Request for help to actually get OS3.9 to install!

[Sandman]

Whether I try to install 3.9 directly to my A3000-040 or install thru Winuae and then transfer via CF card to the A3000, it never seems to render a working install.

When I install thru Winuae, it works great on the PC side but when I transfer the contents of the working installation to the CF card and try to boot the A3000 with it - Problems galore.  I have tried following every online guide and follow their instructions exactly but the problem persist.  The only way that I have even gotten close to a good install was the manually copy libs, etc. from the OS3.9 cd to the cf boot partition but even then it seems broken.

What do you guys find that you manually have to copy to your boot partition to get this thing to turn over.

WB3.1 is a breeze but for a novice like me os3.9 makes Windows 3.1 look like a walk in the park!  

I will post more details after another install attempt on this end....

[Boot_WB]

Have you created an emergency boot disk using your A3000 which includes the correct 68040 libs for your accelerator/cpu card?

Some things (libs, any rtg information, mountlists, etc) are copied from the emergency boot-disk as part of the installation process.

Could you be a bit more specific than "Problems galore"?

[NovaCoder]

Best way is to use WinUAE, and there are some really good guides out there.

You need to get your PC's CDROM drive setup correctly as a 'native' Amiga drive, once you do that all of the file attributes are set right and you're good to go.

[Cammy]

Are you using Windows to copy the Amiga system files onto a FAT-formatted CF card, then transferring the files to the Amiga and hoping they will work? Because that could be your problem. Please try this:

Install LHA in 3.9 in WinUAE if you haven't already.

LhA 2.12 (Run this first) - http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/lha
LhA 2.15 (Then extract this) - http://aminet.net/package/util/arc/lha_68k

The best way to transfer your system is to pack the entire lot into a LHA archive, which can easily be swapped around on disks without losing any of its original formatting, then extracted onto a real Amiga.

Either mount the CF in WinUAE or make an extra partition temporarily, it can simply be a Windows directory rather than a hardfile. I don't know what your root partition is called, but let's just say it's DH0: and the new partition is DH1:, this is what you should do to make an uncompressed LHA (which will extract much faster than a compressed one when you transfer it over to the Amiga). Open a Shell and type:

DH0:
Lha -eraxz a DH1:Backup

Then it will create a file called "Backup.lha" on your DH1: partition, or whichever one you choose. Don't make the destination drive the same as the one you're archiving, and make sure you have plenty of RAM assigned if you're going to use the Ram Disk instead of a second partition.

Now when that's finished you can copy the Backup.lha file to your CF card from Windows if you didn't already mount it and create the file on it. Put it in your A3000 however you've been doing it (I assume you have a SCSI CF/SD card reader?) and to extract the file back onto a fresh partition in the A3000, using CF0: in this example for where the file is coming from and DH1 as the partition you're extracting to, type this in a Shell:

DH1:
Lha -xa x CF0:Backup.lha

Then the OS3.9 setup will be copied to your A3000 EXACTLY the way it was in WinUAE, without any FAT/Windows butchering.

[nyteschayde]

Have you created an emergency boot disk using your A3000 which includes the correct 68040 libs for your accelerator/cpu card?

Some things (libs, any rtg information, mountlists, etc) are copied from the emergency boot-disk as part of the installation process.

Could you be a bit more specific than "Problems galore"?

It's really a shame that we can't redistribute the contents of the Amiga OS 4.x boot floppies. They contain OS 3.x software intended to boot up the Amiga from the OS4.x CDs.

It is by far the smallest and most efficient way to get access to a CD-ROM on the Amiga (assuming you have one actually connected).

It even works if you have two drives on the stock IDE port of an A1200 with no other hardware.

The process goes something like this,

It first kicks version 52 of the scsi.device into memory and reboots
It then runs the tool c:CDMounter which uses l:BootCDFileSystem and possibly devs:ATAPIismajik.

It's like 3 files, no mountlists and you get large HDD support. It's pretty amazing.

[Sandman]

Well, sorry for not getting back sooner with my results but real life gets in the way sometimes.

Anyways, I have spent numerous hours on this and still haven't made any progress.  I am not sure if it is a sporadic hardware issue or what but I just can't get OS3.9 installed.  I am literally ready to pitch my Amiga gear onto the trash-heap of time.

I set up 3.9 in WinUAE and it works flawlessly on a CF card.  I move it to the real amiga and it won't boot up.  It just loads up to a black screen and sits there.

So, I figured that I would follow Cammy's advise and do a .lha archive on WinUAE and then transfer the good OS3.9 install to my A3000 that way.  I create the .lha archive fine on uae with no problem.  I then transfer the CF card to my A3000 and everytime I try to unarchive the backup.lha it fails with a 'Failed CRC Check' at a different spot everytime.

