3.1 AmigaOS problem

[Retrofan]

My adapter woudn't work, but I guess must be an adapter for your Hd like that, that you can connect to your Hd and also with Usb to your Pc. It depends on the type of connector (number of pins) of your scsi Hd.

[thomas]

USB-SCSI adapters are very rare and very expensive.

@tesla: do you have a PC with a floppy drive and an empty 3.5" DD (720K) floppy disk?

[tesla]

Thomas,
Yes, I do. It is running Vista. Do you know something I don't?

Perhaps Crossdos?
EDIT
I have been experimenting with some plextor cd install disks, and when inserted they are recognized quicker than the 3.5 and 3.9 disks. However, same problem with nothing shown when the directory of the disk should display, it does know the disk is there, and shows the stats. I was at first thinking it was a problem with the drive, now I'm not so sure.

How about scsi-IDE adapters?

Or, a IDE card I could install in a Zorro II slot?

Originally Posted by thomas

USB-SCSI adapters are very rare and very expensive.

@tesla: do you have a PC with a floppy drive and an empty 3.5" DD (720K) floppy disk?

[thomas]

Ok, put the floppy disk into the PC's drive, open a DOS window and enter this comand:

format a: /t:80 /n:9

Download these two files and copy them to the floppy disk:
http://aminet.net/disk/cdrom/amicdfs240.lha
http://aminet.net/util/arc/lha.run

Before you copy amicdfs, rename it to amicdfs.lha so that it has less than 8 characters before the dot.

Eject the floppy disk and put it into the Amiga's drive. Open Harddisk:Storage/DosDrivers and double click PC0. It should read the disk and an icon should appear on the desktop.

Open a Shell window and enter these commands:

pc0:lha.run ram:
copy ram:lha_68k c:lha
lha x pc0:amicdfs ram:

If the last command was successful, enter these commands:

cd ram:ami#?
copy l/AmiCDFS l:
copy cd0#? devs:dosdrivers
ed devs:dosdrivers/cd0

The last command should open an editor window. Find the lines reading DEVICE=... and UNIT=... and change them to DEVICE=2060scsi.device and UNIT=4.

Press Esc and enter x to save changes. Or press Esc and enter q to quit without saving (if you want to start again).

Now reboot and test if the CD drive now works better. If it doesn't, open the editor again, find the line which reads CONTROL=.... and add this to the end (before the closing quotation mark): OLDMODE DC=3
Reboot and test again.

[tesla]

Hi Thomas,

I will be trying that soon, but probably not until Monday, can't get the drive on my PC to format a 720K disc, even after changing the bios to 720K disk. In the meantime, I have a USB floppy drive somewhere, just got to find it.

Have a great weekend, Thank you very much, and if we were closer, I'd buy you something to drink!

EDIT

Got the PC drive to create 720K disks, didn't work other than with a dos prompt, and using the switches you suggested. Might be able to work on it in the afternoon.

[thomas]

Alternatively you can run PC0 on the Amiga, insert the disk, click on the PC0:bad icon and select Icon -> Format Disk from the menu.

[tesla]

Great idea.

Originally Posted by thomas

Alternatively you can run PC0 on the Amiga, insert the disk, click on the PC0:bad icon and select Icon -> Format Disk from the menu.

[tesla]

Hi everyone, Thomas,

Remember The problem I've had getting the CD drive to work, even though it was mounted? Well, I got it to work by clicking on AUX. Now I can see everything. However, I can't get anything to run, it says "unable to open your tool 'installer'

If I can fix that, I just might be in luck. BTW, so far, I am using the 3.5 cd, and it says the same thing for 3.5 and 3.1. I haven't yet tried the 3.9 cd.
EDIT

What drawers are the CD AUX icons supposed to be in?

[thomas]

AUX has nothing to do with CD drives. It is an alternative (unbuffered) driver for the serial port.

OS 3.5 and OS 3.9 should load their own Installer from the CD. If it cannot be found, then the CD drive or driver still has problems to read the CDs. I'd suggest to install AmiCDFS because it is much more advanced than the CDRomFileSystem which comes with WB 3.1.

Or directly use CacheCDFS which comes with both OS 3.5 and OS 3.9.

[tesla]

Hi Thomas,

I am in the process of installing AMiCDFS right now. I also contructed a null modem cable to transfer files between my PC and the 2000. It works, but is slow and sometimes seems to change files in such a way that they don't work.

EDIT:

OK, after doing some research, I decided to install Cache CDFS from the 3.9 CD. I sent it over my null modem cable, and tried to run it. (I installed it by itself onto my HDD, creating a directory for it. When I try to run it, all I get is "Unable to open your Tool installer"

After doing a bit more research, it seems I might have to install it somewhere else. Am I right?

