**Need Setup HELP** with Classic Amiga 2000 HARD DISK (Bridgeboard)

[Pat the Cat]

Good work darkage. Obviously me searching on "A2000" was not the best way.

Reason I never seriously had to search for Amiga equipment - I either fixed what I had or it stayed broken until it was fixed.

Nah, that card should work good. It is not that easy to blow up a HD controller.

Only person I know of that offers warranties with their Amiga gear is me. Haven't got IDE card. Sorry.

SATA-IDE convertors not that hard to get, but watch out - some of them you can't boot with.

Also, first partition on a hard drive has to be less than 4GB, and most people stick with 2 or less. Plenty. There are various patches out there for bigger drives, but they usually insist on later (2.1, 3.0, and upwards) Kickstart ROMs in the Amiga. Using more on different partitions works, but you are much smarter to stick with 2GB sized paritions. OS is 32 bit, remember.

[wbrejnia]

And will that IDE card have easy to find drivers?

Would this Compact Flash I found on German Ebay be easier, Cheaper?
http://www.ebay.de/itm/NEU-3-5-IDE-to-CF-Compact-Flash-Hard-Drive-Festplatte-Amiga-4000-3000-2000-/132062592434?hash=item1ebf8b3db2:g:scwAAOSwubRXMdPl
 
 Sorry, I just glanced and didn't know this was IDE to CF. (Not what I need)

[Pat the Cat]

CF is more geared towards A600/A1200 users, who have both IDE and PCMCIA built in.

A2000 has neither of those. Usually CF or SD into IDE is cheapest solution, but not in your case.

A2000 cards are NEVER the cheapest. Unfair I know. But, at least they are not as pricey as Zorro3 cards. Maybe 3 times the price?

EDIT: Tandem driver is here. Site has quite a lot of support for Amiga hardware;-

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/tandem

And the nice part is - you can get CD-ROM attached real easy too, easier than A1200 or A600.

[wbrejnia]

Not that I'm going to spend more money on this A2000.
 
 But what about this.
 http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Commodore-Amiga-A2091-SCSI-Card-with-210mb-Harddrive-2MB-of-Fast-Ram-OS-3-1-/222378950299?hash=item33c6d17e9b:g:v8oAAOSw-0xYe7mN

[wbrejnia]

EDIT: Tandem driver is here. Site has quite a lot of support for Amiga hardware;-

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/tandem

And the nice part is - you can get CD-ROM attached real easy too, easier than A1200 or A600.

Interesting. Thanks.  I'll watch that auction just for fun.

[Pat the Cat]

Not worth it $76. A2091 maybe worst ever SCSI controller for Amiga. Max Partition size is 256MB. Only allows one partition per drive.

[wbrejnia]

I did a search in my area Kijiji.

Found WebSite. (Thought it was a seller, but some kind of Search Engine)

Anything here useful for me

http://reduto.ca/Amiga%202000?p=scb&gclid=CIaklNjn0tECFdi6wAodOLUANg&search=Amiga+2000

** Never mind, it's just a search front for Ebay and places *
 
 But hey.   Isn't this the Card I have??
 
 http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Western-Digital-Disk-Drive-Controller-WD1002A-27X-ships-worldwide/151135715827?_trksid=p2050601.c100085.m2372&_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D35909%26meid%3D6c26b0ca2f004291a1594ab724393169%26pid%3D100085%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D4%26sd%3D192079037730%26clkid%3D2018258828725410600&_qi=RTM2247628

[darkage]

And will that IDE card have easy to find drivers?

Pretty much all drivers can be found on this site -  http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/tandem

Has the user manual there too.   Main downside with this card is theres no autobooting.  

You could get a scsi controller and then use a scsi to ide bridge. but they can be expesive.  like $100 to $150 for the bridge adapter.  

I would check all the controllers released and short list a few you like -  http://amiga.resource.cx/dir/scsi  

Then post a wanted add on amibay.com or monitor the for sale section.

Heres  GVP Impact SCSI controller -  http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?89173-GVP-Impact-A2000-HC-8-series-II-A2000-A3000-A4000-SCSI-controller


Someone did do a electronics project to reverse engineer the a1200 or a600 gayle ide interface for a a500, etc. Theres schematics online.    These should work for a2000, just have to check for space restrictions.

some ppl have done custom projects, you may want to check with them if it fits within a a2000 case.  

http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?51339-Amiga-500-4-8mb-fastmem-boards-with-IDE&highlight=kipper

http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?7158-A500-IDE-adapters-PS-2-mouse-adapter-A600-CF-adapter

[wbrejnia]

Darkage.

So what does no autoboot mean exactly.?
The amiga will power up. I'll need to put in a Workbench disk into Floppy Drive.

Then do something to boot the Amiga off the Hard drive.

