OS 3.9 installation issues

[dschallock]

Are you guys still at it? Get some rest...

BTW, I vote for a installer problem.

M

I've tried with the version of installer that comes with 3.9 and the version that comes inside the boingbag1 release.  I haven't checked to see in the version of installer in boingbag2 is different or if it would yield different results. Is that what you mean but installer problem?  The version of installer?

[dschallock]

It verifies against the Video files on the CD, so copy the entire thing

 
HI Danbeaver, thanks for the feed back. I did make sure I copied the whole cd.  Also I have seen what the installer does when it can't verify the CD. It pops up a message saying "can't verify the 3.9 cd".
In my case it checks the CD and doesn't seem to stop at that moment. I think it verifies fine. What happens next is it attempts to start unpacking the update with xad and it fails when it doesn't find some security password that i assume should be present on the CD? My logic tells me this is either a xad version issue (although I have tried several versions)  or there is  problem with my 3.9 cd and it's good enough to verify and install but it is missing the password boingbag 1 is looking for. I don't know.

[dschallock]

Sooo...  Did you bring your system to the SACC meeting?  How'd it go?  

Yes, I did bring it.  Great group of guys.  Lots of help with my system is general. (I have a working internal floppy drive now).

In terms of the boingbag updates we had some success and but we aren't solved yet.

Sacc-guy had the official boingbag1 CD along with other goodies burned to disk.  He was guessing I had a problem with my version of "installer".  We tried swapping that version around.  At first the version we added crashed completely.  Then we switched to a version that no longer crashed but would fail to install the update from his official boingbag1 CD with the "failed at line 129" issue.  However, when I ran the update from the downloaded version I got from you I would get the xad password error.  Sacc-guy suggested I click "ignore all" to that error.  Which I did.  I appears to still have installed some parts of the boingbag update, but I don't believe it installed everything.  When I type version workbench I get 45.2 which according to Sacc-guy meant I had boingbag2 installed but I don't think any of boingbag2 has been succesfully installed.  When I try to run boingbag2 I just get a "failed, your file must be corrupt" message.
So, we didn't go backwards, I think some of boingbag1 was installed but I don't think all of it was.
I still would like to know if there is a list of what boingbag1 installs so I could go through manually and make the changes.  I know it would be tedious but after this much time, I'm willing to do it.  Hopefully then the boingbag2 would take.

[dschallock]

You could extract BB1 and manually copy every single file over.  It's a lot of stuff, and tedious.

Here's another idea: reinstall 3.9.  Start fresh, again.  Maybe there's something just downright broken in your 3.9 install?

yea, I could do that. If I do that I think I might try to put my cdrom on the warpdrive.device chain so they are all on the same chain.

The most dramatic option (and also something SACC-GUY suggested as a possible solution) was to take out my warpengine completely during the install and then add it after I get through boingbag4. Showstopping problem with that is I don't have any fast RAM on my amiga3000 mother board anymore.  Only 2 megs of chip.  The fast ram I have is 2 16meg simms on the warpengine.  I doubt I could install 3.9 and boingbag1-4 all on 2 megs of chip ram.  One thing is for sure, I feel like Ive crossed an effort level point of no return.  I am definitely in this to win this at this point!

[dschallock]

@dschallock
Because my H &P BB1 cd has never failed for me with my setups, (mostly 4000) I'm going to borrow a 3000D and go thru the steps on the 3.1 to 3.9 and BB1 and 2 and report back.

Thanks again for your help!  I'm sorry I kept you as late as I did.  Thanks again!

[dschallock]

:laughing:

[dschallock]

Post a screenshot of your CD0: device settings (the text file)?

I had to work really late last night and couldn't get to my Miga, but I'll get this information tonight for sure.  Thanks again for putting brain power into this Mike!

[dschallock]

Post a screenshot of your CD0: device settings (the text file)?

Ok, here are the prefs Mike.

[dschallock]

Hiya buddy!

I mean the text file, it should look something like the last screenshot of post # 9.

But on this one, why is yours CD1: instead of CD0:?

I'm still kind of grasping for straws here, but what I'm thinking is that maybe you have some kind of issue with the Mask or MaxTransfer value of your CD driver.  I've never heard of this being a problem with a CD before, especially not with SCSI, but am sure you've heard how having the wrong values can affect A1200/A4000's - file corruption, etc. when trying to read large files.  And I assume the video files on the CD that it's trying to validate against are pretty big...

Edit: any luck finding that adapter to put your CD drive on the warpscsi.device chain?

When I installed 3.1  I used the CD0 device to get the CDROM working.  When I was installing 3.9 I installed the CDROM software off the 3.9 CD and it automatically created CD1 because CD0 was already mounted.  I just deleted CD0 after CD1 was installed.  I'm not sure how many places I would need to change in order to switch it to CD0.  Startup-sequence assign maybe and tooltype and rename the file?
Anyway, man I wish it was a max transfer thing.  That would be a sweet fix.
Here is the text file I think you were talking about.

