DGB wrote:
Shades...,
At this point I am trying to get the following to work. I have an Amiga 2000 with a Flicker Fixer and a DKB MegaChip. The GVP 040 combo is the only other device in it. Although I have a lot of other stuff I have pulled it all out. I am tring to just get the basic stuff working and then I will try adding the rest. Oh yea, the 2000 motherboard is REV. 6.2.
Sounds allot like my old A2000 rigs (I had two myself, before I traded up to an A4000). So I'm hopeful I'll be able to help you. I'm sure if I'm in error, others here will proffer their assistance.
After reading you post I think I need to print it out and highlight the references you have made and do some reading on them from the various books and manuals I have.
No problem... I may not be checking this thread as regularly as I'd like. I'll be relatively busy until after New Years. It may take a day or three to get a response (from me at least).
When CrossDos is activated for a floppy drive the machine works OK until I put a disk in the drive. It doesn't matter if the disk is an Amiga format or a Pee Cee format, the result is the same. The drive runs continueously, the drive light stays on and the machine locks up. I can do either a cold or hot reboot and the result is still the same. In fairness to this test I admit that I have only done this with one drive, DF0, and I have not tried DF1 or an external drive, DFx etc.
I'm assuming this problem doesn't occur when you de-activate CrossDOS?
I will try that laterif I get a chance. (The wife and I are going to see the second "Lord of the Rings" movie today so my Amiga frustration time is going to be short today.)
Have fun!
Yep, my mistake... I had the floppy sizes wrong. What is the Amiga Format size for the HD floppys? Like I said, it's been 7 years and I'm an old phart who suffers from CRS. I do happen to have an external 5.25" drive like you mentioned. I never have tried it though, it was in with a bunch of other stuff I bought from a guy a long time ago.
Amiga HD floppies have a capacity of 1.76MB. I don't know much about the 5.25" drive myself, I just happen to know that on Amigas, they format out to 440K.
As for the GVP combo's.... I really don't want to switch to something else unless I absolutely have too. You are not the first to tell me about the Guru Rom. I have to admit that from what I have read in various posts it seems like a reasonable move to make. That is why I am buying one from another member of these forums. It is comming from Hawai and he is kind of busy with the Christmass season so it will probably be a week or two before I get the chance to try it.
A Guru ROM will certainly be worth it if you stick with the A2000s. I personally would like to get a Cyberstorm Mk3 (or is it Mk2, I forget) to replace my GVP/TekMagic T-Rex II. I mean it works, but it can be flakey. I just can't justify getting a $600 060 accelerator for my A4000.
Originally, when I got the 040 combo, back in 92 I think, everything worked. The worst problem I had then was a crappy Maxtor 213 MB drive That I got with the 2000 on a Supra controller. I switched it over to the 040 combo and added the Toaster. Everything worked but the Maxtor was always having problems wit read errors and it seem to continueously develope bad areas on it. In 93 0r 94 I bought a Quantum 1.2 GB drive and installed it internally chained on the same flat ribbon cable that the Maxtor was on. I used the GVP software to format it and it ran OK. I'm not sure now but I thik I left the OS on the Maxtor and just ran the Quantum as extra storage. When I upgraded to the Quantum I put in a lot of extra stuff. At one time I was running a Toaster, a Studio Sixteen sound board, three DPS TBC's, a DPS anination recorder with an IDE Micropolis 1.6 GB drive and a DPS vectorscope. For about a year everything ran OK except for the problems with the Maxtor. Eventually it got so you had to boot it 4 or five time to get it to start up and if it crashed, which it started to do a lot, you had to do another 4 or 5 times to get it back up. As I mentioned in my other posts, I had to give up the video business so I just got thoroughly frustrated and pushed everything back in the corner. Originally I spent a ton of money on all this stuff and that is another reason why I am not going to do it now. It now is a machine with little or no support save what I am getting through the community here.
