Pre-used A3000 Boot Issues

Understanding the A3000 boot procedure

I am now in my 3:rd (and last ?) Amiga phase in my life,
this time to be able to amuse "the small people" !

Machine :
Preused A3000 with IDE controlled HD via a Budda Flash Phoenix Edition.
The (internal and external) SCSI ports are not used (yet).
At hand I have licensed CDs for AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9 from Amiga International Haage and Partners, and I also have the opportunity
to write .adf files to floppies.

I have 3 HDs as follows :

HD#01 : Gotten with the machine and works OK.
Contains a lot of WHDLoad games.
The machine says:
Kickstart 40.68, Exec 40.10, Disk 44.2
WB 2_x
RAM : FAST 15.5 Mb
CHIP ca 2 Mb

HD#02 : Similar to the first one (and not configured by me).
Kickstart 40.68, WB 40.42

HD#Exp : An experimental HD, that I built and configured in WinUAE using my (licensed) "Amiga Forever" 2008 Premium Edition.
This HD boots up stand alone in WinUAE
(connected via an USB adapter, very convinient but a bit slow).

HD#Exp does NOT boot in the A3000.
When the machine detects it has no boot device, it puts up the screen where it asks for a selection of boot media;
floppy or HD, and Kickstart version (2.1 or 1.3 ?).

The HD buttons are greyed out (no HD detected).
When one of the Kickstart options is ticked,
it ask for the "SuperKickstart Disk", which I do not have (or ?) !
The A3000 then waits (forever ?).
If the selection is cancelled out, the A3000 anyway attempts to boot from the HD.
A "WB blue" screen is put up with the "Workbench Screen" text,
and an error message saying "Not a DOS disk AmigaSys in device DH0".
"AmigaSys" is the name I gave to the boot partion DH0 in WinUAE.

Any one of the selections (Retry/Cancel) can be ticked forever
with no progress.
Could it be I missed out something when I built HD#Exp ?
Some help to the boot loader that is required ?

I checked HD#01, in System: Devices/Kickstarts, and I found surprisingly
Kick34005.a500 (and .RTB). Seems to be A500 !
No such files were found on HD#Exp, is this fundamental ?
I have not checked HD#02 yet.

Could manually put some kickstart images here, some of them can be found on the "Amiga Forever" CD.
The situation is worsened a little by the fact that the builtin floppy DF0:
does not seem to be operational as a boot device.
The external floppy (rear connection) is able to boot up
with WB3.1, however only when a bootable HD is mounted.

I have tried with other floppy drives (PC models) with the same result.
I can see that the drives are accessed and the green LED is on.
In WB, the DF0: is always displayed "DF0:???" or "Disk unreadable".
I will continue fault finding on this (may be the cable or the I/F circuits).
I make use of the "Amiga Early Startup" facility.
I want to handle my HDs in WinUAE.
It seems from the AmigaOS documentation that a Kickstart 3.1 is needed
to install 3.5 or higher. Which one to chose ?

Would new Kickroms solve my HD boot and install problems ?
They are available from a local dealer.
Maybe they solve some old bugs also !

I can live with a faulty DF0:, as long as the DF2: works.
And I can do everything outside the Amiga within WinUAE, a marvelous piece of software !

Furthermore, I have not managed to get HD#01 or HD#02 visible
within WinUAE (and not in Windows XP, but this is expected).

I am sorry I had to write this many lines !
You know all the Amiga Whats and Nots, but I need to clearly describe the problem.

Thanks, Hoping to get a straight answer !
Perran (aka Malörtsgubben)

[alexh]

Your A3000 has Kickstart 1.4 boot ROMs. They load a file from the disk (either floppy or hard drive) and into 512Kbytes of RAM instead of using a real Mask ROM.

In order for your machine to boot correctly you will need to re-format your hard drive with the correct version of FFS (if it is not already) and call the drive the correct name (WB_2.x) and include the kickstart boot rom image (from one of the working disks) which is the file DEVS:kickstart (should be a single file)

This program is used to create superkickstart floppy disks but the README explains a good deal about KS1.4

http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/MakeSuperDisk

The hard disk partitions must be named "WB_2.x" and "WB_1.3" (note: these are devices names like "DF0", *not* volume names) and the Kickstart files must be in WB_2.x:devs/kickstart" and "WB_1.3:devs/kickstart". The partitions must be formatted either in standard filing system or fast filing system format. You *cannot* bootstrap from hard disk drives that are formatted with the international flavours of these filing systems or with the directory caching filing system.

OR

Buy a set of Kickstart 3.1 (or 3.9) ROMs suitable for your motherboard revision.