Can OS3.9 patches run fully on an A4000D?

[Vanilla]

Hello all.

I have been with the help of a friend been putting together a nice A4000D with a WarpEngine and 68040 @ 40Mhz. I now have 128MB of 60ns RAM on my WarpEngine as well. So I have disabled the wait state and it all seems stable. Plus a nice PicassoIV to boot! :-)

I have a 9GB SCSI HD on the WarpEngine's SCSI bus, but put a CDRW on the A4000 IDE bus. My plan was to use the OS3.9 scsi.device with the CDRW to avoid any IDE fix software, a plan that worked well on my A1200D. But so far the A4000 refuses to budge and OS3.9 won't let me do this!

My friend told I need both Boing bags installed for a fully working system. So this is what I tried to do. But, I found I always have to disable the ROM patch, as the machine cannot boot afterwards. :-?

I've got the WarpEngine 68040.library in there and both BoingBags installed. I made sure the OS3.9 patch files are in there and activated in start up. But to no go.

It always ends up the same. The patch installs, reboot ands the machine just sits there with the floppy drive clicking. As if it if started booting and then lost the drive. The HD light flashes briefly before this happens. I can put in a floppy but it just reads it and stops.

Now it looks like the early startup screen is still "there" as when I hold down the mouse buttons after a reset the LED flickers. Like it does when it comes up. But there is only a blank display. Nothing on my PicassoIV VGA out nor the RGB. And without key shortcuts I can do nothing.

I tried to set echo on in the start up script but that was useless as it never gets to execute  it after the first SetPatch installs and reboots! I'm really lost here. I've spend months trying to figure this out but it seems no one is around who has ever fully installed OS3.9BB1+2 on an A4000 with a WarpEngine! :-?

[Vanilla]

Good idea, thanks. I was trying to eliminate things using the SetPatch options but nothing changed.

I also saw an FAQ on Greg Donner's site about OS3.9 and it loosk like not all updated files such as SetPatch and possibly FFS are installed. I'll check my versions. But BB2 should have at least brought my system in line and with the OS3.9 SE edition I read about.

[Vanilla]

@matthey

Thanks for the hints and links. :-)  I was afraid of using another 68040.library as I thought the WarpEngine needed it's own one.

IIRC I loaded in the BB1 patch and this just crashed my machine. So was glad BB2 wasn't as severe on my machine. The new FFS, would you recommend instaling it to the RDB as well as L: ?

I tried installing an updated OS3.9 FFS into the RDB one time and it just crashed right away. Perhaps because OS3.1 is there from boot.

[Vanilla]

@HammerD

I guess I would like too but the transfer rate of the USB flash drives would be an insult to my AmigaOne! :-o

[Vanilla]

I boot from my IDE drive with an external SCSI CD drive on the Warp.

The oppositte of mine!

So your setup should work without fault!!

:-o

Should! Perhaps the SCSI booting is stuffing it up. Actually IIRC I have a wide SCSI HD. My friend done that for me and it needed an adaptor, and I could get a HD light line off it. Perhaps that could be interfering? Check my SCSI config?

[Vanilla]

Have you tried an IDE hard drive?

No I haven't. I have a CDRW on my IDE port. Could be a good idea to test.

[Vanilla]

I have no experience with the Warp Engine but most accelerators can use other CPU libraries. There are exceptions though. I use the Mu/Thor/mmu.library cpu libraries with my Phase5 accelerator. Read the docs well though.

I gave the MMU 68040 library a test, but it ends up the same, machien can't boot. Having said that, I found a 68040 library on the OS3.9 CD, which is different to all I have! So I'm going to give that a shot. :-)

II replaced the latest FFS in my RDB and L: without problems. I use the smartfilesystem now with my CSMK3 ultraSCSI. I don't know what to tell you about putting the latest FFS in the RDB after having problems except back everything up if you are going to try it.

Well I checked and I have these versions. Don't know if there is a conflict there. I'm rather stuck on FFS as being in the RDB it crashes as soon as the machine boots and so before any patches are loaded. Don't know wbay way around that, unless I have a known buggy version.

Fast-File-System: 45.13
SetPatch: 44.38

I wonder what other system files can conflict with buggy versions I should check?

[Vanilla]

I got a WarpEngine with BB2 installed by I skip the exec library update which is slower and reported as buggy sometimes or certain situations. I've planned to give it a try on Piru's excellent exec.library replacement but till today I never bothered...

Damn it my post was wiped out!  It logged me out during replying and I lost everything! Have to start again :-O

How did you go?

Anway, as someone said above if it was botting and the hardware config is the same it should be software. But from my experience with the A4000D a lot of stuff can have bad contacts. Sometimes I just have to push the CPU card a bit further after I moved the machine around, to make it work again.

I've been having trouble with my hardware. The A4000 was crashing on power up. I tried pushing in the CPU card and it seemed to help. But I'd done the same thing earlier and the crashing came back. Once I got it going my keyboard went dead and the caps lock started flashing. That worried me, as the last time I saw that, was when my A500 started randomly resetting and the keyboard was killed by a faulty power supply.

Just then I got it to boot but the screen was black or out of range! It was my PicassoI\V card shorting on the motherboard RAM. I can't believe these were sold as an expensive professional device if something as obvious as a short can trip it up. Were these sold with plastic protectors underneath? I am going to need one!

The termination on the WarpEngine is also a pain. Have you changed any external device ? My chain is terminated by the external CDRom, I have to keep it on otherwise it won't boot. I tried once to get an external terminator (can't remember which) and it didn't work at all! And this was a terminator fot SCSI2.

I don't have any external devices. I have a CDRW on the internal IDE and a my HD is on the WarpEngine SCSI bus as a single device. I set up all the SCSI jumpers and without OS3,9 patches messing my system up it usually boots fine.

But, I have progressed a little further somewhat here. I installed the OS3.9 68040.library and then tested the full SetPatch. I was able to get to the early boot screen! What's more, I could even boot off floppy! I rebooted and it was able to reset and reboot off the floppy. :-D

But, off the HD it still got stuck. Even just trying to boot into a shell stumped it. And me. ;-)  I am wondering if the RDB is causing this. Currently no FFS is installed in there as I don't want to plug in an old one but the new one crashes! Will test one one though. But the FFS I am using must be corrupt. Hmmm, think I should do a virus test. That would do some wreckage!

[Vanilla]

Thanks matthey. Will test and reply back.

[Vanilla]

Thanks for the info number6. Would you reccommend wiping the boot HD and installing again? Even a clean OS3.9 install is not clean as it does it's OS3.1/5 files then it's OS3.9 files. And then it has to be updated twice! Be good if it could be slipstreamed. :-)

I suppose I could try backing up and then doing this.

BTW what do you mean by filenote? Did you actually comment every file and later see what files had no comment? And I suppose it has to be updated in expert mode as I've been told you must tell the installer to update your system.