A590

[rayman]

Hi,

Finally got an A590 with scsi drive to work with an A500.  Anyone like to spoonfeed me on its use.  The manual is okay but hardly answers my questions.  I know A500 and A590 is old stuff but if it still works its good.  And it is amiga.

Later RAy.

[mechy]

People are happy to help,but you didn't ask any particular questions
What is you you would like to know ray?
Mech

[whiteb]

People are happy to help,but you didn't ask any particular questions
What is you you would like to know ray?
Mech

He did say.

"Spoon feed me"

He cant read the manual, tell him in MORE detail than the manual does.

[tone007]

Finally got an A590 with scsi drive to work with an A500.  Anyone like to spoonfeed me on its use.

If you've already got it working, it sounds like all there is left to do is put some files on it.

No, it won't make your coffee or launch a nuclear attack.

[rayman]

Hi,
Okay it is accessing but not booting.  when I run the a590 installation disk dh0:dosa and dh1:ndos show up on the desktop.

Before I install the installation disk a dialog box appears that says something about no memory.  I didnt take a photo of it so dont know if it is no a590 ram or hard drive is full.  After several times hitting cancel it goes away and then a system request box says disk structure corrupt use disk doctor to correct.  I put the a590 install in and that is where it stands now.

Cant go to either one.  It says icons have no default tool.  The manual doesnt say anything about this.  So what does this mean??

First off I dont want to do anything to overwrite anything until there is no choice.

On another amiga with a trump card that did boot I didnt know what to do afterwards.  I should have copied off some software there needed to run the hard drive but didnt think the power suppply would wimp out on me and not be able to run the hard drive and the amiga at the same time.  Also with this trumpcard there was a program that showed itself but I couldnt get it to run.  It has been years now and I dont remember what it was it said when I tried.

So I am assuming dh0: dosa is the partition with the OS.  dh1:ndos is just for storage.  Is this right??

The manual says something about seagate and epson drives showing up multiple times.  I dont think that is what I am seeing because I am using a quantum scsi drive.  But I could be wrong.

I may have disk doctor but will have to find the box the a590 came in.  So what will disk doctor do??

Also when I double click on HD tools nothing happens.  

Also I am using 1.3 and have no hard drive stuff anywhere.  So what should I have in 1.3 for hard drives.   The manuals tell me that I should be able to run a hard drive with 1.3 but cant get nothing from nothing.

So what is going on as it stands now.  Then after I digest that what should I do next???

I dont use the amiga because using floopies is a real drag so I promised myself that I needed a hard drive and will pick up after that goal is achieved.  So I need some know how on the use of the amiga with a hard drive.

Thanks RAy.

[whiteb]

Hi,

I may have disk doctor but will have to find the box the a590 came in.  So what will disk doctor do??

Also when I double click on HD tools nothing happens.  

Also I am using 1.3 and have no hard drive stuff anywhere.  So what should I have in 1.3 for hard drives.   The manuals tell me that I should be able to run a hard drive with 1.3 but cant get nothing from nothing.

So what is going on as it stands now.  Then after I digest that what should I do next???

I dont use the amiga because using floopies is a real drag so I promised myself that I needed a hard drive and will pick up after that goal is achieved.  So I need some know how on the use of the amiga with a hard drive.

Thanks RAy.

Okay, so your A500 is a 1.3 ?

What it could be, is the original owner might have had an A500 with a later operating system (2.04+) has formatted the HDD with FFS (Fast File system), which has the fastfilesystem.device embedded in the ROM, so you do not need to store the .device in the RDB.  so This could be why DH0: is reading DOSa, then once the system is booted, the system loads another device driver, like PFS or something which is why DH1 is reading "NDOS".  Without looking directly at the setup, it is hard to speculate.

It might pay you to see if someone near you has an A500 with 2.04 (Earliest where fastfilesystem.device is in ROM) or 3.0/3.1 Kickstart in the A500 and see if the 590 boots off of that.

OR, if you have enough ram, see if you can use a boot disk and get the A500 to warm boot in to a copy of a later kickstart if you can, using something like Relokick.

*ANOTHER* option, might be, if your PC has a SCSI interface, put the drive on to your PC and use Winuae with a later kickstart, using the ability of Winuae to recognize Amiga formatted drives on the PC.

[rayman]

Hi,

Okay I have another a500 with 2.04 or 3.0.  Will switch them out and see what happens then.  

winuae is a simulator???

I have amiga forever sim but have not tried it out yet.  That and the meanie (IBM) route may be more trouble than its worth.

This amiga doesnt have the clock ram card so probably only have 512k.  How much ram do I need??  Will look into relokick.

Any mac route???

Was hoping to flesh this 1.3 out to its fullest.  Is this a good idea or too limiting??

Thanks RAy.

[whiteb]

Hi,

Okay I have another a500 with 2.04 or 3.0.  Will switch them out and see what happens then.  

winuae is a simulator???

I have amiga forever sim but have not tried it out yet.  That and the meanie (IBM) route may be more trouble than its worth.

This amiga doesnt have the clock ram card so probably only have 512k.  How much ram do I need??  Will look into relokick.

