Installing a cd-rom drive on my a4000

[Darrin]

swoslover wrote:
I am having troubles with installing a cd-rom drive on my a4000.

Does anyone know of a guide I can follow?

You have my sympathies!

I won an A4000 on ebay earlier this month and then I spent days fighting with the internal IDE interface to detect 2 drives (Hard drive and CD ROM) with no luck despite trying multiple drives and cables.

Finally I plugged a USB DVD-RW into my Deneb USB port and the A4000 picked it straight up.

I've ordered a Zorro 4-device IDE card from AmigaKit which should solve my problems (and provide faster access).

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
You are kidding, right? Harddrive as master, CD/CDR/CDRW/DVD as slave, install Workbench and install IDEfix97 from Aminet and you are set.

No, I'm not kidding.

What you describes is what SHOULD happen, but doesn't.

A slave device will not mount and wont ebven be detected using applications such as FINDDEVICE and SCSIMOUNTER which you would expect to locate and list any devices attached to the SCSI.device (only a Master device shows up as Unit 0).

LIke I said, I tried muliple cables, multiple devices and all I can think of it that the onboard IDE has gone tits up for some reason.

I've even tried 2 hard drives connected as Master and Slave.  The Master device shows up and can be formatted/installed/etc while the other is a no-show.  Swap them around and the one you could see as Master is now invisible as Slave and the old invisible slave is now visible as Master.  Swapping their positions on the cable doesn't help - it's just the Master/Slave option.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
Is the only device listed in FindDevice the scsi.device? If so, copy the atapi.device from the IDEfix package to devs: and start FindDevice again.

As for CD drives; I have tried plenty, but the only ones that have given me problems are ASUS drives.

Yes, just the SCSI.device.

OK, thanks for the tip - I'll try it again later.

Cheers.

[Darrin]

@ doctorq:

Got it!  It's finally shown up as Unit 1.

I used IDEFix last time, but I'd screwed around before hand with various CD files systems that I may have messed it up.

[Darrin]

Phantom wrote:
I never had problems installing a CD-ROM (DVD-RW etc) on my A4000. As said before always the hard disk must be master (check the hd's jumper) and the CD-ROM as slave (check again the jumper beside the device). Anyway my Amiga recognized them straight away without any problems as unit 0 and 1.

Did you have to use IDEFix too or did WB3.1 do it straight off the bat?

[Darrin]

swoslover wrote:
So I should be using the cable that connects to the hard drive not the floppy?

Yes, the single IDE port on the A4000 supports 2 devices.  The floppy connector also supports 2 floppy drives.

[Darrin]

Phantom wrote:
No. I installed AmigaOS 3.9 the first time.

Ah, that explains it.  I'm still waiting for my Kickstart 3.1 ROMs to arrive to install OS3.9.

[Darrin]

swoslover wrote:
It seems since I tried to install the cd drive the other day that the flopppy drive is no longer functioning.

There is no familiar clicking sound, I wonder if I have perhaps connected it wrongly?  It has a power lead and the ide cable connected.

I have set the cd-drive to slave using the jumpers.

With regards to your floppy, check that the cable is pushed all the way in to the motherboard header and that the red dotted edge conforms to pin 1 on the header (looking from the front of the A4000, the dotted edge should be on the right).  Then make sure that the first floppy connector (the one in the middle of the cable) is plugged FIRMLY into the floppy drive (again with the red dotted strip to the right if you are looking at it from the front) and that you have a loose connector with lines 4, 5 and 6 twisted on the ribbon (this will be for DF1: if you ever connect another floppy drive and make sure that this isn't the end you have plugged into the motherboard).

As DoctorQ stated, install OS 3.1 on your hard drive.  Download and install IDEfix97 from Aminet (you'll need to register it) if you don't have OS3.9, during the installation tell it that the CD ROM is Unit 1 on SCSI.device, reboot, shove a CD in the drive and you should have an icon for the CD show up in the top left hand corner.

From experience, I can tell you that if you've been fiddling around with extra CD file systems then it might screw up the IDEfix installation.  You may want to do a fresh install:

Format hard drive
Install OS3.1
Install IDEFix97 (CD ROM is Unit 1 if set as slave)
Reboot
Insert CD
Cross your finger...

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
Some small corrections/additions.

IDEfix97 doesn't need to be registred, but if you don't, you will have a pop up requester every now and then. Only question is if you can live with it or not :-)

If the CD drive doesn't work with scsi.device, use atapi.device from the IDEfix package. Remember to change the dosdriver if you change device driver.

My IDEFix install found it on the SCSI.device (I've just rechecked and I'm looking at it right now) and only shows the Hard Drive on the atapi.device.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:

My IDEFix install found it on the SCSI.device (I've just rechecked and I'm looking at it right now) and only shows the Hard Drive on the atapi.device.

Seems like you are right on the scsi.device thing, as I apparently have mixed something up. You can use a CD drive with the use of atapi.device, CacheCDFS and a dosdriver without the need of IDEfix. With IDEfix you can use scsi.device as device driver, and don't need to use atapi.device. I don't know if there are any differences using scsi.device instead of atapi.device.

Nevertheless I doubt that it really is your hdd that shows under atapi.device.

Ah, who cares as long as it works.   :-D

It may have been the CD ROM that showed up, but I'm in the middle of a serious game of Lemmings 2 at the moment so I'll check later.  ;-)

Edit:

Yep, it was the CD ROM on the atapi.device (of course).  IDEfix97 scanned the SCSI.device and automatically installed the CD DOS driver for that.