HD SCSI cables

[Prmetime]

Hello,
   I have an A3000 that will not do anything with the HD installed.  I recently had it apart to put a new battery in it and I'm wondering if I installed the HD SCSI cable the wrong way(put it in upside down so the red side is on the wrong side). The HD works fine in a different machine. If I reverse the cable will that damage anything if it is the wrong way? I'm hoping for something simple so I don't have to start swapping  chips.  Any suggestions are appreciated.  

[doctorq]

I don't believe that you have broken anything, if all you have done is to put the cable in the wrong way around. I have done this a couple of times with IDE drives, and no harm done to either HDD, controller or cable.

Just switch the cable around, and if you are lucky it boots up like it should do :-) Good luck with it.

[nex4060]

I know when you change the battery in the A4000T witch has an onboard scsi-controller you need the reset the scsi-bios otherwise it won't work. sounds abit like the A3000 has the same problem.

I know that there is a thread telling about the problem some where in here.

[X-ray]

@ Nex

Don't you mean the A3000?
I changed the battery in my a4000T (was not working for 2 years) and I didn't have to do anything. I think you mean the A3000, mate.

[Prmetime]

I have changed the batteries on both of my A3000s and I didn't have to do anything differently on the other mahcine.  It boots up fine with either Hard Drive.  While I suppose I can look for the setbatt utility (is aminet still down?), I don't know why one A3000 would boot fine and the other will not (at least not due to the battery anyway). However any help is appreciated.

[X-ray]

@ Primetime

You usually can't put a SCSI ribbon the wrong way on the device, but just in case: the stripe must be closest to the power connector on the device.
As for whether it is the wrong way around on the controller: there should be a small '1' on the circuitboard next to that connector. That is the side the stripe goes.

[X-ray]

@ Primetime

Also, you may have done what I did (a real smart move): I plugged the SCSI ribbon cable onto the SCSI header on the controller so that two pins were not engaged by the ribbon connector. Edit: a variation on this is to miss all 25 of the lower pins and not notice

I know, I know, it was stupid but not only did I do it, but it took me a while to notice what I had done. I did the same thing trying to connect an IDE cable to the IDE connector by feel, because I didn't want to take the drive chassis out.

[melott]

@PrimeTime

Or it could be as simple as a bad ribbon cable.
I had that problem on my A3k. I opened it up to
replace the battery and by unplugging and pluggung
in the Hd the cable went bad. I knew the drive was
good but by poking around in there sometimes it would
work and other times it wouldn't. I replaced the ribbon
cable and have had no more problems.
Its unlikely that the battery is a problem. I removed
the battery from my A3k a couple years ago (minor MoBo
damage) and it runs fine without it. The only problem
is if I need a date stamp on an EMail or whatever I have
to set the time in prefs.

[adolescent]

Definately run a NVRAM utility.  After an extended period of dormancy my NVRAM settings got cleared.  This caused the SCSI controller to be set to SCSI ID 0, which conflicted with one of the internal drives.  This could be what you're experiencing.

EDIT:
IIRC, the defualt should be 7.  I still haven't figured out why it was set to 0 in my case.

[Prmetime]

Thanks everybody.  I will try to figure out what is going on here based on your input.  I'll let you know if I find anything.

Out of curiosity, where would I get a new scsi cable if I needed one?