Any mac route???

Was hoping to flesh this 1.3 out to its fullest.  Is this a good idea or too limiting??

Thanks RAy.

Alright lets cross one bridge at a time, if you have an A500 with Kickstart 2.04 or higher, then yes put the A590 on to the side of the A500, power the A590, then power the A500.

What you are looking for is *ANY* signs it will try to boot the A590.  Do not worry about RAM at this stage, at the VERY LEAST it will try to boot from the drive, if there is an active bootable partition.  

WinUAE is an emulator (Tony Wilen), that can, if fitted, boot off of AMIGA hard drives, via a PC.., but lets not go there yet..

[rayman]

Hi,
Okay switched my original amiga that I upgraded to 3.1.  The a590 booted right up.  There is lots of stuff on the drive so its been a long time since I waded through the mags so am unfamiliar with what is there.  There is some toaster stuff.  I had seen that but dont know what it is or for.  Also there is something called cygnus ed or something like that.  Also directory opus.  Tell me what these things are if u know.  Also I guess I just cant write things out like on a meanie so how do I do that??  I dont think any of these would run so I guess u need the original or something is that right??  Thanks RAy.

[rayman]

Hi,
Anyone know what the above installed software on the a590 hard drive is?
How does it come to be that u have files listed but no software to run?
Also can any scsi hard drive be used or are there hard drives with amiga roms as with the mac??
So how do u install a program from a floopy to the hard drive??
Thanks RAy.

[countzero]

Hi,
Okay switched my original amiga that I upgraded to 3.1.  The a590 booted right up.  There is lots of stuff on the drive so its been a long time since I waded through the mags so am unfamiliar with what is there.  There is some toaster stuff.  I had seen that but dont know what it is or for.  Also there is something called cygnus ed or something like that.  Also directory opus.  Tell me what these things are if u know.  Also I guess I just cant write things out like on a meanie so how do I do that??  I dont think any of these would run so I guess u need the original or something is that right??  Thanks RAy.

toaster is video toaster, a video editing program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster

(you got one beefy a500 there ?)

cygnus ed is text/source editor. directory opus is file explorer.

I don't really follow what you mean by ""Also I guess I just cant write things out like on a meanie so how do I do that??"

if you're looking for a command prompt, it should be inside the system drawer inside workbench drive. (it's called shell) but it would be of little help to you atm. try double clicking on stuff to make them run.

[countzero]

Also can any scsi hard drive be used or are there hard drives with amiga roms as with the mac??
So how do u install a program from a floopy to the hard drive??
Thanks RAy.

theorically, yes you can use any scsi drive, but there are size limits as amiga scsi controllers usually can't access above a certain limits. you should get a drive smaller than 2 gb to be on the safe side, if your drive roms are old, it could be even lower (20-40 mbs)

if the program has a harddrive installer, you can install from the floppy to the drive (there should be an icon on the floppy) otherwise you can't install it. bear in mind that harddrives were not granted in those days, few software houses bothered to write installers for their software.

[darksun9210]

am a bit tired at the moment, but from the sounds of things, to use that drive, you'll need to wipe it and format it to something that OS1.3 understands, and you have a lot of interesting software already on that drive! eeek!

you can use almost any SCSI drives, but that's already been covered. another idea is to use an Acard Scsi2IDE bridge, then an IDE to compact flash card adapter, and various sizes of compact flash card to act as your hard disk.
i have this arrangement working in both a GVP HD8+, and GVP A530. however, i don't know how the A590 firmware would take to this kind of setup.

workbench 1.3 didn't have a hard disk installer, just copy the contents of the workbench disk and extras disk if you like, to the hard disk when formatted...
something like open a CLI prompt and type
copy df0:#? dh0: all
with your workbench disk in df0:, should cover it and give you a basic workbench on hard disk.

some games like populous2 and knights of the sky had hard disk installers. also usually the bigger games like monkey island, dune2, ledgend of kyrandia etc. otherwise, if the disks are workbench compatable, and you can view their contents, then you can create a drawer and just drag and drop / copy the contents of the disk to the drawer, and run it from there.
most of the time that's all the hard disk install scripts back then did anyway, plus maybe create an assign line in your s:startup-sequence to have a pretend disk volume that just pointed to the drawer on your hard disk that the game was installed in.
a line something like
assign kots1: dh1:games/kots
assign kots2: dh1:games/kots
so that when knights of the sky asked for a file from a disk or volume named kots1: or kots2: it got pointed to dh1:games/kots drawer.

however, most games with copy protection, or track loaders with funky filesystems won't be directly hard disk compatible.
however this can be got round in some cases with something called whdload, which was built specificly to make non hard disk compatible games run from hard disk, however this requires OS2.0+, and preferably a 68020 and about 2 to 4+ meg ram for a comfortable experience

enjoy and good luck

A590... god i wanted one of these so bad back in the day

[orange]

if he is gonna waste money on scsi bridge, then perhaps scsi2sata is better option than scsi2ide. given that almost all ssd are sata, and cf will become obsolete sooner.