kickstart/A1200/ATAPIismajik" and it "should" work.
--
moto