So.... Back to installing OS3.0 of off the CDROM the old way.

* I install 3.1 onto the boot drive of the A3000...... no problem.
* Move CD0: to Devs, double-click it and my CDROM shows up fine.
* Reboot, CD0: causes a suspend message and locks up workbench.
* Reboot with bootdisk, move CD0: out of Devs, reboot 3.1 install fine.
* manual mount CD0: again, to access OS3.9 CD, fine.
* Proceed to make Emergency-Disk, install fails with c/installer crash.
* Reboot, CDROM drive not recognized.
* Reboot, CDROM shows up, try to make Emergency-Disk again, installer abruptly quits back to workbench about half-way thru making e-disk.
*Boot E-disk, flashes something about iprefs:bad loadfile hunk but gets to workbench
*WB3.1 install on internal SCSI HD now showing checksum errors.
*Start OS3.9 installer from CDROM, Installer crashes with c/installer program failed.
* Reboot E-disk, now it crashes with a datatypes error.
etc.

Memories come flooding back why I dumped the Amiga for PC back in 1992!

Ready to give up.......

[cha05e90]

...just for the record: You have 3.1 ROMs in your A3000?

[Sandman]

Yes, I have 3.1 roms (KS ver. 40.68) and 16mb of ZIP's, and all of the custom chips have been upgraded including the WD-08.

I did finally get the CDROM to cooperate more by installing AsimCDFS, but now when I go to make an Emergency-Disk it gets farther but  crashes with.

Sorry... an Error Has Occured
Unable to perform operation -- not enough memory in line 2568.

Reboot, try again.  Copy correct installer from c: on OS3.9 cd to c: of boot drive.  Start OS3.9 e-disk installation and it crashes because of c/installer.

Could there be a problem on my SCSI chain causing data corruption?

Stupid computer.....

[Christian Johansson]

Well, sorry for not getting back sooner with my results but real life gets in the way sometimes.

Anyways, I have spent numerous hours on this and still haven't made any progress.  I am not sure if it is a sporadic hardware issue or what but I just can't get OS3.9 installed.  I am literally ready to pitch my Amiga gear onto the trash-heap of time.

I set up 3.9 in WinUAE and it works flawlessly on a CF card.  I move it to the real amiga and it won't boot up.  It just loads up to a black screen and sits there.

So, I figured that I would follow Cammy's advise and do a .lha archive on WinUAE and then transfer the good OS3.9 install to my A3000 that way.  I create the .lha archive fine on uae with no problem.  I then transfer the CF card to my A3000 and everytime I try to unarchive the backup.lha it fails with a 'Failed CRC Check' at a different spot everytime.

So.... Back to installing OS3.0 of off the CDROM the old way.

* I install 3.1 onto the boot drive of the A3000...... no problem.
* Move CD0: to Devs, double-click it and my CDROM shows up fine.
* Reboot, CD0: causes a suspend message and locks up workbench.
* Reboot with bootdisk, move CD0: out of Devs, reboot 3.1 install fine.
* manual mount CD0: again, to access OS3.9 CD, fine.
* Proceed to make Emergency-Disk, install fails with c/installer crash.
* Reboot, CDROM drive not recognized.
* Reboot, CDROM shows up, try to make Emergency-Disk again, installer abruptly quits back to workbench about half-way thru making e-disk.
*Boot E-disk, flashes something about iprefs:bad loadfile hunk but gets to workbench
*WB3.1 install on internal SCSI HD now showing checksum errors.
*Start OS3.9 installer from CDROM, Installer crashes with c/installer program failed.
* Reboot E-disk, now it crashes with a datatypes error.
etc.

Memories come flooding back why I dumped the Amiga for PC back in 1992!

Ready to give up.......

Sounds like you might have Maxtransfer issues.

[mechy]

Yes, I have 3.1 roms (KS ver. 40.68) and 16mb of ZIP's, and all of the custom chips have been upgraded including the WD-08.

I did finally get the CDROM to cooperate more by installing AsimCDFS, but now when I go to make an Emergency-Disk it gets farther but  crashes with.

Sorry... an Error Has Occured
Unable to perform operation -- not enough memory in line 2568.

Reboot, try again.  Copy correct installer from c: on OS3.9 cd to c: of boot drive.  Start OS3.9 e-disk installation and it crashes because of c/installer.

Could there be a problem on my SCSI chain causing data corruption?

Stupid computer.....

No offense but why do you blame the machine for your problems when you dont even know if the scsi is setup right. Stupid human

are you using a bootleg os3.9 cd burned from a pc? it may have corrupted all the files/icon info?

