A3000D Kickstart ROM questions.

[jim_255]

Maybe someone can help me here. I have an A3000 Desktop.
Mother board has the following identifiers.
FAB 313312 REV 09/01
P/N 313313 REV 09/01
 
Appearently an early production Rev 9 mother board.  It has the Kickstart on Floppy or Hard drive ROMS in it.
My problem is that it's been over 10 years since this beasty has been powered up, and it has either lost it's CMOS ram settings for SCSI and cant find the boot device or no longer recognizes the Kickstart partition on the SCSI drive. At any rate, it comes up with a screen asking me to select Kickstart 1.3 or 2.x from floppy.
 
Problem 2,
The only A3000 Kickstart disk I can locate is the original 2.03, and it has some sort of data error on it.
 
The only other machines I have at my disposal are PC's.
 
My only path seems to be to buy a set of Kickstart 3.1 ROMS for the A3000,and AMIGA OS 3.9,  Luckily I have a SCSI CD drive in good working order.
 
My questions are:
1) Is the hardware I have compatible for OS 3.9?
2) what else am I going to need to buy?
3) is there someone who has a good KS 2.x install set for the 3000 they could copy for me?
4) Is there a Kickstart level diagnostic disk I could load?
 
- Jim

[Zac67]

Possibly your HDD is just stuck due to long storage (head sticking to platter). Check if you can hear it running when powered up. If not, you can take it out and give a good twist - most of the time you can get it running again.

Otherwise, depending on where you're at, you can probably find a kind soul who can provide you with some disks.

[alexh]

If you have access to another Amiga it will only take a few minutes to make an A3000 SuperKickstart disk (KS3.1 or later) from a ROM image. Which you can find on the net or someone might send it you.

http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/MakeSuperDisk

If you fit a new hard drive and you have a SCSI card in your PC you could use WinUAE to prep the hard drive and install the Kickstart file to the right location for the KS1.4 bootroms you have.

1) Yes
2) Nothing
3) Surely you want A3000 Kickstart 3.1 or later??
4) No

[Darrin]

The A3000 I picked up from eBay many years ago had the same softkick from Hard Drive option yours has.

The first thing I did was order a set of real 3.1 ROMs and install them.

OS3.9 will work fine on it.

[Matt_H]

Possibly your HDD is just stuck due to long storage (head sticking to platter). Check if you can hear it running when powered up. If not, you can take it out and give a good twist - most of the time you can get it running again.

Otherwise, depending on where you're at, you can probably find a kind soul who can provide you with some disks.

I've also had success with the "put drive in the freezer (!) for 30 minutes" method of hard drive revival.

[VingtTrois]

I've also had success with the "put drive in the freezer (!) for 30 minutes" method of hard drive revival.

:eek:

[LoadWB]

I've also had success with the "put drive in the freezer (!) for 30 minutes" method of hard drive revival.

:eek:

This works surprisingly well depending upon the failure.  I have had two successes with this, though I left them in over-night.  In addition, I had one which I left in the freezer while I was working on it.  It had to come up to a stable temperature first, but I was able to recover all of the data I needed.  Afterward, it was completely spent.

Supposedly stuck arms can also be freed by a sharp jolt by dropping the hard drive FLAT from a height of about two inches.  I have done this only once; the drive would not spin up at all, though it was logically recognized.  Spindle seizure.  Worked like a charm and actually never froze up again -- though this is not typical.

[1985BMWK75]

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