IDE CD-ROM on A1200

[alx]

When I got my A1200 it had an IDE CD drive in a little external housing which was rather unreliable but worked for a bit.  Recently I got a DVD+/-R for the PC, so I've moved out the DVD/CD-R drive that was there onto the Amiga.

It seems to recognise it to some extent - there isn't a "Cannot find atapi device" message which used to come up on startup, and the "eject" program from IDEFix 97 works.  Upon inserting any disk, however, the drive light continually flickers as it attempts to read it (I'm sure the light flickers to a lower intensity than it used to on the PC, and it certainly isn't spinning up to full speed).  At this point, I can only guess it somehow saturates up the IDE bus, since trying to access the harddrive from the WB simply hangs WB.  "cd cd3:" pops up a message about there being no media in the drive.

This is on WB3.0, and the drive is connected to a little circuitboard hanging out of the side of the A1200 which has two full-sized IDE slots (connecting the CD-ROM into the one closest to the A1200 doesn't work at all).  The drive is currently jumpered to slave.

If anyone's got any ideas, I'd really appreciate knowing them!

[ZeBeeDee]

Have you tried putting the drive back into the PC to confirm it's operational?

What's the name of the interface the drive's plugged into?

It might pay you to uninstall any software for the interface then re-install it. Changing drives as you have done might cause the software to malfunction as it could be expecting the old drive to still be connected.

[SteveSMS]

[d]Try checking your master/slave settings on the CD-ROM. [/d]

EDIT: Didn't notice the "slave" part.
Try it in a PC or other computer. If it works there OK, it might be something with the board.
You also might want to try a different PSU.

[alx]

>Have you tried putting the drive back into the PC to confirm it's operational?

It was in the PC until a few days back and worked fine - unless the Amiga's done something to it, then it's known to be good.

>What's the name of the interface the drive's plugged into?

How'd I find this out? (haven't done anything hardware-wise with a Classic for a long, long time!)  As for re-installing the software, I'll do that if nothing else works, although I'd rather not otherwise as it was installed with I got the A1200 and I don't know how hard it is to configure.

[alx]

You also might want to try a different PSU

The drive itself is in a little enclosure which plugs into a mains adaptor for power.

[ZeBeeDee]

alx wrote:

>What's the name of the interface the drive's plugged into?

How'd I find this out? (haven't done anything hardware-wise with a Classic for a long, long time!)  As for re-installing the software, I'll do that if nothing else works, although I'd rather not otherwise as it was installed with I got the A1200 and I don't know how hard it is to configure.

Look on both the actual interface and the underside of the enclosure (box) for any labels or names

[alx]

There isn't an enclosure - it's just a dodgy-looking bare board hanging out the side of the machine :lol: It seems to be made by DCE however - I've taken a photo of it and put it online here.  A couple of laptop IDE cables come out of the A1200 and plug in the two connectors at the bottom, and the CD-ROM is currently plugged in the top.  AFAIK the IDE cable is in the right way (it matches the orientation of the working ones from the A1200 and considering that I can eject from AmigaOS presumably some commands can be received fine by the drive).

[ZeBeeDee]

alx wrote:
There isn't an enclosure - it's just a dodgy-looking bare board hanging out the side of the machine :lol: .

Dodgy looking is right  :lol:

Decent picture

I'm leaning towards my original diagnosis concerning removing the software then re-installing it. IDE-Fix '97 was a temperamental  beast for me until I brought an Elbox 4x Buffered IDE Interface with  EIDE'99 software.

EIDE Interface

[alx]

I'm stuuuuupid  :crazy:

Uninstalled IDEFix, went to remove the "IDEFix" line from the startup-sequence as requested and, guess what... it was commented out :roll:

Reinstalled it now, and also moved the entry in startup-sequence before Setpatch as the installer requested (was after before).  Will see if this does anything now!

---edit---

Eep!  Getting "CD3 - Program failed" on boot.  Is it me, or is it bizzare for anything to go before setpatch?  That's what I assume "behind" meant during the installation.

---edit---

Moved the startup-sequence entry to after Setpatch, and I'm now getting exactly the same behaviour I had before.  I.e. drive can be opened and shut from software, but inserting a CD doesn't do anything except a lot of flashing of LEDs, and seems to freeze up access to the internal HDD.

[alx]

Changing the jumpers on the drive to master makes the Amiga behave (as you'd expect) as if it wasn't there ("ATAPI Device not found" on startup).  Replacing the new drive with an ancient quad-speed one meant that inserting a CD no longer froze the system, but "cd cd3:" still gives a complaint about there being no media in the drive.

Just to be 100% sure, it doesn't matter which connector on the cable the drive is plugged into, does it?  I know that there's a cable select mode, but AFAIK it shouldn't matter where the drive is plugged in.

---edit---

Moving the drive across to the lower of the two full-sized connectors also means the Amiga cannot see it.

[ZeBeeDee]

You need to re-run the CDFSPrefs and re-detect the CD-ROM drive since you've changed it. The interface is still looking for the old one as per it's settings.  :-)

[amigakit]

Some of the DCE adapters required you to disable the CPU caches to work properly, i.e. in the CLI type:

CPU NOCACHE

The adapters we sell do not suffer this problem.

[alx]

Thanks for the hints :-)

@ZeBeeDee

I've loaded up CDFSPrefs, but cannot find anything run to redetect.  I've also run the little utility that comes with IDEFix to pick the device.

@amigakit

Tried that and it didn't work I'm afraid.  That was entering the command once the machine had started up - I take it I wouldn't need to stick it early on in the startup-sequence?

[ZeBeeDee]

Have you checked the cables to ensure they are correctly attached at both ends?

Try running FindDevice in the Prefs folder. Click on each device listed in turn and see if your CD drive is recognized. Once (and if) it's found click on Save then exit the program.

[alx]

The cables are correctly attached as far as I can see - while there's nothing on the adaptor to key in the IDE cable, it matches the orientation of the (working) ones coming from the A1200 and HDD, and I still doubt that I'd be able to eject the drive from software if something like that was wrong.

I've ran FindDevice (this is in utilities/IDEFix for me) and it's listed (unit 3, combo48x) under both scsi.device and atapi.device.  I've tried clicking the atapi device before and pressing "use" which doesn't seem to have done anything.

Cheers