First time HD install in A4000 w/OS3.1

[K7HTH]

I am building an A4000HD but cannot get the OS3.1 Harddisk toolbox to acknowledge the drive. The cable is good and I have 3.0 ROMS. The drive is an 8GB Seagate. I understand OS3.1 drive defaults are SCSI, but I am using the internal A4000 IDE connectors and need to know how to get this drive mounted and partitioned. I also hope to get the ATAPI IDE CDROM working too; so when I can partition the first 2GB I can install OS3.9 and partition the rest. Thanks for any help.

[TjLaZer]

You are using "Scsi.device" in HDToolBox right?  Is it seeing the drive?  Once seen, setup partitions, with DH0: under 4GB and the rest as you please.  Should work fine.  You may have to unselect international mode, delete and reload FastFileSystem and try that.  For some reason that made the partitions not seen until I unchecked it.  Maybe that is a bug in the OS3.9 FFS, not sure, but try that.

[K7HTH]

TjLaZer wrote:
You are using "Scsi.device" in HDToolBox right?  Is it seeing the drive?  Once seen, setup partitions, with DH0: under 4GB and the rest as you please.  Should work fine.  You may have to unselect international mode, delete and reload FastFileSystem and try that.  For some reason that made the partitions not seen until I unchecked it.  Maybe that is a bug in the OS3.9 FFS, not sure, but try that.

Hi Tj, Yes HDTolbox is set for SCSI.device which I am not using in the A4000, I am trying to install an IDE drive. Therefore, HDToolbox is not seeing my IDE drive. Can you tell me what lines need to be typed in the information box for HDToolbox so I can recognize and partition this IDE drive? Thanks. I am using OS3.1 until I can get this HD installed an the CDROM working somehow.

[TjLaZer]

On the 4000 scsi.device is for the IDE controller. So set it to that.

[K7HTH]

Please note my Army brother that I need a primer here. "Setting" anything needs explaining. I open the icon HDToolBox with the Information command on the menu. I see lines of data all prefaced with 'SCSI'. IDE is nowhere listed. What lines do I need to add in the information window to make HDToolBox see my IDE drive to partition it?

[Argus]

@KD7HTH

The A4000 and A1200 use scsi.device at unit 6 for the on-board ide controller.  If you install an IDE drive, HDToolbox should show the drive at unit 6.  If not, either the drive is not jumpered correctly to master (check the drive and set it to 'master' rather than 'slave' or 'cable select' or 3.0 is too buggy to recognize it.  If you're using 3.0 roms there may be some incompatability issues with newer ide atapi drives (i.e. they won't work right, or not at all).  Perhaps this is the problem.  I have a second A4000 w/ 3.0 roms and have tried to use a 1Gb slimline 3.5" ide drive but HDToolbox only will allow me to set up a small 100Mb partition on the drive (strange?).  I also attached a quad-speed ide atapi cd rom but neither HDToolbox nor AsimCDFS see it under scsi.device.  I suspect problems with the 3.0 roms, which really were tested out on the old Seagate ide drives they shipped with.  My suggestion is to play around with the jumpers on the new drive or use an older (smaller) atapi drive.  In the alternative, you can install 3.1 roms for the A4000 desktop, which should give you better results, as well as other bug fixes, rtg, and other enhancements.

[TjLaZer]

Hey man, Do not worry about IDE, on the A4000 the IDE driver is SCSI.DEVICE!  All you have to do is set the tooltype: DEVICE=scsi.device and remove the rest! No need to use any IDE tooltypes.  Once you run the HDToolBox click to see if it sees the drive, if not click on Edit, and then Read Configuration.  After that click Ok, then partition.  I was able to get a 20GB drive seen as a 8GB with 3.0 ROMs so you should be ok.  I later softkicked to 3.1, and I installed 3.9. I was then able to repartition the drive to 20GB and reinstall 3.9.

And I am in the Air Force!

[K7HTH]

@Argus

Thanks for the info. As for 3.1 ROMS that is another issue I am having with this A4000. I installed a Kickflash OS4 that I loaded with Firmware 1.6 and 3.1 Kickstart ROMS for the A4000 on my A200HD. Well, no luck the A4000 chooses to ignore the Kickflash and boots directly to 3.0 ROMS. I followed all directions and even removed the jumper as instructed with no results. So I wasted 50 USD there and will have to burn another 60USD to get the actual ROMS. I tried installing a WD 6 GB drive that already had a 2 GB Amiga partition and OS3.1 loaded on it. When I plugged it into the A4000, the screen turned gray, red, yellow three times then prompted me at the 3.0 ROMS screen for a kickstart disk. I rebooted and the drive powered up, spun, and I was back at the 3.0 KS screen. I have small notebook drives I could use but I suspect the same result with HDToolbox as I experienced this same symptom in the A500. Even with 3.1 ROMS. That was why I went with the AdIDE2 which worked much better adapting a HD to my Amigas. (A500 & A500+) I am very much looking forward to getting this machine straight so I can mothball it in the closet.    

