ClassicWB issues & Fast RAM

[Clym5]

Hey all,

After being content with my stock A1200 for a while, I was given an expanded A4000. The HDD that came with it died after a few hours, and since then, I've tried to put ClassicWB ADVSP on a new drive.

I use CWB Lite on my A1200, so I have done it before, but for whatever reason, I cannot get it working on the 4000! Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Not a DOS disk, Software failure, black screen, bad sector, you name it.

I'm installing on a known-good HDD, so this confuses me!

My A4000 has a Apollo 4040/4060 Turbo in it (45mhz 040 fitted), which I gave 128mb of RAM. It worked yesterday, but now no SIMMs show up. Even new ones. Could this be related to Workbench not starting properly? Is my 4000 faulty maybe?

I did have it running 100% at one point, but it doesn't want to boot off the HDD that had everything perfect now.

Anyway, hopefully someone can offer some guidance!

[Jope]

Sounds like a RAM problem definitely. Someone who knows more about the Apollo can comment on whether it is a known fault or not. :-D

[Clym5]

I just tried to boot off a Workbench 2.04 disk, and everything checks out fine. All 128mb of RAM is there, and the motherboard fast too.

I wonder what I'm doing wrong with ClassicWB then?

With the new HDD installed, the A4000 goes like this:

1. Powers up, HDD spins up and FDD starts clicking.
2. ROughly half a minute later, the HDD access light starts to flicker.
3. After 10 to 20 seconds of random flashing, it stops and the black screen stays there. Sometimes I get a software failure error, or a reset.

With the old HDD, the A4000 would power up, and go straight to booting off the HDD in less than 5 seconds, and while the old HDD worked, it would boot into workbench fine and show all my RAM.

So, it might not be a RAM issue after all, but a user error with setting up a hard drive. Now to find where I went wrong...

EDIT: Yay! Not user error! Seems to be an issue with FText. I'll disable it and see what happens from there.

EDIT2: Now it instantly throws a software error when it gets to EXECUTE T:M. I'm going to give up for tonight!

[fitzsteve]

Are you sure you have Apollo 040 and not 060? 060 needs specific libraries and without them will cause crashes.

[Clym5]

Yeah, I've got a 040 running at 45mhz. (Or 40)

Something in startup-sequence is causing this. The same commands didn't cause any issue on the original WB hard drive though.

[Clym5]

Right, I also do have bad RAM somewhere. I'm just not sure what stick it is, as I only get given a hex value. For example, "0e9c0000 to 0e9fffff"

All I know is that the bad RAM is in the Apollo, but I don't have any replacement SIMMs bigger than 4mb for it. All my 32mb ones are in there. Drat.

Also, is it normal for Agnus and Denise to apparently be ECS? I thought the A4000 was AGA? Or is that normal? I'm new to the inner workings of these machines.

[Jope]

Run setpatch to enable the AGA modes. Setpatch is probably where your installation is crashing. :-)

[Clym5]

And I fixed it! It was a sometimes-working 16mb simm in the Apollo. It failed once out of 6 ram tests. Works great now.

Should I still do the setpatch?

[Jope]

As a rule, you should run setpatch in your startup-sequence.