Question about OS 3.9

[Tesral]

What about SCSI termination?? I don't use SCSI by myself, but it could be wrong configured. BTW it's strange that it worked with os3.1, and with os3.9 it is not..

I was wondering the same myself.  I use an external SCSI box myself.  I boot from IDE.  Does your system boot from an SCSI drive.

Bad termination can stop a box, any box, Amiga, Linux, even winblows (if that can use SCSI) from booting.  If you have an active terminator, or you terminate with one of the drives in that external box, it might need power to show that termination.

I have noted that 3.1 was more forgiving of bad termination.

[Tesral]

voytech wrote:
 I think that it's because devices are being configured IE: master - slave (I might be wrong bout that) during the time from switching power on to loading os from hdd or floppy.

Almost.  The SCSI bus doesn't use "master/slave"   You standard SCSI controller will address eight devices, the controller it self being one of them, so you get seven addresses, 0-6.  Each device on the chain must have a different address.  These address are set by jumpers on the drive proper.  Now the end of a SCSI chain has to be terminated.  The last physical drive of the cable, regardless of address must be terminated.  This can be done via a jumper on the last drive itself, or with a dedicated "terminator" on the end of the chain.

A very common symptom of "no termination", on any type of OS is failure to boot.

The newness f the problem could be OS 3.9 being more finicky on termination, or it could be that the last drive on the chain's termination will not read unless the drive is on, that is active termination vs. passive termination which doesn't depend on anything being powered up.