A590 - New SCSI Drive not appearing in HDToolBox

[kire_online]

I just replaced the XT Drive in the A590 with a SCSI drive, it's a 36Gb Fujitsu, using a 68pin to 50pin converter. The A590 had 6.1 ROM which I've wiped and burned 7.0 onto (made sure I saved a copy of 6.1 first).
The only thing I changed was JP3 from XT to SCSI - I think this is just for the activity LED. The drive spins up, and I boot from the 3.1 Install disk, fire up HDToolBox and it scans for drives but finds nothing.
Is there a newer version of HDToolBox I should be using to partition the drive ? How can I confirm the 7.0 ROM is OK, since I just burnt them using the willem program without a byteswap, not sure if that was required first ?
I grabbed the 7.0 ROM from here;
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=28081&page=2
Also, once I've got it recognising, what's the best partition scheme to use on a 36Gb drive, I will install a few apps, but mainly with WHDLoad Games, and maybe some Mods, etc.
Do I need an alternate filesystem like SFS for larger partitions ?
Sorry for so many questions, but this is exciting stuff for me and I'm looking forward to get this going.

Just read somewhere that SFS is no go for a stock A500 with 68000.

[Toni Wilen]

Check what "version scsi.device" says. ROM is working if it returns version number.

PFS3DS (avialable from Aminet) is the best choice, no size limits when used with real SCSI controllers.

[mech]

Originally Posted by kire_online

I just replaced the XT Drive in the A590 with a SCSI drive, it's a 36Gb Fujitsu, using a 68pin to 50pin converter. The A590 had 6.1 ROM which I've wiped and burned 7.0 onto (made sure I saved a copy of 6.1 first).
The only thing I changed was JP3 from XT to SCSI - I think this is just for the activity LED. The drive spins up, and I boot from the 3.1 Install disk, fire up HDToolBox and it scans for drives but finds nothing.
Is there a newer version of HDToolBox I should be using to partition the drive ? How can I confirm the 7.0 ROM is OK, since I just burnt them using the willem program without a byteswap, not sure if that was required first ?
I grabbed the 7.0 ROM from here;
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=28081&page=2
Also, once I've got it recognising, what's the best partition scheme to use on a 36Gb drive, I will install a few apps, but mainly with WHDLoad Games, and maybe some Mods, etc.
Do I need an alternate filesystem like SFS for larger partitions ?
Sorry for so many questions, but this is exciting stuff for me and I'm looking forward to get this going.

Just read somewhere that SFS is no go for a stock A500 with 68000.

There is a tool type in the hdtoolbox icon info. check it, it may say something like XT_NAME=XT
change this to XT_NAME=SCSI and hopefully it will show.
another thing, i have seen odd behaviour of fujitsu drives on amiga scsi over the years. i dont know if its their flakey firmware or what.
some seem to work flawless and others act erratic.

Mech

[kire_online]

Just tried the "version scsi.device" and it came back with 40.95
So does this mean that the EPROMs I burnt for inside the A590 (u12 and u13) are OK ?
I see the orange LED flash for activity while HDToolBox scans for drives, but still nothing.
Maybe the version of HDToolBox is old, it's the one on the Install 3.1 disk ?
I also tried changing XT_NAME=XT to XT_NAME=SCSI, nothing different.
I'll see if I can get hold of another drive, any recommendations, WD, Seagate, IBM, etc ?

[Seblington]

Its been a while since I used a A590, but doesn't it require its own driver disk? I seem to remember it was not the HDToolbox that I used, (though my machine was running WB 2.04).

there is a DMS file on this page

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/a590

you will need a DMS program to get the file back onto a FDD, but this is worth a try.

[Toni Wilen]

A590 does not need any special hdtoolbox versions.

Original A590 hdtoolbox only supports SCSI-1 drives and returns "Drive does not support INQUIRY" or something like that if drive is SCSI-2.. (don't remember the exact error)

Double check termination and SCSI IDs. Drive and controller must have different ID.

[uridium]

Originally Posted by kire_online

I just replaced the XT Drive in the A590 with a SCSI drive, it's a 36Gb Fujitsu, using a 68pin to 50pin converter. The A590 had 6.1 ROM which I've wiped and burned 7.0 onto (made sure I saved a copy of 6.1 first).

Been here.. have the slash marks up my arm. :>

Okay, lots of issues here. Firstly if it's a 36gb drive and 68pin it's definitely wide and probably scsi-3 rather than scsi 2. Check if there's a jumper on the drive that will force narrow / SE (single ended mode). My A590 won't see things just off the converter.

Secondly Also check the ID jumpers on the drive. old 8bit narrow-se drives have 3 id pins that give the scsi address of 1,2,4 (binary) to make SCSI id's 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 or no jumpers if disabled. The disk drive will have 4 jumpers as wide (68pin) drives have upto 16 devices per chain. Make sure the 4th jumper is not set or the drive is going to respond to scsi mail packets for ID's above 7 and the scsi controller will never send for devices above id 7.

