A4000 tower...help!

[Morley]

Well... latest status update for those interested:

I now have it working from an IDE hdd, everything is 110% from the IDE hdd, I even got to mount a SCSI cd-rom. But the instant i add an SCSI-hdd, - nothing. Just a boring black screen and the drive led on the tower flashes something like 2x per second..huh.
Also when I fire it up from cold-boot with an ide-hdd installed, it hangs before booting anything, and I have to warm-reset it, and then everything works...
Strange, huh? :-?

[Markus_Bieler]

Let the drive flashing for about two minutes. What happens then?
It could be that the drive isn't correctly installed and that the scsi-bus is searching for it.

You could start with the power unplugged to the drve and after booting plug in the power for this drive and start HD-Toolbox.

Try another scsi-hd.

etc.

Markus

[Morley]

@Markus

hmm...just tried the power-up without power to the scsi trick. Everything works nice then, also the cd-rom drive on the bus. But after inserting the power cord and waiting for the drive to speed up and intialize, hdtoolbox freezes and the drive led flashes the wellknown 2x/ps. like it usually :-P does. Then I alter hdtoolbox' settings to search 2nd.scsi.device (scsi) only, and it shows no drives at all...not even the cd-rom. But it works. If i then try to access the ide disk, it freezes+led flash. =>this is straaange! with scsi hdd connected, ide access freezes the machine? humm. this also happens if i try without any ide hdd's connected, just by searching the scsi.device in hdtoolbox.

As for different hdd's, the two I have tested work great on my 1200 and on my xp machine. huh.

[Markus_Bieler]

I guess Bad drive

Disable fast scsi and tzry again.

check the drives jumper for term, termpower, parity, synchronous etc.

Is the scsi-chain properly terminated. There is a active terminator attached to the board wherwe the external floppy connector would have been. The holes are there but no socket fitted. (I soldered them and I have external floppy)

Markus

[Morley]

@markus

I have tried with and without fast-scsi, without parity check, termpower and synchronous, and all combinations of these:)

The strange thing though is that the cd-rom only works when the term switch on the disk/controller card is set to off? I thought this turned the internal termination on and off, and now it doesn't make sense at all.
Maybe the drives have a problem with controllers with other id's than 7? I think the Adaptec card in my pecee and the Blizzard1234 scsi-card is set to id7. Just a thought, as exeperimenting with the id-jumpers on the controller doesn't do anything.

As for the termination on the controller card, cn260 and cn261 are empty, but this is for the floppy i guess. The controller seems fully poulated otherwise.

[Markus_Bieler]

The scsi-controller in the A4000T has also id#7. Mine does.

I have tem enabled at the controller and I use the SCSI-actve_terminator at the board with the serial and parallel connectors. no term or termpower enabled at the drives.

(Sorry, I thougt it was attached to the board with the empty floppy-connector. I had to saw the terminator from the board to gain space for the external floppy connector)

[Morley]

@markus

hm... if the scsi id of the controller is 7, and then fixed, my guess,  - then what are the scsi address jumpers on the back off the controller for? I thought they were for setting the id for the controller

[Markus_Bieler]

Well you can change it to another id. But factory installed it is id#7

[Morley]

Oh my God! This is embarrassing :-P
I have been using Scsi on my Amiga's since '96 and I can't get a hdd to work in my tower? I'll rather work for 3 months instead of getting another scsi-controller. Anyway, I think I'll borrow some old 50 pin scsi drives tomorrow to test with my tower, if I can find any :-? .

Just tried using the active terminator on the io board instead of the passive on my cd-rom (i also have a looase active terminator which fits on the cable), but this didn't help either. But now I can leave the Term switch on the controller on when i use the cdrom.

