Question about OS 3.9

[melott]

I have a minor problem with OS 3.9..............
When I was running OS 3.1 it wasn't a problem.

On my A3k I have an external SCSI box. In it I have
a CD Rom and a 9 gig drive. I only turn the external
box on when I want to use the CD Rom or put or
get some data from the drive. With OS 3.1 this
was not a problem, I just turned on the box when
I did a cold boot, everything worked fine.
(I have back-up partitions called SYS-Bak and
Work-Bak plus a Storage partition)
Now with OS 3.9 my A3k 'WILL NOT' boot unless
I have the external box turned on.
Whats going on here???

 

[voytech]

Maybe its because of 3.9 rom update file in devs: ??
Does she (amiga) boot, and stops in a while or after you switch the power on, she won't do nothing??

[melott]

It does nothing .............
It won't even look at the floppy drives.

But when I turn on the external box it boots
up fine.
I've left it set for several minutes and it just hangs
there and if I turn on the external box while its
hanging it will boot up.

[voytech]

What about SCSI termination?? I don't use SCSI by myself, but it could be wrong configured. BTW it's strange that it worked with os3.1, and with os3.9 it is not..

[Tesral]

What about SCSI termination?? I don't use SCSI by myself, but it could be wrong configured. BTW it's strange that it worked with os3.1, and with os3.9 it is not..

I was wondering the same myself.  I use an external SCSI box myself.  I boot from IDE.  Does your system boot from an SCSI drive.

Bad termination can stop a box, any box, Amiga, Linux, even winblows (if that can use SCSI) from booting.  If you have an active terminator, or you terminate with one of the drives in that external box, it might need power to show that termination.

I have noted that 3.1 was more forgiving of bad termination.

[voytech]

Tesral wrote:
I have noted that 3.1 was more forgiving of bad termination.

Wow.. Didn't know about that.. :-o

[xyth]

I have the same problem with an externally housed and powered CD drive on my A1200 (OS3.5).  It's hooked up via a 4xEIDE interface.

I have to switch it on before the main power or else my 1200 refuses to do anything.  Black screen, no HD, no floppy.

Never tried it pre OS3.5 though.

[voytech]

So, it looks like Amiga feels, that something is hooked up to her, but is waiting to see what it is - no power for CD, no fun :shocked: . I think that it's because devices are being configured IE: master - slave (I might be wrong bout that) during the time from switching power on to loading os from hdd or floppy.

[Tesral]

voytech wrote:
 I think that it's because devices are being configured IE: master - slave (I might be wrong bout that) during the time from switching power on to loading os from hdd or floppy.

Almost.  The SCSI bus doesn't use "master/slave"   You standard SCSI controller will address eight devices, the controller it self being one of them, so you get seven addresses, 0-6.  Each device on the chain must have a different address.  These address are set by jumpers on the drive proper.  Now the end of a SCSI chain has to be terminated.  The last physical drive of the cable, regardless of address must be terminated.  This can be done via a jumper on the last drive itself, or with a dedicated "terminator" on the end of the chain.

A very common symptom of "no termination", on any type of OS is failure to boot.

The newness f the problem could be OS 3.9 being more finicky on termination, or it could be that the last drive on the chain's termination will not read unless the drive is on, that is active termination vs. passive termination which doesn't depend on anything being powered up.

[Framiga]

@melott

how the external box switch, switches OFF the chain? only the power?

The termination is still active? if not the SCSI chain has no more a termination.

Ciao

[melott]

OK......... I have a WarpDrive accellerator in the
A3k. I use the Warpdrive SCSI for the internal
boot drive ( its much faster than C= scsi).
The internal drive, a 1 gig Conner has the term
set (jumpered), no other term on that SCSI and
no other drives.
I use the Commodore SCSI for the external box.
The external SCSI box has a Quantum Atlas
9 gig drive (not terninated) and a CD Rom
(last drive on chain) terminated and also an
(active?) terminator plugged into the pass-thru
(out) port on the back of the box.
This is the same setup I used for OS 3.1 and it
worked fine. When I upgraded to OS 3.9 I didn't
delete the data in the SYS-Bak partition until I
was satisfied OS 3.9 was working OK.  When
I deleted the backup OS 3.1 and copied a mirror
image of my OS 3.9 boot partition is when the
problem started.