Ressurection... again...

[Kernel]

Hey all - it's been about 6 months since I've been here and today I decided to pull out my A3000 again in an attempt to resurrect it.  The last time I pulled it out of the garage, my DENEB appeared to have a bad port and my hard drive went kaput.  So I'm basically left with a shell of a machine.

I have OS 3.1 floppies and a 3.9 CD; what I'd like to do is skip trying to dig up a hard drive and install to a USB drive.  However, I'm so rusty I can't even recall how to get started.  The last thing I remember, I was attempting, with lots of floppy swapping, to make a RAD install and attempt it from there but I ran into some issue that caused me to give up.

So, can anyone give me a shove in the right direction of how to go about this without a hard drive?  Specs are 2MB Chip, 16MB Fast, 3 Floppies, DENEB, USB DVD-RW, USB 10/100 dongle w/wireless link, O3.1 floppies, OS 3.9 CD, plus a bunch of other uutilities on floppy.

As a side note, I do have a license for AmigaForever... I think 2011 version if that would be of any use in this.

Thanks!

[Kernel]

Ok so I found the RAD: install notes I made, but I made the mistake of NOT putting the DENEB into RESCUE mode first so I can't access the Poseidon, Trident, or Deneb Tools installs... gotta try to find them somewhere else or I'll need to start again

[danbeaver]

A working Deneb will get you a CDROM, Ethernet and sneaker.net, but you NEED a SCSI drive.  There are many old small drives available for the asking and larger drives for not much (SCA-80 will need a $3 adapter).  But you cannot do this easily without a HDD ; also an external floppy or two will help.

[Kernel]

Ok can someone recommend a few specific newer SCSI drives that will work with the A3K?  I tried a bunch of different ones - mostly U320 with adapters - that I landed from work during system upgrades, but nothing would recognize.  I'd prefer to put something in that is newer rather than finding an older SCSI drive.

Thanks.

[freqmax]

New SCSI drives may be problematic due timing etc.

Try to find some "harddisk emulator".

[motrucker]

You should be able to find older SCSI I or SCSI II drives around here.  I should have a 420Mb SCSI 2 somewhere in my stuff I would let go cheap.
I and 2Gb SCSI 2 are usually plentiful too. I use a 2Gb SCSI in my a2000.

[danbeaver]

Ok can someone recommend a few specific newer SCSI drives that will work with the A3K?  I tried a bunch of different ones - mostly U320 with adapters - that I landed from work during system upgrades, but nothing would recognize.  I'd prefer to put something in that is newer rather than finding an older SCSI drive.

Thanks.

SCSI HDD's with the name, "Atlas" are generally compatible or backwardly  compatible with Amiga controllers.  The end manufacturer may be Maxtor,  Quantum, etc., but the "Atlas" models tend to work well.

[Kernel]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone... I'll check them out.

I've actually made progress... found the old instructions I was previously compiling to make an install to RAD: and started banging through/updating them - and I actually made it to a full RAD install of OS 3.1 with recognition of the DVD-RW and Flash.  But alas, I'm running into random freeze ups which I'm unsure how to track.

It could be any number of things, but manifested originally when trying to copy files from the HD floppy to RAM: (how I'm getting stuff to the Amiga from PC downloads), copying files from RAD: to RAM:, and at boot-up a few times at about the moment WB appeared.  The DVD-ROM also "died" at one point (at least that's what Trident alluded to) and I pulled out the Flash at one point and it didn't disappear from WB... and when I reinserted it, it kept saying it has been removed.

It could very well be the bad port on my DENEB is more problematic than I know - I'll need to pull it out and see if I can duplicate the problem.

I do have a memory testing program so I suppose I should try that to rule out an issue with RAM.

[Kernel]

I picked up a new SCSI drive from ebay finally... a Quantum Fireball ST 4320S 4GB model... a pull from an old apple.

HDTooolBox would not read the drive geometry (saw it as a 14MB drive) but a search on Google lead me to another thread here and a recommendation to try HDInstTools and it worked like a charm.

I need to get used to having the A3K keyboard at the same desk as my laptop... so far I'm failing miserably and am always using the A3K Keyboard when I should be using the laptops LOL.  interestingly enough, it's never the other way around... hmm...

Now just to install a few other utilities and get my DENEB back from repair!