Amiga 1200 + HD problems

Hi all,

I have an Amiga 1200 with a FPU accelerator card. My old Amiga HD (300mb) crashed some time ago. Now I have an new 2,5" IDE HD for my Amiga 1200. It is an Toshiba MK1401MAV HDD. An it have 1,4GB of space. First I formatted the HD (in WinUAE), and then I placed it in the 1200, but the Amiga don't recognized the HD. I've heard the spinning of the HD and the HD led stays orange for about 10 seconds and then it boots from the floppy. So the second thing I've done was to partition and format the drive in Workbench 3.0 (in WinUAE). Then I installed Workbench and install it in the 1200 again. But the same thing happens again: the Amiga doesn't recognize the HD. It seems that there are no RDB blocks on the HD or something that the real Amiga recognize as a HD.

Can somebody help?

Berrie

[thomas]

If the Amiga has Kickstart 3.0, it can be the infamous slow-spinup problem, i.e. the HDD becomes ready too late for the Amiga to recognise it. Try if it boots after you press Ctrl-A-A.

Also boot from a Install3.0 floppy disk, run HDToolbox and check whether the Amiga really does not recognise the HDD.

Thanks for your reply, it has Kickstart 3.0 and i've tried to restart but that doesn't solve the problem. Also HDToolbox doesn't recognize the drive. Which is very strange.

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Berrie94

Thanks for your reply, it has Kickstart 3.0 and i've tried to restart but that doesn't solve the problem. Also HDToolbox doesn't recognize the drive. Which is very strange.

try preping and formating it on your amiga(thats of course if you have the install disk)

I can't prep the HD because the Amiga itself can't recognize the HD, even not in the Early Boot Menu.

It seems that I must install a driver or something else to recognize the HDD.
Another strange thing is when I format or partition the drive it is booted fine in WinUAE but the A1200 doesn't boot or see the drive.

[prowler]

Which device did you use in WinUAE to partition the harddrive, uaehf.device or uaescsi.device?

If you choose the wrong one it can cause exactly the symptoms you describe when you transfer the hard drive over to your Amiga.

I think the correct one is uaescsi.device

I partitioned and formatted the harddrive using uaehf.device. I did this using the options UAE controller and later IDE0 controller. But also after these options the A1200 can't see my hdd. Uaescsi.device is only for CD, ZIP drives etc. if I'm right

[thomas]

It seems that I must install a driver or something else to recognize the HDD.

How do you want to do this? The HDD is not recognised and where else do you want to install a driver to?

i've tried to restart but that doesn't solve the problem.

One more chance could be to cut the reset line from the IDE cable. This will prevent the HDD from spinning down during a reset and spinning up too slow again afterwards. Keep a spare IDE cable at hand for the case that you cut too deep :-)
The reset line is the first one on the side marked with a big "1" on the motherboard. It's usually the red colored one on the cable, if it's connected correctly.

I've cutted the wire, and the problem is there still. And the drive itself isn't damaged. It works fine under Windows or WinUAE so that is not the problem. I have tried another cable in the Amiga but that doesn't work either.

[roy bates]

in workbench your drive uses scsi.device in conjunction with your filesystem. your drive dont show in the early startup because it hasent been preped by the os.it has no file system or shall i say no RDB so it cant be seen.like ive said you can do this with your install disk and hdtools.
btw did you let windows format your disk? it would explain why it dont work.

[rkauer]

Some A1200 have a different behavior: some only recognize the drives prepared and partitioned in that Amiga.