Zeus 040 scsi issues with KS 3.1.4

[James L Jensen]

Hello everyone! First post for me.

I have an Amiga 2000 (Rev 4.4) with a PP&S Zeus 040 (28mhz) accelerator. Currently have 16mb of 60ns installed (and have another 48mb on its way). I also have a GVP Spectrum 28/24 graphics board and a CBM 2320 flicker fixer in the video slot. Two floppies, CD drive, and that's it. Zeus is fitted with a SCSI2SD v6 adapter.

Now for the goofy part. This beast was running just fine with 3.1 kick and OS3.1 installed. 21 mips and 5 mflops. Life was good.

Swapped in the 3.1.4 kick and turned the machine one. No love. Just this message:

DH0:
Software Failure #80000004
Suspend, reboot, etc etc.

Left the machine on for about 30 minutes just in case something needed to initialize between the new kick and the HDD. Nothing changed.

With a two button start up, I can disable DH0/1 etc and boot from the Install disk. I can then see all the partitions on the SD card via HDtoolbox. Seems like everything is there. I then put the 3.1 kick back in and everything was back to normal.

Put the 3.1.4 kick back in. Same problem. My SD card has nothing on it; I am starting a fresh build on a new harddrive. So I can play around quite freely at the moment which is nice. So i go to format the partitions with the install disk software and I then get a similar software failure, only this time in the guru style.

Zeus has the v2.98 scsi roms. I can't find any documentation on if there were subsequent rom upgrades, but I have read some interesting stuff on these forums about folks burning warpdrive.scsi drivers to the Zeus roms.

I am not a power user. I kinda know my way around the machine, but I can't dive into the technical side too much. My sense is that, somehow and someway, the 3.1.4 kick cares about something that the 3.1 kick didn't, and now my Zeus scsi does not comply. So my questions are these:

1. Is anybody out there using a Zeus 040 with scsi and 3.1.4 kick; if so, I would like to know more about your setup! I am desperate!

2. If this rambling makes any sense, what thoughts might there be about what is going on here?

Thanks for any help that might be out there!

James

[Toni Wilen]

You didn't mention size of drive or partitions.

Does it work without crash if you create only single less than 1G partition at the beginning of drive? Leave the rest unused.

I don't think it is (at least direct) boot rom vs 3.1.4 compatibility problem.

[James L Jensen]

Thanks for the question, Toni. Apologies for leaving those parts out.

The SCSI2SD, under my 3.1 install, had a 500mb workbench partition, a 2gb Work partition, and a 2gb Play partition. The SD Card itself is 16gb.

I will attempt your suggestion and report back.

Also, possibly useful information that I did not include in the OP is that I can use this accelerator without autoboot if I slap in my A2091 controller, so I think I do have it narrowed down to something around the Zeus scsi controller.

James

[James L Jensen]

OK, I went ahead and redefined the drive and partitioned to have a 300+/-mb DH0 at the beginning of the drive. Left the rest unused. Went for the reboot and got the same message. The exact message is:

Software Failure
DH0
Program Failed (error #80000004)
Wait for disk activity to finish.

It hangs at this message, mouse still moves the cursor, but never gets passed this.

For the partition, I enabled Direct SCSI, set the block size to 4096k, and set the max transfer to 0xFE00 (though I understand I shouldn't need to mess with max transfer at this point). Zeus manual calls for max transfer of 0xFFFFFF, but that doesn't seem to make any difference in this.

Thoughts? The fact that the 3.1 rom works is what's got me stumped. I don't have enough beer in the house to solve this one!

James

[Michael]

Lets start from scratch, what happens hen SD card is not connected, all works fine ?
What kind of file system you use ?
Try PFS, SFS only on a cleaned card with nothing in the RDB.
Do you have any other HDD to test with ?
HDToolBox version ? Not mixed settings/prepping/formatting with other tools ?

[James L Jensen]

Hi Michael. Thanks for throwing out some ideas!

If I remove the SD card and leave the SCSI2SD connected, it boots from the install floppy. If I disconnect the SCSI2SD, it boots from the install floppy.
I am using SFS. Tried FFS. I don’t have PFS on my 3.1.4 floppies, so I am not using it.
I have an old SupraDrive (80mb). I thought I had it working before, but it doesn’t seem to show any signs of life
I do have a v5.1 SCSI2Sd, but I upgraded to the v6 so that I can take advantage of the synchronous transfer.
I am using HDToolBox from my 3.1.4 install floppy. I am committed to using it and nothing else!

Does this information provide any useful clues?

James

[Michael]

Ok. Lets try a few other option.
Do you have a below 4GB SD card just for test?
Or any other card never used with amiga?

You also say you can disable the drives in early boot menu.

Will the system boot without crashes with enable drives and no startup boot ?
Try disabling the partitions but allow just one of them (try a few in a row) maybe configuration of one of them is not ideal.

If it boots to CLI then it could also be a problem of something starting early in startup-sequence that raises the conflict. Then trying the setpatch command and see what happens.

Also for SFS to work nicely you need the rare latest build 1.280

[James L Jensen]

Breakthrough!
I was able to get PFS3 on a floppy. Added it as the file system for new partitions and it booted! I was then able to quick format and then install OS 3.1.4
Not sure what exactly was afoot here, but the relationship of 3.1.4, Zeus scsi drivers, and fast file system don’t seem to agree with each other. Curious is anybody is using Zeus 040 with scsi, with 3.1.4 and FFS.
Thanks for the suggestion of file systems, Michael. I had not fully vetted that avenue.

This bad boy is in business!

James

[Michael]

Glad to hear your system is up and running.
To test just the FFS issue, you can use 3.1 rom + New FFS or
use the 3.1 rom, + loadmodule all new rom modules, - the new FFS

Also how/what version is installed in the RDB of the disk may matter.
So once booted check the resident version.
That's if you wish to tackle the issue from the other side and find the core of the problem or it could be just an unlucky coincidence of several factors coming together.

[James L Jensen]

Michael,
That is an interesting thought. I have another SD card that I can use for this testing purpose. I believe that I was using the latest FFS, but the one thing that I had not done was use 3.1 rom + load module. I didn't have the loadmodule floppy when I went down that path so I was stopped short. But now that I have my CD drive working with my 3.1.4 install I can get loadmodule onto a floppy and complete the 3.1.4 install that way.

Would be nice to understand exactly what was going on so that we can collectively benefit from this head scratcher.