Scsi harddisk problem on Amiga 2000

[PatrickZ]

Hello

I'm quite a newbie to Amiga and I got a question. Recently I got an Amiga 2000 with a 40MB SCSI harddisk in it. It was then working good.

But someone took out the hard disk and placed it in a Windows PC. I have put it back in the Amiga, but it is not being recognized any more. I can boot the system from a diskette (workbench 1.3), but as I try to format dh0: it says Drive not found. It certainly is there.

Who can help me with this?

Patrick

[InTheSand]

Hi,

It sounds like the Amiga partition(s) have been lost, so they'll need to be recreated.

Presumably, when you start the system from a Workbench disk, you don't see any other icons on the desktop aside from DF0: (floppy drive) and RAM: (RAM disk) ?

 - Ali

[amigagr]

welcome to the amiga comunity my friend and Don't Panic!
if the scsi board of the amiga is gvp maybe you will find here http://www.l8r.net/install/ the software to control the board at first. 12 years ago i had a lot of nightmares exactly with this board and this hard disk on the a2000 in my work...
this file http://www.l8r.net/install/hard_drive_cont/gvp_a4008hc.DMS if it is the right one you have to write it to a flopy disk in an other working amiga and then you will boot with this floppy.
if the hard disk has no damage the software will recognise it and then you have to make a partition, after that format the partition (with the same software) and at last you will copy the files of the workbench 1,3 disk to the hard disk. :roll:

[PatrickZ]

Yes, I think the Amiga partition has been lost because there has been a FAT-partition on the disk. But how do I create a new partition?

My SCSI-controller is a Golem SCSI device. I do have a disk for it, but I didn't get it to work with it. Besides, you can give me all kinds of urls here, but how do I write them to floppy disks the Amiga can read with my Windows PC?

[Hyperspeed]

Hmmm, that's an interesting question.

Can WinUAE format a double density disk in 880k format or is this beyond the PC drive's capability?

[Oliver]

Hyperspeed wrote:
Hmmm, that's an interesting question.

Can WinUAE format a double density disk in 880k format or is this beyond the PC drive's capability?

As far as I know, the PC floppy drives are not capable of formatting discs to be read natively in the Amiga.  This is due to hardware issues, not software.

Surely there must be a way for the Amiga to format and partition a new HD, without having a functioning one to work from.  I thought I had done so before, many years past.

[Zac67]

A PC can't read/write Amiga format disks. You'll have to transport the file via MS-DOS disk format (720k) to an Amiga, mount it there w/ Crossdos or Messydos on Amiga side and write the file to disk then. If the file's too big, this might be a tough task - maybe someone can send you a disk (dunno where you're from).

[InTheSand]

Hi,

If you boot into Workbench using the correct disk, and then put your SCSI card's disk in the drive, is there a program on there called "Prep", "HDPrep", "HDInstall" or anything similar?

It's the age old catch-22 Amiga situation with disks - you need a working Amiga and/or boot disk that can read/write MS-DOS 720Kb disks before you can easily transfer anything...

An alternative for you might be to give the drive back to the "someone" who took it out, and have them format the drive and install Workbench whilst using WinUAE...

Otherwise, if you're stuck and prepared to pay P&P from New Zealand, I can send you a Workbench 1.3 disk with MultiDOS preinstalled - this'll allow you to transfer stuff to and from MS-DOS disks. But you may be able to find someone physically nearer who can assist...

 - Ali

[PatrickZ]

There is a file hdinstall on the scsi-diskette, but as I try to load it, it says: Unable to load hdinstall: file is not an object module. There also is a program called Part, but that gives the error "Can't open disk 0 on the scsi3.device".

Sending a disk from New Zealand to the Netherlands wouldn't be cheap I guess, but if there's no other way...

[amigagr]

maybe then it's wrong the unit number (scsi id) of the default setup of the part program. try this: click on the icon of the program and with right mouse button pressed search in the menu of the workbench a command like this:''info'' or ''disk info''(i don't remember anymore...) and click on that. it will appear a window with some informations of the prep program. somewhere there maybe there is writen something like ''scsi.device'' or similar and a ''unit x'' or ''scsi id x''.
change this numbers of the id between 0-7, and it is possible that one of this will work.

[lozzy]

You MAY be able to recover the partition together with its contents. There's a program called RDprep from microbiotics which does a great job of these things, as it allows a read of the RDB (rigid disk block) which holds partition info. If that is overwritten, you may still be able to recover if you have a mountfile file for the drive stored somewhere. All you need to know is what the device name for your golem interface is, as that needs to be put into the icon used to run RDprep - (the compatibilty notes explain it). It's probably golem.device or similar, and in fact this may be why you can't run the other utility...it's looking for scsi3.device?
It all fits on a floppy disk, which I can send you (won't be expensive), but these are getting rare now, so I'd appreciate it back.
Any use?
Lozzy

[PatrickZ]

I'm not realy interested in the contents, since it needed to be reformatted anyway. I also don't have the mount file. And the device name for my scsi-device is indeed scsi3.device.

[PatrickZ]

Oh, and that solution with the scsi-id. That's very nice but there is no icon for Part. How can I create one?

[amigagr]

but how do you run the program if there is no icon? you can copy the icon from another program that has one and rename it to prep.info but because it's not the original there will be no options to change so try another option, if there is an icon of cli or shell run this icon and at the window type: prep ? and if there are available options for the program run it again with this options. if the reply is ''i can't find prep'' or similar you have to direct the prompt of shell to the director where the program is. example: cd df0:c or cd df0:tools etc...

[baro2000]

PatrickZ wrote:
Yes, I think the Amiga partition has been lost because there has been a FAT-partition on the disk. But how do I create a new partition?

My SCSI-controller is a Golem SCSI device. I do have a disk for it, but I didn't get it to work with it. Besides, you can give me all kinds of urls here, but how do I write them to floppy disks the Amiga can read with my Windows PC?

Hello,

Check if on boot your hard disk is recognised by controller. If not check jumpers on your disk and if disk is terminated. If you had something important on that disk you better try solving problem with another disk first.

You need drivers that come with the hardware. Most other will not work with your hardware so you'll be wasting time. If disk is recognised by controller it should be recognised by software. A manuall would be also handy. About drivers and info you can also check here: http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=46409

If you don't succeed a copy of correct disk via mail is half of solution. The other half is up to you. And about transfering files there are 2 ways (one requires at least 1MB ram and/or second drive and another serial cable). For getting dms to amiga diskette you require kikstart 2.0 or above. But you can use transadf with kikstart 1.3 and dms2adf on PC. Also try google for more info. And there is also Catweasel.