Seriously Though, if you don't take the time to learn a bit about your stuff you will cause yourself nothing but trouble. I kind of wonder if the amiga didn't dump you back then LOL

First set your scsi chain right. If this is wrong it probably will never work reliably.

I have made a emergency disk with asim before and it never works right.the emergency disk doesn't copy all the asim stuff because asim does a screwball install putting stuff in silly places. this MAY be your trouble. It could also be max transfer issues.

Getting a scsi cdrom working on a A3000 is easy with os3.1 and 3.1 roms.. you simply copy CD0 from storage/dos drivers to devs/dos drivers then edit the cd0 icon info for UNIT number and DEVICE where your cdrom is,then save it. reboot and it should see the cdrom.
i have been doing this for a 15+ years now and it works everytime. after you do that you can install the better os3.9 cd filesystem.

Mech

[Sandman]

Well, I can tell you for certain on THIS A3000 w/os3.1 and 3.1 rom you do not just simply copy cd0: from storage/dos drivers to devs/dosdrivers and then edit cd0: for UNIT 3 (scsi cdrom id #) and set device for scsi.device because it always crashes on either cold/warm reboot with cd0: in devs/dosdrivers.  This IS with using default 3.1 cd filesystem (no asimcdfs).

I've never had this problem on any of my A4000's but something is screwy with this A3000.  Maybe maxtrans may be an issue but I have tried different values here to no avail.  The problems don't seem to be consistent.  I can try to make an emergency-disk and the first time the installer fails, I reboot changing nothing and next time it gets past the installer and into the install just to guru half-way through preparing the disk..

Even when I can get the emergency-disk to install, I get a different error everytime I go to boot from it.... somethin' ain't right!

[marcfrick2112]

For what it is worth, the CD driver built-in to OS3.1 is utter crap. When I upgraded to 3.9, oddly all I had issues with was CD support. I eventually 'downgraded' to Asim CDFS 3.10 .

Hmm, you are booting from the emergency disk and then installing, correct?
Maybe you can have someone make and send you an Emerg. disk?

Also, with the 're-boot' that occurs with OS 3.5/3.9 , only after an OS install, I always had to do a cold start, no reboot... if a warm boot was done after 3.9 install, I had issues as well...

odd tho, Sandman, I have NEVER seen an error like that installing OS 3.5 or 3.9 ... weird

[mechy]

Well, I can tell you for certain on THIS A3000 w/os3.1 and 3.1 rom you do not just simply copy cd0: from storage/dos drivers to devs/dosdrivers and then edit cd0: for UNIT 3 (scsi cdrom id #) and set device for scsi.device because it always crashes on either cold/warm reboot with cd0: in devs/dosdrivers.  This IS with using default 3.1 cd filesystem (no asimcdfs).

I've never had this problem on any of my A4000's but something is screwy with this A3000.  Maybe maxtrans may be an issue but I have tried different values here to no avail.  The problems don't seem to be consistent.  I can try to make an emergency-disk and the first time the installer fails, I reboot changing nothing and next time it gets past the installer and into the install just to guru half-way through preparing the disk..

Even when I can get the emergency-disk to install, I get a different error everytime I go to boot from it.... somethin' ain't right!

This may be a clue as to some problem. It does sound like you may either have a ram problem,the scsi chain is not terminated properly or some chip somewhere is making bad contact on a pin or somewhere.

What does the scsi chain look like? i.e. what devices are terminated and what is not terminated. are there termination resistors on the motherboard?

As for using the os3.1 cd filesystem, its not the greatest,but it should allow you to read a cd like os3.9. I have worked on about 60+ A3000's over 20 years the owners claimed it would not work and made this work every single time barring a bad cd drive or bad cables which i fixed regardless of the scsi chip. Don't give up, you will get there.

[Tension]

Which 68040.library are you using??

[matthey]

Yes, I have 3.1 roms (KS ver. 40.68) and 16mb of ZIP's, and all of the custom chips have been upgraded including the WD-08.

Have the DMAC and Ramsey been upgraded also? Which 040 accelerator do you have? I have had random checksum errors on the SCSI bus with these chips and some accelerators. If I remember correctly, replacing the old DMAC only solved the problem despite the rumor that the new Ramsey and DMAC should be upgraded together. The new Buster and SCSI chip are good upgrades in my experience.

The 68040.library could be the other problem. You could try to remove the 040 accelerator (with needed jumper changes too). I bet the SCSI errors will go away and this will narrow the problem down. I very much doubt that the SCSI maxtransfer or mask are your problems as the 3000 is not picky about them. The 3000 SCSI is usually not picky about termination as long as 1 end of the SCSI bus is terminated (worth checking though). The reversed diodes on the earliest 3000 motherboards can cause problems.