Just bought GVP HD8+ hard drive!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Please explain exactly what you mean by a crashed hard drive. I'm still waiting for the replacement from Zetr0, anyway.

So, you never sent the 2Mb of RAM! I've been expecting it to arrive any day for weeks now. I didn't think you were going to send it by UPS, just US Mail or whatever it's called. I don't know about any compatible RAM I can buy locally for under $10 or about £7.50. I don't know about any problems you have getting to a post office, as you live in Washington DC. I can walk to a post office in just a few minutes. Over here, a lot of post offices are being closed down. Is the same thing happening over there?

I work 12 hours a day.  Post offices aren't open at 2am when I get out of the office, and one needs to sleep sometimes.  Sorry, and it sounded like you didn't need it as badly when you mentioned that it already had 2MB in it.  But seriously, you need to put a little more effort into this.  You don't know what "crashed hard drive" means?  Seriously?  Google it!  Use ebay.  Type in "30 pin simm"  There's 134 listings for them!  And didn't your mother ever teach you it's rude to nag people when they're offering you things for free?  Bah, I give up!

[Tripitaka]

I'll be putting one of these up on ebay over the next few days. It's got a 48Mb drive and 2Mb of RAM. Currently it's case is in a retrobrite bath (and is lightening up nicely I must say). I'll let you all know when I put it up on ebay.

[AmigaBruno]

I work 12 hours a day.  Post offices aren't open at 2am when I get out of the office, and one needs to sleep sometimes.  Sorry, and it sounded like you didn't need it as badly when you mentioned that it already had 2MB in it.  But seriously, you need to put a little more effort into this.  You don't know what "crashed hard drive" means?  Seriously?  Google it!  Use ebay.  Type in "30 pin simm"  There's 134 listings for them!  And didn't your mother ever teach you it's rude to nag people when they're offering you things for free?  Bah, I give up!

As I suspected, the term "crashed hard drive" covers a few different faults. Not only that, but the information I've found doesn't feature SCSI drives or the Amiga, but I'm not sure if that matters.

As for searching for just "30 pin simm", not any type of 30 pin simm is compatible. I was pleased to hear that you had some which was definitely compatible.

At the moment, I don't think I'm any nearer to getting this GVP unit working again. I still haven't received the replacement hard drive from Zetr0 and haven't heard from him either. :huh:

[Tripitaka]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290922727787

My ebay listing as previously mentioned.
Happy bidding if your interested.
If not, have a nice day anyway.

[AmigaBruno]

Good news! I've heard from Zetr0 that he's posted the SCSI hard drive to me, but this was only last Friday, because he's been ill.

I hope this means I'll be able to get my GVP SCSI unit going again and enjoy my alternative Amiga history where I wasn't limited to floppy drives and 1Mb or 2Mb RAM! I'm gonna party like it's 1993. :pint:

Of course, the main reasons I'm using a classic Amiga or an Amiga at all are so that I can do computer graphics again (Windoze and even Linux graphics software put a stop to that, but I thought I needed to persevere) as well as use various applications and play games I missed out on. All of this on REAL Amiga hardware, not on a PC!

[AmigaBruno]

As promised some time ago now, here are some pics of the insides of this faulty GVP unit. I hope someone on here can see something wrong with it that I can't see. I don't know much about electronics. The black circles drawn on both sides of the SCSI cable indicates where I saw the cable bent, before I straightened it out.

[AmigaBruno]

Well, the replacement SCSI hard drive from Zetr0 has now arrived! I don't know much about electronics and I'm now trying to learn again for about the third time, so please don't laugh or criticise me.

All I have to do now is remove some thick, tightly fitted posts which are holding the hard drive itself onto a board which I didn't take any pics of. I think these may be called brass stand offs, as used to insulate PC motherboards from their cases, but I'm not sure. I don't know if I've got a tool I can use for this. I hope everything will suddenly work after I've done that, but I can't help doubting that it will. Other things I could try are:

1. buy a longer cable from Amigakit

2. remove the interface from one end of the original cable, cut it to a reasonable length, then refit the plug and plug in the cable again (I don't know how to remove the interfaces, though)

If these ideas don't work, then I'll have to take send my GVP SCSI controller and hard drives somewhere for repair, but I'm not sure where.

[Tenacious]

Some tthings that might increase your chances of success:

1  Get the technical specs of your new HD from the net.

2  Ensure that the SCSI id jumpers are set the same as your failed drive (You didn't change these, right?).  If not, a safe id would be something other than 0 or 7, one of these is usually used to identify the controller itself.

