A1200 Workbench Problems/Hardware Probs?

[blade002]

I should have posted this a long time ago, because its been happening ever since i installed ClassicWB by Bloodwych.

My current hardware setup is:

A1200
Phase 5 Blizzard 030/50
32 meg fast, 2 meg chip
CD Rom Drive
40 gig Internal 2.5 inch HD
3.1 Rom Chips

I actually have the my CD Rom Drive sitting in a mini tower case with its own power supply, and a data cable that was modified by Amiga Technologies back in 1997 that runs from the CD drive ( obviously ) into a 2 way ide connector into the A1200 that also connects to the Hard Drive. I power up the tower and then i turn on the 1200 for it to boot.



Problem #1:
Sometimes when the 1200 boots to workbench, i find that all the icons have turned into little grey squares, including the Hard Drive icons, and the rest of screen has gone into a plain grey, whilst the Copper background also will not execute ?.

Other times when i load it up, all the icons are perfect, but the Copper program to give the colour gradient will not execute.

And then there are times when it all loads perfectly and there isnt a single problem?. this may be on my first initial boot, or it may take mulitple machine resets for it to work properly?


Problem #2: When im transfering files from CD to the hardrive, it sometimes goes into the yellow guru, and i have also found that the files dont always transfer completely across even when there has not been a yellow or red guru. Mostly its yellow though.


Problem #3: Why is it, that my Amiga will not boot unless i have the tower powered up that houses the CD Drive? If i turn the Amiga on only, it will not boot ??... but if the Tower is switched on, the Amiga will always boot?.

Also it wont boot when i first turn the Amiga on after a cold boot. It always takes 1 reset for it to start loading from the HD. My guess for that is that the HD is spinning up.

Anyway, i will try to supply some pictures soon, to let you know how it looks.

I really need help with this, because i miss the days when i used to have my A1200 setup to perfection, and now i feel its just rotting in the corner of the loungeroom when its like this.

[Bloodwych]

It’s very hard to solve because of your unique hardware setup and only someone with similar devices can test.

All I know is the ClassicWB works fine in WinUAE and on my basic real A1200 (8MB Fastram, 2GB HD), with none of the problems you’ve outlined above.

Is this the latest version of the ClassicWB? If so, have you tried disabling FBlit from the tools menu? FBlit is a big patch (replaces blitter with CPU) and the first thing I’d try removing especially with the icon problem you’ve mentioned.

Another method is to remove non-standard options one-by-one from the user-startup file by placing “ ; “ in front of them and see if it helps. There are very few patches and non-standard entries on top of the required Scalos and MUI, so finding a conflicting entry shouldn’t take long.

If no solutions seem to be surfacing and since you say all of these issues started after installing the ClassicWB, it’s unlikely to be faulty hardware. I’d remove it and start your own Workbench. Something must be conflicting with your particular setup or perhaps before installing the ClassicWB you’d changed partition sizes and the parameters are not correct for the large drive (maxtransfer too large, partition size and boot limitations exceeded etc).

If you can’t get it stable, I’d start building your own Workbench from scratch or install OS 3.5/9. Anything rather than letting your A1200 rot in the corner!

[blade002]

Originally Posted by Bloodwych

It’s very hard to solve because of your unique hardware setup and only someone with similar devices can test.

All I know is the ClassicWB works fine in WinUAE and on my basic real A1200 (8MB Fastram, 2GB HD), with none of the problems you’ve outlined above.

Is this the latest version of the ClassicWB? If so, have you tried disabling FBlit from the tools menu? FBlit is a big patch (replaces blitter with CPU) and the first thing I’d try removing especially with the icon problem you’ve mentioned.

Another method is to remove non-standard options one-by-one from the user-startup file by placing “ ; “ in front of them and see if it helps. There are very few patches and non-standard entries on top of the required Scalos and MUI, so finding a conflicting entry shouldn’t take long.

If no solutions seem to be surfacing and since you say all of these issues started after installing the ClassicWB, it’s unlikely to be faulty hardware. I’d remove it and start your own Workbench. Something must be conflicting with your particular setup or perhaps before installing the ClassicWB you’d changed partition sizes and the parameters are not correct for the large drive (maxtransfer too large, partition size and boot limitations exceeded etc).

If you can’t get it stable, I’d start building your own Workbench from scratch or install OS 3.5/9. Anything rather than letting your A1200 rot in the corner!

As always Bloodwych, you are super helpful and your one hell of a nice guy!. Thankyou for all your help with this one and for taking the time to sit down and give me so many options as to what may be the cause.

Im actually poping over to Europe in 2008 for a trip, so i might pay you a visit so that i can meet the man behind the masterpiece that is ClassicWB.

Thankyou

[Bloodwych]

Hey no problem; just hope you find a solution.

The euro trip sounds fun! I went inter-railing a few years back with a tent on my back and some brave friends. Great experience and I hope yours goes well if you get round to it.