[dschallock]

This is an addendum  to the logic in the previous post:  You mentioned only  having 2MB chip on the A3000 motherboard.  The rest of your memory is on your accelerator.  Your CD drive is on the A3000 built-in SCSI.  Your hard drive is on your accelerator.  Depending on what type of memory and how much is allocated to the buffer on the CD drive...  I'm thinking it's trying to read these huge video files on the disc, and since it has to go through the motherboard to get from the CD to the accelerator memory, if it has to try to buffer through that meager 2MB of chip ram you've got on there...  Get what I'm saying?  Makes sense to my "it's 2am and I need to go the %#$# to sleep" brain, anyway.  LOL.  

Actually that's pretty brilliant, or I'm equally tired.  I think the easiest fix try for that theory is to get the CDROM on the warpdevice as well.

[dschallock]

Gah, I'm confused again.  So are you installing a fresh 3.9?  Or 3.9 on top of 3.1?

I did do a fresh install, it wasn't over 3.1... however the emergency disk I created was made on a fresh 3.1 install which meant the CD driver was the 3.1 CD0 driver in Devs/dosdrivers/.  That was necessary just to get the system to boot and recognize the CD to be able to install 3.9.  But the 3.1 CDROM driver has problems not the least of which is the truncated file names, so I installed the CDROM software from the 3.9 install which is improved. Does that make sense or am I explaining it wonky?

Also, from your screenshot, "BufMemType = 513".  I wish Thomas was here, but as far as I know there's only supposed to be a single digit there, 0 through 5:

Buffer Type: 0,1=Any, 2,3=Chip, 4,5=Fast RAM

Try changing that field to a 1 and see what happens.

Next try changing your MaxTransfer to 0x1fe00.

Try increasing the number of buffers from 50 to say, 200.

Make these changes one-at-a-time, and note if anything changes.  

Awesome tips, Thank you.  I will try these one at a time.  I guess the test after each change is to try and install boingbag1.

[dschallock]

Yes, but you need a little Hardware-Hack to get it working in the A3000 !

It is incompatible with the A3000's motherboard SCSI controller - replacing the A3000's SCSI chip to rev. 08 solves the problem.

And the device is called warpdrive.device

Hi Rotzloeffel, Thanks for the feedback.  I understand what your saying and yes I know its warpdrive.device (I was being lazy and typing short hand).  What I meant by attaching the cd to the warp chain was to plug it in to the end of the scsi chain I already have coming off the warpdrive.device now.  And I know that does work as I used to have a cdrom attached to it.  I am only using the amiga 3000 scsi.device for it now is because it is a an external drive with the 25 pin external plug and it was just easier for me to plug it directly into the back of the A3000 rather than hacking a port for the internal warp ribbon to end in an external 25 pin plug.

[dschallock]

Gah, I'm confused again.  So are you installing a fresh 3.9?  Or 3.9 on top of 3.1?

Also, from your screenshot, "BufMemType = 513".  I wish Thomas was here, but as far as I know there's only supposed to be a single digit there, 0 through 5:

Buffer Type: 0,1=Any, 2,3=Chip, 4,5=Fast RAM

Try changing that field to a 1 and see what happens.

Next try changing your MaxTransfer to 0x1fe00.

Try increasing the number of buffers from 50 to say, 200.

Make these changes one-at-a-time, and note if anything changes.  

Well I tried these. Nothing stopped working but it did fix anything either.  What program do you to burn Amiga stuff to disk?  Also what cd rom software are you using on your Amiga?

[dschallock]

Just an update.  I moved the CDRom from the scsi.device to the warpdrive.device.  Unfortunately it didn't allow me install the boingbags successfully (same errors as before), however it did seem to alleviate some of the read errors I was getting on the CD when extracting archives off CDs.  It's a long shot, but I am hoping that maybe my 3.9 is a a flawed install even though it seems to be working fine, and that if I reinstalled from the CD now connected to the warpdrive it would solve my problems.  Like I said, a long shot, but I am running out of ideas.

[dschallock]

UPDATE 10-7-15

I obtained another copy of the 3.9 disk. (I assure you I own a real pink copy by the way).  I wanted to rule out something amiss with my copy.  I also now have the cdrom drive connected to the warpdrive.device instead of the 3000's scsi.device.

I have had complete success through boingbag2.
Here was my procedure.
1) format workbench -clean slate
2) install 3.1 fresh and mount CD0 to get access to the CDdrive.
3) insert new copy of 3.9 disk and create EBD (emergency boot disk)
4) reboot from boot disk
5) re-format workbench -clean slate
6) install 3.9
7) install 3.9 internet software
install 3.9 cdrom driver (to replace the 3.1 driver in DEVS)
9) reboot
10) insert a cd burned on a PC (using windows 10 normal burning) with the boingbag updates (1-4) already decompressed (using winrar).
11) copy boingbag1 folder to RAM:
12) swap CD for new 3.9 disk
13) install boingbag1
14) reboot
15) repeat step #10 through #14 with boingbag2

Everything in the above steps works 100% including using the ROM updates with my warpengine.  No problems, no errors, everything good!
Thanks to everyone for the help and education that got to this point.  I hope this thread helps others get at least this far in in the future should they run into similar problems.

********************

I did attempt (and succeed) moving beyond and installing the boingbag3&4 combo (which by the way does not require the 3.9 disk inserted).  The install seems to work fine however on restart I get messed up colors on my screen and various commodities return errors on startup.  I will continue to try and discern the nature of those problems but I am happy I succeeded through boingbag2 at this point with a stable system.