A4000D replacement CD-ROM drive not compatible?

[dnelsonfl]

Hi all, thought I'd ask here and see if anybody has some more ideas. I have an A4000D whose IDE CD-ROM drive is starting to die. The motor is starting to sound downright awful and is on its last legs. I pulled a working 24x no-name IDE CD-ROM drive out of my parts bin and put it in the A4000D. It's set to slave, the Western Digital Caviar 35000 in the A4000D is set to master. It is OS 3.1 with idefix97 and using atapi.device. Everything works FINE with the dying CD-ROM. idefix97 appears to be registered as there are no nag screens. It's using CacheCDFS with atapi.device. This is not a 4-way IDE just the standard A4000D mb's IDE connector.

The symptoms of the problem are this. When the Amiga boots, the HD and CD-ROM lights are both on. When I insert a CD, the CD-ROM light flickers a bit and then goes off. The HD light goes off while this happens, and then comes back on and stays on again. The inserted CD does not appear on the desktop. Trying to look at CD0 results in "insert disk" message. diskchange cd0: didn't help. idefix97's finddevice does show an Atapi CD-ROM drive connected to the system.

Removing this problematic CD-ROM and reinserting the dying CD-ROM results in everything working fine again.

Any thoughts on how to get this replacement working?

-David

[amipal]

Have you tried plugging the CDROM into the secondary port as master?

[amigakit]

Does the new replacement CD drive show up in IDEFIX's FindDevice?

Run FindDevice, click on ATAPI.device on the left hand side and tick the Show All Device Types box.

[dnelsonfl]

@amipal,

Stock A4000D IDE connector on the motherboard. There is no 4-way adapter installed, so only two IDE devices can be hooked up. I tried flipping it around so the CD-ROM was master and the HD slave, but that gave the same results.

@Amikit,

Yes, finddevice finds an Atapi CD-ROM device out there under the atapi.device. It can also be found under scsi.device.

-David

[amigakit]

Have you tried running the IDEFIXPrefs program and re-saving the settings.

[dnelsonfl]

@Amigakit,

Ok, I just tried the idefixprefs and re-saving the settings. While I was in there, here's what the settings are:

System Parameters: Boot graphic mode: default, disable cache not checked, no fastmem not checked.
Controller Parameters: Connector Type: A4000/A4000T, 4-drive adapter: None, boot delay: 3, Atapi enabled is checked

Unit Parameters: Unit 0: Atapi Speed: default, unit type: auto detect; unit mount: auto detect, wait drive ready not checked.
Unit 1: The same as Unit 0

Resaving the prefs had no effect. I appreciate you taking the time to walk through all this with me.

-David

[tonyvdb]

I have found on my A4000D that just installing a new CD rom drive wont work. You need to reinstall the CD driver program from scratch and during the instal have it go through the "search for new device" prosess. Give that a try and see if that helps.

[Matt_H]

Check the CONTROL field in the CD0 DosDriver, or adjust it graphically with the CacheCDFS prefs tool. Some drives are very picky about driver settings and your replacement drive may not be compatible with your current prefs.

I never know what to set it to - I figure try a few different combinations. You'll probably have to reboot each time to have the drive mounted with the new settings.

[Thomas]

Use direct-SCSI and disable change interrupts. CDFSprefs should automatically complain about wrong settings when you try to save.

The settings should apply immediately, no need to reboot.

Bye,
Thomas

[Nickman]

Try using cable select on the hd and cdrom. Or try with the hd as cable select and the CDROM as slave.

[zipper]

I had problems with some brands (at least Creative) 32 - 52x; mostly they delayed or blocked booting on A4000. Atm I have some non-brand taiwanese 52x that is best to keep out of Dosdrivers and boot from loaded Workbench - then no problems.

[dnelsonfl]

@tonyvd,

The 4000 is still how I bought it over a year ago software-wise. I don't have the orginal install media or idefix/CacheCDFS. Now I did try to boot with an emer. disk into OS 3.9, but when it tried to mount CD0 the same thing happened (HD light and Cd-ROM light stuck on, "insert disk" message for the Cd-ROM). I checked the emergency disk and it was using CacheCDFS, too. Hmmm.

@Matt H,

I played with some CacheCDFS settings and no go.

@Thomas,

Ironically enough, CacheCDFS complains about the change interrupts option and deselects it. SCSI-direct by itself had no effect. It also complained about the change interrupts with SCSI-direct off as well.

@Nickman,

I thought a special cable was required that supported cable select. Gave it a go anyway, all combinations, and that just resulted in the insert boot disk screen after a very long delay on boot. So I have got to go with the master/slave jumper settings.

@zipper,

I gave that a try, too, mounting CD0 manually after the 4000 booted. Same result.

[doctorq]

@dnelsonfl

Just a thought; are you sure the new drive isn't busted as well? I have used several CD drives throughout the years, and have never experienced anything like the faults you are mentioning.

Maybe make a backup of your current OS installation, and install OS3.1 from disks, and try installing the CD drive with the IDEfix package. If that works, you would know that there is something on the current OS installation that is buggy, at least with the new drive. I know it's a long shot, but might be worth a try.

[dnelsonfl]

@doctorq,

Good thought, and that's why I try to use known good parts. I checked it in another ancient PC here, and the PC works fine with it. HD in PC as master, Cd-ROM as slave. The PC also has a Western Digital, but it's not the same model. I don't know what to say except this silly Cd-ROM is obviously allergic to my Amiga. Perhaps it's a compatibility problem with the western digital in the 4000. I don't have spare HDs to test out that theory.

Although this 4000 came with 3.1 on the HD, the seller only had 3.0 disks. Go figure. I'm going to put the old Cd-ROM back in so it'll boot up fine, and go ahead and back everything up. Then I'll install OS 3.9 up to BB2 and maybe take another crack at the 24x Cd-ROM under a clean OS 3.9 setting and see if that makes any difference.

A very big thank you to everyone for trying to help sort this mess out.

-David