getting my Amiga 4000 cd drive working

[sovietconscript]

I have an Amiga 4000/40 with 2mb chip ram and 12 fast ram (sometimes 20) i'd like to get up and running in a better condition. i have 1 hard drive installed and 1 scsi cd-rom drive that i cant get to work. i'm booting up useing a kickstart 3.1 disk and it boots up fine with it showing ram and the hard drive. i'm trying to run the scsi cd-rom drive via a ram expansion/scsi controller add on card. the reason i said sometimes 20 fast ram is because it only seems to only randomly detect the extra ram i have installed via the zorro card. the hard drive is running on the built in ide controller of the A4000. I'm aware the reason this isn't working may have to do with OS 3.1 and the wierd type of IDE they used that it won't recagnize my cd-rom drive (i've also tried a ide drive with no luck.) i would like to upgrade to OS 3.5 or 3.9 but as far as I know they are only avalible to install via cd....but I cant get a cd-rom drive to work so am I in some wierd Amiga paradox?

will a standard ide hard drive work in an A4000 also? i'd like to eventually add a second hard drive as well.

i also know about the IDE fix program but
1) i downloaded it and theres a billion files so how do i install it?
2) my amiga will not read 1.44mb floppies that my PC uses

[bdb]

If you have access to a PC with a CD ROM you transfer a full registered copy of IDEfix from the Amiga Forever CD to a (720K) floppy; better yet would be a CF card that you connect to the IDE interface; I can't talk prices in posts but I consider cheap to get IDE-to-CF adapter. You can format with Amiga emulation from the Amiga Forever CD or use DOS FAT, but the latter means getting the correct L: handler and Messy dos driver on the boot disk

In fact with a 2 GB CF card you copy the whole CD install of OS 3.9 to it -- don't bother with 3.5 it is just a prettier 3.1

[sovietconscript]

so the fdd in the amiga can read 720k formatted floppies but not 1.44mb?

[bdb]

If you have a high density drive -- Chinon FB-357A -- in your Amiga it will read/write Amiga 1.76 MB, PC 1.44, and with CrossMac also MAC 1.6 MB disks; if your Amiga is intact from the factory it should have a HD floppy drive. I know some sellers pull the HD drives and put a double density so they can sell the HD drive at a premium

To be honest, except for reading & writing PC 1.44 disks, the HD drive is never used. I can't remember which version of 3.x Amiga OS includes CrossDos as part of the install. If 1) you can use ADF files (I use BlitzADF) and 2) have Internet access then go to the web site theoldcomputer.com, register, give them a ten buck PayPal "donation," and go the the Amiga section, go into the "ROM" section and finally into the "Application" directory. Be prepared to drop your jaw as you will Not Believe What They Have for Downloads (same with "Games" Section). ADF files extract to a regular DD drive by the way; I cover the HD hole with plastic/Scotch tape

[duga]

With Workbench 3.1 you should be able to use a IDE CD-ROM with your A4000 IIRC.

To install IDEFix, just use the Installer.

[bdb]

CF card size is an issue; see if you can get one less than or equal. 2GB. And transferring from a PC to the Amiga requires format readable by both. Once you get OS 3.9 installed you should be able to handle non-boot partitions up to around 128Gb; boot partition must be within the FIRST 4 GB of the drive; some folks will recommend 1GB or less

[sovietconscript]

well, I tried putting IDEfix on a formated 720k floppy. it seen there was a disk but all i got was the DF0:????? and it wouldnt let me open the disk. i checked the disk in an old tandy 1000 under dos and it read it just fine so i'm pretty sure its not the disk. someone suggested my install of OS 3.1 is incomplete and lacks crossdos. i'm going to open it up later and take a look inside.

the Zorro card i tried useing with the SCSI cd-rom drive is a GVP A4000. maybe the SCSI controller didn't work because its only supposted to be for hard drives?

[bdb]

It works the other way around, SCSI controllers are ready made for removeable devices like tape drives, zip drives and Cd/DVD drives. The IDE/ATA device is designed for just hard drives; the ATAPI standard added additional SCSI-like instructions to handle removable media: rewind a tape, eject a CD ROM, etcetera

The simple Amiga IDE controller needs to have those instructions added by either firmware or software -- as in the IDEFix program.

