A2091 + KS1.3 + WB1.3 Floppy = Frustration

[bozimmerman]

Hello all,

I'm having a strange and frustrating problem.

My Amiga 2000 has a manual kickstart switcher with a 3.1 and 1.3 rom, an A2091 scsi card, a scsi drive with Workbench 3.1 on it, and an inability to boot from floppy whenever the 1.3 rom is activated.

The error I get is "Please insert volume LIBS into any drive".  I tried a 2.04 workbench and a 1.3.3 workbench disk -- they all say the same thing.  Those disks work fine on my A600 of course.

I mentioned all the extra hardware because it is ONLY when the 1.3 rom is active, and ONLY when I have the scsi hard drive plugged into the 2091 that I have this problem. Remove the SCSI drive, and it boots fine. If it matters, I think the 2091 is the 4.1 variety with 2mb ram, and none of the 3 option jumpers set.   I set the boot partition on the drive to priority -31 so the floppies would certainly come first.

My understanding is that this is not an uncommon configuration of hardware.

Any advice is appreciated,
Bo Zimmerman

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

It's asking for your LIBS: directory.  Every Amiga should have one, pretty much needs one to be able to boot.  Do you have that path properly assigned somewhere?

(attached screenshots might help, obviously your path would be somewhat different)

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

As a side thought - are you sure your floppy drive is working correctly?  I.e., you activate the 1.3 ROM and try to boot with a floppy in the drive, and it gives you that error every time?  Can you try booting from a game disk and see if that works?

[bozimmerman]

As a side thought - are you sure your floppy drive is working correctly?  I.e., you activate the 1.3 ROM and try to boot with a floppy in the drive, and it gives you that error every time?  Can you try booting from a game disk and see if that works?

Hmm.. well, the same thing happens with 3 different workbench disks and the boot disk for Super Street Fighter II.

I'll try swapping the floppy drive out.  If that's what it is, I'm going to feel really silly.  Although, I guess I forgot to mention that it boots fine from the same floppy when the 3.1 ROM is active.

Thanks for the suggestion all the same -- I'll give it a shot.

P.S. Just tried the 3.1 boot again, and yes, the the computer does boot into WB 1.3 from floppy with the 3.1 rom active, but it appears to be reading *something* from the harddrive to get there -- the LIBs perhaps?  It's definitely not booting entirely from the HD though, since the HD has a 3.1 OS.

[paul1981]

Sounds like you have a file system on your hard disk that isn't compatible with 1.3. What file system are you using? And what version level is it?

[bozimmerman]

Sounds like you have a file system on your hard disk that isn't compatible with 1.3. What file system are you using? And what version level is it?

Hi Paul,

The filesystem on the HD is International(FFS), at least according to the partitioning tool.

Your question raises so many others in me though.  For example: Why should it matter what FS the hard drive has if it is supposed to be booting from floppy?  Or is the mismatched FS a symptom of a bad floppy drive or something?

- Bo

[paul1981]

Hi Paul,

The filesystem on the HD is International(FFS), at least according to the partitioning tool.

Your question raises so many others in me though.  For example: Why should it matter what FS the hard drive has if it is supposed to be booting from floppy?  Or is the mismatched FS a symptom of a bad floppy drive or something?

- Bo

There's your problem then. International FFS is a no go for KS1.3. The file system is loaded into the Amiga's memory from the RDB every time you power on your Amiga. In your case the file system on your RDB is trying to access a library that it needs that isn't part of KS1.3, or more likely is not a high enough version number... Of course though, throw it a 2.x or above KS and it will work. You need to revert back to original FFS or use PFS for KS1.3 or above (all in one PFS - for all Amiga's/CPU's/Kickstarts):

http://aminet.net/package/disk/misc/pfs3aio

If you delete the FFS from your RDB, then reboot and reformat as FFS plane (ie using the FFS in ROM and not updated version from RDB) then you can ensure 1.3 compatibility, but you'll be limited in partition size. What that is under 1.3 I'm not sure. So I'd be choosing PFS...

[PanterHZ]

For a floppy disk to be bootable under Kickstart 1.3, it must have a KS1.3 compatible boot block, and if it's a DOS disk, it must be OFS formatted instead of FFS. This is the reason why you are having problems with booting from your 2.04 WB disk. Here the Amiga (under KS1.3) will find the disk to be non-bootable, so it will try to boot from the harddisk instead, which fails since most WB3.1 executables does not work with KS1.3.

Your question raises so many others in me though.  For example: Why should it matter what FS the hard drive has if it is supposed to be booting from floppy?  Or is the mismatched FS a symptom of a bad floppy drive or something?
- Bo

This is because under KS1.3, the Amiga can boot from harddisks with FFS, but not from FFS formatted floppy disks.

[bozimmerman]

Well, now I've added Factory Shipped Commodore/Amiga Workbench 1.2 and 1.3.3 Floppy Disks to the list of disks I've tried.  All identical results.  If they those don't have KS1.3 compatible boot blocks, what would?

I also added half a dozen game floppies, which boot fine in other systems, to the list of those that give this error.

