Help !! No scsi.device on A1200 PPC+ 233/060

[Effy]

I tried to build a PPC card with scsi in my metal Micronik tower where my A1200 was mounted with a Powerflyer Lite IDE board. After several minutes I found out that I needed to remove the Bvision gfx card because the Powerflyer was in its way. Okay, I can live with that, data speed is sometimes more important than screenmodes. Okay, everything was in its place. Powerflyer had kickstart 3.1 on it. To test I attached an older Quantum scsi harddisc to the system (connected to PPC scsi) and tried to install that. No problem. Then I connected my Plextor 40x12x40 to port 1 and set it as master. That was the
only IDE device connected. When trying to install that cdrewriter I discovered (after 238 times trying and trying and rebooting and trying  ...) that the system could not find anything at scsi.device. I did see that doing the search on scsi.device took a very long time. I changed the rewriter to port 2, still master, and then the system rebooted much faster but still didn't see anything at scsi.device. Tried to connect a IDE harddisc as slave, no result. Tried to disconnect the rewriter, but harddisc was still not seen by the system ...
No need to say that this was getting on my nerves ... :-x
But there were still plenty of options left. One of them was changing the cable. Could have been a reason. Wasn't. Other cable gave same result ...
The Powerflyer itself then. Okay, I knew that I had problems with that Lite version in the past, so I removed it and place another Powerflyer, a full version this time with no limits, but this still gave the
same result. The system boots up, but when something is connected to port 1 and is master then the booting itself (the time before you get into workbench) takes a long time, and when AsimCDFS tries to mount CD0 then it also 'hangs' for more than 10 seconds and then says that it doesn't see CD0 at that place. When I come into workbench I load a program that shows me what is connected to what device, in my case it is Scsi Inquire, and it doesn't show anything at scsi.device.
The tower where the PPC card came from was also one of my worries. The system often refused to boot up. I blamed it on the PPC card. People told me, also on Amiga.org, that a PPC is a very sensitive card and needs a lot of cooling and a lack may cause boot failure. So I installed a twin-cooler in that other tower, but it still often refused to boot up. Now I have mounted that damn PPC card in another tower, connect an old SCSI hd to it and suddenly the PPC card boots up every time, not one single #### up !!
And now a clue, in that previous tower I had a Zorro4 busboard with a cool megafast Z4 Powerflyer !!! The best you can get, brandnew, got it from the fair in Aachen 'a few months ago' ...
Now somewhere in the back of my confused mind the idea starts to grow that BlizzardPPC and Powerflyer(aka Winnner Fast ATA controller) do not really like eachother. Is this true or do I have two faulty motherboards that both have something against the (standard) scsi.device ??
I'm not a genius in hardware, but I do have learned a long time ago that if there is a problem that I have to take away all the things that might cause any trouble and so finally reach the origin of the problem. But now there really isn't much connected at all, just one louzy hd and one (superfast) rewriter ... :-(
Can anybody please help me out ?? Please ??

[Matt_H]

Darn Z4 and PowerFlyer! I'm grappling with similar problems at the moment, but I can offer the following:
1. The PowerFlyer replaces the Amiga's scsi.device with its own. If there are devices on both of them, one will be renamed to 2nd.scsi.device
2. My Z4 board hates my Blizzard060 (Not all Zorro cards can be detected), and refuses to work at all with a PowerFlyer ZIV connected.
3. I think (not certain, though) that you *must* use AllegroCDFS with CDs on the PowerFlyer. Asim is, unfortunately, vastly out of date now. Replace your CD0 DOSDriver with one from the PowerFlyer disk.

To be honest, I'd recommend switching completely over to SCSI on the BlizzPPC, or putting up with motherboard IDE. Then you can get the BVision back.

If I can be of any more help, let me know.

