GVP A2000 HC & GVP A2000 HC2 ROMS (Help)!!!!

[melange]

Hi all,

I have brought this subject up a few months ago and received a lot of help from a particular member (Castallen) who was kind enough to check on what I was doing with respect to programming the eprom code and if it was being done properly or not.

Err.. time to elaborate me thinks.

I have one of these (GVP A2000 HC) scsi contollers

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=1195

and also one of these (GVP A2000 HC2)scsi contollers

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=1190

Both of these controllers have an odd & even pair of roms containing exactly the same driver version.

The version information on the original ROMS labeled 1.0 is as follows...

GVP   V1.0
ODD   69D9

GVP   V1.0
EVEN  1A3B

Even though both rom sets on both cards are labeled with a 1.0, Sysinfo informs me that the version of "scsidev.device" that these things put into memory is 3.0.

Now what I am hoping, is that someone else out there is running one of these two cards in thier A2000 and have a more recent version of the ROMS than myself.  I have seen references made to a V3.07 and was hoping somebody might have a copy of this code.

The version 1.0 ROMS (with 3.0 driver) fails when it comes to attaching more than one SCSI device.  Futhermore the one SCSI device that it does allow you to attach must be on ID 0 to function or it won't see it.  This makes mounting a CDROM impossible.

Currently I am booting both machines from a floppy running binddrivers and using gvpscsi.device 3.15 from Ralph Babels site in order to boot up with a CDROM and/or more than one SCSI device on the chain.  Works well, but I obviously want them to boot from HDD not floppy.

There is EPROM code on Mr Babels site, that is supposed to be for the series one cards and apparently works with some series two cards.  I have tried unsucessfully to program that code, I do not believe that the code is compatible with my cards.  If anyone here has made the gvpscsi3.hex code function on one of these cards I'd love to hear from you. I have converted the code to binary, split it bytewise, offset it as recommended by Mr Babel and performed a byteswap before programming the ROMS. I've also tried a slew of other things and no go.

So if anyone has one of the above cards working with a CDROM or more than one SCSI device attached, please help.  :-(

Furthermore if anyone has archived ROM Code for GVP cards, I'd love to try some other code in these roms.  (The 4.15 driver don't work).

Cheers all

[melange]

BTW, I know this is a huge ask, and I wouldn't be surprised if this went nowhere.

That said, what I have learned about Amiga user's, is that they can be very resourceful.  So I thought, hey what the hell.  It's worth a try... (I hope)   :-)

[DamageX]

try these files:
http://www.hyakushiki.net/junk/gvp3even.bin
http://www.hyakushiki.net/junk/gvp3odd.bin
although they may be the same as what you already have, I'm not sure

[melange]

Cool, thanks a lot, I will give em a shot and see what happens...

Back soon  :-)  :-)  :-)

[melange]

@DamageX

Thanks very much for your help, I loaded them up and could see immeadiatly that they were the same as what I have, but I gave them a try anyway and still no joy. :-(

What sort of controller do you have?

thanks

[DamageX]

I found those on the web, split already, but apparently it is the same image ^_^;

Did you try the 4.15 device driver or the ROM image? or both? I dumped the ROM on my HC+8 a while ago, it is labeled 4.13 http://www.hyakushiki.net/GVP-U34
interestingly, it is a 32KB ROM but appears to have 8KB of something, followed by 8KB blank space, and finally 16KB of something else. Don't know if that is of any use on your card.

Can you post your original ROMs? Someone who knows about the structure of Amiga expansion ROMs might be able to find a clue as to why the 3.15 aren't working.

[melange]

Hi thanks again,

I have tried the 4.15 Rom and Binddrivers driver.  Neither of those work.

As you know I have tried the 3.15 ROM and it don't work, but the 3.15 Binddrivers driver does work, which makes me think that the Rom should work as well.

I'm going to try that one you just posted, which BTW is the wierdest one I have seen yet.  It's like two different ROMS in one???

I'm off to run some tests and the likes. :-)

I will look into posting my ROMS, think I'll actually have to use my webspace for the first time .  I don't remember how to access it even :-)

Back soon

cheers

[melange]

G'day again...

