Retronaut > Getting a TrumpCard Grandslam to work in my Amiga 2000

[Tchucolate]

I recently fitted a Dicke Olga accelerator card in my Rev 6 Amiga 2000. And it went very well, and its now pumping along quite nicely.

Originally it came with a IVS Grand Slam SCSI + Memory adapter, which also has an extra parellel port (no idea why...). So it uses the same drivers as the TrumpCard, as its the top end version of it.

This was previously working, though I recall it was a right old PITA to get it to work. Now however I cant get it working, at least in terms of SCSI and only when booted into Workbench 3.2.2.

When I boot from the older of the two utils disk available for it, labelled online as 2.0f, I find its TCUtils app runs and shows the drives on it (BlueSCSI). These show as DH4, DH5 and DH6, each being 3.9GB which is total overkill.

When however I boot into WB, I see no drives, at all. Formatted or not.

I prefer to use HDUtils in Workbench, so I have modified HDTools to use IVS_SCSIpro.device and then run it, and... nothing, no drives shown.

When I use ShowConfig and expansion cards, it shows the correct devices. Dicke Olga appears there, as does the GrandSlam. It appears as 3 devices, 2x 4mb memory devices, and 1x SCSI device.

When I look at Devices in ShowConfig however I see no IVS_SCSIpro.device. I'm assuming this would normally load in from the cards ROM?

Assuming this is NOT the case, I looked in the 20f floppy's DEVS folder and found these files.

clipboard.device
clipboards
IVS_SCSI.driver
IVS_scsi.drives
IVS_SCSIpro.amhd
IVS_SCSIpro.device
IVS_SCSIpro.driver
keymaps
system-configuration

So, I know that .device files should go in DEVS:, but where do the .driver files go?
I see there is a DOSDrivers folder in DEVS: so I placed those there.
The other two related files, IVS_scsi.drives and IVS_SCSIpro.amhd, I'm really not sure where those should go, if anywhere. Would these be needed?

So, I have tried variations on these files being present ONLY in DEVS:, the .device file in DEVS and the Driver files in DOSDrives, and the other two files moved around. Nothing works. So far I can get the TCUtils to run, but it does not find the card. And I can run HDUtils with IVS_SCSIpro.device, and again it never finds any drives.

Oh great Amiga experts. Please chip in to get this card working.

BTW, I dont really NEED to get this working for its SCSI drives, BUT, I could get its SD card on a back bracket and then it would have a nice removable drive for file transfers. Also, as its BlueSCSIv2 I could get its WIFI working, which would be very nice.

[patrik]

I had one of these in my otherwise stock A2000 rev 6.2 a long time ago. I have a somewhat hazy memory of it having some non-standard schenanigans where if you booted from the disk drive, its SCSI drives did not mount.

From your description, it sounds like this might be what happens when you boot into WB, which I assume is from a drive connected to your Dicke Olga? Assuming here that booting from another harddrive would trigger the same behaviour.

If the driver is not loaded from ROM, one common way to bind a driver to a board is to place a special version of the driver in the SYS:Expansion/ directory, to have it automatically be loaded by the BindDrivers command on startup. I think it has to have an icon with the manufacturer and product id. This could perhaps be the .driver file, but this is just a guess as I know it is not the .device and the .amhd file is an amax driver.

[patrik]

Try this page, where the 2.0g disk can be found which has an Expansion/IVS_SCSIpro.device with info file:
https://www.stone-oakvalley-studios....oard_index.php

No idea if the PRODUCTID tooltype of its info file has to be changed. Currently at 2112/52.

Note that despite the same file name, the .device in Expansion/ and devs/ is not the same:

8.Ram Disk:> md5sum ivs2.0g/expansion/IVS_SCSIpro.device ivs2.0g/devs/IVS_SCSIpro#? 
540ba74bfc5b8d90d4b47b0e026e0755  ivs2.0g/expansion/IVS_SCSIpro.device
bfba7921bb6b607507471e9aa5dc1fe4  ivs2.0g/devs/IVS_SCSIpro.device
f27ab8cf2f31b978b462f945ec94e7e1  ivs2.0g/devs/IVS_SCSIpro.driver
1085ee6d4922b2cb43fc9f869cf1e76a  ivs2.0g/devs/IVS_SCSIpro.amhd

[patrik]

Originally Posted by patrik

I had one of these in my otherwise stock A2000 rev 6.2 a long time ago. I have a somewhat hazy memory of it having some non-standard schenanigans where if you booted from the disk drive, its SCSI drives did not mount.

From the manual:

GAME SWITCH
If you want to boot from any floppy and still be able to access the hard disk, hold down the Left mouse button on startup until the floppy drive light comes on. One note: if the floppy is not bootable, the hard drive will boot.

So worth trying that too .

[Tchucolate]

Originally Posted by patrik

From the manual:

So worth trying that too .

Thanks for the info

So I have some progress.

I put the two .driver files in the DEVSosDrivers folder, and the .device file from the utils floppy DEV folder into DEV. This did not work, however, as I recall, and I'll have to validate this, but when I put the .drives file into the DEVS folder as well, thats when SCSI drives on the GS card appears in HDToolBox.

So, TCUtils is a really cranky old app, and crashes a ton on my machine. So I thought, maybe it cant handle the 128mb of FAST ram in some way. So whilst booting into WB I ran NoFastRam Util, waiting until I only had Chip RAM, and then ran TCUtils. With no FastRam it does not crash. So thats a thing...

So now I see the drive in HDTools and in TCUtils, but still no drive mounted on desktop. I was unsure WHERE the Extension file should go, but you filled in that blank.

Odd that the manual does not mention this. Also, very odd it does not seem to automate this whole install process. Because its a right PITA.

I did however skim read the manual, as its massive and has a lot of info I don't really need. Anyway, lets see if the Extension file does it.

This feels like it needs a video, searching online for this series of cards, you see so many people having these exact same issues with it.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Tchucolate

Originally it came with a IVS Grand Slam SCSI + Memory adapter, which also has an extra parellel port (no idea why...).

This is a Macintosh style 25 pin SCSI connector, please don't attempt to plug parallel port devices in to it.

[Tchucolate]

So that was the final thing, the IVS_SCSIpro.device EXTENSION, in sys:Extensions folder, got the drive to actually appear on the desktop. Oddly, they have ghosted icons. So maybe I now need an icon editor to sort that out.

Thanks for the help!