Well, as I said, my GVP 030 combo's SCSI controller would 'hang'. What I didn't mention is this caused plenty of read errors. Your Maxtor drive may not be as crappy as you think (slow though, I have a Maxtor 270 and it's no speed demon). It may simply be down to the GVP SCSI controller. This may also have been caused/compounded by your adding the Toaster, Studio 16, DPS PAR, etc., etc. The A2000 power supply was the beefiest of all the desktop models, but it was only 200W. I doubt power would be a problem now that you only have the GVP 040... But then again, the power supply maybe flagging and just has died yet. Do you have a voltmeter?
I have an idea, see what you think of this... I still have the Supra HD controller. I am thinking of taking it and the old Maxtor drive in my other 2000 box and trying to completely re-format it. If that works then I will try running it on my 040 combo card. I still have all the Supra utility software and I have nothing to loose with playing with that drive. As I remember, when I started with the 040 combo I just switched the drive from the Supra. I need to figure out what to do about changing the address on the Maxtor.
Instead of reformatting it, see how well it operates... Unless, that is, you re-prepped the drive and the RDB is non-standard. You may be able to use the GVP prep software to record the drives various parameters and then use HDToolBox (or the Supra controller's software if it came with any) to create anew RDB... I've never done this, so perhaps some one else here can better advise you. Anyway, if it's stable, you have another indication there is something wrong with the A2000 your GVP 040 is in now. Then try adding the GVP 040 to the "other" A2000, but keep the drive on the Supra Controller. If thing are still OK, then try attaching the drive to the GVP. If the problems you've experience manifest, you know it's the GVP 040. If they don't materialize, you'll know there is something amiss in the 'original' A2000.
One question, will the older 2.X OS run on the 3.1 rom in my other 2000? I have a DKB MultiStart rom switcher but that is just more complication and I really don't want to mess with it.
Yes, 2.x should run fine with 3.1 ROMs.
I would really like to just start fresh with a clean drive but this ridgid disk block thing with GVP SCSI sounds like it could be a problem. As I said, I have other drives and other controllers that I can expirement with. I am hesitant to foul up the one drive I have with a 3.1 OS on it that does seem to boot up the machine every time. I have the OS software on floppy that I can re-install but the way things have been going I don't want to risk a further set back.
Well, I'd recommend you find at least one drive you can do a clean, plain vanilla, install on. As your problems may be down to incompatible software or corrupted files. You could even use a Syquest cartridge if push comes to shove. This would be invaluable for troubleshooting what's going on. And as I said, there are ways around the RDB problem... I just can't help you too much there... If you could get software off the net and on to your Amiga. I'd recommend backing up your drives on to SyQuest carts with ABackup from the Aminet... Better yet, onto your IBM PC or CD-ROM. You could then fiddle around with impunity. This can be done in one of several ways. But they're all pretty much predicated on your getting software from your IBM PC onto your Amiga...
Strictly FYI, you can mount Amiga formatted hard drives in Windows NT4/2k/XP (using WinUAE) and Linux... And a SCSI controller in your IBM PC (to mount your current Amiga hard drives. Just want to mention this in case it turns out to be something worth attempting. I haven't attempted this myself (yet) BTW. Perhaps some other WinUAE or Linux users could advise you. BTW, what are the specs of your IBM PC?
I am not sure if there is a hardware problem with the 040 combo. I have tried writting email to GVP-M which has a great looking site online that is claiming sales and support but they did not answer my email. I am not sure what's up with them or if they have crashed and the site is just running it's time out there until the host ISP dumps it. I was going to send the 040 combo to them to have it checked out. The thing that keeps getting to me is the fact that I had all this working once upon a time long long ago.