Ok, I have had a good look at both parts of that ROM.

1. Programmed it as it was, dissected bytewise, offset data @ $004000 and performed byteswap.  No go.

2. Used hex editor to make two seperate lots of roms, the first pair using just the code at the start of the file, the second pair using just the code that appears later in the file.  No go for either of those.

3. Spent lots of time comparing the different GVP ROM binaries I have, including the one you made available.  I came to the conclusion that original ROMS on my controller are very different to both the 3.15 & 4.15 ROMS.  In fact the 3.15 & 4.15 have more in common with each other than with my originals.

I wonder if it's possible to edit the original ROM and insert the new code into the right spot???
I don't understand it well enough.  However, some other ROMS for my series I adaptor would be handy for comparison and perhaps working it out.

I need scsidev.device ROM code, of a different version from what I have.

Here are my original roms.  I have never done this before, so hope it works...

This is the set in thier odd and even form dumped from the chips and unchanged.

http://people.aapt.net.au/~quazi/files/scsidev30odd.ROM
http://people.aapt.net.au/~quazi/files/scsidev30evn.ROM

This is a version of the two files unified bytewise and bytes swapped so ascii can be read.

http://people.aapt.net.au/~quazi/files/scsidev30swap.ROM

Ok, hope that works for anybody who's interested.

Thanks again...   :-D

[DamageX]

http://people.aapt.net.au/~quazi/files/scsidev30.ROM

FYI the byte order is wrong in this one "csised.vedivec"

[melange]

Your correct, I thought I had swapped it, before I saved it, but obviously I didn't.

Doh, I will edit the above to point to a fixed file.

thanks

[Computolio]

    I have the EXACT same problem with the EXACT same cards. Tried splitting + burning the ROM file and got nothing.

    This is going to sound completely bonkers, but maybe the ROMs shouldn't be split. There's pictures on the Amiga Hardware Database showing specimens of these cards with only one ROM socket populated and the other left empty. I'm going to try again without splitting the ROMs, but I'm not very optimistic here.

    We might have to bother Ralph Babel over this.

[Nostalgiac]

Hi,

I have this same card GVP A2000 HC2
When I bought it originally it had the 2 v1.0 roms.

Somewhat later I bought the upgrade so that it would support RDB and newer scsi command, it was called FaaastROM".

the upgrade consisted of ONE v3.07 ROM (double the size) and a PAL chip that had to be replaced. The single rom went into the "even" socket,and the "odd" socket is now empty.

So as far as I know you cannot simply split into 2 seperate eproms. You need that PAL.

btw... these are all versions:
1.0 : original
2.2/2.3 : removable media support
3.07: support for RDB, Direct SCSI; MUCH faster
3.12: same as 3.07 but with faster autoboot, and extra support for some accelerator ram (I guess dma ?)
3.14/3.15:  later cards had a WD33C93A scsi chip, this rom supported this chip better and was again faster.
4.0 or 4.3 ?? ... last version that can work with these cards (Series I) : enhanced support for removable media based on AmigaDOS 2.0 FastFileSystem

hope this explains
Tom

[Computolio]

    Well that's just {bleep}ing GREAT. Does anyone have the PAL so it can be dumped/duplicated?

    This is going to get hell of expensive

[Nostalgiac]

Hi Computolio,

I just rechecked my original docs again, and have partial good news:

The HC card WITHOUT memory does not need the pal chip, so it should be sufficient to stick the single v3.07 rom chip in the EVEN socket, and leave the odd empty.

The HC+2 card MUST have the pal. My card obv does, but sadly I cannot remember which chip it was I replaced (there are 6 pals on there) but I GUESS it was U39 .... purely based on the layout of the board

Btw, the checksum of my rom v3.07 chip is ECD9

My advice: try upgrading the HC card... but forget about the HC+2

ta
Tom

[Computolio]

    Unfortunately at some point I killed the A2000-HC card by accidentally putting one of the ROMs back in the wrong way. Yeah, I know, real smooth.

    I doubt it would've worked in an A4000 anyway (which was where it would have gone had it survived and had the ROM update been successful).