A1200 Startup Issues w/ Fresh WB 3.1

[mschafe]

Hi All.  I have an A1200 that I'm trying to get working.  It actually worked fine, until I realized the Workbench partition it was setup for is way to small to load additional tools and stuff.  I reloaded WB 3.1 from scratch, and now it gets as far as the desktop but always 'hangs' with the stopwatch.  I vaguely remember this happening way back in the day when I first got this working, and had to edit something in my startup-sequence file, but I think I've tried everything and it still does it.  I can do the basic startup to the CLI and it works fine, which is how I can get in an edit the file.  Any tips would be fantastic.

[lionstorm]

maybe it is something in the user-startup ? you can rename the file from the CLI like user-startup.bak and reboot to see if something has changed.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Did you reinstall it from original, unmodified disks? Download any of the additional updates? (IMHO the "BetterWB" package is pretty good for an unexpanded or only mildly expanded 3.1 system).

[mschafe]

Installed from original install disks, my plan was to apply the BetterWB package after it was up and running. The user startup has one commented item, so nothing that would be causing it to hang.

[lionstorm]

can you post your startup sequence ? it might show the culprit.

[orange]

maxtransfer?

[kreciu]

If this is clean WB install there should not be ANY issues, with exception of all this random issues . If this is clean install SS should be fine.

IMO this is some sort of HDD issues (BTW. I never had maxtransfer issues ).

Can you write EXACTLY what is in you A1200? HDD size is it CF memory? FastATA etc. Size of first partition?

Are your floppy discs super old/new?

[goldfish]

Hi check your PSU . I had same problem and it was down to the floppy drive not getting enough power.

[scuzzb494]

Hi All.  I have an A1200 that I'm trying to get working.  It actually worked fine, until I realized the Workbench partition it was setup for is way to small to load additional tools and stuff.  I reloaded WB 3.1 from scratch, and now it gets as far as the desktop but always 'hangs' with the stopwatch.  I vaguely remember this happening way back in the day when I first got this working, and had to edit something in my startup-sequence file, but I think I've tried everything and it still does it.  I can do the basic startup to the CLI and it works fine, which is how I can get in an edit the file.  Any tips would be fantastic.

So did you format the Workbench and Work partitions , resize them  ? What did you do to clean up.

Try booting from your hard disk install disk and using the HDToolbox to check the drive. You may have a bad section of drive. I have one drive on a 600 that I cannot use the first part which I leave blank or it does just what is happening to you.

I doubt its a software issue. Sounds like a hard drive problem. You can also check the state of the disk with HDToolbox.

How big is the Workbench by the way and how much free space ?

I'm guessing the only thing you did previously was put items in the other partition and ASSIGN them in some way to free up space. Dunno , don't think you have said what drive you're using and the sizes. Sorry if I missed that.

Have you tried a softboot after the hard to see if that clears the problem. Sometimes works. You can also change the echo status of the startup to see the mount file list out the sequence of events to see where it hangs.

[mschafe]

Thanks for all the tips!  So, it has a 340mb IDE HDD installed (Areal A340).  It originally had a 7mb Workbench partition and a 200-something MB 'Work' partition.  I re-partitioned it for a 50/50 split and formatted them.  I installed from both my original set of WB 3.1 disks and from my Gotek.  It finishes installing successfully but on booting, it still gets stuck at the stopwatch after booting to the desktop.

Now for the strange part.. when I first was tinkering with this, I had the original install doing the exact same thing, and after messing with something in the startup-sequence I can't remember, it booted successfully.  The A1200 is stock otherwise.

[scuzzb494]

Thanks for all the tips!  So, it has a 340mb IDE HDD installed (Areal A340).  It originally had a 7mb Workbench partition and a 200-something MB 'Work' partition.  I re-partitioned it for a 50/50 split and formatted them.  I installed from both my original set of WB 3.1 disks and from my Gotek.  It finishes installing successfully but on booting, it still gets stuck at the stopwatch after booting to the desktop.

Now for the strange part.. when I first was tinkering with this, I had the original install doing the exact same thing, and after messing with something in the startup-sequence I can't remember, it booted successfully.  The A1200 is stock otherwise.

Copy your Workbench to your Work partition and the two mouse button down on a hard boot and boot from your work partition and see if that works. It could be that there is a problem with the workbench partition.

Looks like a 3.5". What power supply have you on the Amiga. Is is the original small one. I had to get a heavy 500 brick to get those working on my machine. Interesting but in Dec95 I had the exact same problem. How is the Gotek powered [ never used one ]

[mschafe]

I will play around with the partitions a bit, but I'm not sure that's the issue since it did it before.  I'm thinking it could be an issue with the HDD, I'll have to see if I can dig up another 2.5" IDE device, but its not a 3.5" that's currently in it.  Gotek is in an external case, but it starts up the same whether or not its disconnected or connected.  Power supply is from a 600, but I did try my 500 PS to see if that made any difference but it didn't.