Amiga 4000 no boot 8Gb CF

[arttu80]

Hi all!

My problem is with 8Gb CF-card. Booting fine on my A1200/030, but when I connect it to A4000/040 via standard IDE cable and el cheapo IDE-CF adapter it will recognise card when I cold start it, but after reboot it disappears.  Since it's supposed to reboot once, before WB loads, I can't get in WB on my A4000. So I suspect too long a cable or should I try tweaking CF card?

On a side note, standard FFS 4gb CF's working fine..

[Thomas]

Booting fine on my A1200/030, but when I connect it to A4000/040

Since it's supposed to reboot once

Before the reboot you probably load an A1200 scsi.device. This does not work on an A4000, you have to replace it by an A4000 scsi.device.

[arttu80]

Before the reboot you probably load an A1200 scsi.device. This does not work on an A4000, you have to replace it by an A4000 scsi.device.

Thanks, but pardon my software weakness, how'd I do that? I should tweak it in HDToolBox?

Anyway, for now I'm out of this game since I managed to fry my 8Gb CF while trying other CF-IDE adapter (while in serious influence of holy beer)... I plugged 4-pin power connector backwards. Luckily my 4000 endured this ordeal!

P.S. And yes, there was real smoke from CF card! Well, some excitement and fireworks with my beloved computer.

[arttu80]

Here I'm at it, again.

Received 16Gb CF card. Same thing while booting in A4000. Working fine on A1200.

Soo, I can see there is a line in startup-sequence file "c:LoadModule devs:scsi.device"

I checked scsi.device version, which is 43.47. Is it correct while using on A4000D with 3.1 ROMs?

[Thomas]

Version number does not matter. There are different variations of scsi.device for different Amiga models. Version number is always the same. You have to load the one for A4000 on the A4000 and the one for A1200 on the A1200.

The original AmigaOS ROM Update contains all variations and loads the correct one for each model. If you don't use the ROM update, it's your own responsibility to choose the right variant depending on the Amiga model you want to boot.

[arttu80]

Hmm, still I'm looking for someone who actually have some advice about what scsi.device file I should use on A4000D with that CF card and where I can get it?

Actually I'm little surprised at how difficult this simple issue is to solve. I googled hi and lo, but no firm answer on this...

[Thomas]

Well, where did you get this one from?

Soo, I can see there is a line in startup-sequence file "c:LoadModule devs:scsi.device"

The same source should have the one for A4000.

[arttu80]

Well, where did you get this one from?



The same source should have the one for A4000.

Well, just one guy selling these here locally, but I'm sure he's not up to it so that's why all the hassle... And I'm confident he wouldn't have written these .device files himself so they must be available, right?

scsi.device A4000 anyone?

[arttu80]

Hi there, again.

I tinkered some more with my 4000. Even tried to replace scsi.device (43.47) with 43.45 and lesser versions, but no luck. It seems, after LoadModule command machine reboots and loses scsi.device completely as witnessed by loading SysInfo4.0 from floppy disk and checked loaded devices, it didn't show scsi.device at all.
When I bypass LoadModule command, machine will boot but show dh1 as NDOS disk, since it's out of 4gb range. Filesystem is PFS3.

Is there different version of LoadModule command or substitute to it I can try?

[Thomas]

You should return to plain OS 3.9 with Boingbag 1 and Boingbag 2. Don't skip ROM updates and don't use LoadModule.

Only then your CF card will run in both machines because SetPatch will automatically load the variant of scsi.device for the current machine from the ROM update file.

If you want to stick with LoadModule then you need another utility which tells you what machine you are running on and by which you can decide which file to load with LoadModule. I don't know such utility.


Edit: the latter is not true. I forgot the latest update of LoadModule. You can now make directories called A1200 or A4000D and put the corresponding variants of each file into there. Just read the Modules.readme for details.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

LoadModule is available on Aminet:  http://aminet.net/package/util/boot/LoadModule

If you want the latest version of scsi.device you can also get it off the "OS 4.1 for classics" setup floppy disk.  Version 52.something-or-other is also compatible with 3.9.

Obviously if you intend to swap this card back & forth between your A1200 & A4000 you'll need to prep it accordingly to load the correct version depending on which machine it's in.

Good luck!  

[arttu80]

Whew, I think I'll be stuck with this, because I don't see any scsi.device files available separately for A4k, so I'm reeeally starting to think it's hardware related problem I have with bigbox...

Maybe something to do with memory allocating while using LoadModule command? Have tried REVERSE and HEADERFORWARDS options with it, no luck.

This sucks, because really looking forward to expand this baby with some new HW, but 4Gb won't cut it.

As for swapping CFs between two machines, wasn't my objective. Just keeps me wondering why not working with 4000.

[Thomas]

There is nothing wrong with the hardware except that it is different. The A4000 has a different IDE controller than an A1200 and thus needs a different driver.

You've got a pre-installed OS which has been patched by some stupid guy in such a way that it only works on an A1200.

If you revert to an unpatched OS 3.9, it will run on both machines because it contains all required drivers. The drivers of OS 3.9 do not exist as seperate files, but they are packed together in a file called Amiga OS ROM Update which resides in the Devs directory. Upon boot the SetPatch command will load this file and install the machine-specific drivers in memory. LoadModule is not part of the OS and is not required.

[arttu80]

It's Workbench 3.1 and SCALOS setup on top of it. Not OS3.9 I'm using. Therefore no such thing as "Amiga OS ROM Update" in Devs.

Maybe I should go to the length of trouble and install that darn 3.9 to get rid of this miserability.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

It's Workbench 3.1 and SCALOS setup on top of it.

I'm not familiar with what SCALOS does or does not do, but 3.1 natively does not include support for hard drives greater than 4GB.  You'll have to install one of the various patches / patch methods to support hd's greater than 4GB if you intend to stick with 3.1.