The link info I suggested will give you CrossDos version 7, the last version -- it ends up being a very small addition to your boot drive size-wise, but this were the CF card comes it handy via an IDE-to-CF card adapter. Of course you can use an IDE HDD, but a CF card it easier to take between a PC and an Amiga. For the PC a USB CF card reader is about 12 salad leaves US from NewEgg. Intact the BuddahIDE card ships with a full install of IDEFix and one small Buddah file; that's what it needed to work

[sovietconscript]

i have a little experence with a CF to IDE reader. I once used a 32MB cf as a hard drive in an old tandy 1000 SX. so lets say i get a IDE - CF adaptor and a smaller say 2Gig cf card to use as the hard drive. do i need to format it or anything like that of just install it to the amiga and install OS 3.1 then after just connect it to the pc and insert whatever i need that way.

also anouther side question, how many disks are with OS 3.1? I have 5 here labeled "install,fonts,extras,locale, storage" am i missing the workbench floppy?

and lastly, so my SCSI drive with the scsi controller card theoreticly should be working? someone suggested to me my OS is missing a CD file system.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by sovietconscript

well, I tried putting IDEfix on a formated 720k floppy. it seen there was a disk but all i got was the DF0:????? and it wouldnt let me open the disk. i checked the disk in an old tandy 1000 under dos and it read it just fine so i'm pretty sure its not the disk. someone suggested my install of OS 3.1 is incomplete and lacks crossdos. i'm going to open it up later and take a look inside.

If you've correctly installed Workbench 3.1, then CrossDOS will also be present. All you have to do is activate it.

To temporarily activate CrossDOS, open a Workbench window by double-clicking on your hard drive icon, then open Storage/DosDrivers and double-click the PC0 icon.

Now you will be able to read DOS-formatted 720K disks in your Amiga's internal floppy drive.

Originally Posted by sovietconscript

how many disks are with OS 3.1? I have 5 here labeled "install,fonts,extras,locale, storage" am i missing the workbench floppy?

Yes, you are missing the Workbench floppy.

[sovietconscript]

Originally Posted by prowler

If you've correctly installed Workbench 3.1, then CrossDOS will also be present. All you have to do is activate it.

To temporarily activate CrossDOS, open a Workbench window by double-clicking on your hard drive icon, then open Storage/DosDrivers and double-click the PC0 icon.

Now you will be able to read DOS-formatted 720K disks in your Amiga's internal floppy drive.



Yes, you are missing the Workbench floppy.

yes! that worked and it did indeed detect the 720k floppy. my issue is that with the unregistered IDEfix file i dl onto the disk there a ton of files, there are over 4 or 5 files i fould labeled as "installer" some seem to do nothing or give an error where clicked. i poked around and one file, i beleive IDEfix.dat did...something. is there a meathod to this?

i'm taking the thing apart to pop in a ide drive and see if that works, i'm also going to clean the contacts on the scsi card to see if that was the cards issue. so 2 more questions now.

1) say the IDEfix works, will a DVD drive work as a cd-rom drive or do they use a diffrent kind of protocal?
2) i currently have 3 4mb sims making 12mb fast ram onboard. i have a box full of 16mb 72 pin sims. will installing 1 of these give me 16mb fast ram (the limit) or am i restricted to useing 4mb sims?

[prowler]

Originally Posted by sovietconscript

yes! that worked and it did indeed detect the 720k floppy. my issue is that with the unregistered IDEfix file i dl onto the disk there a ton of files, there are over 4 or 5 files i fould labeled as "installer" some seem to do nothing or give an error where clicked. i poked around and one file, i beleive IDEfix.dat did...something. is there a meathod to this?

The InstallSoftware icon is the one you need to double-click. If you cannot see it I can upload a suitable archive for you.

Originally Posted by sovietconscript

...so 2 more questions now.
1) say the IDEfix works, will a DVD drive work as a cd-rom drive or do they use a diffrent kind of protocal?