Correct?  Or something else.

[darkage]

 
 But hey.   Isn't this the Card I have??
 
 http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Western-Digital-Disk-Drive-Controller-WD1002A-27X-ships-worldwide/151135715827?_trksid=p2050601.c100085.m2372&_trkparms=aid%3D111001%26algo%3DREC.SEED%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D35909%26meid%3D6c26b0ca2f004291a1594ab724393169%26pid%3D100085%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D4%26sd%3D192079037730%26clkid%3D2018258828725410600&_qi=RTM2247628

Looks like a PC ISA card which you can only use with the bridgeboard in emulation mode ?

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a2386sx

Past discussion about it http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4322

For regular amiga disk controller if no autoboot, then you need to use floppies to boot into WB and load the drivers for the controller.    If it had autoboot then it would have boot code within onboard ROMS so no floppy startup required.

[wbrejnia]

Looks like a PC ISA card which you can only use with the bridgeboard in emulation mode ?

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a2386sx

Past discussion about it http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=4322

For regular amiga disk controller if no autoboot, then you need to use floppies to boot into WB and load the drivers for the controller. If it had autoboot then it would have boot code within onboard ROMS so no floppy startup required.

Yikes. That's almost as hard as me figuring out my Hard Drive Access problem.

Time to get back on the original track which is....

Figure if I can get access to my HD (somehow). Trying the Workbench disk rebuild sounds like my best effort at this point. (IT may work!!)

Wow time has flown. It's 4am here in Canada (Toronto).
Till tomorrow.

Thanks everyone.

[Pat the Cat]

Darkage.

So what does no autoboot mean exactly.?
The amiga will power up. I'll need to put in a Workbench disk into Floppy Drive.

Then do something to boot the Amiga off the Hard drive.

Correct?  Or something else.

Close. The floppy mounts the hard disk into the system and then you can transfer boot to that. A standard WB floppy would not have the handler (l), driver (.dev) for the hard drive. You could copy them onto a WB floppy, then adjust the startup with a MOUNT command.

It is far from ideal. I guess one thing about an A2090A - you could connect the existing hard drive to it. (shudder)... I thought you said you wanted a faster solution, so that probably is a backwards step.

[darkage]

This seems like a great price so far on ebay.ca, no bids and one more day left.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/COMMODORE-AMIGA-GVP-Impact-A2000-HC-8-Series-II-Rev-II-A2000-A3000-A4000-/122314705339?hash=item1c7a8649bb:g:~BMAAOSwA3dYflif

info on card - http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/impact2000hc8  

Scsi so need scsi to ide bridge adapter.

[wbrejnia]

One last question so I can sleep knowing I sent this out, and I'll be prepared to get some progress tomorrow.

CLONING THE BROKEN (Workbench disk for my Amiga) STEPS:

Remember I'm a Rookie, but can learn fast as I go along....

1) I make a new Workbench disk (Hopefully same version of Workbench)
2) I copy over as many files as I can from my OLD Workbench disk to the New Workbench disk. (Overwriting them, or Delete and Copy)

3) If some give read errors, they won't copy
4) What files should I be targeting from the Old Workbench disk (with hope that I can get this Hard Disk to recognize)

*** Will also try one of the Disk Recovery tools on that workbench disk (but less reading is best to keep it alive). **
*** I do have a couple of Workbench disks labelled as for this setup, so might have to use both to get the files I need **

Of course all above will be done painfully slow, so I'll work on ensure that cabling is correct between the Controller and the HD.

All above steps seem right?
 
 ** OH one question to save me time, and stress on amiga. It there a keyboard sequence to reboot it to try workbench disks ** Right now I power off and on **

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

** OH one question to save me time, and stress on amiga. It there a keyboard sequence to reboot it to try workbench disks ** Right now I power off and on **

CTRL+AMIGA+AMIGA

Yes, make that new Workbench disk. Good luck!

Btw - nice setup in that earlier pic!

[wbrejnia]

Question on SCSI interface connectors (MAY HAVE Plenty of SCSI Drives)

I just remembered something....

Since I was a SUN administrator years ago at work (before SUN Equip. got replaced). I built many SUN Systems, including RAID Storage, etc.

At work in my Storage Room I have a ton of SCSI Drives in a box (at least 10-30).

If I buy that card [COMMODORE AMIGA GVP Impact A2000-HC+8 Series II Rev II A2000, A3000, A4000] on Ebay will one of those SCSI Drives work with this Card.



My point is I'm not sure what kind of Interface Connector those SCSI Drives have. I assume there are many generations and Rev Versions of Signalling (But SCSI may have some standards).

Regardless of the connector, would there be a conversion cable to make them work?

I would have to drive to my Storage Room which is about a hour away (To have a look at them).