A4000T booting delay issues

[MRamos]

Hi,
I've recently got an A4000T, but it hadn't the manual book.

The thing is, it take ages to boot. There is a CPPC board fitted and I'm using it's SCSI interface, but the Amiga onboard SCSI interface have neither devices or a terminator attached. Can I disable the onboard A4000T SCSI interface?

Do the A4000T have an IDE interface? Do it suffers from the same problem as the A4000D one? Should I plug some devices to hurry the things up?

thanks in advance.

[iamaboringperson]

The A4000T does have an IDE controller.
You shouldn't need to disable the SCSI controller. I'm not sure whether it can be disabled.

Delays can be caused when you are booting with a CD drive attatched, or when you have devices attatched to both the IDE controller AND SCSI controller.

I'm not sure, but it could be possible that delays are caused by having devices on two different controllers.

Extra devices will only slow things down.

A bit of advice:
1. Try booting with only on HDD
2. Check the device ID's. Make sure that they don't conflict (for each controller)

[metalman]

If you have non-existent SCSI devices in either the start-up sequence or the WBStartup, start-up becomes very slow as it repeatedly tries to find the missing devices.

Suspect its looking for a missing CD() device or such on the SCSI bus. The SCSI card itself will not affect boot up, if no SCSI devices are in the S-S

[MRamos]

Thank you guys for your replies.

Right now, i have a harddrive and a CDRom attached to the Cyberstorm PPC SCSI Interface. The CDRom is ID 3 and the harddrive is ID 1. Also i have a harddrive attached to the A4000T´s motherboard SCSI interface, wich is ID 4.

And there´s an IDE HD plugged to the IDE interface.

After plugging drives to all the interfaces, the booting time is significantly quicker, but there´s still a big delay.

The Amiga stays idle for about a minute and a half every time i boot the machine. Even when i cold boot, and the Blizkick and Setpatch needs to reboot to apply the patches.

All the unused SCSI IDs are disabled on the CPPC firmware, so the delay is not fom there.

As the IDE interface has a drive as well, i think the only possible cause id the motherboard´s SCSI interface, that´s looking for more devices in the SCSI chain.

I would like to know if there´s some configuration menu where i can disable all the devices IDs that are not in use, as i do in the CPPC firmware, but for the motherboard´s SCSI interface ?

Oh, yeah . . . all the SCSI devices are corectly configurated, and i have proper termination as well.

If someone have the A4000T manual in electronic format (PDF or whatever), or can supply me with a copy, please let me know.

Best Regards.

[adolescent]

I don't have an A4000T, but have an A4091 which is basicly the same SCSI card.  AFAIK, there's no way to disable individual devices (like you can in the CSMK3/CSPPC bios).  Double check the jumpers on the back of the card and verify that 1) Long spinup is disabled (SW5 off), 2) External termination is enabled (SW7 off), and 3) Multiple LUNs are disabled (SW8 off)

[Framiga]

but you can disable the NCR onboard SCSI device from the CSPPC boot menu.

press ESC during the boot then go to System section and enable the "NCR ScsiPatch" option. (MapRom enabled)

This will diable the A4000T SCSI device.

With the ScsiPatch the IDE will be disabled also.

[patrik]

@MRamos:

Atleast the IDE-interface of the A4000T will make the computer wait 30seconds during boot if no device is connected.

As Framiga said the CSPPC firmware can patch this behaviour. Though, it will always wait each time you start your computer with the power-switch.

If you want it to not wait even when you start from cold, either attach a device to the IDE-controller or build this.

I dont know how much wait the A4000T onboard SCSI adds.

/Patrik

[Amiga4k]

Saved from an info file:
Even when an A4000 is configured without one, the system will still look for an IDE hard drive on power-up or reset. To allow IDE drives time to spin up, there  is a long search built into the 3.0 ROMs, and an even longer one in the 3.1 ROMs  (about 30 seconds). A BattMem bit to disable the extra delay with 3.1 ROMs has been reported and finally confirmed, but it enables or disables an additional eight seconds of the wait, and defaults to off. With software, it is possible to remove the delay between resets, but not on power-up (Matthew Frost's "NoIDE" program is available from the disk/misc directory of Aminet). The only currently-known way to completely disable this delay is by obtaining a small piece of hardware (the circuit is courtesy of Sean Riddle; the instructions are mine, so errors are entirely my fault). With this "IDE ignorer," the search for IDE drives is skipped altogether.  You can follow the instructions here to build one, or buy a prebuilt version from Redmond Cable
(part number is "40socket-term").
Parts Required
two 4.7K resistors
40-pin crimp-on IDC connector
male-to-male 40-pin header (see below)
Procedure: The two resistors are connected between pin 39 and pin 3, and pin 39  and pin 5 (the effect is to tie IDE data bits 7 and 6 high). Rather than using a  piece of whole 40-conductor ribbon cable, Strip short pieces of individual  conductors from one and used fine needle-nose pliers to press these wires into  the contacts for pins 3, 5, and 39. Then the crimp-on cover was clipped on top of these.
Since the relevant pins are at either end of the connector, Run the resistors  flat along the side of the connector, using heat-shrink tubing and tape to insulate the leads.
   _______________________________
  |-----------####----------------|  <--two 4.7K resistors on side
  |---------------####------------|     of 40-pin IDC connector
  \_______________________________/
   |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
   ===============================   <--40-pin male-to-male header
   |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
   _______________________________
  /                               \
  |                               |  <--A4000 IDE cable connector
  |_______________________________|

[MRamos]

Ok guys...

thanks very much ...
boot now seens to be a bit fast...

[Matt_H]

Check the DIP switches on the rear external SCSI connector. One of them increases the boot delay to accomodate SCSI drives that are slow to spin up.