Thirdly.. hopefully the v7 proms will work. I've used some 8/16gb disks fine, I have some 143gb bug havent bothered. You may get the situation where the CHS values are too big for the registers on the scsi scripting chip to hold. Here's where the fun begins, you have a partition which creeps over the magical boundary where the CHS values wrap back to zero and your writing to the start of the disk again. This is all fun and games because it looks like your disk partitioned, formatted correctly and "just works!!! (tm)" right up till the point where you write a file that pushes it over that limit and bam, surprise butt-secks for the file system and probably not recoverable. So! moral here, if you get this far, write some AREXX that will create 128mb files you compress with lha with store only so it basically jsut does checksums, and fill the drive testing if they all decrunch correctly. SFS should support the larger capacity .. hurrah! but .. the a590 may not!

Thar be dragons! $etc

Hope this helps.

[bdb]

1) If the Fuji drive came from a server its RDB may be locked; see discussion at:
http://forum.hyperion-entertainment....2d82a1e1366c23

2) The 3.1 HD Toolbox is old, weird, and crumpy. It seems to be getting
configuration for drives from fairy land. The OS3.9 system
handles large drives (TD64 built in) and has a much better Drive Toolbox; OS 4.1 has the most complete Media Toolbox at present. Trying to get a large drive working is more difficult using a non-inheirent file system like SFS or PFS; you can deal with that once all is working.

3) As you know, the 7.0 ROM (which handle CD ROM better, and multiple drives on the SCSI bus) should not matter for a one drive scenario. It would be best to revert your ROM's or get a known working set. Either way
they should show something attached to the bus. My A2091 had no problems with my large HDDs when I was playing with it in OS 3.9, and even 18 GB partitions on a 36GB drive worked fine under OS 3.1. There drives were NOT installed & formatted in 3.1's ToolBox.

4) The difference between SCSI 1 & 2 deal with (a) a new command
set that concerned itself with Synchronous/Asynchronous Transfers, Parity, and better CD-ROM support, and ended up doubling the
throughput. (b) SCSI 1 & 2 are otherwise equal except for the throughput speed.

5) There may be a problem with the (SCSI 3) 68-pin drive as far a large size (easy to overcome), but SCSI is both forward and backward compatible: A SCSI 3 Drive will work on a SCSI 1 controller, and a SCSI 3 Controller will handle a SCSI 1 drive. The SCSI 3 bus is also a 16-bit "wide" data path which again doubles throughput. The SCSI 2 & 3 is "narrow" or 8-bits wide; on the Internet, you will see a SCSI 3 drive listed as. UW for "ultra wide" and the throughput is either 160 or 320 MB/s -- UW320. Again these speeds of transfer work only with SCSI 3 Controller. The SCSI 3 drive must be built to be "compatible with a narrow bus."

6) Termination deals with stability of the signal on the bus; Active (which means power is used to dampen the signal on the bus ), vs Passive which uses resistors to try and absorb signals. A SCSI 3 drive wants active termination; they sell these for 50-pin (8-bit) cables as well as the 68-pin types.

You may have fallen into a trap here; the large, fast 68 & 80-pin drives are being pulled from service as their servers are replaced by the thousands; therefore there a ton of these available for nearly no money. I picked up 4 Maxtor 146Gb 80-pin 10k drive off eBay for $25 USD; two were fine and installed & partitioned, and two required the "KILLRDB" command and initial formatting in OS 3.9; I was then able to use them in OS 4.1.

What has happened is that those 50-pin drives (SCSI 1 & 2) have become more expensive. This works out for me because I have an A4000T with a CSPPC that gives a built-in A4091 SCSI, an IDE , and a SCSI 3 controller. OS 4.1 does not support the A4091 SCSI because of DMA issues, but 3.9 supports everything

[bdb]

1) A lot if good advice is in your thread before any of my comments
2) Check and recheck drive jumpers against the drive spec sheet
3) Use working ROMs
4) Use "off drive" active termination on a cable connector.
5) Try drive on a known working controller with a more up to date install/format/partition program
6) Just use FFS Intl file system (DOS/3), you can use one of the others later
7) Read the Hyperion thread and download the recommended program(s)
8) If all else fails, send the drive to someone who can make sure the drive works and have them do an OS install on it. The folks on these forums want to help (well most of them)

[TjLaZer]

Try HDInstTools from Aminet. Seems to work better and identifying newer HD's. But I suspect the only way to get a 36GB HD to work is with AmigaOS 3.5+

[Toni Wilen]

It is probably better to fix the detection problem first before suggesting filesystems and OS updates.

Does scsi.device appear in device list? "version full scsi.device" should show name and version string. ROM fails to detect the drive or ROM is broken if nothing is found.

[bdb]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

ROM fails to detect the drive or ROM is broken if nothing is found.

Yes, as covered, working roms are important

[Toni Wilen]

Looks like I already asked for scsi.device version

AFAIK hdtoolbox uses HD_SCSICMD to read and write the drive which probably means possible problems are: boot rom hates your drive or drive is broken.

Size limits shouldn't cause any problems at this point.

[bdb]

Yes, he burned his own set of Version 7.0 ROMs over his original 6.1 set, and has no way of testing them.