Long delay booting to kickstart

[-Acid-]

I'm using an A4000 with KS3.1 roms. It can take 30 seconds to boot to the kickstart screen most of the time when I boot up. Apart from the delay being annoying when it can sometimes boot instantly (this is few and far between though) it is having other drawbacks.

If I use 3.9, it takes an age to boot the first time to the hard drive, it then reboots and takes an age again, but that time it will not boot from the hard drive but it sits on a 3.9 kickstart screen. If I power off then back on it starts the process again.

I've had the board recapped by Hikey and he said there is nothing wrong with the ide port etc, the same problem occurs with an 030 in, a CSmk1 060 and a CSmk2 060. The hard drives boot fine they work perfectly in my A1200 060 so I know they are not at fault. The long delay even happens when I only have a floppy drive attached to it.

So basically can someone tell me why it's doing this? i've also tried changing the rom speed jumped between 160 and 200 ms on the main board and still no change. Could the kickstart roms be the problem? though since they always boot i don't see why this should be a problem.

Someone save me please, i'm going mad here

[Jope]

Does it boot the HD if you ctrl-amiga-amiga once you get to the strap screen?

[Vot]

You sure the floppy is working and not connected with the cable the wrong way around. When you have no floppy it waits a long time

[fitzsteve]

Do you have any other expansion that could be causing a delay such as scsi cards?

[Jope]

If it stops at the strap screen, it doesn't find the boot media. Let's debug that first. If it doesn't find anything on the IDE bus, the 3.1 scsi.device will wait 30sec before giving up.

[Sandro]

it can be a problem of the hardisk

3.1 roms waits so long for slow hardisks, 3.0 roms are far better and faster booting

[fitzsteve]

Originally Posted by Jope

If it stops at the strap screen, it doesn't find the boot media. Let's debug that first. If it doesn't find anything on the IDE bus, the 3.1 scsi.device will wait 30sec before giving up.

He says it does boot, just takes a long time before booting starts, at least that's how I read it. SCSI or other IDE expansions attached can cause this, that's why I ask. Knowing full spec of the machine in crucial to give correct advice.

[NorthWay]

There is a long wait for the IDE drive to come to life.
If you have none then you can add some kind of cable with a resistor or something (can't remember what) or simply add an IDE drive with nothing on it.

[Vot]

You guys are missing his last sentence. It only happens when his floppy is connected.

[Jope]

No, he said it also happens if only a floppy is connected.. But this is normal with 3.1 ROMs, scsi.device is just sitting there, waiting 30 seconds for an IDE disk to show up.

[Vot]

Oh man i read that 4 or more times and misread it each time.. I didn't read this "The long delay even happens when I only have a floppy drive attached to it." I read this "The long delay happens when I only have a floppy drive attached to it.". I do have a partial excuse. Sick as a dog its 5am and i have had 4 hrs sleep. Been up coughing all night.

[-Acid-]

Ok to answer some questions

The system:

A4000 (think it's a rev 2 board) recently recapped
3.1 roms (they are stickered so i'm not certain if they are legit as they came with the board)
Cyberstorm 2 060 @ 50mhz fully populated with 128mb ram (I have the SCSI module but it's not attached yet as I have no SCSI drives)
One floppy disk drive
Buddha Flash is in one of the Zorro slots but nothing attached to it
IDE Zip drive (not attached right now but was on the Buddha with the same problem)
IDE DVD drive (I usually had this on the ide cable as a slave with the HD but I get the same delay if it's attached or not)

The IDE hard drive in the system spins up fast enough to boot from cold in my A1200 which boots in 2 seconds flat (also 3.1 roms) so I know it's not just a slow starting drive. The floppy drive is connected the correct way, once the kickstart screen appears you can load disks from it.

If I leave it to get through the delay it will boot from the hard drive most times from a cold start and if it's not attached it will go to the floppy drive.

In the times I'm attempting to run 3.9, it gets through the first delay and goes to the hard drive to boot. Then it pops up stuck on the 3.9 kickstart screen, if I soft reset it and go to the early start up menu the hard drive is not in the list of boot disks. When booting from a 3.x install, i'm using idefix97 to get large drive support (so my two 60 gb partitions show up) and also for the DVD drive, it it resets on boot to make that resident it will boot again from the drive to go to workbench. Don't know if this helps?

Going back to 3.0 roms (if I bought some) is not really an option as I need it in order to be able to use 3.9.

Anyone got anything?

[fitzsteve]

Delay time is probably due to the Buddha having no devices attached, it's a bootable device. Do you get the delay without it?

Next, amend your startup sequence for os3.9 to skip the scsi device update, with the following setpatch declaration:

c:setpatch SKIPROMUPDATES "scsi.device" QUIET

Does this now solve the issue with getting stuck at the ks3.9 screen? I'm thinking hdd does not like 3.9's scsi device.

If you use a drive over 4gb then you'll need to use loadmodule to patch a different compatible scsi device, but we can cross this bridge if we have to.

Good luck.

[fitzsteve]

Ok just read your have a large drive so you will need some other method to obtain large disk support. You can use idefix97 with 3.9 too. What file system do you use out of interest?

[-Acid-]

Ok got a little time, so i've took out the Buddha so the only thing connected is a floppy drive, still takes about 30 seconds to get to the kickstart screen. My hard drives are formatted with SFS by the way, have been using it for years but will probably try PFS3-AIO if I start a fresh drive off next.

Edit: I actually forgot to connect the floppy drive cable, so I did and now it has just boot in a couple of seconds as I would expect it too. I will use the computer for a while and make sure it stays this way, if it does then I will move on to putting my 3.9 drive in and attempt to get that working right.

Although Workbench is booting up (CWB Full activated with 3.0), if I try to run Dopus I get a program failed, if I try to open the Workbench hard drive icon (or any partition) it guru's instantly. Max transfer is 0x1fe00 on all partitions and it has no troubles in my A1200. Any ideas on this one? Going to try my other hard drive see if that is going to play nicely.

[fitzsteve]

The 30 second Kickstart Screen time is normal if nothing is connected (with KS3.1) I'm glad it was just something simple like Floppy Cable not connected.

I would suggest activating Classic Workbench with WB3.1 and doing the full 3.1 upgrade during the install since you're using KS3.1 this is probably the issue.

I imagine the 3.9 Issue is the OS3.9 scsi.device, let us know how you get on with it. That version (43.43 I think) has given me so many problems in the past.

[-Acid-]

Okay so although it crashes everytime I try to open a partition icon (does the same with ram disk as well) it loads data fine if I load igame up from the menu. Played loads of games for over an hour without problems, could it be a program running at boot causing the problem?

[fitzsteve]

Sounds like library issue. You use correct. 060 library?

[-Acid-]

Originally Posted by fitzsteve

Sounds like library issue. You use correct. 060 library?

I'm using the ones from the Apollo 060 disk (since my other 060 is an Apollo). Are there any differences between them and the ones from Phase 5?

[fitzsteve]

Yes this is your issue. The libs are indeed different. You must use the phase 5 libs for the cyberstorm and the Apollo libs for the Apollo.

Ps. Incorrect libs might contribute to your other issues in this thread.