[darksun9210]

hmmm, ok
are you using the scsi cable that came with the machine? might be worth getting hold of another one. mine was all folded up when i got it and might have had a couple of internal lines broken... seemed to work when straightened, but other than that, it didn't... anyway, i replaced that with another cable, and took the headers off the cable to use on another new cable for all my devices.

and one of the things i remember was that swtiching the dip switches to "on" switched off the functions. most irritating. one other thing to consider, (and boosted my scsi speed) was switching off the termination, and putting an [active] scsi terminator on the scsi port on the back. other than that, its just make sure that none of your devices have termination enabled apart from the last one(s) on the chain, but i guess i'm pointing out the obvious there (scsi controller counts as a device)

oh and if anyone does seriously want a Scsi CDrom or DDS2 tape drive, send me an email, and if you're in the UK i'll ship it free, outside the UK and i guess the postage'll cost more than a new drive! two of each, and they're just sitting on a shelf not doing anything...

oh crap, just thought. it might be worth one of your devices suppling "term power" to the bus (should be a jumper for it on one of your drives) this would enable the proper termination if you are using an active terminator.

[Morley]

Well, I have just ordererd a new disk I/O module, new A/V module and a new C= 68030 cpu-card from Vesalia. If they have it in stock that is, which I believe they have since the items were on some sort of clearing-out sale.
Anybody know how long it takes from ordering to Vesalia sends a order-receipt back?

With a shining new I/O module SCSI will be proper again I hope!

..oh! the price? 30€ total! :-D
 :banana:

[Morley]

AAARGH {bleep}{bleep} silly computer!

NOW! I'm angry.

Just got my new SCSI/floppy module and some 3200/3400 boards from Vesalia. Well, I thought maybe the SCSI module or the 3640 board I'm using could be the problem, so I bought theese.
So. Inserted the new SCSI module, plugged a HDD onto the SCSI bus, power-on -> nothing. Just as before. Then  I threw in another cpu-card.. -> same result. The machine starts up just fine, initializes the SCSI disk, then it hangs and the drive led just flashes once a second. No kickstart screen, just a black screen. It's not completely locked, I can still do soft-resets which hangs the machine again after initializing the disks. Hmpf. I have tried all sorts of combinations on the jumpers at the back, 5(!) different SCSI hdd's, all with same result. The strange thing though is that it works just fine with a SCSI cd-rom and an IDE hdd...huh? Only thing that makes it cough-up is SCSI hdd's...

Somebody have any good suggestions? I really can't figure this problem out...

[Morley]

 :bump:

Well, today I experienced something odd... Itried to plug a 9.1GB Western Digital 80pin SCSI drive through an adaptor in my 4000T, the drive was'nt recognised, but at least the machine booted into workbench for the first time with a SCSI hard-drive connected. I then gave up the 80 pin drive, and connected another 68 pin drive I had lying around, which did'nt cooperate very well in my 4000T. (see previous postings in thread)

Guess what? Now it is found by hdtoolbox and works like a charm. I haven't touched any settings from the last time I tested it, just threw it in...
And now it works. Maybe my 4000T was so glad I gave it a scandoubler that it decided to give me access to my scsi hdd's? :-)

[darkcoder]

I don't know if it helps...I suspect the A4000T has a special version of workbench 3.1. I guess this is because of a special version of scsi.device, which should be able to make work both the onboard IDE and SCSI controller.
My 4000T came with WB disks labeled "3.1 4000T".

cheers

[Morley]

darkcoder wrote:
I don't know if it helps...I suspect the A4000T has a special version of workbench 3.1. I guess this is because of a special version of scsi.device, which should be able to make work both the onboard IDE and SCSI controller.
My 4000T came with WB disks labeled "3.1 4000T".

cheers

Cheers!

Yep, I know the 4000T had a special version of WB. Infact workbench.library was on disk instead of in ROM because of the second scsi.device.

This was not the problem though, my A4000T disliked all scsi hdd's. I had a scsi cd-rom working fine along with two IDE hdd's, but adding a scsi hdd always made the machine choke. But today, wohoo! :-D  it works perfectly?! And that is what is strange, because I haven't touched anything since last time I tried to connect a SCSI hdd.

Humm...haunted computer?