[K7HTH]

TjLaZer wrote:
Hey man, Do not worry about IDE, on the A4000 the IDE driver is SCSI.DEVICE!  All you have to do is set the tooltype: DEVICE=scsi.device and remove the rest! No need to use any IDE tooltypes.  Once you run the HDToolBox click to see if it sees the drive, if not click on Edit, and then Read Configuration.  After that click Ok, then partition.  I was able to get a 20GB drive seen as a 8GB with 3.0 ROMs so you should be ok.  I later softkicked to 3.1, and I installed 3.9. I was then able to repartition the drive to 20GB and reinstall 3.9.

And I am in the Air Force!

Oh, hey, OK so you are on McCord then. I thought you were at Ft Lewis with your South Tacoma location, great.

I can now see my Drive is unkown. I select it and load parameters even though the size it comes up with is way low, but not bad at 2 GB. When I go to save the changes I am told the disk is too full. Now what?
 
Thanks for the idea my AirForce bro.  

[K7HTH]

Well, good times. I got 2GB out of the configuration, I was able to save chnages to the disk by deleting the foreign langugaes on the floppy, and am now formatting the drive. What I need to do now is find a way to get my 44 speed CDROM to get recognized. Any suggestions?

[Argus]

KD7HTH wrote:
@Argus

Thanks for the info. As for 3.1 ROMS that is another issue I am having with this A4000. I installed a Kickflash OS4 that I loaded with Firmware 1.6 and 3.1 Kickstart ROMS for the A4000 on my A200HD. Well, no luck the A4000 chooses to ignore the Kickflash and boots directly to 3.0 ROMS. I followed all directions and even removed the jumper as instructed with no results. So I wasted 50 USD there and will have to burn another 60USD to get the actual ROMS.    

I too have a Kickflash but haven't used it yet..hmmm.  Anyway, I can't tell from your post exactly but afaik you can't use the A2000 Kickstart ROM images on the A4000 so maybe that is your problem there.  You might want to email Jens Schoenfeld of Individual Computers about your problem.

I see in a later post you got the first 2GB partitioned. That is in line with the 32-bit arithmetic partition limitation of Amigados 3.0/3.1. That's good news.  I don't know about your atapi cdrom though.  What are you using for a cd file system?

[Brian]

Here's what I've gathered...

You got an A4000 with KS3.0 and KickFlashOS4 and an 8GB harddrive.

First boot with your WB3.0 install disk. As explained the scsi.device is used to communicate with the IDE drive so there's no need to change that. in HD toolbox read the drive and make a small 200MB or so system partision. When that's done start your CDRom drivers and install OS3.9 or if you find it easier (as I do) start by installing WB3.x and then the CDRom drivers before installing OS3.9 ontop of it.

Now for OS3.9 to work you need KS3.1. You can load an A4000 KS into the KickFlash (that seem to be the best way for you) or you can do as I did and use the tool BlizKick with an A4000 KS file (only work on specific CPU cards, read the readme) to softkick your A4000 to KS3.1. Make sure it's an A4000D KS file or it won't work with the computer.

[K7HTH]

@All,

Thanks for the great info. At the moment I have no drivers for the CDROM and was ignorant in not thinking I needed one. I am still stuck in PC mode thinking all attached drives will be recognized by the ROM/OS. Where could I get the respective drivers for my CDROM? It is a generic 44X ATAPI/IDE drive.

As for the Kickflash, I loaded the KS 3.1 ROM for the A4000D. I had to use the A2000HD desktop to run the program to load the firmware. Now that I have OS3.1 loaded I could work to get the Kickflash loaded again but do so on the A4000D.  

[Brian]

There's a few more or less good CD file systmes. I use AsimCDFS but there's CasheCDFS, IDEFix, AmiCDFS and more... the latter is free on Aminet but I'm nor sure if it will work with IDE CD's or just SCSI CD's.

[K7HTH]

Well, I must say I am suffering the symptom of the disappearing hard drive. I loaded OS3.1 and all install well and good. Then I warm boot, good to go. Then I cold boot and the OS3.0 prompt screen returns. I know I selected the HD to boot thatwas evident upon the warm boot. So I boot with OS3.1 Install disk and there goes the HD Icon lost in the Amiga netherworld. I go through the whole installation process again and the same thing again. I am using a WD Caviar 36400. I was unable to get the 8MB Seagate to recognize. What I find curious is that my drives have 39 pins but I use a 40 pin cable because there are 40 pins on the A4000 mobo. I am tempted to breaking pin 31 on the mobo so I can use better cables that have that pin blocked on the cable connector.