It may do, Some DVD drives are problematic, you'll just have to try it. And yes, it should work as a CD-ROM drive.

Originally Posted by sovietconscript

2) i currently have 3 4mb sims making 12mb fast ram onboard. i have a box full of 16mb 72 pin sims. will installing 1 of these give me 16mb fast ram (the limit) or am i restricted to useing 4mb sims?

I don't think the 16MB SIMMs will be of any use here. IIRC you are stuck with using 4MB SIMMs for a maximum of 16MB.

[sovietconscript]

i get "unable to open your tool "installer" when i try to install.

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by sovietconscript

2) i currently have 3 4mb sims making 12mb fast ram onboard. i have a box full of 16mb 72 pin sims. will installing 1 of these give me 16mb fast ram (the limit) or am i restricted to useing 4mb sims?

you can use 16mb simms with a very simple mod, put only 4mb of every simm will be used, so you still need to populate all 4 sockets for 16mb..

the mod is to ground pin 19 (dram address 10) of all simm sockets as shown in the attached photo - it may seem to work without doing this, but your system will most likely become unstable; you won't damage it, though.
Another option is to just put a ground wire on pin 19 of each of the 4 modules - that way you can do it without taking the mobo out and also don't need to mod it

I did this to mine because I had 4 60ns 16MB simms lying around and I need them to be fast for overclocking purposes :-)

[prowler]

Originally Posted by sovietconscript

i get "unable to open your tool "installer" when i try to install.

Just try this:
http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?...7&d=1234134690

[duga]

2 x 8 MB should work. I think they should be placed in the first and in the third slot.

[hooverphonique]

Originally Posted by duga

2 x 8 MB should work. I think they should be placed in the first and in the third slot.

that works.. they must be placed in the sockets marked "bank 1" and "bank 3".

[sovietconscript]

Originally Posted by prowler

Just try this:
http://eab.abime.net/attachment.php?...7&d=1234134690

thanks, i'll try this tonight when i have some more time and hopefully it will work. once i get a cd-rom drive going i'll be in good shape. one the plus side cleaning the gvp a4000 card it now consistantly recagnizes the added ram, unfortunitly i cant get the scsi cd drive running so hopefully i can at least get an ide cd drive going

Originally Posted by hooverphonique

you can use 16mb simms with a very simple mod, put only 4mb of every simm will be used, so you still need to populate all 4 sockets for 16mb..

the mod is to ground pin 19 (dram address 10) of all simm sockets as shown in the attached photo - it may seem to work without doing this, but your system will most likely become unstable; you won't damage it, though.
Another option is to just put a ground wire on pin 19 of each of the 4 modules - that way you can do it without taking the mobo out and also don't need to mod it

I did this to mine because I had 4 60ns 16MB simms lying around and I need them to be fast for overclocking purposes :-)

neat mod i'll keep in mind but it will probibly just be easier to find a 4mb stick and max my ram to 16 normally.

[bdb]

You wil need a CdFileSystem in the L: directory and a mount in the DevsosDrivers directory. 3.1 will take a Devs:mountlist as well, all of which are found in the Applications directory on theoldcomputer.com, but I guess you have limited Internet access. Can you access Aminet? Do you have the ability to buy Amiga Forever CD? If you have access to a PC with a CD R/W drive can you burn an Iso image file to a CD?

[sovietconscript]

i have all the internet access in the world i just have no money. i recently moved and paypal doesnt beleive i am who i am so untill thats straightened out its money orders only. i do indeed have a dvd/cd writer.

[sovietconscript]

well not much progress. most of my prior experence with amiga has been with an A500 which was basicly a pop in a disk click and icon and play system and a A1200T that already had the cd drive configured so all this delving into the amiga OS is new to me which probibly isnt helping at all.

i tried running the new installer which brought up a window that seemingly said a bunch of irrelevent things but thats it. it didn't seem to install anything. i pretty much clicked on everything and attempted every combo with 2 IDE drives and a scsi drive i could think of and multiple cd's and nothing. the only shred of progress was in the IDEfix folder there is a large "finddevice" icon, when i have the scsi drive connected and go into it and scan it does indeed detect the drive even identifying the manufacturer. i select "use" go out and....nothing. i also checked my L: and i did have a file in there "CDfilesystem" if thats what bdb was refering to.

i'm pretty annoyed with something that should be so simple as connecting a CD drive and my ignorence of the OS isnt helping me. i appriciate everyones help but i may just save up some cash and maybe snag a HDD off someone with OS 3.5 or 3.9 pre loaded in the future.

