AmigaOS 3.2 on A4000T

[mpiva]

Hi everyone! With AmigaOS 3.2 coming out, I've decided it would be a good time to get back into the Amiga scene after several years of having my Amigas packed away and passively keeping an eye on the Amiga forums. I purchased AmigaOS 3.2 for my A4000T but I'm having some troubles with it that I hope you can help me with.

My hardware is as follows:
A4000T

• CyberstormPPC-060
• CyberVisionPPC graphics card
• ~ 100MB of RAM
• Promethius Card with NIC
• Multiface III Card
• 50GB SCSI hard drive on Cyberstorm's SCSI bus
• 4GB SCSI hard drive & Iomega ZIP drive on A4000T's SCSI bus
• 4GB IDE hard drive and DVD-RW on A4000T's IDE bus

Initially, the system had AmigaOS 3.9 running on it. I started by making a copy of my OS 3.9 partition and installing 3.2 on it from the physical CD. I managed to get this OS 3.2 partition booting up properly and most things seem to be working well (more on that later). The Early Startup Menu reports "Exec 27.7 (Kickstart ROM 40.70)".

The biggest issue I have, though, happens after I install the physical 3.2 ROMs. Once I do that, my Amiga no longer recognizes any IDE devices no matter what I do. I've been trying to fix this for days to no avail. I thought that maybe I wrecked the IDE connector when I replaced the ROMS (in the A4000T the ROM sockets are right next to the IDE connector) but I eventually tried putting the 3.1 ROMS back in and the IDE drives came back, both for AmigaOS 3.9 and for AmigaOS 3.2 with soft kick.

I received the physical Kickstart 3.2 ROMs from Retro Rewind and have confirmed that they do have "A4000T" on the labels. The Early Startup Menu reports "Kickstart 47.96" when they're installed.


The other, minor, issue I'm having is with the Shell. For some reason, when I hit backspace or try to use the arrow keys within the shell, I get weird things like "1D" appearing instead. I'm using the A4000T's original keyboard and these keys work fine everywhere else. Even if I boot with no startup, everything works fine in the CLI there however, if I launch a NewShell from Workbench, these keys will not work properly in the shell.

[bubbob42]

- Did you clean the partition before installing 3.2 or did you install it on top of the latter?
- Not related to your machine’s current symptoms, but nevertheless: Did you exchange the caps on the motherboard? (You should, they are leaking even if you don’t see it)
- Does scsi work?

IDE works fine with the 4000T and 3.2; the colourful screenshot on the Hyperion website was taken on an A4000T with both SCSI and IDE.

[mpiva]

Thanks for the reply, bubbob42;

I've tried installing it both ways with no difference. Both the CyberStorm's SCSI and the A4000T's SCSI work fine. It's just the IDE that's giving me issues and ONLY with the physical ROMs. If I boot into 3.2 using the software ROM, the IDE works fine but as soon as I install the physical ROMs, I lose the IDE. Is there any way to confirm that the physical ROMs weren't accidentally mislabelled?

Regarding the caps, unfortunately they haven't been replaced. Sadly, I don't know of anyone local who would be able to do that and I can't afford to ship my machine to someone who can.

[hiho]

Originally Posted by mpiva

Thanks for the reply, bubbob42;

Regarding the caps, unfortunately they haven't been replaced. Sadly, I don't know of anyone local who would be able to do that and I can't afford to ship my machine to someone who can.

Does anyone know of a source to get this done in Texas?

[QuikSanz]

Not sure about Tx, California may be the next closest. There is another in New York, a bit farther. Check with AOTL, they may have started doing this. Check the Master recap list in this forum or check the sites on other boards with similar threads.

Chris

[bubbob42]

Originally Posted by mpiva

Thanks for the reply, bubbob42;
Is there any way to confirm that the physical ROMs weren't accidentally mislabelled?

The A4000T ROMs are the only ones supporting the onboard NCR SCSI. If your SCSI works, they should be ok.

Did you try without scsi devices? (Please disconnect them from from the bus and the psu).

Another thing you could try is Jumper J151 - if it's closed, open it.

[mpiva]

Originally Posted by bubbob42

The A4000T ROMs are the only ones supporting the onboard NCR SCSI. If your SCSI works, they should be ok.

Did you try without scsi devices? (Please disconnect them from from the bus and the psu).

Another thing you could try is Jumper J151 - if it's closed, open it.

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, neither made any difference. J151 was already open; I tried closing it but then I couldn't even get into the Early Startup Menu. I also tried removing all SCSI drives but then the Early Startup Menu only shows DF0:

I'm not sure if this is unusual behaviour, but even with AmigaOS 3.9 my IDE drives would only appear after the SetPatch command rebooted the computer once (it's been this way for as long as I can remember). Likewise, with the software ROMs for 3.2, the IDE drives would appear after SetPatch rebooted the computer but this doesn't happen with the hardware ROMs even if I manually reboot.

