Advice for trouble-shooting & booting a A4000T - Success!

[SACC-guy]

All 4000Desktops and early 4000towers came with hi-density drives.
In amiga speak that was 1.76k (1.44 for pc's)
Until they ran out of that special drive.
BTW, the 4000T was also the only Amiga that does not have an external connector for an outside floppy drive.
Other amigas came with 88ok floppy drives. Which as you discovered can be swapped.

You can still find DD floppies or use HD's with the second hole covered trick.

m

[Ancalimon]

On my Escom A4000T (Commodore produced only 200 A4000Ts)  there is an addon thats attached to the Disk Module and supported by silicon. I've been told that I would have to remove this addon if I wanted to remove the standard 880k floppy drive and attach a 1.76m floppy drive.

I recently bought one and will install that on my A4000T.

[amigasociety]

Radio Shack had a deal on 10 pack of HD floppies.  $1.99 so I purchased 2 boxes, all they had left.

Funny thing is the sign neat the floppies on the shelf said $9.99.

Anyway, making copies of the A4000T Floppies as we speak.

Will let you all know how install goes later.

tj

[amigasociety]

Man I feel sooo close but can't seem to get Workbench 3.1 installed on the internal SCSI drive to boot.

I am able to boot to the Workbench 3. fine, made copies of all floppies, boot the system from the Workbench Floppy, use HD Tools and made 3 partitions (500MB, 500MB, 1000MB), then rebooted from Floppy again and formatted the HD partitions naming them Workbench, Work, & Storage.  

While booted from Workbench floppy insert the Install floppy and did a Intermediate install (novice would not work as it tried to install to the floppy and not let me select the Workbench bootable hard drive partition).  Install seems to go fine.  Reboot and I get the following error when it tried to boot from the HDD.

In red letters:
Error 8000 000B
Tasj 08025BD0

Hold Left Mouse Button to reboot and it keeps going back to that until I put the floppy in.

What is it on the 3.1 floppy disk that is not transferring over to the hard drive that allows it to boot?  

Remember this is a 68060 Cyberstorm MKII.  Obviously enough is on the floppy to boot so why not the install it just did?

TJ

[Ancalimon]

You must boot from the "Install 3.1" disk and install AmigaOS3.1 that way.  Do no boot from Workbench3.1 disk and install AmigaOS3.1  

If you boot from your Workbench 3.1 disk, it will become the SYS: and it is something you don't want.


When creating partions, make sure the first partion (leftmost) is "bootable" and definitely smaller than 2gb. Make it fastfilesystem and don't forget to install fastfilesystem on the RDB as well.

Leave the logical names as DH0: DH1: DH2: (or HD0: HD1: HD2:) you can rename the "labels" as Workbench Work , etc...




If the above gives you the same result, there could be an incompatibility with the stock 68040.library and the setpatch command with your accelerator.





try renaming the 68040.library and 68060.library inside the libs directory to 68040.library.bak and 68060.library.bak (not the floppies)

turn on the machine and hold two mouse buttons.
boot with no startup-sequence

type the following:
---------------------------------------------
sys:
libs
dir 68#?
---------------------------------------------

you'll probably just see the 68040.library there I think.

rename it with the command:

---------------------------------------------
rename 68040.library 68040.library.bak
---------------------------------------------

Wait 5 seconds for all disk activity to finish and reboot. (if you reset too soon after the drive writes something, you risk invalidating your fastfilesystem formatted partion and that's a bad thing)

You will need the three libraries that are needed by your 060 board.

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/cyberstorm2






things that I "absolutely" needed to make my Amiga working properly: (with these disks, it felt like I could... CONQUER THE WORLD!)

1- AmigaOS3.1 floppies

2- A TCPIP stack (Miami and later MiamiDX on floppies (with the three keyfiles now on aminet) were what I had)

3- An external dialup modem with correct cable that I could use to go online and download stuff.

4- (optional:  TERM  ... a terminal program that allowed me to "ahem" download stuff it was so much fun. )

5- An old version of AWeb or IBrowse so that I could download stuff.

6- AsimCDFileSystem or CacheCDFilesystem on floppies to configure my CDROM

7- A floppy with DiskMaster3

8- a floppy with commands like lha, latest setpatch from aminet.

9- the correct 68060 and 68040 libraries for my card on a floppy.

10- IdeFix on a floppy (I'm still not sure if I actually needed this)
...

