Resurrecting an A4000 OS from scratch

Hello, I am a new EAB member and an Amiga user for many years in the past (from a2000 to a4000), actually used it for work back then. But now, many OSs later, I do not remember much. I still have an A4000 left from the old exciting days and decided to resurrect it. Problem is that the original HD failed once I turned it on (beep-beep-beep-stuck!). It contained a rather nicely set up WB system, many apps etc (no games though), and now it is lost.

I got my hands on a Quantum fireball se4.3a ide drive, installed it and decided to go through the WB3.0 installation steps.

However I failed at the 1st step. HDToolBox did not recognize the drive size correctly (was listed Unknown, tried "Read Configuration", reports name and some other specs properly but reports 14 Meg size while correct is 4Gb). So the question is this. Does anyone know what settings are needed on the HDToolBox configuration to recognize the drive quantum fireball se4.3a properly (and not partially as it does now)? I will leave the disk inside the machine, but I am stuck here.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Jope]

What geometry does it detect for you?

I am using the original 3.0 Installation floppy disk for the above, since it is all I have (I suspect there were updated versions of these tools in aminet etc)

It reports:

Man.Name: QUANTUM
Drive Name: FIREBALL SE4.3A
Drive Revision: API.
Cylinders: 14848
Heads: 9
Blocks per Track: 63
Blocks per Cylinder: 567
Park hear where (cyl): 14848

Size: 14820K (14 Meg).

Thanks again.

[thomas]

14848 * 9 * 63 * 512 Bytes = 4,310,433,792 Bytes = 4.014 GB = 4 GB + 14 MB

The display wraps around at 4 GB, so the geometry is correct.

Reduce the number of cylinders by 54 to 14794, then you are safe and don't need to worry about the 4 GB limit.

That looks like a logical suggestion. I will try it next weekend. While on the subject, do HD drives "park" when idle? I wonder what the meaning of "parking cylinder" was when everyone just pressed the power button to turn the machine off (thus I suspect giving no notification for the drive to park).

Anyway, Ssnce I will probably get stuck again in a couple of steps, there will be more to come on this thread.

For example, how does one revive the CD-ROM (I remember an atapi.device...).

Thanks again!

[TjLaZer]

Did you remove the battery? Hopefully it hasn't leaked.

You can try HDInstTools from Aminet, it works much better than HDToolBox!

[Jope]

Originally Posted by ambilly

That looks like a logical suggestion. I will try it next weekend. While on the subject, do HD drives "park" when idle? I wonder what the meaning of "parking cylinder" was when everyone just pressed the power button to turn the machine off (thus I suspect giving no notification for the drive to park).

Just about all drives you'd want to use in 2015 can autopark, so the setting there is not used.

Originally Posted by TjLaZer

Did you remove the battery? Hopefully it hasn't leaked.

You can try HDInstTools from Aminet, it works much better than HDToolBox!

Here is an update:

No, unfortunately the battery leaked. And many of my WB3.0 floppy disks give read-errors nowadays. But with as far as the HDinstall went (it stopped at the Locale disk), the system now boots from HD. It takes some time to start booting (no idea why) and does not show a real SCSI drive (on a GVP card) that the machine had as secondary storage (also no idea why) but it boots.

I believe it would still be hard to transfer anything to the system as I do not have another machine with floppies easily available (and even if I did I don't know if my half-installed system would read PC floppies). Maybe it is time to resurrect that old PC (which has a floppy) as well . But I do have a Amiga to USB connection cable and software (I had transferred files with it a few years ago) so my next step this weekend is to try to cheat and attempt to transfer the remaining needed files via WinUAE or something.

Greetings to all!

Hello again. Here is the situation now:

The A4000 now boots to a basic WB but the OS is half installed as my WB3.0 disks where not usable (only the 1st one was really ok).

The CD-ROM (atapi) does not work (I remembered I own Amiga Forever 2009 and it came with some stuff but it is on CD.)

I wonder if I can use the serial connection with a PC to complete the missing parts of my amiga. But what? Install ClassicWB? Use files from Amiga Forever? Copy from my WinUAE partition? from elsewhere? Any suggestions? I dont have much time to research this, that is why I ask.

Tonight I plan to connect the PC and hopefully try IDEFix for the CDROM. Will see how that goes.

2nd update (I would like to keep track of my steps here for anyone's -with similar issues- future reference):

- Connection to a PC via Amiga Explorer (null modem to USB!) successful.
- Transferred Lha and Installer on the Amiga (from Aminet).
- Decided to take advantage of the Amiga Forever 2009 stuff and install WB3.1. Now transferring WB31 adfs to Amiga, and will try to write them on floppies and install. Searching for a good Amiga ADF to Floppy utility (keep fingers crossed that the floppy drive works)
- Still cannot figure out how to enable the CD-ROM. It is on the IDE port (with the HD) so from what I read in forums no IDEFix is needed. I also wonder how I will get the other drive on the GVP SCSI (reports gvpdevice) to appear.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by ambilly

- Still cannot figure out how to enable the CD-ROM. It is on the IDE port (with the HD) so from what I read in forums no IDEFix is needed. I also wonder how I will get the other drive on the GVP SCSI (reports gvpdevice) to appear.

