A1200 won't boot with HD attached

[shufflemoomin]

Hi all,

I've finally gotten around to adding an HDD to my A1200. I ripped a 2.5 IDE drive out of an old laptop I had. I got the 44pin cable and hooked it up. I can hear the drive spinning up when I switch on the machine, but nothing else happens. It makes no attempt to read the floppy drive and the screen goes blank. The floppy makes a short noise on power up and while the screen is blank, caps lock still responds. When I remove the hard drive, the machine boots up as normal.

Does anyone have any idea what might be wrong here or anything I can try?
Thanks
Shufflemoomin

[Thomas]

What does the power LED do ?

What does the HDD LED do ?

What happens if you press Ctrl-A-A ?

How big is the drive ?

Is there anything printed on it about power consumption ?

Does it have jumpers ? How are the jumpers set ?

Are you sure the cable is connected correctly and properly ? Does the cable have any damages ? Or the connectors ?

Kickstart 3.0 or 3.1 ?

If 3.1 wait for 10 or 30 seconds. Does something change ?

[motorollin]

Is the HDD jumpered as master or slave?

--
moto

[save2600]

It's easy to accidentally misalign those tiny pins on the ribbon cable. That's happened to me before and the system wouldn't boot. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to cause any permanent damage if you're clumsy that day. lol

Also, if you took that from an old laptop, I'm guessing a PC laptop, you've got a SATA drive when the Amiga wants a PATA? Am I wrong about this guys?

[motorollin]

Also, if you took that from an old laptop, I'm guessing a PC laptop, you've got a SATA drive when the Amiga wants a PATA? Am I wrong about this guys?

Yes, you're wrong Laptops can have IDE interfaces too. SATA drives have totally different connectors so the 44 pin IDE cable wouldn't fit.

--
moto

[Thomas]

It's easy to accidentally misalign those tiny pins on the ribbon cable.

The drive wouldn't spin if the connector was misaligned.

Also, if you took that from an old laptop, I'm guessing a PC laptop, you've got a SATA drive when the Amiga wants a PATA? Am I wrong about this guys?

You cannot connect an SATA drive to a PATA cable, it does not fit.

[shufflemoomin]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the quick responses. I've detached and reattached the cables many times, and I'm lucky enough to have gotten it to boot up. I can hear the hard drive spinning, but I can't see it in HDtoolbox or anything. It seems the drive isn't recognised. I don't know the size of the drive as it still has an old cradle over it for stupid reasons. It came out of an ancient laptop, so it's certainly less than 10Gb. The jumper is set to Master/Single. Is the Amiga expecting something else? Could there be any other reason why the system doesn't see this drive or any other way to test if it's connected properly?

It's been many, many years since I used an Amiga and I've never had one with a HDD, so I'm kinda on new ground here.

I appreciate the help and responses guys. Keep 'em comin'
Shuflemoomin

[motorollin]

Try soft-rebooting (CTRL-A-A) now. Sometimes it doesn't see the drive when it cold boots.

--
moto

[shufflemoomin]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it twice with no luck. At no point do I hear drive activity or see anything on HDD status light. Surely this must be hardware related, right?

Anything I might be missing here?
Shufflemoomin

[Thomas]

The drive might be too power-hungry for an Amiga. Or it might just have died.

Does the laptop still boot up if you connect the drive back to it ?

Do you have an USB adapter so you could try to connect it to a PC ?

Do you have a spare IDE cable ? Then you could try to cut the reset line of the cable. This sometimes helps to get the drive recognised after Ctrl-A-A. (You can certainly do this without a spare cable, but if you cut too deep...)

You didn't answer my question about the Kickstart version.

[shufflemoomin]

Okay, do you know what the power consumption of the drive has to be before the Amiga will read from it? I would assume if the Amiga boots and the drive spins, then power isn't an issue, right?

The laptop boots fine with the drive attached, so I don't have to test it anywhere else. I'm going to pick up a spare cable anyway, just in case there's something odd with this one, so I can give snipped the cable a try. Do you know which pin controls the reset signal?

Sorry about not answering the kickstart question. By this, do you mean the ROM version stated on boot up? If so, it's 3.00.

Thanks for the advice
Shufflemoomin

[Thomas]

Okay, do you know what the power consumption of the drive has to be before the Amiga will read from it?

No, unfortunately I am not familiar with an A1200's power dispersion.

I would assume if the Amiga boots and the drive spins, then power isn't an issue, right?

The drive might decide by itself that there is not enough power to initialize.

Or the motor does spin up but needs too long to reach its nominal speed, longer than the Kickstart waits for a reply. This is a well-known problem with Kickstart 3.0 and is usually called the "slow-spinup" problem.

Do you know which pin controls the reset signal?

The one which is marked red if it is connected to pin 1 as it should be.

it's 3.00.

3.1 could perhaps solve the problem because it waits far longer for the drive to respond.

[shufflemoomin]

Doesn't using a soft-boot fix the problem of the Amiga not waiting long enough for a response from the drive? It I wanted to move to 3.1, I have to buy new chips and install them on the motherboard, right?

I guess all I can do now is get hold of another IDE cable and make sure there are no issues there. Thanks to everyone for their help and in the meantime, if anyone has any new ideas or suggestions, please feel free.

Thanks again guys
Shufflemoomin

[Thomas]

Doesn't using a soft-boot fix the problem of the Amiga not waiting long enough for a response from the drive?

Yes, but do you have any means to make a software reset ? Ctrl-A-A is a real hardware reset, just as if you pressed the reset button on a tower case.

Some drives are built to run through the same procedure after a reset as after power-on, although the motor is already spinning. That's the reason why cutting the reset line might help: if the drive does not notice the reset signal, while all other components in the Amiga do reset, the drive continues to run normally and is recognised when the Kickstart checks drives.

It I wanted to move to 3.1, I have to buy new chips and install them on the motherboard, right?

Yes, that's right.

[shufflemoomin]

Thanks for the advice. I have another IDE cable in the way and if that makes no difference, I'll give cutting the reset like a try.

Thanks again
Shufflemoomin