A1200 3.1 upgrade

[Abou27]

Hi there.  I ressurrected my A1200 (8MB RAM expansion + 210MB PCMCIA Overdrive harddrive) a few weeks ago as I was getting increasingly fed up with random crashes on my PC - now just used for internet.  Amazing how more relaxing using Amiga is.  Forgot how good it is.  Decided to jazz it up a bit and got 3.1 ROMs through eBay.  Problems straight away.  When I power up, the screen stays black and harddrive doesn't boot (though powers up).  After about a minute the kickstart screen appears.  It will boot from floppy at this point but harddrive isn't recognized despite fact it is up and spinning as soon as switched on.  Tried two-mouse buttons but harddrive doesn't appear on boot list.  Also, drive won't mount from floppy on Workbench.  My questions are as follows: Is it normal for such a delay in booting after changing ROMs?  Is is likely that I have blown the PCMCIA port whilst fitting ROMs?  Do I have to re-install Workbench on harddrive after updating ROMs?  Sorry for lentgh of this post!  Any help would be much appreciated as I certainly don't want to return to my PC for my general computing needs!

[amigamad]

I think the 3.1 roms wait longer to allow for slow hard drive spinup. If your drive has 3.0 workbench on it it might now need 3.1 you could check to make sure the cables are still pluged in properly. :-)

[amiga1260]

Kickstart 3.1 has a longer delay before it boots up, because some old harddisk needs some warm up to boot. If your PCMCIA is not reconized then you have the wrong version of KIckstart ROMs.

[Abou27]

Cheers. Is there anyway of identifying the different versions?

[Abou27]

I've checked leads; everything seems fine.  Have ordered WB 3.1 so will see if makes a difference. Will probably have to revert to old chips and try and obtain chips that I definitely know are for A1200! Thanks for your help.

[Matt_H]

Check for a device called CC0 in the early startup menu. That's the device for PCMCIA RAM cards and similar. If it's not there, you've got the wrong version of the 3.1ROMs. The correct version number is 40.68, but that same number may also be used for other systems, too.

[Abou27]

No, it doesn't appear at all.  That's why I thought that I might have buggered the port up.  I think that I've learnt my lesson - make sure you know exactly what your buying! Cheers.