[bdb]

OK, if you pm me with your email address I'll send you some attachments to get your CD/DVD drive operational. Add a request for anything you can think of that will fit on a 720K floppy; sneaker-net works better with a CF card or USB; but USB solutions on the Amiga are hard as hell to come by with spending $$$

Do you have Lha? (For un-archiving files)

[sovietconscript]

got it!

bdb, you triggered a thought when you pm'ed me and mentioned the cd0 mount file. i decided to take a closer look. i remembered from the scsi drive and useing the detect button it detected my scsi drive at gvpscsi, my mount was configured for just scsi so i changed it to gvpscsi and the immediatly recagnized the cd. looks like after work tongiht i'm going to attempt to install OS 3.9 and we should be in good shape. thanks everyone for all the help its been very much appriciated.

[bdb]

Well let us know how it all turns out when you have a chance

[sovietconscript]

well, i installed OS 3.9 but now i have alot of "minor issues". i guess these are more software then hardware issues now but i'll just number them for ease

1) to make my cd drive run i have to manually go into EXPANSIONS and click CD0. is there a way to make this active automaticly on startup?

2) I seem to be stuck on the 4 color pallette. if i go into Pallette and choose "muticolor" nothing happens regardless if I click save or use, does the fact i'm useing a commodore RGB monitor or have removed the battery have anything to do with this? games run fine with all the correct colors...well the few games i can get running via the DD.

3)on booting up the OS i get
cannot open "resource library" version 44, unable to run "AMIDOCK"
i click to continue and everything boots up seemingly fine.

4) i cant seem to run alot of programs, for instance i cant unzip and ziped files (i thought LHA was included in OS 3.9?) and even when i manually select the LHA program to unzip something nothing happens. do I have to have the LHA file in a specific drawer? also when i go to do something like for example install WDHload i get the message "unable to open your tool 'C:installer' then i get the option to retry abort or choose anouther program...i'm suspecting that has to do with files needing to be in specific places but i have no idea what file and where. I also have this issue trying to install BoingBag1 and thus have been unable to.

last time i touched an Amiga was about 2 years ago when i had my 1200T up and running and i never had any issues with that system on getting things running, unzipping or installing and running whdload.

[bdb]

1). You can mount the CD0 with this line in user-startup:
C:Mount DevsosDrivers/CD0

2). Your ScreenMode must have more than 4 colors to display more than 4 colors. If you are using AGA, 16 is a good number of colors, then let palette select which colors

3). You don't need 3.9's AmiDock, just delete from WBStartup directory, or locate the Resouce.library Version 44 and put it in the Libs: directory

4). Lha handles ".lha" files; type "Lha ?" to get info on how it is used. Look for Unzip on Aminet.net or maybe it is just "Zip;" Get BlitzADF as well. I believe the CLI command is Lha x file.lha The Installer program may be in the Utilities or Tools directory, but place a copy in your C directory where many programs expe
ct it. OS 3.9 has a poor install routine as do BoingBag's 1 & 2; BB 3 and 4 are easier

[Jope]

There is no need to add separate mount commands for dosdrivers into your startup-sequence.

If the dosdriver file is in DEVS:DOSDrivers, it will be automounted. If it is in SYS:Storage/DOSDrivers, then it is not automounted, but the mount command will find it without you having to specify the full path if you want to mount it manually.

So just move CD0 to DEVS:Dosdrivers in order to get it to automount.

[bdb]

Yes, if the startup-sequence has a line that says:

C:mount Devs;Drivers\~(#?.info)

If is doesn't you can add it or if you just want CD0, the line I suggested from before

Use a ":" not a ";" as this site puts stupid icons in their place if a D is involved

And pm me with anything else I can send to help

[prowler]

Originally Posted by bdb

Use a ":" not a ";" as this site puts stupid icons in their place if a D is involved

Then how did Jope manage it above?