11- Many years later, AmigaOS3.9 CD




After installing AmigaOS3.1 and booting properly from the harddrive with no floppies inserted (if it crashes, try renaming the 68040 and 68060 libraries like I told you and try again)  you'll find a thing named PC0 in you Storage/Dosdrivers directory. If you doubleclick that and insert a pc formatted floppy (I think you have a high density floppy drive so your Amiga can read 1.44mb pc disks), your amiga is able to read its contents.  This is how you can transfer files from your PC to your Amiga.  The CrossDos version that came with AmigaOS3.1 is old and it only supports 8 character long filenames. You'll need CrossDos7

My Windows7 64 can not format floppies from its icon. I have to open a CMD and format using the dos command.

[amigasociety]

Whew, I got some work to do it appears.  :roflmao:

Problem is, the A4000T will not boot from my Install Floppy, only the Workbench Floppy, so that is where my problem starts.

I know the floppy drive and floppy is fine, data is there and all, but my guess is there is something on the Workbench Floppy that the INstall floppy is lacking.

Not sure how I would get past that.

tj

You must boot from the "Install 3.1" disk and install AmigaOS3.1 that way.  Do no boot from Workbench3.1 disk and install AmigaOS3.1  

If you boot from your Workbench 3.1 disk, it will become the SYS: and it is something you don't want.


When creating partions, make sure the first partion (leftmost) is "bootable" and definitely smaller than 2gb. Make it fastfilesystem and don't forget to install fastfilesystem on the RDB as well.

Leave the logical names as DH0: DH1: DH2: (or HD0: HD1: HD2:) you can rename the "labels" as Workbench Work , etc...




If the above gives you the same result, there could be an incompatibility with the stock 68040.library and the setpatch command with your accelerator.





try renaming the 68040.library and 68060.library inside the libs directory to 68040.library.bak and 68060.library.bak (not the floppies)

turn on the machine and hold two mouse buttons.
boot with no startup-sequence

type the following:
---------------------------------------------
sys:
libs
dir 68#?
---------------------------------------------

you'll probably just see the 68040.library there I think.

rename it with the command:

---------------------------------------------
rename 68040.library 68040.library.bak
---------------------------------------------

Wait 5 seconds for all disk activity to finish and reboot. (if you reset too soon after the drive writes something, you risk invalidating your fastfilesystem formatted partion and that's a bad thing)

You will need the three libraries that are needed by your 060 board.

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/cyberstorm2






things that I "absolutely" needed to make my Amiga working properly: (with these disks, it felt like I could... CONQUER THE WORLD!)

1- AmigaOS3.1 floppies

2- A TCPIP stack (Miami and later MiamiDX on floppies (with the three keyfiles now on aminet) were what I had)

3- An external dialup modem with correct cable that I could use to go online and download stuff.

4- (optional:  TERM  ... a terminal program that allowed me to "ahem" download stuff it was so much fun. )

5- An old version of AWeb or IBrowse so that I could download stuff.

6- AsimCDFileSystem or CacheCDFilesystem on floppies to configure my CDROM

7- A floppy with DiskMaster3

8- a floppy with commands like lha, latest setpatch from aminet.

9- the correct 68060 and 68040 libraries for my card on a floppy.

10- IdeFix on a floppy (I'm still not sure if I actually needed this)
...

11- Many years later, AmigaOS3.9 CD




After installing AmigaOS3.1 and booting properly from the harddrive with no floppies inserted (if it crashes, try renaming the 68040 and 68060 libraries like I told you and try again)  you'll find a thing named PC0 in you Storage/Dosdrivers directory. If you doubleclick that and insert a pc formatted floppy (I think you have a high density floppy drive so your Amiga can read 1.44mb pc disks), your amiga is able to read its contents.  This is how you can transfer files from your PC to your Amiga.  The CrossDos version that came with AmigaOS3.1 is old and it only supports 8 character long filenames. You'll need CrossDos7

My Windows7 64 can not format floppies from its icon. I have to open a CMD and format using the dos command.

[billt]

Picked up a non working A4000T yesterday.  Was told it did not boot and they believed it to be a software harddrive issue.

Connected it to a 1080 monitor today and tried to boot it.  Floppy whirs, hard drive live flickers. CD light comes on sometimes, all the while I have a purple raster on the screen.

TJ

I always had problems with the A/V module coming loose. It's on pin header connection to motherboard, which comes loose easily. Make sure that's tight and try again, if it goes good then hot glue it or something. But I don't remember this causing purple... Though I think kickstart screen has a purple background, maybe it's not getting to draw the disk? Check your RAM is tight fitting too. Wiggle any plugins and press them tight...

[Ancalimon]

Whew, I got some work to do it appears.  :roflmao:

Problem is, the A4000T will not boot from my Install Floppy, only the Workbench Floppy, so that is where my problem starts.

I know the floppy drive and floppy is fine, data is there and all, but my guess is there is something on the Workbench Floppy that the INstall floppy is lacking.

