2.5 HD in A1200 question continued please help

[Mickey]

Hi all,

 A few weeks ago I asked what I needed to get a hard drive running on my A1200. Well now I got everything. A 2.5 cable and 2.5 HD. When I boot the computer I can hear the hard drive spinning(so at least I know it powers it up). I don't see it when workbech loads however, nor do I find it anywhere in the startup sequence(the two button hold on the mouse). I even tried running the wb3.1 installation disk where you can start the hard disk tool and there I don't see it either. What am I doing wrong?


The hard drive is 344MB and it was stripped off of a laptop computer. Please let me know if you know anything. Thanks a bunch.

mickey

[DethKnight]

sorry I cant help a.t.t. , I feel suddenly tech-anemic
it's been soooo long since I installed my 750mb in my A1200, I vaguely and I mean *vaguely* remember having some similar issue.
For the life of me I cant remember how I circumvented it, I thought the HDtoolbox helped, but maybe it didnt as you have stated. Its been a *while*

[TheGoose]

Mickey, sure you got the cable lined up right? Know it sounds stupid but this an easy thing to do on the 2.5 HDs.

It should come up as something if all things are in place.

[Ilwrath]

Hmm...  Assuming that the drive is hooked up properly (which it probably is, if it didn't smoke and blow up when powered up) you'll still need to do a couple things to it before it'll show in Workbench.

1) boot into workbench off the install floppy.

2) run HDToolBox from the install floppy (not an install language, but there should be an icon named HDToolBox)

3) Locate the drive in the HDToolBox app, and go in and partition drive to your liking.  

3a) go into Advanced... for each partition and set "Max Transfer" to "0x1FFFF" (Don't ask - just do - trust me!)

3b) Close the advanced area and then write the changes to the drive.

4) Exit HDToolBox and reboot as required, but leave in the install diskette

5) Once you are back in workbench, you should now see something like dh0:?  That's your first partition (you'll have dh1:? and whatever else for the rest of the partitions if you made multiple ones)  Format the Partition(s) you created.  You can do this by simply picking the icon and choosing "Icons > Format disk" from the pulldown menu, or running sys:System/Format

6) NOW run the installer language of your choice.  You should have much better luck.  :-)

- If at step 2 you don't see any HD's in the HDToolBox app, close the app, and click on it, and choose "Icons > Information..." from the pulldown menu.  Make sure your device is set to "scsi.device".  Another strange quirk of the 1200.  Even though it's an IDE drive, you MUST use scsi.device.

Let us know how things go!

[DethKnight]

THAT's what it was, thanx for joggin the grey matter

Max Transfer" to "0x1FFFF" (Don't ask - just do - trust me!

your device is set to "scsi.device". Another strange quirk

glad someone could remember that cryptic stuff

[Mickey]

Thanks everyone, I'll give that stuff a try Ilwrath and let you all know...if you are interested ;-)

[Damion]

Hey Ilwrath, is that MaxTransfer value good
for SFS/PFS as well?  

[Ilwrath]

Hey Ilwrath, is that MaxTransfer value good for SFS/PFS as well?

Hmm... Now THAT is a good question.  I don't know if it's needed in that case, though it shouldn't hurt anything.  (It might cause your drive to benchmark slightly slower, but not much - I'd be surprised if it slowed the drive down more than 3%.)  

But, under OFS or FFS, it'll save you from loads of corruption.  I remember this all too well, because I was an early (way early) A1200 owner, and Commodore was arguing that these problems weren't existing for about a month before they finally issued a paper saying how to fix it.  ;-)

[Damion]

Thanks Ilwrath, I'll experiment a bit and see
what happens. :-)