A1200, problem booting from Flash card

Hi,

I've recently bought one of the now common flashcard harddrive substitutes for my A1200 having dusted it off recently and decided to treat it.

My A1200 is completely standard apart from a memory upgrade in the expansion bay and the compact flash HD.

I installed the card with no problem and was happilly running the version of WB3.0 that came installed on it.. (I haven't had to install or format the hd myself..).

I started backing up some of the data from my old floppy disks to it (it's a 4GB Kingston). I also decided to install a couple of applications I found on some old cover disks that sounded useful. PPaint and SID2. After I'd done this I rebooted the Amiga and found myself staring at the disk insert screen.

Slightly panicked I rebooted and held the mouse buttons down, and sure enough the harddrive is now not being shown anymore. I tried booting from my WB3.0 floppy, this didn't work either. The HD was still not being shown.

For some reason I tried booting with the CPU Cache Disabled option, and the Amiga boots from the HD in this mode, but still does not boot when in normal mode.

It's been so very long since I did anything technical with an Amiga I'm a bit lost. I'm a Windows engineer by trade, so please be gentle...

Any ideas would be gratefully accepted!

Cheers
Gareth

[thomas]

For some reason I tried booting with the CPU Cache Disabled option, and the Amiga boots from the HD in this mode, but still does not boot when in normal mode.

Are you sure it's the CPU cache option which makes it boot or could it be the simple fact that you entered the early startup menu ? What happens if you enter the e/s menu and just click on Boot, without changing anything ?

Anyway it sounds like a timing problem. It seems that the card has slowed down a bit now that it is heavily being used. Disabling the CPU caches makes the Amiga slower, too, so it waits a bit longer until the card is recognised.

I'm not sure what could fix the problem. One cure for the "slow spinup problem" of harddrives is to cut the reset line from the IDE cable. Could help here, too. Only after power-on you have to press Ctrl-A-A once to boot.

Another possible fix could be to upgrade to Kickstart 3.1.

I never thought to try just letting it sit for a second or two on the E/S and then click boot. That certainly seems to work and the card "slow spinup" may be the issue.

What benefits would upgrading to Kickstart 3.1 give me then?

Cheers

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Pegsta

What benefits would upgrading to Kickstart 3.1 give me then?

Cheers

Support for OS 3.5/3.9 and there is a longer delay to allow for slower HDD's to spin up.

Steve.

Thanks for the help

Looks like I'll be hunting around then...

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Pegsta

Thanks for the help

Looks like I'll be hunting around then...

No problem, and welcome to EAB!

By the way Amigakit sell the Roms you'll need

Steve.

Already there!!!

Sorry to be a pain but, when I get the Kickstart chips and install them, is it easy enough to upgrade the OS that is installed on the harddrive to 3.5/3.9? or does it need to be wiped first and would I/do I need extra kit in the machine?

I've seen on a couple of threads here talk of needing at least an 030 accelerator board to cope with the demands of the IDE interface and WHDLoad. I've been running several games so far and not seen any need for this... apart from the music on Ork seemed rather slower than I remember!

Thanks again

Gareth

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Pegsta

Already there!!!

Sorry to be a pain but, when I get the Kickstart chips and install them, is it easy enough to upgrade the OS that is installed on the harddrive to 3.5/3.9? or does it need to be wiped first and would I/do I need extra kit in the machine?

I've seen on a couple of threads here talk of needing at least an 030 accelerator board to cope with the demands of the IDE interface and WHDLoad. I've been running several games so far and not seen any need for this... apart from the music on Ork seemed rather slower than I remember!

Thanks again

Gareth

Not really, I ran OS3.9 with only a 8MB RAM expansion and never had any issues. Im not a speed freak, so speed doesnt bother me, it runs everything I want, .

[fitzsteve]

You'll need a CD Rom drive though as OS3.5/3.9 come on CD and I am pretty sure it is installed as an upgrade.

If you keep you eyes open on forums like this and Amibay sometimes resonably prices 030 accelerators come up. Although not required to run the latter OS's it will make the experiance more enjoyable plus you'll be able to run some nice Emulators like Speccy & SMS and such. Doom runs quite nice on an 030 too

With regards to WHDLoad and just running a hard drive the 020 with a Memory is plenty fast enough.

Steve.

[rkauer]

WHDLoad only requires memory (more, the merrier) and the ROM images at DEVS:Kickstart.

I'm running a lot of OCS & ECS games on my A600 (2Mb chip + 1Mb PCMCIA "FAST") with the "PRELOAD" option commented out.

On my A500 1Mb chip + 4 Fast I can run the same games with PRELOAD option turned on.

BTW: both machines have HD and ROM 3.1.

Ok, update.

I've installed a set of 3.1 roms and still have the same problem. I've replaced my internal floppy drive for one that detects disks being removed or inserted and the amiga now defaults to the boot screen even faster now! (because it isn't trying to boot the disk it thinks is in the drive now).

Would a re-install of the OS or an upgrade to 3.9 do anything?

Help!

Cheers Gareth