Help installing OS3.9 on to a A4000D

[dangermouse]

Hi

I've been away from Amigas for a few years and recently decided to come back into the fold. Just recently I've picked up an A4000D and am having some issues installing OS3.9 onto it.

Anyway, onto the system. She is:

* A4000D w/3.1ROMs
* WarpEngine 4028 accelerator w/128MB RAM
* Indivision AGA adapter
* Retina Z3 gfx card
* Toccata sound card
* 200GB IDE hard drive
* Sony IDE DVD-ROM

The hard drive and sound card are both connected to the internal IDE bus with the hard drive as 'master' and the CD as 'slave'. The CD works via IDEFix.

The problem is this. I can install WB3.1 onto the HDD (currently configured with a sole 1GB partition) without any issue. Amiga reboots fine. I then run the 3.9 installer and everything installs without issue. The system then reboots....and goes into a crash cycle (green 'power' light flashes a few times then the machine resets itself and starts the cycle over).

Browsing the web I found some other people over the years have had issues with the 'SetPatch' command so I went digging around in the Startup-Sequence. Sure enough the following lines are present:

If $SCSIUpdate EQ 1
   SetPatch QUIET
Else
   SetPatch SKIPROMUPDATES "scsi.device" QUIET

So I commented out that whole statement block and rebooted. OS3.9 booted to the desktop with the following error:

'Cannot open "workbench.library", version 45. Unable to run "AmiDock".

This was a minor annoyance but I thought fine I can live without AmiDock. Then I went to change the screenmode using the tool and, after double clicking, nothing happens. The 'Amiga Workbench' toolbar at the top of the screen flashes but ScreenMode does not appear. I then tried 'Sound' and 'PrinterPS' and, again, the toolbar flashes but no program appears.

So, I reinvestigated with Google and found people saying that the crashing appears to be a common problem with the WarpEngine and to install BB1 & BB2. So, I unzipped my BB1 LHA archive to the RAM disk (using lha x BoingBag39-1.lha) and run the install. The installer gets to 40% and then just hangs..the hard drive and CD-ROM are both doing nothing.

Finally, after even more research, I heard someone else suggested to install the 3.1 'SetPatch' over the 3.9 version and reboot. I did this (with the uncommented Startup-Sequence) but I get a shell error message saying the an invalid number of arguments have been passed to 'SetPatch'.

And this is the current 'broken' state of affairs that I can't figure out.

If anyone can offer any tips / assistance I would greatly appreciate it and my Amiga will too

Thanks

[dangermouse]

Thanks for the prompt reply Thomas.

As part of installing IDEFix I did have to copy an 'Installer' to C: which I left in there after installing 3.9. Removing that fixed my BB1 install issues to the point where it now hangs at 40% after requesting the 3.9 CD.

I also copied over the 68040.library as you suggested from my WarpEngine disk to Libs:, uncommented the SetPatch lines and rebooted...same flashing light crash again I'm afraid.

Finally I renamed the AmigaOS ROM Update and the machine booted..success!

Feeling lucky I went an installed BB1 and BB2 (accepting the choice to install the new ROM update in BB2) and rebooted..again success! Feeling curious I went back into my Devs: directory where I had renamed 'AmigaOS ROM Update' to 'AmigaOS ROM Update_old' and noted the entry of a new AmigaOS ROM Update file (presumably from selecting 'Yes' during the BB2 install question). Am I correct in assuming that my Amiga is now booting without skipping any ROM updates (as it should be I guess)?

Now, I do have 2 final questions if someone can answer them:

1. The Amiga boots but a warning appears - 'Can't install BenchTrash'. Any ideas what this might be?
2. As I said above I have a 200GB drive but HDToolbox is giving me 2 strange issues. a) It is reporting the size to be 127.9G b) when I partition it the partitions don't add up to anywhere near that amount. I've got a 1GB Workbench: partition, 2GB Apps: partition and a 4.8G Games: partition. For the Games: partition 4.8G was the maximum size I could get the HDToolbox 'slider' to represent. I can live with this issue as those sizes are probably more than I'll use anywhere but it would be nice to use the whole 200GB if possible.

Regardless, many thanks Thomas..I really appreciate this and has no doubt saved my hair from greying any more than it needs to

Happy Miggie 4000 owner

[dangermouse]

No, I must not be using the update somehow.

It says:

Kickstart version 40.63
Workbench version 45.3

with the title being "3.1 ROM"

Looking in the Devs: drawer I see

* AmigaOS ROM Update (321,768)
* AmigaOS ROM Update.BB39-2 (321,768)
* AmigaOS ROM Update_old (127,956) - this is the original one that you told me to delete; I just renamed it

Another oddity I've noticed is that WB is reporting 890,740,216 other mem..I wish but this WarpEngine couldn't even support that. 'ShowConfig' is reporting the correct amount of RAM on the WE but WB does not?

[dangermouse]

Hi Thomas

Well I left the Amiga for an hour or so and, when I turned it on, I was back to the green flashing reboot cycle. I've since booted without the Startup-Sequence and renamed the "AmigaOS ROM Update" again so that I can at least get into 3.9 with the Startup-Sequence enabled.

