New member and amiga 2000 problem

[Jaycebot]

Hey everyone,
First ill introduce myself.   I am a collector of vintage radios ranging from the 1920's to 1960's.  I am also into vinyl records.  I  pretty much like anything old and cool.

Anyway, a friend of mine gave me an Amiga 2000.  I was able to get it to boot up into the AmigaDos.  However workbench will only work maybe one out of six or seven tries.  It will say error validating disk key 2048 checksum error, use diskdoctor.   Something like that.  How can i get it to stop doing that and have workbench boot every time?

Thanks!

[Matt_H]

Welcome! Hope you have lots of fun with your Amiga.

Unfortunately, that error signifies some sort of disk corruption. Are you booting from hard drive or floppy? And do you know which version of Amiga OS you're using? It's probably 1.3 or 2.04. The recovery methods are a bit different for each. 1.3 is very blue, with white and orange highlights. 2.x is grey with blue highlights.

Don't panic, we'll get you up and running

[Jaycebot]

Hi Matt,

It is 1.3  
I am using a hard drive
It says low memory before it gives me the error messages.  I can take pictures of the errors if you want.

[Jaycebot]

Does anyone know how to fix this problem?
Do I need to post pictures of the errors?

[Matt_H]

Pictures would help, I think.

A bit about validation: an Amiga drive will lose validation if the system crashes/reboots/powers down while there'd data being written (and if you're unlucky, sometimes while being read). Normally, it resolves itself if you let it sit for a while. But it sounds like your issue might be a bit more serious.

DiskSalv is the premiere repair utility - do not, under any circumstances, use DiskDoctor which comes with 1.3 (it'll make things worse). If you haven't discovered it yet, Aminet is a great resource. You can find a version of DiskSalv there.

[Jaycebot]

Hey,
I think I may have fixed it.
I took out the hard drive and found out that a connector had come loose.
So for it has been working with no problems.
I'll let you know if I come across any more issues.

Thanks!

Check out my website of you want.
http://jaycesradios.jimdo.com

[Jaycebot]

I am still getting the errors some times.
I can get workbench to work sometimes when I remove the hard drive card and place it back in.

Here are the pictures of the errors





Those are all the messages I get.

[drwho]

Welcome!

You say that you can get this working when you remove the hard disk card and put it back in. It's possible that the contacts on the card are dirty, you can clean them in a number of ways, the easiest is to remove the card, get a No.2 pencil, gently rub the eraser on the contacts to clean them off.

Also, it might be a good idea to plug the card into another slot, if you haven't done that already.

Good luck,
Mike

[actung_bab]

usually in my experience that u need to put new hard drive in and start again to fix this
permantly as if you get it booted and it wont let you save or write to hard drive
if this isint that case thats great but click on hard drive and say zero room available
i tryed disc salv 2 and doesint work , and plus the hard drive be old as the hills as well
they just get to old and get unreliable, i just format another hard drive and then conect both after you get wb on your new hard drive and tranfer files from on to the other if
this is issue for you

[drwho]

True, it's been a long time since I've seen this, but, I recall some issue in 1.3 where there was nothing to stop the OS from writing to the drive when it got full, it would just sort of "round robin", overwrite some data and corrupt the volume.

I'm not sure if this is a hardware problem, or just a corrupt drive. It might just be a coincidence that it seems to work ok after being pulled out and pushed back in.

A fresh OS install may be the only thing that's needed here. :-)

[Jaycebot]

I also get an error mesage that pops up before the ones I took the pictures of.
It says I have low memory.
I only have two RAM cards in the hard drive board.  I have several extra slots in that card and another one.  
When workbench does load, I get a message that says that no errors were encountered when accessing memory.
Could it be that I do not have enough RAM cards?
Thanks

[gertsy]

It could be a number of things. You really need to give us an idea of the hardware in the machine Hard Disk card type etc 2091?.  Apart from that it might be an idea to get a good set of 1.3 workbench disks, format the hard disk and reinstall. If there is any data you want to keep you will need another disk drive to backup to. Finding another working 50pin SCSI drive could be a problem depending on where you are.

[Jaycebot]

Hi guys,

The hard drive card is a Great Valley A2000-hc+0 series 2 rev 2

So today, i took out both of the ram cards out of the hard drive card and placed the correct jumpers in,  I have had no more problems so far.  
Am i losing out on anything by not using those two ram cards?
I also have another card that says Meta 4 on it
And
Pcb007 rev. 1.1
Sa007 Assy007

However when i put it in, all i get is a white screen, nothing happens.  It has slots for the same RAM that i removed from the hard drive card.

Thanks!

[Jaycebot]

anybody know how to use the Meta 4?

[zipper]

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/meta4
Just keep the total Fast RAM at 8 MB max on ZorroII interface.