[tesla]

Hi Thomas,

I took your advice, and installed "Installer" in both the C and Utilities directories.

Unfortunately, I now have another problem. This is what I get;

9 instances of "Assign Unknown command"
Then a system request, "Please Insert Volume ENV in Any Drive"

[thomas]

Could you please describe what you did when you "installed "Installer" in both the C and Utilities directories". The Assign command should reside in the C directory. Almost all shell commands reside there. Somehow you renamed, deleted or moved the Assign command so that it can no longer be found.

[tesla]

I simply tried both versions, one being the version off of the 3.9 disk, the other the version you recommended.

I transfered them to ram using my serial port device, and then from there transferred them to the C and Utilities directories.

In case you wondered, the reason why I used the serial cable is that the 3.9 cd is very easy to access using my PC, and doesn't cause crashing, which at present CD access sometimes does.

EDIT

It seems that we may be talking about two different things here, the assign command, and the installer file.

[thomas]

Well, I would like to tell you what you did wrong, but you don't give me enough details for that.

There is something you did between the last successful boot and now which prevents the Assign command from being found.

To fix this you should check if the Assign command is still in the C directory and if it is missing, copy it from the Workbench3.1 disk.

But this does not help you to avoid the same problem to happen again, because you don't know what caused it this time.

The only action you mentioned before the error occurred was to "install" Installer. Therefore I asked you to describe what exactly you mean by "install" so that I can perhaps detect your mistake. But all you did was to replace the word "install" by the word "transfer".

[tesla]

Thomas,

There has never been an entirely sucessful boot, my definition because I haven't been able to accomplish my goal, to install 3.9. I will do what you mentioned, then report the results.

Ok, what I did was install "INSTALLER" in both the C directory and the

Originally Posted by thomas

Well, I would like to tell you what you did wrong, but you don't give me enough details for that.

There is something you did between the last successful boot and now which prevents the Assign command from being found.

To fix this you should check if the Assign command is still in the C directory and if it is missing, copy it from the Workbench3.1 disk.

But this does not help you to avoid the same problem to happen again, because you don't know what caused it this time.

The only action you mentioned before the error occurred was to "install" Installer. Therefore I asked you to describe what exactly you mean by "install" so that I can perhaps detect your mistake. But all you did was to replace the word "install" by the word "transfer".

[thomas]

Well, I define a successful boot if you reach Workbench without a Shell window or a requester popping up and without manual intervention. A very successful boot is if after a successful boot also all parts of the installed OS work correctly.

The function of additional third-party programs or the installation of a different OS version is not part of the boot process.

If your CD drive suffers from read errors or the like and if your harddrive randomly loses files, then you should consider a hardware problem. What about SCSI termination? Or mainboard / CPU cooling? Or power supply fluctuations?

[tesla]

Hello Thomas,

Unfortunately, A lot of what I just typed in was lost, the system logged me out.

Long story short, it now boots up normally as long as I don't have 3.5 or 3.9 in place in the CD drive. Apparently, during boot, and the system access's the CD drive, it tries to do something, (boot off of it?) and fails.

I'm not sure if it is a hardware failure/other problem, but I can't discount it either. I have been thinking of completely re-installing 3.1, that would I hope fix the problems, or confirm the problem. What is your opinion?
EDIT
HDD is last in the scsi chain and is terminated. The cd drive is not, as it should be, being in the middle. The other problems you mentioned might be a problem, but if there is a hardware problem, (remember, it seems to only happen when I use the CD drive), I suspect the RAM I added to the Blizzard 2060. I keep a large quantity of various types of ram that I scavenged from previous computers. I am going to remove that ram, and see what happens.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by tesla

(remember, it seems to only happen when I use the CD drive)

This could also mean that the power supply does not deliver enough power for the CD drive's motor, if the computer crashes when the CD accelerates.

[tesla]

Thomas,
I would agree, but it only happens with the 3.5 or 3.9 cd's. I just tested it with a music cd, everything is fine. However, that being said, I am looking at two icons (from the music cd) on my screen, one says CD1:CDDA, the other CD4: CDDA. I get the CD4, (The scsi ID of the cd drive), but CD1?

Originally Posted by thomas

This could also mean that the power supply does not deliver enough power for the CD drive's motor, if the computer crashes when the CD accelerates.

[thomas]

Check Devs/DosDrivers directory. You probably have two CD icons there. The number does not correspond to the SCSI ID. CD1 is just a name as is CD4. Perhaps you even have CD0 still there. Delete them all except the one which belongs to the file system you want to use (open it with a text editor to see). Having multiple DOS drivers handling the same drive can also lead to crashes. DOS gets very confused if you mount two identical volumes.