But regarding the hard drive FS, I don't understand why it would matter what FS the hard drive has if the floppy disk is itself bootable (which it is, just not on  this Amiga 2k w/ KS1.3.)

Reformatting my hard drive and putting another FS on it sure does seem extreme, but I'll do it if that's what it takes.

Thanks for all your responses!!

- Bo

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I also added half a dozen game floppies, which boot fine in other systems, to the list of those that give this error.

If there's a floppy in the disk drive, the Amiga is supposed to boot from it first, every single time.  So unless you've got something really wacky going on with your hard drive controller, that 1.3/3.1 ROM switch, or your boot sequence, I'm going to go with "bad floppy drive" on this one.  Sounds like the system is trying to boot off the floppy, then "loosing it", and going to the hard drive in mid-boot.

Could just be dirty or a loose ribbon cable.

Disconnect the hard drive and see what happens then.  Also try it without the switcher, just the 1.3 ROM plugged into the socket.  Eliminate components until it works correctly, then re-add them one-by-one until the problem occurs again.  Troubleshooting 101.

But I'm still betting on a bad floppy drive.  

[smerf]

Hello all,

I'm having a strange and frustrating problem.

My Amiga 2000 has a manual kickstart switcher with a 3.1 and 1.3 rom, an A2091 scsi card, a scsi drive with Workbench 3.1 on it, and an inability to boot from floppy whenever the 1.3 rom is activated.

The error I get is "Please insert volume LIBS into any drive".  I tried a 2.04 workbench and a 1.3.3 workbench disk -- they all say the same thing.  Those disks work fine on my A600 of course.

I mentioned all the extra hardware because it is ONLY when the 1.3 rom is active, and ONLY when I have the scsi hard drive plugged into the 2091 that I have this problem. Remove the SCSI drive, and it boots fine. If it matters, I think the 2091 is the 4.1 variety with 2mb ram, and none of the 3 option jumpers set.   I set the boot partition on the drive to priority -31 so the floppies would certainly come first.

My understanding is that this is not an uncommon configuration of hardware.

Any advice is appreciated,
Bo Zimmerman

OK when you are booting with the 1.3 rom you have to use a 1.3 or lower (1.2 / 1.1 /1.0) floppy workbench.

Now when in 3.1 mode it should boot all work benches, at least it does with my Amiga 1200 which is using OS 3.9 which uses a 3.1 rom.
Now this should make sense to you, because it makes sense to me, I think, but if it doesn't make sense to you, you can contact that guy in the miner hat, is it solraK, or Wayne, you know sometimes I get things backwards, but any whoose solraK used to be a moderator / monitor who gave a pretty good display.

smerf

Just kidding Karlos

[Matt_H]

It sounds like the boot priority of your hard drive is set higher than your floppy drive. If that happens, the system will always attempt to boot the hard drive first. When you're in 1.3, the filesystem expects components that don't exist under 1.3 and you get the errors you're experiencing.

Under 3.x, open HDToolbox and set the boot priority of your bootable partition(s) to 0 or 1. DF0: is always 5, I think. Or maybe 10.

[bozimmerman]

Thanks to the good advice and hints from you folks, the problem is fixed.

I checked out the floppy drives and kickstart chips, and they were fine.  However, I swapped the 2091's hard drive for an old PC-formatted drive and suddently I was able to boot into the my 1.3.2 Workbench floppy disk with the 1.3 kickstart, which was always my goal.

My best guess is that, when booting any of the Workbench Floppys (and many games apparently fall into this category), they will always Mount any drives they find, including the hard drive.  However, my hard drive had the International FS which 1.3 didn't have a driver for, thus generating the "insert volume LIBS" prompt.

To be sure, I partitioned the new hard drive as FFS, and "unchecked" FFS when I Quick-Formatted it.  Then I switched over to the 3.1 ROM and installed AmigaOS 3.1 on the hard drive.  Then I switched BACK to the 1.3 rom and confirmed that the 1.3.2 Workbench floppy still boots just fine.

Again, thank you all so very much for your advice and suggestions.  Me and my Amiga 2000 thank you.

- Bo Zimmerman

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Sometime when you have a chance, check the boot priority on the old hard drive like Matt_H said.  Out of curiosity,  ya know.  

[Thomas]

My best guess is that, when booting any of the Workbench Floppys (and many games apparently fall into this category), they will always Mount any drives they find, including the hard drive.

Harddrives are mounted by the Kickstart before it even checks for floppy disks. You cannot avoid it unless the harddisk controller has an off-switch.

 However, my hard drive had the International FS which 1.3 didn't have a driver for, thus generating the "insert volume LIBS" prompt.

This is not the reason, at least not completely. FFS Intl. does work on Kick 1.3 if it is installed correctly on the harddrive.

To be sure, I partitioned the new hard drive as FFS, and "unchecked" FFS when I Quick-Formatted it.

This is not a good idea. By unchecking FFS you made it OFS. OFS has a very small partition size limit (8 MB or so). If your partition is bigger it will corrupt sooner or later. And it is sloooow. That's why FFS is called Fast File System. You should keep FFS, only uncheck Intl and DirCache.