My SetPatch output as the Amiga stands at the moment (booted into 3.9 w/Startup-Sequence and without a 'AmigaOS ROM Update' file in Devs) states:

SetPatch (V44.38) has already been installed. Patch list:
68040 Support Code Loaded
BOOL CheckIO() workaround
Enabled Advanced Graphics Modes
exec/ReleaseSemaphore()
AmigaOS Copyright
HWG IEEE Single Precision Mul/Div/FPU Fix
ramlib signal usage
stack size check for CON:, RAW:, RAM:, PAR:, PRT:, SER:
graphics/WritePixelLine8()
graphics/WriteChunkyPixel()
Memory Pools
Enabled data cache

And that's all. Nothing about ROM updates though.

I'm assuming then that my SetPatch is the correct version judging by the sample you provided.

So, I guess the state of play as it stands is still:

* Unable to boot with the 'AmigaOS ROM Update' file present in Devs:

Only other thing that may be pertinent is a message is flashed up briefly just prior to the WB screen becoming visible. Something about 'Intuition' is all I could see. I seem to remember having this error on my A4000s/A1200s from a few years back and it never seemed to cause any problems I was aware of. I resized the WB window in the hope the message was lurking in the background but it disappears without any mouse input.

In case it's useful, the pertinent parts of my Startup-Sequence at the moment are:

Set SCSIUpdate 1
If EXISTS C:IDEFix
   C:IDEFix
   Set SCSIUpdate 0
EndIf
...
If EXISTS SYS:Prefs/Env-Archive/NOSCSIUPDATE
   Set SCSIUpdate 0
EndIf
If$SCSIUpdate EQ 1
   SetPatch QUIET
Else
   SetPatch SKIPROMUPDATES "scsi.device"
EndIf
Unset SCSIUpdate

The 2nd SetPatch line will fire as I do have C:IDEFix

And finally my memory is now showing the correct amount again on the WB toolbar

Many thanks

[dangermouse]

OK.

The message that disappears is:

"Intuition is attempting to reset the Workbench screen. Please close all windows, except drawers" with or as options.

In regards to the crash it appears whenever I have "AmigaOS ROM Update" present in Devs:

The sequence is basically as follows:

1. Place "AmigaOS ROM Update" into Devs:
2. Turn the machine OFF
3. Turn the machine back on
4. After a few seconds the power light flashes screen..the system then reboots
5. On this reboot a "Software Failure" Guru message appears..after leaving that for a while (no mouse action) the machine reboots
6. I've had 2 things appears here - either a yellow screen or another Guru message...either way the machine reboots again.
7. Let it reboot by itself enough times and AmigaOS 3.9 will eventually boot but the available 'other mem' shown in the toolbar is completely wrong. Also, even when it does manage to boot, the 3.1 ROM (Kickstart 40.68) is still shown in the 'About...' box.

Interestingly, if I don't have the AmigaOS ROM Update file present in Devs: the machine will always boot straight away AND show the correct amount of 'other mem'.

So, it appears that once every now and then the machine will boot even with the ROM update in place but, even after booting, it appears to have not taken effect. I checked that the ROM update was still present in Devs: when it finally manages to stop reboot cycling and it is.

Whether the machine booted with or without the ROM update present the Intuition message still appears.

I hope I've explained that clearly

Many thanks

[dangermouse]

Oh

Well, at least this means I haven't just been a complete idiot and missed something. I guess I'll have to hunt around for an A3640, a Cyberstorm or stick with what I've got.

Thanks for the info Matthey and thanks again to Thomas for your help thus far.

[dangermouse]

Well I soldiered on with the A4000 and, on the weekend, had a stable enough machine (sans Update) to create a 'Games' partition and start loading up some WHDLoad goodies.

Some of the games were WHDLoad and some were JST...and ALL failed to load. Either downright hanging on a black screen or, in one case, having the WHDLoad splash screen load (the demo one) and stop writing out the characters like it does.

Feeling this was just getting plain silly I decided to rip the RAM out of the WarpEngine and replace with a full 32MBx4 set of known working EDO RAM sticks.

Rebooted the Amiga and all the games loaded fine. So...looks like the old RAM was bad.

I then thought 'hell, let's try the update again' so I proceeded to reinstall BB-2 and selecting 'yes' to the 'do you want the update'.

Rebooted the Amiga...and the Indivision 'chime' happened so I thought well here goes Then I heard the chime again...so I started to get a little excited. Maybe the ROM had updated. A few seconds later and boom...the Workbench screen appeared and all BenchTrash errors had gone. Checking the 'About...' screen I am indeed running 3.9 with the 3.9 ROM.

So there you go folks..it all appears to have arisen from some dodgy sticks of RAM on the WarpEngine. And I can confirm positively that OS 3.9 with BB2 and the ROM update will work on a WarpEngine 040. The 'Startup-Sequence' file is original..no changes were made by myself following the 3.9 or BB installs.

Thanks for the input from all the people who helped. I even managed to get my 200GB HDD partitioned properly Thomas!

If anyone wants to know any more about my system in the hope of getting their WarpEngine 040 running with 3.9/BB2 then just let me know and I'll post whatever details you're interested in.

Thanks again folks!