Reference 40MB Amiga SCSI drive

[morch]

I recently came into possession of an Evesham Reference 40MB SCSI hard drive for the a500

it has no power supply, and it looks like a 5pin din

i have found these bits of info so far:
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/d...SI-Hard-Drive/
https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/b...t.aspx?id=1173
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/referencehd

has anyone got any information about drivers or pinout?

[Photon]

Most of making this expansion work will require Amiga electronics experience.

You can trace the DIN pins to find the voltages, and likely use an off-the-shelf PSU. Some sidecar expansions can also be supplied by the A500 (i.e. leaving the expansion's power socket disconnected) - but it requires knowledge and may require a stronger A500 PSU. I recommend new PSUs for old gear, for example PicoPSU.

It's probably a cheaper clone of established brands at the time, and Faaastprep (I think it's 3 a's in the name) or similar of-the-time software should allow you to partition and format it. It will likely be OS-compatible, and the WB3.2 tool suite could work fine.

WB 3.2 should also have a compatible and up-to-date scsi.device, which is the driver (with FastFileSystem or another file system of your choice).

Autoboot should be supported, but some simply won't. In this case you need to make or find a bootdisk to mount the harddisk to access it. You can then (tested under OS1.3-2.0 only on A500) make a small startup-sequence on that disk to mount it, and continue to run the startup-sequence of the OS install on the harddisk.

[mark_k]

scsi.device from Workbench won't work.

The driver in the Reference boot ROM should though. amiga.resource.cx says it's not RDB compatible but maybe there were different versions? Can you upload a pic of the EPROM on your Reference board?

WinUAE can emulate this controller so you could play with that to see if you can get it booting without having the original installer disk.

[morch]

here is some photos of the board:

https://ibb.co/YtpFKgV
https://ibb.co/dDs33ms
https://ibb.co/D44th5Y

[Toni Wilen]

At least only known ROM dump does support RDB ("Evesham.device" v1.1. "Kemputa1/Evesham drive 13Mar93")

Amiga.resource says it is not RDB compatible (and BBOAH says it is DMA. No, it isn't.), perhaps v1.0 didn't support RDB. Impossible to confirm without either original install disk or v1.0 ROM dump. Or it is an error. or misunderstanding because v1.1 filesystem loader does not handle relocations correctly (=Some FFS versions work, anything else simply crash)

Unfortunately ROM driver is not installed if it does not detect any drives.

ROM can be dumped (except first 64 bytes or so because it is used by SCSI chip IO) by reading everything from address $e90000 to $e9ffff. (Note that it is in nybble based format, dump will look like it is corrupted)

[morch]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

At least only known ROM dump does support RDB ("Evesham.device" v1.1. "Kemputa1/Evesham drive 13Mar93")

Amiga.resource says it is not RDB compatible (and BBOAH says it is DMA. No, it isn't.), perhaps v1.0 didn't support RDB. Impossible to confirm without either original install disk or v1.0 ROM dump. Or it is an error. or misunderstanding because v1.1 filesystem loader does not handle relocations correctly (=Some FFS versions work, anything else simply crash)

Unfortunately ROM driver is not installed if it does not detect any drives.

ROM can be dumped (except first 64 bytes or so because it is used by SCSI chip IO) by reading everything from address $e90000 to $e9ffff. (Note that it is in nybble based format, dump will look like it is corrupted)

ah okay, so the hope of getting this working with the combination of no psu and no install disks with this... i have the hard drive still, if i can somehow get my a590 working, i might be ableto try mount the drive or would i be better to try mount in in a PC with winuae? do such old scsi drives work with newer ones? even if it is just to take an image which has drivers

[morch]

some interesting development after having another look and having a read of this:
https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/b...t.aspx?id=1538
mentioning that the ram test dip switch disables the ram on board (which this has none of so )
& noticed these 2 jumpers saying "dont connect unless not using psu"
https://ibb.co/FDncdyb
so i bridged them with the ones from the ram section
and then i got a power light and this when i switched it on without a drive
https://ibb.co/HDvmkd8

since i have my own polish made modern a500 psu i will try the scsi drive without the mystery 5 pin psu

[morch]

I ran sysinfo from my gotek in df1 and got this

https://ibb.co/d7jm1Cn

and nothing when it is disconnected

https://ibb.co/zXgSB5Y


i was thinking if i get a mains to 12v molex adaptor, i can try to power the drive from that?