Heh, heh, heh... You and everybody else. GVP-M is notorious for their lack of customer support. Don't know what it was like back when GVP was just GVP (long story), but I may have gotten one reply about problems I was having with the GVP T-Rex II I had in my A2000. As it turned out, the oscillator crystal was loose (hell it eventually would fall right out of its socket!) and this caused my A2000 to lock up constantly. And here's where I suggest you try reseating any and all socketed chips in your A2000. Including those on the GVP combo.
I just want to get this stuff going so I can play. I don't want to spend a ton of money on it. If it comes to that I will put all this stuff on ebay and buy a big Mac G4 to play with. If I have to spend money I will do it with something that has support. If I can get things working again without too much money spent I will be a happy camper. When it was working I could do EVERYTHING I ever needed with video, animation, sound and music on my Korg M1. With DVD recording ability I can put anything I do on DVD and it will last far longer than I will. I really don't want to go another direction because my learning curve for this stuff is about three times as long as everybody else and I'm too damned old to start from zero.
Well, I'd like you to get the A2000s up and running instead of you getting a Mac (only 'cause I love the Amiga so much). I'll do everything I can to help and hopefully that won't include you spending much (if anything).
Oh, I almost forgot... The one reason I was probably having trouble reading the CDROM is because I did not have the CDROM software installed that came with the CDROM when I got it. It is called AsimCDFS. It was specificly for the Amiga and the NEC CDROM.
I tried putting it on last night but I either did something wrong or I am still having a problem reading the drive due to something else. I was going to remove it and try installing it again but the computer won't let me remove it because it says it is in use. I looked at WBStartup but I don't see anything there. Any idea on how to disable it so I can remove it?
You'll have to look in the startup-sequence or user-startup (I think it's in the startup-sequence though). Start ed or any text editor your comfortable with. Open S:startup-sequence and/or S:user-startup. You should see lines like ";BEGIN AsimCDFS" and ";END ASIMCDFS". The lines in between will need to be commented out with semicolons, as the "BEGIN" and "END" lines are. That will disable AsimCDFS. I would recommend you try re-installing it if you have version 3. I've used it on and off with little or no problems (I'm using CacheCDFS now, only because it came with 3.5/3.9).
I wonder if you have a 'full' copy of AsimCDFS. I don't recall there ever being a special OEM version, but I could be wrong... I didn't get into Amigas until just before Commodore's collapse. Does the disk mention which version of AsimCDFS you have (v2 or v3)?
I'm afraid I have not been much help to you in spite of all the stuff I have written. I just thought I would try to tell you as much as possible and you might be able to sort something of value out of all of this.
The more information the better. The more you provide the better I, and others here on Amiga.org, can help. Though Wayne may disagree. After all, it's his storage space :-D.
I will keep trying stuff and keep you posted on any new wrinkles or advances I make. Keep in mind that there is nothing on any of my HD's that I have to save and that I have all my software on floppys so I don't care what happens to anything on my HD's.
In that case, I'd strongly recommend you do the following. First, verify that your floppies are still good! I'd hate for you to start the process and then find 'disk 3 out of 4' is bad. Then make a partition and install a plain vanilla OS install and leave it alone; next make another partition and install the OS again and use it as your 'production' SYS: partition; or vice versa. That way you'll be able to use the Early Startup menu to boot from your backup boot partition if things get dicey again. Trust me. It's worth the effort. After that, you can divvy up your drives anyway you like.
I am not an expert on all the technical aspects of the Amiga hardware and software. There a lots of things that you guys mention that I really don't know enough about to understand what you are trying to tell me. So, please be patient if I seem really dumb about things. I will probably ask a lot of stupid questions and try a lot of dumb things. When all else fails I am basically a trial and error guy. Some of the points brought up here I understand or at least have heard something about. Other stuff is Greek to me. I may have to do a lot of reading.
In this context, no question is a dumb one. Everyone at some point has to ask them. I know I still do ;-).
That's exactly why I took up computers as a hobby... The complexity. But I 'fell in love' with the Amiga because of its relative simplicity.
Dave
ShadesOfGrey