[bdb]

Don't know, maybe the Internet is out to get me; maybe it's my iPhone 4; Mongo just a pawn in the game of life. What do you think?

[prowler]

Originally Posted by bdb

What do you think?

Well, one way of doing it is shown here:
http://eab.abime.net/misc.php?do=bbcode#noparse

Enclose the smilie-generating code in noparse tags and it won't be converted.

[bdb]

And this solves the external CD Drive access?

[sovietconscript]

still no luck, now alot of things such as "screen mode" will not open, i just get the cannot open "resource library" version 44 error.

i read that installing the boingbags may correct this but when i click to install them i get
unable to open your tool 'C:installer'

acually i get one or the other of those errors with almost any program i do attempt to use.

anyone know where i can find "resource library" version 44 ?

[bdb]

It sounds like the OS 3.9 failed to do a proper install, so re-install it

The resource.library will be on the CD; the files are just listed, so search in a Libs drawer until you find it; as I recall it is about 4 - 6 "clicks" deep

[bdb]

Actually CD0:Emergency-Boot/Libs has version 44.102

[sovietconscript]

ok, i think were getting closer to now but so many issues. thanks for the heads up on the location of the resourse library, for some reason OS 3.9 did not install it. so that leave 2 issues

1) i can now access "screenmode" and no longer get any errors refering to resource.lib. my issue with screenmode is that i cant change it to anything. i can switch to anouther setting and change colors from 4 to 16 but i have no way to save it. all i have is a test button. as soon as i close the screenmode window my settings reset. is thins from not having a battery?

2) still having issues with installing anything such as WHDload because of installer issues. at first i was getting "unable to find installer" errors so i did some reserch and discovered theres acually supposed to be a program in the C: thats used to install stuff. so I found the program and placed it into my C: drawer but now when i try to use any install programs i get "cannot open install scripts icon" error. this may be my last major hurtel here. any ideas?

[bdb]

Download Installer version 43.3 (I believe) from Aminet.net; that should be the most current. The one that shipped with 3.9 was buggy (the battery doesn't do anything but keep time) but check your Devs:Monitors for a NSTC monitor; if is not there copy it from Storage/monitors. Always do a test before saving and exiting ScreenMode. That should save you settings. Keep up the good work!

[sovietconscript]

Originally Posted by bdb

Download Installer version 43.3 (I believe) from Aminet.net; that should be the most current. The one that shipped with 3.9 was buggy (the battery doesn't do anything but keep time) but check your Devs:Monitors for a NSTC monitor; if is not there copy it from Storage/monitors. Always do a test before saving and exiting ScreenMode. That should save you settings. Keep up the good work!

i'm useing a 1084S monitor. i do indeed have NTSC monitor in my devs:monitor file but no luck. problems is i don't seem to have a save button, only a test button. i'm running it in NTSC: high res right now. i can change to something like NTSC: super high res and it looks fine on the test but theres no seeming way to save it so i just exit the screenmode window and nothing changes. i origionally assumed i just needed to scroll down in the window and it would be there but nope. it won't scroll down and i cant adjust the window size.

as for the installer i do have ver. 43.3 and same error. i do have one guess to the issue. i simply copied and pasted the installer files into C: its been my experence that some files need to be unzipped to where there going to work correctly (i don't know why thats the case) unfortunitly i'm out of CD-r's so i cant test this theory till i buy some more....i do hate wasting an entire cd on a 900k file.

[bdb]

I know that this is not the answer, but the "Save" button may be off screen, for me it was to low and I had forgotten to les it scroll down.
Good point on the CD-R's; I guess you could use R/W CDs.

I don't know what you have on the PC for compressed files but the program I use down a bunch of formats such as lha, tar, far, zip, and 7z. You might try another re-compression or a format with a high compactness; a lot of the Lunix-type folks compress .rar files twice which I find dumb, why not use a better compression utility the first time. The cost of a higher compression ratio is more time to de-compress it.

On the PC I use Jzip which handles many formats and is shareware