[morch]

also the person i got this from as a bundle, has informed he he found a load of disks....i wonder if the install disk is amongst it, so i will find out in the new year

[Toni Wilen]

i was thinking if i get a mains to 12v molex adaptor, i can try to power the drive from that?

Probably but A500 PSU should work (at least if it is 4.5A model). I used SupraDrive 500XP without external PSU back in the day.

Originally Posted by morch

also the person i got this from as a bundle, has informed he he found a load of disks....i wonder if the install disk is amongst it, so i will find out in the new year

Install disk would be great, even if it isn't needed because old HD controller partition software is usually weird and interesting

Could you try to software dump the boot ROM? If you have some way to transfer data to/from Amiga. Download mon165.lha from aminet (if you don't have any other favorite monitor program), run it (it is KS 1.x compatible), type "] e90000 10000 ram:rom.bin". If system hung, reboot and try "] e90080 ff80 ram:rom.bin". Transfer and attach the file.

This does not require connected HD but keep autoboot option enabled.

do such old scsi drives work with newer ones?

Ancient SCSI drives usually work just fine. Ancient IDE drives can be problematic.

[morch]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Could you try to software dump the boot ROM? If you have some way to transfer data to/from Amiga. Download mon165.lha from aminet (if you don't have any other favorite monitor program), run it (it is KS 1.x compatible), type "] e90000 10000 ram:rom.bin". If system hung, reboot and try "] e90080 ff80 ram:rom.bin". Transfer and attach the file.

This does not require connected HD but keep autoboot option enabled.

is this what you need? the first command worked, the 2nd one crashed it

https://gofile.io/d/fwS1MM

https://file.io/BN4YUjoLgcCU

https://ufile.io/78lt9k34

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by morch

is this what you need? the first command worked, the 2nd one crashed it

https://gofile.io/d/fwS1MM

https://file.io/BN4YUjoLgcCU

https://ufile.io/78lt9k34

Did you use correct address value because dump seems to contain random RAM contents.

[morch]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Did you use correct address value because dump seems to contain random RAM contents.

I done as asked.

I'll try again tomorrow but screenshot the device info

We are getting 64k which seems right so maybe it wasn't picked up? (I loaded sdbox software also)

[morch]

skip forward a day: with sd0 also loaded, the autoconfig in sysinfo still says E90000 and 64k so that isnt a problem

running the command
cd mon165
mon
-> command line
] e90000 10000 ram:rom.bin

https://www.file.io/download/2ShBD33JMXG0
https://ufile.io/rc99ybs9

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by morch

skip forward a day: with sd0 also loaded, the autoconfig in sysinfo still says E90000 and 64k so that isnt a problem

running the command
cd mon165
mon
-> command line
] e90000 10000 ram:rom.bin

https://www.file.io/download/2ShBD33JMXG0
https://ufile.io/rc99ybs9

Still RAM. It would be quite odd but perhaps the controller unmaps the ROM after it has been read. (Previous ROM was dumped with ROM reader.)

Do you get similar looking data if you type "m e90000"? and does it change if you repeat it?

[morch]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Still RAM. It would be quite odd but perhaps the controller unmaps the ROM after it has been read. (Previous ROM was dumped with ROM reader.)

Do you get similar looking data if you type "m e90000"? and does it change if you repeat it?

I will try and let you know, i do love a good mystery!
eta:

it changes between reboots - im trying to make up a simple WB floppy with mon165 on it so there's less variables

[mark_k]

There's supposed to be a game switch on the back, isn't there? Could the ROM be disabled if it's set to game mode???

[morch]

Originally Posted by mark_k

There's supposed to be a game switch on the back, isn't there? Could the ROM be disabled if it's set to game mode???

I just noticed this

i will change it and try it... now i get

https://ibb.co/31jjdnP
https://ibb.co/0BkQ1ZT
https://ibb.co/NxKzZB4

i spotted my request in ram in the one with the typo for 90000 not e90000 haha

on an extra mention
i have some ram coming through the post that should work in it, 2x1mb sticks as well as a molex mains cable so i can try to power the drive and see if it works more than just turning the board

[mark_k]

Those $E90000 hex dumps do look like ROM data.

[Toni Wilen]

Yeah, now it looks correct. Nybble wide autoconfig data in even addresses.