With 3.1 you need an updated scsi.device (that's the name of the IDE driver ). IDEfix is one possible solution, the easiest one.

IDEFix has several components. Two of them are needed for the CD drive on the IDE controller. The IDEfix program updates scsi.device so that it recognises CD drives. The other component is CacheCDFS which enables to read ISO9660, Mac HFS and Joliet file systems.

A CD file system is also needed for the drive on the GVP controller. The SCSI driver probably recognises CD drives, but you still need a file system. CacheCDFS is one of the best and works on SCSI, too.

So if you install IDEfix you have all software needed to get both CD drives to work.

Update: Have to give credit to the creator of TransADF/TransADF GUI as my A4000's floppy disk is a bit unreliable these days. Used it to install WB3.1 from Amiga Forever 2009.

Originally Posted by thomas

With 3.1 you need an updated scsi.device (that's the name of the IDE driver ). IDEfix is one possible solution, the easiest one.

So many answers and still they cause new questions. That's life!

Anyway, I really appreciate all the help, thank you!!!
I will surely try installing an updated scsi.driver (aminet???) for IDE (right but that silliness I remember -or at least "rings a bell"). I am sure there must also be some info on gvp SCSI controllers (there is one installed on my A4000) on this site (being so popular back then) but that I leave for much later.

The next question is this: this being 2015 and IDEfix appearing difficult (impossible?) to register and pay for, 3.1 still looks aged. The copy of MagicWB I found (to make it look like I was used to) is unregistered. The bottom line is I MISS MY OLD WB3.0-based customized smooth-looking smooth-running Workbench I was so used at!!!

How would you go about installing a decent up-to-date Workbench without spending too many nights struggling? Is there a modern internet-era approach? Maybe purchasing a later WB version may include some of this functionality, but I had a nice system running on WB3.0 and I am trying to replicate that. Any ideas/suggestions are welcomed.

Thanks again!

[thomas]

You wrote above that you've got Amiga Forever 2009. AF comes with an IDEfix license. If you boot the 3.X environment in WinUAE you'll find the license key in Work:Software/IDEfix97/Register/License.doc.

Originally Posted by thomas

You wrote above that you've got Amiga Forever 2009. AF comes with an IDEfix license. If you boot the 3.X environment in WinUAE you'll find the license key in Work:Software/IDEfix97/Register/License.doc.

I did not notice that. Truth is I bought a AF2009 license back then solely for the Amiga Explorer and never looked at the downloaded cd contents. Till a few weeks ago. It proves quite valuable now. Thanks again.

Reporting success, ide cd works fine. I will burn the Amiga Forever 2009 (AFE2009) cd now and take it from there.

Next hardware-related task: resurrecting the GVP SCSI controller and drive on it.

Switching the subject to software again.

I wonder what are the must-install programs and utilities that one should have on a freshly-installed WB3.1 Amiga, and where can one find them (legally). For example my list of things to install already includes IDEFix97 (found in AFE2009), MUI (may be in AFE2009), MagicWB (or something to enhance the way WB looks), DOpus (found in AFE2009), Octamed (found on an Amiga Format floppy). Some of these have dependencies on other packages (for example, I tried to install MagicWB but there was a library missing). So there must be a list of steps to follow.

I also would like to locate a modern text editor and other non-game apps (I remember some decent office apps, Imagine, DPaint, even Shapeshifter etc). I even had some software development tools installed. Maybe some of those have gone PD and are publicly available (aminet?), so many years later. But which are the must-have ones?

[macce2]

I'm quite sure this has been asked before, but:

Does Workbench 3.1 package (disks,/adfs) for A4000 differ from the WB set for other Classic Amiga models ..? I'm aware that the WB set for A4000T was different somehow ?!
But how about A4000D with 68040 processor (A3640 ?! )
I have got my set of WB 3.1 disks (copies) from a friend, when I bought my A4000 years ago.
When I try to boot my machine with WB 3.1 floppy, after some loading, I do only get black screen (using Picasso IV). If I remember right (?) , the disk didn't work with television, either.
So, there must be some problem with my WB 3.1 disk(s).

And no, the floppy isn't damaged, it's ok and has been checked for errors.
-What drivers should I put in Monitors directory ?
-How about the driver VGAonly ..? ( referred to in startup-sequence)
Now, I forgot to mention that the floppy disk named "3.1 Install" boots ok...

[thomas]

All disk sets are equal. Only A4000T is different because it requires workbench.library on disk. The other models have it in ROM.

If the install disk boots fine, then you should compare its setup with your WB disk. I suppose there is nothing in devs/monitors, so you should remove everything from the WB disk's devs/monitors, too.

Another difference could be 68040.library. The install disk has it, the WB disk not.

OTOH what do you need the WB disk for? If the install disk boots ok, then just install WB to harddrive.