A3000 strange boot problems

[Rod_cl]

Hi:
i was upgrading the old 40 MB SCSI HD from my A3000 to a 2.1 gb Seagate HD and after the format of the HD i began experiencing strange problems. First I couldn't use an external SCSI device and after changing a couple of settings on the HD for the scsi chain, the computer refused to work.

Now all i get is a strange yellow boot screen. I uninstalled every Zorro card and hd and im still getting the same screen.

Any ideas? Heeellllllllpppp

Best Regards

Rod

[Secret Vampire]

Yellow apparently means that the CPU hit an error before the exception handling code (the bit that brings up a guru meditation message) was loaded.
Cause could unfortunately be any number of things, My A4000 produced them for bad memory and a bad power supply, and my A2000 because the wind was blowing in the wrong direction or something but it could also be due to a defective zorro card, or a poor connection to the RAM/CPU, or some of the other ICs, or potentially board damage from a leaky battery.
My first action would be to reseat everything that can be reseated, and make sure the edge connectors on your zorro cards, and their respective slots are clean (same goes for the daughter board) slots can be cleaned by covering the edge of a piece of thick card with alcohol or contact cleaner and pushing it in and out of the slot a few times.

[Rod_cl]

Thanks:
i did more or less what you told me and now he A3000 Boots. I still have a question regarding the SCSI chain. The internal HD is ID 0 and its terminated and the following option enabled too: Term. Power from Drive and Term. Power to SCSI Bus.

If i add the following devices (all external): External HD(ID3), 1gb Jaz (ID4)

Should i leave the internal HD just as it is right now or should i modify the settings?

Best Regards

Rod

[Secret Vampire]

SCSI will always be something of a black art, what should work according to the rules doesn't always, and sometimes a setup that ought to not work at all will work flawlessly.

The A3000 should supply term power itself, but it shouldn't matter having it switched on at the drive also. The internal drive is terminated correctly (provided it's on the end of the cable, if not, adjust your cabling so it is) and since it works should be left well alone. The A3000 has internal termination, which according to Warren Block's SCSI guide may be either not present at all, soldered in or socketed. If it's missing then it's fine, if socketed, you should remove the terminators, if soldered, leave them in and see what happens, it might be reliable without having to remove them, which will save some effort and potential motherboard damage if done carelessly.
After that, make sure that termination is set on the last device on the external chain, if neither has a termination setting then you might need to get an external terminator from somewhere, but it might work anyway.
apart from that, keep the cables as short as possible, hook it all up, and see if it works. if it fails to work, try changing the order in which devices are connected, and playing with termination. It should be fairly obvious if things aren't right, devices will fail to show up or you'll get data errors (it would be useful to have backups, but I suspect that is what the jaz drive is for)
This is probably better than some old Macs which when booted with certain SCSI combinations will give you a sad Mac picture and the chimes of death, which are usually used to indicate a hardware failure that is probably fatal.

[Rod_cl]

Hi:
i just resolved everything. Now the amiga boots fine and i can used the cd-rom and the jaz unit. Now i have a strange different problem. Thats why i posted a new thread. Some strange resource.library issue. This thread is finnished and resolved.
Thanks everyone.

Rod