[Effy]

About the Z4 tower with the Z4 Powerflyer that the BPPC card was first in. Now I have added a Blizzard 1230/50/50 to it, a normal state of the art qualtiy card, but not to fast as the BPPC. Funny thing is that the tower also refuses to boot with the Z4 Powerflyer connected, with or without IDE device connected. Now that's a 2nd problem for me.  First my BPPC in a Micronik tower that does not see any IDE device connected to the Powerflyer (and also not to Powerflyer Lite). Going the scsi way is an option, but that doesn't change a thing about the fact that IDE is also supposed to work !!!  :-(

[Framiga]

AFAIK PowerFlyer, require almost 1 IDE device, connected to the Amiga standard IDE port, to work correctly.

Ciao

[Effy]

A Powerflyer ?? No, to install a Powerflyer  you need to take out the kickstart's, mount them on the controller and mount that controller back on the motherboard together with another piece that you need to press over an existing chip. Don't ask any names, I don't know them, but I do know that it's a tricky thing, because the slightest lack of presssure results in crashes ...
Don't compare it to an IDE Express, that's something different.

[Effy]

Matt H : to install a CDFS, Allegro or AsimCDFS, you first need to locate a cd and this happens to be the key problem. Besides, I have used AsimCDFS for years with my old Powerflyer and it gave absolutely no problem at all !!! Until now ...

[Effy]

And what about connecting a CDrewriter WITH burn proof to the standard IDE 2,5" port of the A1200  :-?

[Matt_H]

RE: PowerFlyerZ4

So... the 1230 doesn't work either? Hmmmm... I'm starting to suspect serious design flaws...

RE: Asim

Ah. So it is supposed to be compatible with a PowerFlyer. My mistake. Don't get me wrong, though. I love Asim, and I used it for years, but it just bombed on me with OS3.5. What version are you using? I maxed out at 3.7, but I heard they went to 3.10. If I could find 3.10, I might bring it back into service.

RE: Burning

I get about 5.3x burn speed with MakeCD through an IDE-Fix-97 interface, whichI believe is on par with the motherboard. Certainly not all that good, but usable. Then again, I don't do much burning.

[Effy]

Hasn't anybody else got any experience with a BPPC card and a Powerflyer IDE controller ??  :-?

[mindful]

Mabye it none of the above? I never had a powerflyer. But I have had serious problems booting my system, some of them alike to the ones described above. However, my problem was a faulty powersupply. and I never noticed until the powersupply died on me and took a hd with it!!
Who knows how long it's been going on...

[Effy]

The power supplies are still the original ones. One tower with Z4 and Z4 Powerflyer and now 1230 has got the original Elbox powersupply and the other tower without Z4 or any other Zorro but with Powerflyer mounted on the board and BlizzardPPC has still got its original Micronik power supply ... it all used to work until I started with Powerllyer ...

[Framiga]

by Effy on 2003/8/12 0:04:45

A Powerflyer ?? No, to install a Powerflyer you need to take out the kickstart's, mount them on the controller and mount that controller back on the motherboard together with another piece that you need to press over an existing chip. Don't ask any names, I don't know them, but I do know that it's a tricky thing, because the slightest lack of presssure results in crashes ...
Don't compare it to an IDE Express, that's something different.

Yes that's right for PF for A1200.

With PF4000, you should connect an HD on standard IDE port to work correctly.

Someone with a PF4000, has any suggestion, to avoid this unuseful HD installed? (a fake charge on standard IDE port or so)

Ciao

[Matt_H]

No, I don't think it's the power supply either. When I was trying to get a similar setup working, I had a brand new 300W AT powersupply connected to the Z4 board. No dice. :-(

[Effy]

Did a large mail to Elbox support with detailed info about both computers, with the serial numbers of all 3 Powerflyers (Lite, full version to fit on motherboard, and Z4 model) and now I wonder what they will say ...

[Effy]

I still have got a scsi-to-ide controller unused, so I could perfectly put a 40 Gb IDE drive in that and connect it to the scsi of my BlizzPPC, but how would I have to connect an IDE cdrewriter ?? To the standard 2,5" port ?? That is actually the reason why I need such a Powerflyer, not just only because scsi harddrives are expensive,  but also because a scsi cdrewriter becomes rare on the market !!  :-(