Amiga 2000 SCSI boot probelm, any ideas?

[Zero]

This is more of an annoyance, then a problem.

I have an Amiga 2000, (Rev 6.2), with 2.0 kickstart and running Workbench 2.1.

My SCSI card is a GVP (Impact) Series II with 4mb of RAM and a 250mb SCSI hard drive.

All this works fine all the time, the only problem I get is when I attach my SCSI CD-ROM drive, it usually just refuses to boot and stays on a white screen and then after a while goes to the kickstart screen.

However, if turn it on and off a few times it boots fine and I have no more problems until I power off again, soft reboots are fine.

Done all the usual stuff and the termination etc, is fine.

Any ideas?

 :-D

[Ral-Clan]

Have you tried turning on the A2000 with a CD-ROM already in the drive?

Also, play with the BOOTPRI (boot priority) function in the RDB of the SCSI hard drive.  Make it trump the CD-ROM and see if that helps.

Also, try putting the SCSI hard drive's ID to a lower number than the CD-ROM.  i.e. 0 or 1.

[Zero]

Hi!

Thanks, I have tried the CD in the drive, that did not work, mind you my CD drawer won't open until the Amiga is on and running.

It usually boots on about the third power on!

The CD-ROM is ID 6 and the Hard Drive is ID 0.

I will have a look at the BOOTPRI

Thanks again!



 :-D

[Ral-Clan]

Is there a way to make the CD-ROM drive non-bootable from the early startup menu (can't remember).  Try that.

It sounds to me like the Amiga is looking for a disk in the CD-ROM drive to boot the Amiga, and only gives up after many, many tries.  (but that still does not explain why it doesn't then try to boot from the hard drive).

Also see if there is a jumper on the GVP board that allows extra time for drives to spin-up upon turning the Amiga on.  My A2091 has this jumper.

Actually, my Amiga usually needs a warm re-boot after turning it on.  It just hangs with a black screen most times, but works fine after a CTRL-A-A.  Been this way for years, and I think has something to do with the drives needing time to spin up before being recognized by the SCSI card.

[rkauer]

 Try to lower the CD-ROM SCSI ID to 3 or 4, don't forget to edit the CD icon, too.

 Also change the SCSI device to not search the entire chain, this way you get some speedup on boot.

[Dmaster]

Would terminators have something to do with this?

[Zero]

Hi

The GVP does not appear to have a wait/delay jumper.
Ctrl AA won't make it boot if it fails, only power on will work.

I will look at changing the ID on the CD-ROM and see if that helps.

I know everything is terminated properly and have checked on some other gear I have here.

I have read elsewhere that GVP SCSI cards can be a temperamental, and mine is a rev 1 card so...

 :-D

[Ral-Clan]

There is also something in the RDB that can be set so that the Amiga sees that drive and looks no further on the SCSI chain for bootable drives.  I think it's the LASTDEV flag.  So, the Amiga would look up the chain of SCSI devices, see this flag on your hard drive, and look no further before booting (i.e. it wouldn't try to access the CD-ROM if it was on a "higher" SCSI ID).

[Zero]

I looked at the Boot Priority and my hard drive is in two partitions DH0: and DH1: both were set at -10.
I set DH1: to -128, as it says to do on the FaaastPerp disk and it seems to have improved things, its starting first time most of the time, altough it has hung once, so I shall see how we go and also look at the great advice I have recived from you all, if it starts playing up again.

Thanks!

 :-D  :-D  :-D

[Matt_H]

A GVP ROM upgrade might help, too. What version is your gvpscsi.device?

[Zero]

I have version 3.12

I thought I might had sussed the problem earlier, but it still won't boot first time...

[Zero]

Fixed it!

This sounds silly, but I would turn on the CD-ROM first, (it's external), then the Amiga 2000, but that caused the problems.

Turn them on together and it works, first time almost every time.

 :-D  :-D  :-D