3  The new drive will need Termination, see the docs from step 1.  This is usually a jumper.

There is a very good tutorial about SCSI issues, diasy-chaining, termination, etc, that's been linked in the past.  Anyone still have the link?  Have you Googled SCSI termination?

Reading thru all of this, many folks have stepped forward (some above and beyond).  This is a great community!  

[AmigaBruno]

Some tthings that might increase your chances of success:

1  Get the technical specs of your new HD from the net.

2  Ensure that the SCSI id jumpers are set the same as your failed drive (You didn't change these, right?).  If not, a safe id would be something other than 0 or 7, one of these is usually used to identify the controller itself.

3  The new drive will need Termination, see the docs from step 1.  This is usually a jumper.

There is a very good tutorial about SCSI issues, diasy-chaining, termination, etc, that's been linked in the past.  Anyone still have the link?  Have you Googled SCSI termination?

Reading thru all of this, many folks have stepped forward (some above and beyond).  This is a great community!  

Here's another newsflash! I opened up my GVP SCSI host controller/RAM unit again and slowly managed to remove the poles or stand offs holding the old hard drive in place. I used the tools supplied in a standard PC too lkit. I then screwed in the new hard drive (a Conner HDD), plugged in the power and SCSI cables and screwed the GVP case back together. After a few minutes cursing the Amiga A500/A500 Plus edge connector design and wondering if I was finally going to break it, I managed to finally slide the GVP unit onto the edge connector. I plugged in the PSU, turned on the GVP unit and heard it spinning. I waited for at least several seconds, then turned on the Amiga. I continued to wait, while the drive light flashed rapidly, then went off, but then it started flashing again. The screen was still white. Suddenly, a Shell window appeared then an error message saying it couldn't find something, followed by the Shell window closing and I was faced with a Workbench screen!!!! After all this, I noticed there were two partitions, named DH0: and DH1: .

Tenacious, I'm afraid I don't understand all the advice you've given me which I've quoted above. I don't know if I need to study and follow it. All I know is that I've plugged it in and it WORKS! Does this mean I'm OK to continue using the hard drive as it is now, or what should I do to avoid damaging it?

Unfortunately, recently I found that my ADF transfer kit had stopped working yet again and the cable fell out of the back of the Amiga TWICE while I was using it! I think my Amiga parallel port may have totally blown out now. I suppose I'm lucky the whole Amiga didn't blow up. Unfortunately, I haven't got any other cable or device I can plug in to check my Amiga parallel port. Can someone suggest something I can buy to check it? A printer is the obvious choice, but I don't know if any of those old printers would still work. I also used to use a Digiview device, but they blew out twice and had to be returned to Topeka, Kansas for replacements. What else is still available?

[Tenacious]

It sounds like your friend Zetr0 took care of you very well with the HD and it's jumper settings.

The SCSI interface is versatile, but, has a small learning curve.  If you ever hope to get more from this system (CD reader or writer, Zip drive, one of Mechy's card readers, etc), you should read up on SCSI termination, IDs, etc.  I'll bet Wikipedia has some good stuff.    For now, I think you're good to go.

None of the Amiga ports are "hot pluggable" (The power must be OFF to add or remove a cable!).  Most ports will survive a couple of accidents, but, the damage is accumulative.  One day the port will simply stop working.  Fortunately for you, the A500 has socketed chips and can be repaired easily.

The parallel port is particularly useful.  You can get sound samplers (like GVP's DSS8+), hardware MP3 decoders (like MasPlayer), video enhancement (DCTV, GVP's G-Lock), etc.  Many of these take some patience to find today.

[AmigaBruno]

It sounds like your friend Zetr0 took care of you very well with the HD and it's jumper settings.

The SCSI interface is versatile, but, has a small learning curve.  If you ever hope to get more from this system (CD reader or writer, Zip drive, one of Mechy's card readers, etc), you should read up on SCSI termination, IDs, etc.  I'll bet Wikipedia has some good stuff.    For now, I think you're good to go.

None of the Amiga ports are "hot pluggable" (The power must be OFF to add or remove a cable!).  Most ports will survive a couple of accidents, but, the damage is accumulative.  One day the port will simply stop working.  Fortunately for you, the A500 has socketed chips and can be repaired easily.

The parallel port is particularly useful.  You can get sound samplers (like GVP's DSS8+), hardware MP3 decoders (like MasPlayer), video enhancement (DCTV, GVP's G-Lock), etc.  Many of these take some patience to find today.

I'll read up on the SCSI standard. I hope to get a SCSI CD-ROM drive which may or may not even have been designed for the Amiga! This is something I never had on an Amiga in the past.

I'll look out for sound samplers, genlocks, and video digitisers that use the parallel port, I had all those devices years ago.