GVP A2000 Hardcard HC2 SCSI Problem

[melange]

Hi Folks,
Just wondering if anyone has experience with the above GVP SCSI card. I have one in an A2000 along with a GVP 030 Accel and whilst the HDD is running fine I am having problems getting a CDROM drive to work with it.  The problem seems to be that everytime I probe the SCSI bus in order to setup the CDROM, it hangs.  That is everytime I make a call to the "scsidev.device" that it uses, the machine stops.  Even if I use sysinfo and ask it to look at scsi drives it again tries to probe the SCSI ID's and dies.  I thought it might be the ROM version so I pulled the 2.04 ROM and wacked in a 1.3, but same thing.  I have spent ages on this and I'm hoping someone has one and has already figured this problem out.  The only thing I haven't done as yet is yank the Accelerator out to see if that's making it hang.  Seems unlikely that the GVP Accel would get in the way of another GVP product, but anythings possible I suppose.

Cheers all  :-)

[Olecranon]

Lets see...  First, lets make sure we have the right card.  I'm guessing that your card is an Impact A2000-HC+2 ?  The card has two 30pin simm sockets on the board?

If there is a ROM version problem, I would guess its the ROM on your SCSI card.  That controller is an older GVP series I, and I'm not sure how well it supports CD-ROMS.  Here are a few things to try.

#1 Change the SCSI ID of the CDROM.  There should be jumpers on the back of the drive to do this.

#2 Change the termination on the CDROM.  There is a jumper on the back of most SCSI CDROMS to enable/disable built in termination.

Now I'm not sure if the following will work (someone will tell me if I'm wrong), but you can give it a try.

#3 Goto http://babel.org/amiga/#gvp  and look on the page for the gvpscsi 3.15 BindDrivers driver.  This should be the updated driver for your card, but for some reason it's named gvpscsi.device (not scsidev.device).  Pop this in your SYS:expansion drawer.  Maybe make a copy of it and rename it to scsidev.device and put that in your expansion drawer as well??  Make sure you have the bindriver command in your startup-sequence.

One last thing to keep in mind.  Even if the system doesn't lock up when you scan the scsi bus, you wont be able to use a CDROM without additional software.  I think I'm using amicdfs240.lha off of aminet.

[melange]

Hey Olecranon  :-D thanks for the rapid reply.

Firstly, yes that's the card I have.

secondly, I have done all the SCSI ID and termination stuff about 10 times over.

Looking at the 40MB HDD that came with it originally it looks like the guy has done what your talking about with the Binddrivers driver.  I have plenty of experience mucking about with a number of different classic amigas, but the expansion drawer is something I have never had to use in the past for anything that I can remember, so I was a little confused by what was going on there.

You have cleared it up somewhat.  I will give it a try soon and let you know how I fare.

The original unit (A2000) had a CDROM removed when I got it, so I assumed it must be possible

Thanks HEAPS for your help

I'll let you know how I fare

 :-)  :-)

[melange]

Bummer

After many hours of toil I have had no luck.

If binddrivers is meant to load a more recent version of scsidev.device or gvpscsi.device then it ain't doin it.  The version I keep finding loaded is 3.0, should be 3.15.

I removed the CDROM drive from in the 2000 desktop case and placed it into a external CDROM housing, then connected it to the rear SCSI output of the Hardcard.  That also failed.  Still haven't actually removed the accel as yet, but did run a command to disable it. That didn't work either.

I'd love to see a manual for this thing so I know what the jumpers are for.

The HDD MUST be configured as SCSI ID 0 which I thought was odd, but won't boot on any other ID AFAIK.

Too tired now, will stuff about with it again soon.
Thanks again for your help.

[Olecranon]

by melange on 2006/8/23 10:17:59

If binddrivers is meant to load a more recent version of scsidev.device or gvpscsi.device then it ain't doin it. The version I keep finding loaded is 3.0, should be 3.15

I might have sent you on a wild goose chase with that one.  I recently came back to the classic Amiga after being away for 15 years, so I'm a little fuzzy on some things.  For some reason I thought bindrivers would override the ROM driver that is on the card, but now I'm thinking that it's for cards without ROMS.  If your card version is 3.0, that means there were a lot of updates to that ROM over the years.

You mentioned that the system had a CDROM at one point with the current controller?  What CDROM are you trying to install now?  It could be a case where the original CDROM was an older 2x-4x speed model, and a newer high speed recorder isn't compatible.

[TjLaZer]

You might want to get the latest ROM update for this card, revision 4.15.  There are some on ebay right now.  

[melange]

Cheers all,

just had a look at that ROM. it's not for my card.  Mine has an odd & even ROM set.  Might have to try and find someone locally who can burn me a set from the images on Babels site.

I figured this is where it was headed.  Looks like the only way this could work ATM, is for me to disable the on board roms and boot the system from a floppy or (maybe set up a RAD) using Binddrivers to load the new driver.

I don't know much about burning EPROMs (Assuming that's what they are).  Can I write over the old ones or do I have to purchase new ROMS to burn to, anyone know??

Cheers again  :-)

[CLS2086]

Hi, a similar problems happened to me with a GVP HC+8 série2 (bios 1.xx or 2.0x). I could only use a SCSI CDROM with an old SCS1 HDD !
My A2000 is "dead" so i can't test anymore the newer bios...

[melange]

Well I gave it a try, that is I figured out how to disable the onboard ROMS and loaded the recommended gvpscsi.device v3.15.  Used sysinfo to check that the device had been added and it was there as v3.15, but it didn't find the HDD so I therefore assume it (the driver) don't work.

I further tried all the gvpscsi drivers I could find, and the only one that works is the binddrivers scsidev.device that comes on the original install disk for the card.

I renamed the recommended gvpscsi.device to scsidev.device and loaded it, but it loaded as gvpscsi.device anyway (which I sort of thought it would, but you gotta try I guess:lol: ).  

At this point I believe that I should probably give up, but I will no doubt fiddle a little more.

If anyone knows where I can find jumper settings for this thing, then that might be helpful, however I think I know what most of them do already, just one or two I'm not too sure of.

The version of the scsidev.device that (sort of) works ATM is 3.0