Help Mounting A2090a MFM Miniscribe Harddrive

[nimtene]

Thanks for everyone's help with regards to information about
getting the proper A2090a controller I needed.

I'm now working toward accessing the MFM drive.

I'm using a bare A2000, that boots up to the workbench 1.3
disk screen when I turn it on. I've placed the A2090a
card in it, and connected the MFM drive to the controller.

Looking closer at the harddrive, I see that it's Miniscribe
8425 hard disk (20 MB?), which I've read originally came
bundled with the A2090A, in a kit called the A2092.

I'm under the understanding  that this harddrive has already
been preped, and formatted, and has typical data files
already installed on it.

Amiga4k was generous enough to send an A2090a install disk
with the controller, but I'm not sure if this is what I'm
needing, seeing as the harddrive is already formatted and
prepared? Anyhow, when I put this into my floppy drive,
the workbench disk screen flickers a few times, but nothing
seems to happen.

So I'm thinking I need to do something else. From what I've
read, I'll need to make a boot disk with Workbench on it
along with MountList.HD. Then I'll need to edit the
MountList to match the partitions on my Miniscribe harddrive
(hopefully typical A2000 partitions). Then I'll have to
mount these partitions.

Does anyone know if the A2090A-Miniscribe8425.dms i.e.
A2092 install disk will help with this task?

Or am I completely on the wrong track, and simply using
the A2090a install disk will suffice? I'd appreciate
any insight you can provide. Thank you!

[joekster]

I don't know the exact process, but I did the same kind of thing back in the old days. A word of caution - be sure that the drive parameters (heads, cylinders, etc...) are 1. correct for that drive and 2. the same as when it was origionally setup.

[Zac67]

I was thinking you wanted to recover some data from the MFM drive - if the drive is prepped and autoboot is activated, it should be able to boot up by itself. Prepping it again will erase all data on the disc.

If autobooting doesn't work, you can copy the HHDisk driver from the A2090 disk to your Workbench disk's Expansion drawer.

You'll have to edit devs/mountlist as well: copy the RES0: entry from the A2090 disk to your Workbench:devs/mountlist - hopefully the parameters fit.

After rebooting (or 'binddrivers' in a shell console) the HDD should get mounted. I can't remember the exact way to do it any more and the manual is a bit vague.

BTW: Autoboot is disabled by closing J4, so you might only have to remove that jumper.

BTW2: the A2090a has got three ROMs:
U50 HI Top centre, below J2
 28 pin   315098-01 2090  AB5C
U51 LO Top centre, below U50
 28 pin  315097-01 2090  D32B
U36    Top right
 28 pin  390230-09 2090a 2FEF

U50&51 are the boot ROMs, U36 the Z80 firmware