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Author Topic: Do A590s work without hard drives?  (Read 1547 times)

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Offline gunniTopic starter

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Do A590s work without hard drives?
« on: September 28, 2011, 01:37:32 PM »
I have 2 A590 boards that I acquired a while back and just got round to getting myself a power supply for them.
Neither board has a hard drive but I was hoping to use an external scsi cdrom hooked up to the back port.
My problem is my A500 won't switch on with either board attached. I  tried removing the trapdoor expansion (which turned out to be a  disappointingly misnamed power pc board) as I heard these can sometimes  cause problems but still no joy.
Does anyone know if the A590 works without a hard disk attached, or are these boards just knackered?

Thanks in advance...
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Offline Matt_H

Re: Do A590s work without hard drives?
« Reply #1 on: September 28, 2011, 02:11:46 PM »
No reason it shouldn't work. My guess is there are SCSI termination issues.
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Offline save2600

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Re: Do A590s work without hard drives?
« Reply #2 on: September 28, 2011, 04:55:11 PM »
You'd think it would be a simple termination issue, but... a little while back, I helped a buddy out with a GVP A590 like device and sure as ****, you *did* need a HD installed in order for the pass-thru to work. Not 100% sure if not having a HD installed would refuse the computer to boot, but then again, there's an "on-off" switch on the GVP that bypasses the HD and allows it to boot. "Game mode" they call it. Wouldn't be surprised if hooking a harddriveless A590 to an A500 without such a switch would cause the computer to hang. I doubt you'd have two "bad" A590's, so throw a HD in there to be absolutely sure!
« Last Edit: September 28, 2011, 05:05:55 PM by save2600 »
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Offline Ral-Clan

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Re: Do A590s work without hard drives?
« Reply #3 on: September 28, 2011, 05:31:15 PM »
Just a thought....is the ROM of the A590 recent enough to even allow removable media drives to be hooked up to it?  It's got the same ROM as an A2091, as I recall, and that had problems with CD-ROM drives, etc. unless you upgraded the ROM to version 7.0 or something.

Another thing....is there a CD in the drive when you turn on the computer?  It could be as simple a problem as the Amiga looking for a boot-block on the disc in the CD drive (because it thinks it is a hard-drive) and not finding one, and so it waits forever.
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Offline arttu80

Re: Do A590s work without hard drives?
« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2011, 06:42:43 PM »
Try playing with DIP -switches.

-Turn switch no.1 to OFF position, which disables autoboot function.

-Second is for LUN setting (OFF - one drive at each address, ON - multiple drives at each address) .

-Third is for time out setting ( OFF - Short wait period for drive / parity check enabled. ON - Long wait period for drive / parity check disabled).

-Fourth switch isn't used at all.
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Offline gunniTopic starter

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Re: Do A590s work without hard drives?
« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2011, 01:15:52 PM »
tried dip switch settings, jumpered ram to amnesia, tried with and without cd drive attached (both with and without a cd in the drive)... still nothing.
I'll keep my eye out for a cheap scsi drive and give that a whirl
thanks guys
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