A1200 Won't boot to HD, but UAE will.

[Leifern]

Hello,

I have a strange problem with my A1200. It worked fine last night but today it wouldn't boot. I disconnected the HDD and plugged it into the PC. UAE booted just fine with it and it worked like normal (It is PFS3). I then plugged it back into the A1200 and it was just like before. No boot.

When starting from my WB 3.1 floppy it loads, but hangs once the OS is loaded. When starting from my 3.1 install-disk it loads just fine, and my hdd-partitions are all there, but when opening a folder with many folders in them the system hangs. My ACA 1232 seem to be working fine.

Does anyone have an idea of what could be wrong? Please tell me I don't have to replace my motherboard or something like that.

[Thomas]

To me this sounds a bit like a problem with the power supply. Whenever the HDD starts working, it pulls down the power so that the machine crashes.

Could also be a problem with the IDE cable. When you say "it hangs", does it really hang, i.e. the mouse pointer cannot be moved any more, or can the mouse still be moved but only the windows are not updated any more?

[Leifern]

I can move the mousepointer, but it remains as the stopwatch and the OS is unresponsive.
I have a spare PSU that i can try with when I get home from work. But it is so strange that the HD should "work" when booting from the OS3.1 install-floppy, but not when booting from the HD and not when booting from the WB3.1-floppy.

[Ancalimon]

I can move the mousepointer, but it remains as the stopwatch and the OS is unresponsive.
I have a spare PSU that i can try with when I get home from work. But it is so strange that the HD should "work" when booting from the OS3.1 install-floppy, but not when booting from the HD and not when booting from the WB3.1-floppy.

Have you tried Snoopdos? maybe it can help you see when the crash happens.

Create a spare Wb 3.1 disk which loads snoopdos (from another named disk if there isn't enough space) so that you can watch as the disk loads.

[Leifern]

Wow, I have no idea what that is or how it works, but I'll look in to it! Can this snoopDOS tell me what is going wrong when booting from the HD?

[Thomas]

I can move the mousepointer, but it remains as the stopwatch and the OS is unresponsive.

Then the rest of the OS is ok and only the IDE bus hangs.

Could still be a power problem. What kind of HDD is it (2.5" or 3.5") and how is it supplied with power? Does it get power through the IDE cable (2.5" style) or is it connected directly to the power supply?

If 2.5", could you build a custom cable which connects only the data lines to the motherboard and the power lines to the power supply?

I have a spare PSU that i can try with when I get home from work. But it is so strange that the HD should "work" when booting from the OS3.1 install-floppy, but not when booting from the HD and not when booting from the WB3.1-floppy.

I suppose that it depends on the amount of data which is transmitted over the IDE cable. And (if it is a power problem) on the number of head movements or such.

Do you have a spare IDE cable which you could test, too?

Do you have a spare HDD which you could try? Preferably a more modern one which needs less power or even a CF or SD card with a matching IDE-Adapter.

SnoopDOS won't be of much help. It will probably stop at an Open() of a certain file. You could only find out if it always stops at the same file and compare this to the same operation on WinUAE. But if WinUAE does not stop at this file, then the information is of no use.

If it's always the same file, then you could use WinUAE to delete it and see if it becomes better on the real Amiga. If this works, a virus comes into mind as another possible reason for all the trouble.




Edit: one more idea. While the drive is connected to a PC, can you use a Windows tool to read out its SMART data? Perhaps it has some health problems which are not so severe for Windows.

[Lurch]

Try another PSU :-)

[Leifern]

Then the rest of the OS is ok and only the IDE bus hangs.

Could still be a power problem. What kind of HDD is it (2.5" or 3.5") and how is it supplied with power? Does it get power through the IDE cable (2.5" style) or is it connected directly to the power supply?

If 2.5", could you build a custom cable which connects only the data lines to the motherboard and the power lines to the power supply?

I suppose that it depends on the amount of data which is transmitted over the IDE cable. And (if it is a power problem) on the number of head movements or such.

Do you have a spare IDE cable which you could test, too?

Do you have a spare HDD which you could try? Preferably a more modern one which needs less power or even a CF or SD card with a matching IDE-Adapter.

SnoopDOS won't be of much help. It will probably stop at an Open() of a certain file. You could only find out if it always stops at the same file and compare this to the same operation on WinUAE. But if WinUAE does not stop at this file, then the information is of no use.

If it's always the same file, then you could use WinUAE to delete it and see if it becomes better on the real Amiga. If this works, a virus comes into mind as another possible reason for all the trouble.

Edit: one more idea. While the drive is connected to a PC, can you use a Windows tool to read out its SMART data? Perhaps it has some health problems which are not so severe for Windows.

My HDD is 2.5" and connected with IDE-cable. I have no other cable or HDD to test with, I'm sorry to say. I have tested my other PSU now but nothing changed.

I have connected my HDD to WinUAE now, and everything seems to be working fine. Could i have to many to large partitions for the filesystem or the PSU?
I have 4 partitiones:
DH0: 506mb
DH1: 4031mb
DH2: 1511mb
DH3: 2014mb

All are pfs3, but DH3 is also used in mac-emulation.

The last thing I was doing last night before going to bed was formatting old floppys using x-copy. I have noticed that several of them have viruses on them, but i have VirusZ running at all times. Shouldn't it be able to sniff them out? These disks are from the 90s. Should I be using a different filesystem? Could pfs3 be the problem?

The HDD I am using was taken from a DELL laptop (ca 2004).

EDIT: I am looking in to ways to read the SMARTdate from the drive, but I have no idea what that is. I'm sorry that my knowledge is so lacking when it comes to these sorts of things, but I am extremely grateful for all the replies that I have gotten.

I should be able to get a new IDE-cable, but it is very strange that it broke overnight.

EDIT 2:
Well, the strangest thing: It works! I removed Mu4k-thing from startup sequence and installed IdeFix97 from the startup-sequence, and after one cold-reboot (befor which nothing had changed) it works. It does seem that some files has been lost though. This has happened before I think. Some of my WHD-load games has no icons (and wont run). I could have messed something up when setting up PFS (II 18.5). Perhaps i should try another filesystem. I'm probably not advanced enough as a user to be messing around with filesystems, but it seems like such a good idea.

[danbeaver]

As an aside, the MMULib's are useful, but they squeeze in a wedge of OS stuff that can screw with booting, so use carefully.  IDEFix is a great bit of software for getting different IDE/ATAPI kit to work; you can get the registration code from Claonto's Amiga Forever CD.   PFS has a disk doctor available, but for a non-hardware or hard core Amiga person, I'd stick with FFS (v45.16) and Dave Haynie's DiskSalv.