First time HD install in A4000 w/OS3.1

[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.

[Orjan]

IdeFIX uses CacheCDFS, doesn´t it?

[Orjan]

On many drives one pin is missing ( I guess so you won´t put the cable in reverse, provided you have a cable with a plugged hole at the same location as the missing pin.. ) but this is of no importance to functionality..

However, Jens Schoenfeld told me some time ago that the WD Caviar drives dont comform 100% to the IDE standard, and therefor won´t work in his IDE hardware solutions.. I´m not saying that the A4000 has a general problem with Caviars, but it´s a possibilty..

Anyone else using a Caviar drive in their 4000?

[K7HTH]

I would like to use the Seagate but I just can't get HDToolBOX to acknowledge this 8GB drive at all.

Since pin 31 is of no consequence, cliping it off the mobo is acceptable?

[Orjan]

Well... I don´t know exactly what pin 31 does, if anything, but I can tell you for sure that cutting the pin of the motherboard won´t make a difference, and I don´t really see why you should consider that at all... If there´s no pin on the drive, then the pin isn´t connected on the motherboard, so to speak... The wire is physically present in the flat ide cable, but it doesn´t go anywhere...

[K7HTH]

Orjan wrote:

Well... I don´t know exactly what pin 31 does, if anything, but I can tell you for sure that cutting the pin of the motherboard won´t make a difference, and I don´t really see why you should consider that at all... If there´s no pin on the drive, then the pin isn´t connected on the motherboard, so to speak... The wire is physically present in the flat ide cable, but it doesn´t go anywhere...

My thought exactly, thanks. Well there is hope in all this since I chose to not quit. I got the Seagate to come up and be configured for partitioning. I got 4GB out of it so far. Right now I am formatting it and hope to install 3.1 again and have it stick this time unlike the WD drive. I will work on the CDROM after I can have a somewhat stable HD installed. Stay tuned.

[Orjan]

Tip: You normally don´t have to "format" drives if they have appeared as icons in Workbench.. You only have to "initialize" them ( choos format in the menu system, then initialize ) Initialization only takes a few seconds, compared to a format which takes, well, forever... :-)

[K7HTH]

Hmmmm, intialize. I never noticed that. Well, formatting is done, OS3.1 installed, Cold boots fine, but misses the first boot with the CDROM attached, causing me to warm boot then the HD takes over. Now, I am decompressing Kickstart files on my laptop to hopefully get it working in my A4000D.

[K7HTH]

Orjan wrote:

Tip: You normally don´t have to "format" drives if they have appeared as icons in Workbench.. You only have to "initialize" them ( choos format in the menu system, then initialize ) Initialization only takes a few seconds, compared to a format which takes, well, forever... :-)

I take it formatting a drive without a WB icon would be unfeasible. When you mean 'initialize' from the format menu, you mean to Quick Format, right? I am using WB 3.1 until I can get Picasso drivers loaded and this darn Kickflash to supposedly load KS 3.1 so I can even run the Picasso. I hope to get my CDROM working via the Budda/Catweasel, but right now the Catweasel disk is corrupt right out the box. Got to love this vintage money pit technology!

[Argus]

Ah yes, the money pit.  Who among us doesn't know the $$ needed to sustain the habit?

I finally got around to working with my 3.0 rom'd A4000.  I couldn't get 3.1 to recognize a 1Gb ide drive nor cdrom but 3.0 installs perfectly on the 1GB Seagate ide drive and AsimCDFS installed my 4x Mitsumi atapi drive no problem.  I think you're going to need to softkick into 3.1 from a 3.0 harddrive install.  If you have another A4000 w/ 3.1 ROMs you can copy the ROM image onto floppy for use with the softkicker program.  I've done this with A500s before but not an AA machine.  Same principles apply though, so it should work.  I would think you'd want to save your Kickflash flashrom space for the 3.9 rom update later.

[K7HTH]

Argus wrote:
Ah yes, the money pit.  Who among us doesn't know the $$ needed to sustain the habit?

I finally got around to working with my 3.0 rom'd A4000.  I couldn't get 3.1 to recognize a 1Gb ide drive nor cdrom but 3.0 installs perfectly on the 1GB Seagate ide drive and AsimCDFS installed my 4x Mitsumi atapi drive no problem.  I think you're going to need to softkick into 3.1 from a 3.0 harddrive install.  If you have another A4000 w/ 3.1 ROMs you can copy the ROM image onto floppy for use with the softkicker program.  I've done this with A500s before but not an AA machine.  Same principles apply though, so it should work.  I would think you'd want to save your Kickflash flashrom space for the 3.9 rom update later.

At the moment I do not have faith in this KickflashOS4 to support the 3.9 ROM update because it cannot properly load Kickstart 3.1 ROM even with CoyoteFlash1.6. It is curious you mention kickflash flashrom space for 3.9 ROM update because there are two locations on Kickflash one each for ROM update AND Kickstart ROM.

My current 8GB Seagate was partitioned and formatted under OS3.1 using 3.0 ROMS. The only Amiga I own more than one of is the A500.