Cyberstorm mkIII SCSI and HD Size limits

[Bifford]

I got my 060 mkIII Cyberstorm working again. One of the old SCSI HD's is dead, making nasty noises but the other is fine.

First of all, it's been ages since I "played" with AmigaOS (3.9 installed) and I can't for the life of me think how to make the SCSI harddrive the boot drive.

I can successfully find it using MountCD when the device is set to cyberppc.device so it is there...but how to get it mounting and booting?

I also salvaged 3 server scsi devices which all work nicely but exceed the limit the system will allow. Is there any way to extend the limits?

Cheers!
Sam / Bifford

[danbeaver]

On an A4000(D or T), I find it easier to use an IDE hard drive to install an OS3.1 bootable partition and then do the setup from there rather than from floppies.

However, if you know your SCSI hard drive works, and you have the proper active, wide termination on both ends of the SCSI-3 bus, then you can do an OS 3.1 install to the cybppc.device by going into the Install Disk Hard drive tools icon and change the scsi.device to cybppc.device; save it and the due the prep.  Note that the use of the latest version of FFS will be needed to see the full extent of a large hard drive.

[zipper]

HDToolbox is the tool to use. Upto 128 GiB / 137 GB disks are supported on 3.9 without additional tweaks.

[danbeaver]

Yes, OS3.9 once installed will give that much, but you can't get there without using OS3.1; that is the issue (which doesn't see large drives, and has to be set up to see CD drives).  The CD option for the CS MK3 and CSPPC is not robust enough when I have used it (ergo, IMHO) to install OS3.9 straight.  It does work sometimes for an OS4.1 install using the boot floppy, and sometimes the CD isn't seen on boot.  It is probably not the heat, but the humidity.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Yes, OS3.9 once installed will give that much, but you can't get there without using OS3.1; that is the issue (which doesn't see large drives, and has to be set up to see CD drives).  The CD option for the CS MK3 and CSPPC is not robust enough when I have used it (ergo, IMHO) to install OS3.9 straight.  It does work sometimes for an OS4.1 install using the boot floppy, and sometimes the CD isn't seen on boot.  It is probably not the heat, but the humidity.

So what you're saying is, HDToolbox on the 3.9 recovery floppy and the other 3.9 tools don't see the CD drive on the CS MK3?  Is it some weird device name, or the like?

How about an IDE CD drive connected to the motherboard header, plus the 3.9 recovery floppy, to boot and install to the CS MK3 hard drive?

I bet I could make it work.  I am just stubborn enough that I'd bang on it until I found some combination of hardware that worked, LOL.  :lol:

[danbeaver]

Well if you are using a recovery floppy, then that means you have a functioning system that has booted to a state that recognizes the CD drive; this is why I use the IDE port to install OS3.1.

Otherwise without being booted to a point to recognize the CD drive and hence the OS3.9 CD, how can it capture your boot settings to make the recovery floppy. I suppose you could borrow someone's floppy from exactly the same system, and it would mount the CD drive and perform the assigns to get the OS3.9 install functioning; however that is like borrowing an egg to make a chicken and asking "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

[QuikSanz]

Yes, danbeaver is correct. Must have the proper SCSI device selected.

[Thomas]

HDToolbox is the tool to use. Upto 128 GiB / 137 GB disks are supported on 3.9 without additional tweaks.

Actually up to 2048 GiB / 2199 GB disks are supported by HDToolbox (any version).

It's a matter of drivers which harddrive size will work or not. With SCSI all 2 TiB should work. 128 GiB is a limit of IDE (LBA28 vs. LBA48) which does not apply to SCSI.

OS 3.9 comes with drivers for Commodore hardware only. Therfore using 3.1 or 3.9 does in no way influence the CybPPC harddrive limit.