Not sure how I would get past that.

tj

The answer lies within your question. an Install floppy must be installed before it can be bootable.  (never remove the write protection from your original disks)

[amigadave]

The answer lies within your question. an Install floppy must be installed before it can be bootable.  (never remove the write protection from your original disks)

What the heck do you mean by that statement?  You mean it must be inserted inside the floppy drive, then I agree, but otherwise, I don't know what the heck you are writing about.  An Amiga Install disk is always bootable, unless it is damaged, or there is a problem with the floppy drive.

I suggest giving the floppy drive a good cleaning and checking the Install floppy disk in another Amiga to see if it boots on another Amiga machine.

[amigasociety]

Yes, only my A4000T Workbench 3.1 Floppy boots this computer.  The Install floppy does not although it is fully readable, copyable, I can see all the files on it, transfer to another floppy, etc....

The drive is reading and writing it appears fine.

I formatted floppies today and made copies of all my floppies so it seems to be running well.

tj

[amigadave]

Yes, only my A4000T Workbench 3.1 Floppy boots this computer.  The Install floppy does not although it is fully readable, copyable, I can see all the files on it, transfer to another floppy, etc....

The drive is reading and writing it appears fine.

I formatted floppies today and made copies of all my floppies so it seems to be running well.

tj

Well, if your Install floppy disk will not boot your A4000T, it either has something wrong with it, or it is not the correct Install floppy for an A4000T.

The 3.1 Install floppy for a A4000T is different than the Install floppy for any other Amiga computer.

If you downloaded these floppy images from the Internet, you probably don't have the one you need for the A4000T.

Sorry I can't provide more help, I am half asleep and can't think straight at the moment.  Too much pasta for dinner dulls the brain.

[Ancalimon]

amigadave:

He has the A4000T Workbench 3.1 disks and his A4000T 3.1 rom since it's not a Commodore one.

It seems like there's something wrong with his Install3.1 disk.  So he needs to install an empty floppy disk and copy over the files from the original Install3.1 disk to that empty disk and rename the empty disk as Install3.1

[amigasociety]

Well, if your Install floppy disk will not boot your A4000T, it either has something wrong with it, or it is not the correct Install floppy for an A4000T.

The 3.1 Install floppy for a A4000T is different than the Install floppy for any other Amiga computer.

If you downloaded these floppy images from the Internet, you probably don't have the one you need for the A4000T.

Sorry I can't provide more help, I am half asleep and can't think straight at the moment.  Too much pasta for dinner dulls the brain.

Mine are OEM Amiga floppies, not copies.

But yes, I guess it can be bad.

So, how can I buy another copy, downloaded to a Mac OS X machine, and somehow create a floppy for my Amiga?

I do have an older OS 9/X Cube with a USB floppy on it.   Not really sure that would help of course.

Is there a way to go "around Workbench 3.1"?  Meaning, jump up to OS 3.5 or 3.9 without having to install 3.1?  Can I buy this someplace?

And if yes, do these newer OSes have 060 libraries or whatever is needed to install and make bootable a Cyberstorm 060 based A4000T?

My manual that comes with the Cyberstorm basically said you needed to install their software before installing the 060 card but I don't have that luxory anymore as I have no 040 to go back to.  Not even sure that is the issue since my system boots from workbench A4000T floppy so.

Hey Sac Amiga group, any of you here reading this thread?

Any of you running A4000T?

I would like to bring the A4000T to your next meeting.  :hammer::hammer:

tj

[mechy]

On my Escom A4000T (Commodore produced only 200 A4000Ts)  there is an addon thats attached to the Disk Module and supported by silicon. I've been told that I would have to remove this addon if I wanted to remove the standard 880k floppy drive and attach a 1.76m floppy drive.

I recently bought one and will install that on my A4000T.

To address your earlier message, A4000T's have lithium batteries stock. they do not have the leakage problem of the earlier rev A4000's. the 4000T's lithium battery is just soldered in.

Some 4000t's had a small board plugged to the floppy pin header,it was just for using a pc floppy in them(many came with sony drives). later ones came with ugly hacked floppy cables instead of that little board. Any 4000T can use a High density drive, you just need a good cable that hasnt been hacked. no changes need to be made to the disk board other than removing that small adapter if its present.

Mech

[amigadave]

Make a copy of your bootable Workbench disk and then erase enough files on it to make room so you can copy all of the files from the Install floppy disk to it and rename it to the same name of your Install disk.  That should give you a bootable disk that has all of the Install files and allow you to do a proper install of OS3.1.

Hope this helps.

[Ancalimon]

I know it sounds stupid but although AmigaOS 3.9 comes with 3.1 inside it, you still need to have 3.1 disks in order to install AmigaOS3.9  because you need to have a working cdrom