Help! Workbench is out of Sync!

[MarkM]

Hello All.  I was involved in the Amiga at "PC Powerhouse/Microwave Magic & Computers" (the store) in Cincinnati Ohio years and years ago.  Used to sell Amigas and was an avid user.  Lost touch over the years, but recently just bought an A1200HD/40 from Ebay that's in great shape and working.  My issue is that when this machine boots into Workbench, It's giving me a 24Hz desktop, and my monitor will do a minimum of 31.5Hz. (I believe)

Holding down both mouse buttons and getting the boot menu, I've been able to boot into a 640x200 desktop that worked through composite on my TV, but I really want to see workbench on my monitor.

Is there a quick fix of setting this to at least 31.5Hz?  Editing a startup-sequence or anything like that?

I'm so lost after all these years.

Thanks in advance!

-Mark McKee

[TjLaZer]

You need the DblNTSC, DblPAL, Multiscan modes in devs:Monitors.  You may also need VGAOnly in there too.  But with this setup you are limited to Workbench apps!  Games will not work.  You need a hardware Scandoubler for that.  These cost around $100+ if you can find one, but work great even for games!

[MarkM]

Thanks for the reply TJLazer.

Here's what is happening:

If I try to boot the Amiga on a TV screen, I can see the initial load starting to happen, then the TV goes crazy as it flips into some high-res mode that the TV can't do or sync to.

If I try to boot the Amiga on a modern monitor, I get a black screen and the monitor will say something like "out of range" and tells me that the hertz is 24.  

I need the hertz to be 31.5 so I can see anything.  If I hold down both Amiga buttons to get the Early Boot Screen, and tell it to bypass normal startup, I get dumped into AmigaDOS.  Remembering enough to type "LoadWB" to get to some kind of WB screen, I can see things at this point on a TV, but since I went past the normal startup-sequence load things are wacky.  (Keeps asking for volumes, etc.)

Any suggestions appreciated.

-Mark

[Thomas]

Try the following:

Boot without startup-sequence. At the DOS prompt enter the following commands:

cd devs/monitors
rename #? :storage/monitors
cd :prefs/env-archive/sys
delete screenmode.prefs
delete overscan.prefs

Now wait for the HDD to finish its work and a few seconds more, then reboot.

You should now see the normal Workbench on your TV.

Open the Devs/Monitors drawer as well as the Storage/Monitors drawer. Drag the icons labelled Multiscan and VGAOnly to Devs/Monitors and reboot.

Now run Prefs/Screenmode and choose Multiscan:Productivity 640x480. Click on Save. The TV should go crazy now, again. Better disconnect it to avoid damage.

Connect the Amiga to your PC monitor. It should display the Workbench with a resolution of 640x480.

Bye,
Thomas

[MarkM]

Thomas,

Thank you very much for the information.  I was able to carry out the commands, but now a new problem has arisen.

The hard disk is "not validated".  There's a duplicate block or something like that and it won't fix itself.

This machine was used, and there are several software packages on there, including ABTools.  I tried running that, and it found tons of errors.  Also tried (through AmigaDOS) the Diskdoctor 1.3.  It found errors, but couldn't fix.

Now my Amiga boots not into workbench, but into AmigaDOS.  I noticed there is no "S" folder anymore.  Since drive isn't validated, I can't write anything to it.

At this point, the machine doesn't have a CD drive, and I can't get the CompactFlash card to work.  It just doesn't recognize it.

Unless there is some driver that has to be loaded before it does recognize a CF, I'm out of luck.

I can only try and hunt down AmigaOS 3.1 (it has 3.5 installed on the hd) and try to format (or replace) the hard disk and just load on 3.1.

I also have AmigaForever 2006 on my PC and I notice there are .ADF files of all the Amiga floppies for install of 3.1, yet I have no way of getting them onto the Amiga until I can get the CF Card to work.

I'm not sure what it would take to get a CD drive installed on this Amiga, as I'd love to have OS 3.9.

Thanks,
Mark

[odin]

Do not use the 1.3 'Diskdoctor' that will only make matters worse.

The easiest thing to do would be to connect the HD to a PC and do a fresh 3.1 install with WinUAE, although that will probably require a 2,5"-3,5" converter thingy.

[MarkM]

I tried that.  Disasembled the A1200, pulled out the drive (The guy has a 3.5" Seagate 125MB ide drive installed with some funky kind of modifed ribbon cable!).

Sadly, when I tried to plug this into my PC, the drive wouldn't spin up.  If I do not connect the IDE cable to it, it will spin up.  Don't know if this is because I have an 80-pin IDE cable connected instead of a 40.  I also tried setting the jumpers to a master - didn't help.  I might venture out tomorrow and see if I can track down a 40-pin ribbon cable just to see if it'll fix it.

At this point, I'm ready just to buy a 2.5" laptop ide hard drive, 2.5" cable and buy AmigaOS 3.1 and install this fresh.

I may also go the way of getting that 4 channel buffered ide interface from Amigakit and try to hook up external CD drive.

This is going to be a challenge; but again, it's a pet project.  I don't have any other Floppies or anything else to try.  I'll just have to wait to get more things before I can proceed.

Thanks anyway!

-Mark

[fx]

You may be able to transfer stuff to and from the amiga on a 720kB formatted DD Floppy diskette. If you boot to AmigaDOS and type 'Mount PC0:' you should then be able to access it with PC0: instead of DF0:.

This way you could transfer DiskSalv to the machine, try and fix the harddrive, undelete the startup-sequence and copy it back.

But the easiest way would ofcourse be to get the 3.1 diskettes and make a fresh install. And I think a bigger and faster harddrive would be nice aswell!

[Thomas]

At this point, the machine doesn't have a CD drive, and I can't get the CompactFlash card to work. It just doesn't recognize it.

Unless there is some driver that has to be loaded before it does recognize a CF, I'm out of luck.

Enter

cd devs:dosdrivers

and

dir


Check that there is something like CF0 or CD0. If so, enter mount cf0: or mount cd0: respectively. The former activates the CF card, the latter the CD-ROM drive. But only if the L and Devs drawers are still intact.

Bye,
Thomas

[thanos]

Heya I was poking around and noticed that some other poor fella had a display issue.

I had used WinUAE to setup my old 8Gb hard disk, but I guess I selected an invalid display mode for my TV.
I had a rolling display on my TV, but thanks to Thomas' advice to ParkM, I was able to get my a1200 setup working.

Now I wish I had a better setup, heh.
Guess I'll have to raid the piggy bank and get an adapter to VGA.

Thanks...

[MarkM]

SUCCESS!!!

I have been able to use DiskSalv to fix my disk errors!  Now that I can write to the hard disk, I was able to try and fix some of the errors.

Got a WB screen running (although crippled) and able to read/write PC Disks (720K).  Part of this 'fix' was finding a PC that could actually format a 720k floppy.  

Using a Windows program called "MaxFormat" I was able to format at 720K and now going to try loading the CF Card software.

With all of this, working, will be able to use my legally purchased AmigaForever 2006 and extract those .ADF files for AmigaOS 3.1 and get this thing working finally.

Many, many thanks to all that helped...I would have been lost without hope!

Thanks,
Mark