[A4000Bear]

Your kickstart ROM should contain scsi.device which handles IDE, and is exactly the same as in the A4000D. There is also ncrscsi.device which handles the onboard SCSI controller. Try typing 'version scsi.device' (without quotes) in a shell and see what you get.

You could also use a program called romsplit, which will let you extract and examine the kickstart components to see if you have scsi.device present. it can be found here: http://www.doobreynet.co.uk/beta/index.html

[mpiva]

Originally Posted by A4000Bear

Your kickstart ROM should contain scsi.device which handles IDE, and is exactly the same as in the A4000D. There is also ncrscsi.device which handles the onboard SCSI controller. Try typing 'version scsi.device' (without quotes) in a shell and see what you get.

You could also use a program called romsplit, which will let you extract and examine the kickstart components to see if you have scsi.device present. it can be found here: http://www.doobreynet.co.uk/beta/index.html

Thanks for the suggestion of romsplit. This is what I found:

When I click on the "Grab ROM" button I get a "ROMsplit error" that says "Unsupported ROM (Modified 47.96 A4000T (Hyperion OS 3.2) ROM)". However, ROMsplit work fine when I use it with the A4000T ROM file included on the OS 3.2 install CD.

Typing "version scsi.device" into the CLI gives me "version 47.4", however, if I type "version ncrscsi.device" I get "object not found".

[A4000Bear]

Originally Posted by mpiva

Thanks for the suggestion of romsplit. This is what I found:

When I click on the "Grab ROM" button I get a "ROMsplit error" that says "Unsupported ROM (Modified 47.96 A4000T (Hyperion OS 3.2) ROM)". However, ROMsplit work fine when I use it with the A4000T ROM file included on the OS 3.2 install CD.

Typing "version scsi.device" into the CLI gives me "version 47.4", however, if I type "version ncrscsi.device" I get "object not found".

That's odd. It looks like whoever compiled your ROM has left out the scsi.device (IDE) and renamed your NCRscsi.device to scsi.device. Why they did that, I have no idea! This explains why ROMsplit fails - your ROM is not standard.
While I have never had to try this, you may be able to enable your IDE interface by copying scsi.device (the IDE one) to the expansion drawer in your workbench partition. You will need to rename it so that it won't clash with the scsi.device (for NCR SCSI) in your ROM. You will need to have 'Binddrivers' (without quotes) in your startup-sequence (It should already be there). Of course this means you can't boot from IDE, and you will need to put your renamed scsi.device in the tooltypes for HDtoolbox when you want to partition your IDE device.

Otherwise , if you have an EPROM programmer, you could burn the correct A4000T Kickstart ROM file from your CD into two EPROMS.

Note: yesterday, I incorrectly had 'NCRscsi.device' as 'ncrscsi.device'. Not sure if the version command is case sensitive, might be worth trying it again: 'version NCRscsi.device'.

[mpiva]

SUCCESS!!!

Thank you everyone for your help and suggestions. Turns out the solution was actually quite simple. The CyberstormPPC has its own early startup menu and there is a "SCSI Patch" option that was turned on. I assume the OS 3.2 soft kickstart must overwrite the Cyberstorm's patch which is why the IDE still worked when soft-kicked. However, with the hardware kickstart, the Cyberstorm's patch must be conflicting with the new scsi.device. I've turned off the SCSI Patch option and now my IDE drives are visible again. Yay!!!

BTW, regarding NCRscsi.device, turns out the device name is actually "NCR scsi.device". Using the version command with the correct space in the name gives me the correct version number.

One last thing, though. My IDE DVD-RW is now being detected but it's showing as "Unknown" in HDToolBox. In AmigaOS 3.9, HDToolBox was able to detect the drive's make and model and it functioned flawlessly. Any suggestions on how to get AmigaOS 3.2 to recognize this as a CD drive?

[gdonner]

Originally Posted by mpiva

SUCCESS!!!

Thank you everyone for your help and suggestions. Turns out the solution was actually quite simple. The CyberstormPPC has its own early startup menu and there is a "SCSI Patch" option that was turned on. I assume the OS 3.2 soft kickstart must overwrite the Cyberstorm's patch which is why the IDE still worked when soft-kicked. However, with the hardware kickstart, the Cyberstorm's patch must be conflicting with the new scsi.device. I've turned off the SCSI Patch option and now my IDE drives are visible again. Yay!!!

BTW, regarding NCRscsi.device, turns out the device name is actually "NCR scsi.device". Using the version command with the correct space in the name gives me the correct version number.

One last thing, though. My IDE DVD-RW is now being detected but it's showing as "Unknown" in HDToolBox. In AmigaOS 3.9, HDToolBox was able to detect the drive's make and model and it functioned flawlessly. Any suggestions on how to get AmigaOS 3.2 to recognize this as a CD drive?

Glad this is resolved! I had no idea the Cyberstorm PPC had its own early boot/startup menu, but the PicassoIV does, and CS-Lab Warp cards will (in time) have them too, so...

It's interesting that the device name has a space in it--until hearing about this, I can't ever recall an Amiga device name with a space in it.