A1200 + New IDE HD Problem (it's there, but not?)

[canis]

Hello from the n00b, :-P

First, let me say it's great to see how active this place is! I'd been using Amigas since drooling over a friend's A1000 in 1986... then finally scoring a dual-floppy A2000 in '89 (WB 1.3 was still fairly new I think)... then graduating to an A4000 in '93 (as soon as it came out). I actually still use the A4000 now and then, but only for OctaMED and the 15k+ audio samples I spent endless weekends collecting. (Switched to Mac in '95 after the disasterous PageStream 3.0 and it's endless updates started ruining my design business.)

Anyhow, long story short, I've been wanting to have fun with OctaMED again, so last week I bought an A1200HD to use as a back-up/"portable" system. It works like a charm with the HD it came with (120MB), but I had bought a larger drive to replace it and am now having a weird issue with it.

The drive is a 2.1GB Toshiba MK2101 2.5" IDE, brand new. After installing it, I've been trying to prep it using "HDToolBox". It "sees" the drive just fine (lists brand/model/rev. #, etc), and it allows me to low level format, verify bad blocks (went through them all with no errors), set-up partitions, etc, etc, including saving the changed settings to the drive itself.

So far, so good... but here's where it gets weird: after "HDToolBox" tells me it needs to reboot and that I then need to initialize/format the partitions, the workbench comes back up and only shows the RAM disk and the floppy... no "HD#:" drive icons to select and format! When I open a CLI and type "info", it lists the HD's partitions, but shows "no disk present" after each. The partitions show up in the "Format" app, but when I try to do it I get a window that says "no disk in drive". I don't get it! I've tried manually typing "BindDrivers" and "Mount HD#:" with no effect... even played with MaxTransfer in a last ditch attempt!

Hopefully it's something simple that years of Mac-ness has erased from my memory, but I can't imagine it's the drive itself as it's stats can be read/written and it passed the Verify Blocks test... it's not the A1200's IDE controller because the original HD worked fine. Any ideas, please?

SPECS:
Amiga 1200  (C= brand w/ stock PSU... going to grab an A500's soon)
RAM = 2MB Chip only
Kickstart = 39.106 (v3.0)
Workbench = 39.29 (v3.0... floppies from A4000, if that matters?)
HD = 2.1GB Toshiba MK2101 2.5" IDE


Thanks for any assistance... great to see she's still alive!

- Geoff Rantala


PS- If you want to hear some hip-hop/experimental beats made on Amiga/OctaMED, please check out my website: dawgisht beats  :-D

[bloodline]

to low level format

DON'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Low level format is a quick way to kill an IDE drive.

[canis]

by bloodline on 2004/2/11 3:12:29

DON'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Low level format is a quick way to kill an IDE drive.

Uh oh... I already did it once as a last resort (had the same problem before I did). But the stats still show up and Verify Blocks still shows no errors... how would I know if this killed the drive worse than it already was? (I can probably have it replaced... it was only $20 anyhow.)

Thanks for the warning!  :-o

- Geoff

[bloodline]

canis wrote:

by bloodline on 2004/2/11 3:12:29

DON'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Low level format is a quick way to kill an IDE drive.

Uh oh... I already did it once as a last resort (had the same problem before I did). But the stats still show up and Verify Blocks still shows no errors... how would I know if this killed the drive worse than it already was? (I can probably have it replaced... it was only $20 anyhow.)

Thanks for the warning!  :-o

- Geoff

Hmmm, you might have got a way with it this time :-)

[Thomas]

"Please insert volume Harddisk into any drive !" :-)

Never saw this before. Seems like the HDD mistakenly identifies itself as a removable device. What happens if you enter Diskchange HD0: into the shell window ?

Did you boot with the Workbench disk and started HDToolbox from there or did you boot from the Install disk. You should do the latter. If you can get hold of some 3.1 floppies you should install the FastFileSystem V40 onto the HDD. Might be there is a bug in the V39 one. If the bug is in the V39 scsi.device you need a new Kickstart ROM.

Does the HDD have jumpers ? Perhaps there is one "identify as if no disk is present". (Of course it is labelled totally different so that nobody knows what it means).

Bye,
Thomas

[Thomas]

bloodline wrote:

to low level format

DON'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Low level format is a quick way to kill an IDE drive.

Well, the SCSI command "low-level format" has a totally different meaning when sent to an IDE drive. Older HDDs might be killed by it but more modern drives usually ignore it. I've seen at least two drives on which the LLF command caused a reinitialisation of the internal bad-block list. So a drive which reported read errors in block 0 was revived by it because it got new place to store bad blocks in. Of course the drive was not really usable afterwards because bad blocks are not cured by initialising a list.

Bye,
Thomas

[Karlos]

@canis

Even if your old IDE drive is wrecked, don't dispair - you'd be amazed at what works on the old IDE interface. As long as you either keep it <4Gb or use OS3.5+ you can put a newer drive in to replace it.

I assume since you already formatted it, replacing the drive isn't at the cost of any valuable data loss.

[Matt_H]

How are your partitions set up? Early versions of the OS3.x FastFileSystem don't really like partitions greater than 2GB.

Are all the jumpers set correctly? The Amiga doesn't support CableSelect well.

As a last resort, you might try IDEFix.

I don't expect these will help, but if you're out of options you might give them a try.

EDIT: Oh, and Welcome to Amiga.org!

[Damion]

Hmmm....I can't remember if this also affects unformatted partitions, but formatted partitions
 won't show up on the WB unless they're "mounted". You can select whether or not they
are "mounted"  from within HDToolbox.

Good luck!

[Ilwrath]

I agree with Thomas.  Try typing "diskchange dh0:" or hd0: or whatever drive you are trying to format is...

At the very least, it should give you an interesting message, and possibly a hint as to what is wrong.  

I would also check to make sure that the drive is set as Master, and that CableSelect is disabled.

I tend to think it's a simple glitch or overlooked setting, and nothing serious.

By the way.... Do yourself a favor.  In HDToolBox, go through your partitions, one by one, select it and choose "Change..." Set the MaxTransfer size to "0x1fe00".  Do the same thing for each of your partitions.  It avoids a wacky buffer glitch in the IDE controller of the A1200/4000.  It'll save you the headache of having certain files getting mangled bits tacked on them.

[canis]

Thanks everyone for all the great advice!

Ok, here's what it took to get the HD running: After trying all that advice, having no luck, and getting ready to give up, on a whim I opened an old copy of Quarterback Tools, was able to select each partition as a device, then "Format Bad Disk". After this, the partitions showed up on the WorkBench as they were supposed to and now work with no problem. I have no idea what magical voodoo QBTools did, but it worked and I'm all set.

Thanks again... so glad to have found this board. Now if only I can find a SCSI Squirrel I'll be all set!  :-D