HDD boot trouble in an A1200D, need urgent help

[Amigaz]

Installed my first ever 2.5inch 2.1 gig HD in my A1200D yesterday which I had ordered from www.analogic.co.uk, it has W 3.0 installed my problem is that my comp. won't boot from the HD, I can hear the HD spin up and work and HD light flashes but then stop work but keep spinning and just the insert disk animation screen appears both after warm/cold boots.
Have tried rotating the IDE cable 180 degrees but still the same thing so I wonder if this is a typical problem if the HD has no boot partion (the seller forgot to fix it) or is there a special procedure for booting from my HD? never had a HD in my young days when I had an A500 because they cost a minor fortune back then so I'm a pure newbie in this case
Extremly grateful for help!

my machine:

A1200 desktop, standard, never opened

[Ilwrath]

rotating the cable 180 is bad, because it supplies power to the drive, as well as the data connection.  Could very easily short something in the logic board of the drive.  With the HD in it's cradle, and the cradle seated, there should be no twist in the cable, for all laptop drives I've seen.

When the HD is hooked up in this configuration, boot the Amiga, and insert a workbench disk like it asks for.  (Actually, insert your A1200 3.0 INSTALL diskette, if you have one.)  Check your program HDToolBox, and see if the hard drive shows up there.  If it does, you are right, and they probably forgot to format/install it.  If it doesn't, there may be something wrong with the HD.  (blown logic board?)

[Amigaz]

Thanks for the reply.

I didn't twist the cable just rotated the connectors at both ends and then fitted them again to the HD and IDE.
When I got this Amiga I didn't get anything with it
so no workbench disks, bah
Got it for free from a guy on Ebay in England because he sold me some games that didn't have the manuals so couldn't play them because of the copy protection.
I do have all WB2.05 disks except the install disk, any way I can analyze the problem with WB2.05?
Since I'm still an Amiga newbie I must ask you what a "logic board" is?
I'm quite an expert on PC's and Amiga's are older/"simpler" but not easier to deal with, hehe


/J-J

[Amigaz]

Just want to add that there's also four free pins left over on the HD, any chance that there's a jumper there missing like on a PC drive?
Am also pretty sure I've seated the connector firmly onto the IDE pins on the mainboard.

/J-J

[Effy]

Try to boot with a Workbench 2 floppy. When you get into the Workbench after loading then see if you notice an icon of the internal harddisc. If you do then it is formatted or at least prepared to format. If you only see the icon of the floppy then you need indeed to use HDtoolbox as mentionned before. Workbench 3.0 is normally supplied for free with an A1200, although Workbench 3.1 works too on a bare A1200. Try to lay your hands on one of those floppy-sets !!

[dandelion]

Congrats on the free 1200..now let's get your hard-drive working.

So, everything should be connected correctly. The red line on the IDE cable should match the little "1" on the motherboard. The fact the drive is spinning up means its connected correctly so anyway, don't have to worry about that.

If the drive isn't bootable, you should still see the icons for it if you boot from a workbench disk. So that's good.

Now you want it to boot on its own. I'd go for a fresh install.

You'll need the set of Workbench 3.0 discs (or 3.1 if you have those roms, but probably not). You'll also need the Install disc with HDToolbox on it. Some one here will help you out with this and i'm sure you can google for it too.

Boot from the install disk. Load HDToolbox. Click New Drive, hold on off to the pub.

If you need more help pm me. It's dead easy (easier than a PC!! DAMMIT!!)

[Amigaz]

Many thanks you guys for the quick aid!

Will try all of these options, hopefully they will solve my problems, have some games here which are HD installable, arggh

the IDE cable hasn't a red line, must be a cheap crap cable, lol.
Read about the "1" and red line in another thread on the forum but couldn't find mine.
Whish I knew how to attach an image in this message, have taken pictures of my installation so you can see my cable etc.

/J-J

[u_jakobsen]

Rotating the cable probably won't harm your drive, since the harddrive (fortunately) has circuitry that protects the electronics from this failure. (The protection is needed simply because you CAN connect it wrongly (do it on a PC and it won't boot either)).

There are typically a few things to try (they are in the order of how likely they are):
* Drive Partitioned? Take your WB3.0 disks and get hold of HDTOOLBOX. Divide your harddrives in to at least two partitions:
 - "workbench" (at least 20 Megabytes),
   partition device name: dh0
   bootable
 - "work" (the rest)
   partition device name: dh1:
   not bootable

* Drive formatted? Format the "Workbench" & "Work" partitions. (later copy the contents of a workbench disk onto the partition "Workbench". Later again copy the contents of the other disks into their respective folders (eg.: the contents of the fonts disk into "Workbench:fonts")


* Is the drive set as master? Somewhere on the harddrive there are jumpers, with which you can tell the controller how to handle this drive. If the drive is set as C/S (cable select) or slave it won't work. Cure? somewhere on the harddrive there is a diagram of how to set the jumpers (it varies greatly from drive to drive)

* Defective cable? Try another cable. Borrow one from a friend. Cure? Get another cable or try to solder it.

* Defective drive? Try your drive on another Amiga. Careful with this one: I have destroyed a controller on my A4000 due to a defective drive (this is however an unlikely event :-) ) Cure? Return the drive and get another!

* Unsufficient power? This highly unlikely, unless you also have installed an acceleratorboard. The power consumption could then possibly be so high that after spinup the system can't handle it. Cure? Another powersupply.

* Defective controller on motherboard of your Amiga? Try using a friends working drive, from a working system. Cure? Another Amiga motherboard! (This i almost impossible that it could be the trouble in your case since your Amiga is capable of booting up)

Hope this helps.

Cheers and good luck

[Ryu]

@AMIGAZ

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