A590 not booting

Kakaboy · 17 February 2011, 21:30

Hi all ,

I have had my A590 repaired last year , I think it had damaged controller chips . The repairer replaced the SCSI chip but didnt have any IDE from memory but said I dont need it as its running SCSI and been jumpered to do so . So I had that sorted out and then upgraded to a 2gb SCSI and an extra 1mb of ram to total 2mb and upgraded roms to ver7.0 and installed WB by the repairer .

Now last night is the first time I hooked it up to my A500 and had 3.1KS enabled . It wasnt booting and giving me the black and red screen telling me SOFTWRE FAILURE ERROR 80000 00006 or something to that effect .

I disconnected the A590 from the A500 and tried to boot the A500 on its own and the 3.1rom didnt seem to want to kickstart . So I reseated the 3.1rom and tried again after a few attempts i managed to get the 3.1KS screen . Being unhappy with the reliability of the 3.1rom I changed it to a 2.05rom and restarted and it worked fine . So I connected the A590 and booted hoping that the preinstalled WB would boot up . I managed after a couple of attempts to get it to boot and I think it had WB38.00 or something installed I cant remember now exactly . But after turning it off I had no more luck in getting it to boot up again .

The A500 has the 1mb chip ram mod done to it its an 6A board . So I turn off the autoboot jumper on the back of the A590 and boot up the A500 with WB2.05 in FDD . It boots up fine , WB tells me I have 1mb of chip ram and 2mb of fast ram which is the ram on the A590 . I have the power to the A590 hooked up and it does work as I have switched it off from the PSU and the A590 shut down .

Now for interest sakes I trid to prep the drive and install WB 2.05 to see how it would go but I get an error telling me its "Open Drive" or something to that effect . In shell i tried to see what drive I had by typing device . scsi or something like that and it told me couldnt find hardware or something . All the jumpers on the back of the A590 are switched to OFF and its connected with the PSU in ON position . Im using an AT PSU from my A1200 which works fine and powers up the A500 as well and auto shuts down the A590 when switched off also .

Does it seem like possible the SCSI drive is not working as I can see the RAM in WB from the A590 so I guess to a point the A500 is talking to the A590 .

Does anybody have any ideas or some pointers as to what to check or do next .

BTW sorry for the long post but I felt like I needed to cover everything that has happened

Extra Info: When I had 3.1 rom and tried to boot I got a red screen when I try to boot with 2.05rom it hangs at light grey screen .

Loedown · 18 February 2011, 14:49

It may help everyone here if you diagnosis was a little more organised and not so flaky, not an intentional criticism.

Chances are that the repairer did repair most of the issues, but do you know if the PSU was recapped for instance, or whether the ROM chip is properly seated?

cosmicfrog · 18 February 2011, 19:31

also theres a 30 second delay if KS3.x cant find a working HDD so if your HDD is borked make sure you wait that amount of time for it seem to do something

Now in what way is the 3.1 KsRom more flacky than the 2.04KS

I`d try another working HDD if there`s one available

Kakaboy · 19 February 2011, 13:11

I realised that its not the roms that are flacky , it was the rom switch that the were plugged into . When I insert the roms on their own they boot perfectly .

Now im pretty sure the SCSI drive is nackered . The drive spins and the read LED flickers and it sounds like it wants to load but then you get the Software error screen .

When I turn the autoboot off the A500 starts fine and when I load WB it sees the 2mb RAm that is in the A590 . But im afraid the drive is stuffed .

Im annoyed as it was purchased last year and was the first time I tried it .

Shame the SCSI to IDE converters cost so much I would put a CF card in .

cpiac64 · 19 February 2011, 17:22

verify the bootblock on the hd with the utility for a590 or with hdtoolbox, i have similar product (rochard) and the hd boot only if formatted from utility made in rochard

your hd size?

from bigbook
The A590 is a hard drive controller which connects to the side expansion slot of the A500(+). It provides both a SCSI controller, and an XT controller. An XT Controller is the very old 8 bit IDE standard (not to be confused with ST506). Whilst it uses the same 40pin IDE cable that modern IDE controllers use, you cannot use modern IDE drives with the XT controller because they are 16 bit. You must use XT hard drives. These were only ever made up to about 80MB in size. The A590 was usually shipped with a 20MB Seagate SCSI drive by default or a 20MB Western Digial XT drive but the drive specifications are printed on the base of the unit.

There are several versions of the ROMs for the A590, Version 6 ROMs only allow hard drives up to 512MB in capacity. Version 6.6 and 7.0 ROMs have been reported to work successfully with drive sizes up to 9GB but you will need at least OS3.5 to use drives over 4GB. Notice the names of the LEDs on the unit, named Fred and Wilma.

Kakaboy · 20 February 2011, 02:38

The ROMs are upgraded to 7.0
The HDD is a SCSI 2gb
The RAM is upgraded to 2mb
All the jumpers are set correctly
The A500 sees the extra RAM and the HDD spins and does seek for info but doesnt load and crashes .
When I use something like Toolbox it tells me the HDD isnt there and to check connections . When I try and prep the drive it says : -1 open drive , and also says to check connections and hardware .
Like I said its an old SCSI offcourse and my first time I used it and it only booted once after a few attempts and now it does not boot at all .

Thanks for all your input so far , but Im steering towards the SCSI being damaged .

cpiac64 · 20 February 2011, 14:12

have close termination scsi?

Kakaboy · 20 February 2011, 21:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpiac64

Notice the names of the LEDs on the unit, named Fred and Wilma.

I just noticed what your wrote , have to have a look . That is a quirky thing to do lol .

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpiac64

have close termination scsi?

Dont understand what you mean ?

cpiac64 · 20 February 2011, 22:13

sorry, my bad english, the chain scsi need a SCSI terminator and the hd need set number of device

Kakaboy · 21 February 2011, 09:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpiac64

sorry, my bad english, the chain scsi need a SCSI terminator and the hd need set number of device

If you mean jumper for IDE/SCSI then yes it is set to SCSI .

Dont forget that it booted up once ! and then nothing and I have not touched anything .

Kakaboy · 22 February 2011, 13:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by cpiac64

sorry, my bad english, the chain scsi need a SCSI terminator and the hd need set number of device

Ok I have had another look at the Jumper and it looked like the contactors were'nt connecting properly , so I have soldered the two SCSI terminals together .

Now the drive boots up everytime !!

Thank you cpiac64 for making me have another look . Sometimes just because it has a jumper doesnt always mean the jumper is doing its job (bad contacts) .

Thanks for your help mate

EDIT : It stopped working again ....

I had it boot 4 times and now it stopped booting and gives me the software error screen ARGH

Loedown · 22 February 2011, 14:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kakaboy

Ok I have had another look at the Jumper and it looked like the contactors were'nt connecting properly , so I have soldered the two SCSI terminals together .

Now the drive boots up everytime !!

Thank you cpiac64 for making me have another look . Sometimes just because it has a jumper doesnt always mean the jumper is doing its job (bad contacts) .

Thanks for your help mate

EDIT : It stopped working again ....

I had it boot 4 times and now it stopped booting and gives me the software error screen ARGH

Sounds like the SCSI drive may have lost a phase in the motor, I had one like that a drive that booted when it felt like it.

cosmicfrog · 22 February 2011, 15:48

so near and yet so far Kakaboy

soldering the jumpers dosn`t sound like a good idea to me
scsi and ide are completely diffrent when setting the up
scsi needs a number in binary for the dvice/HDD, then the bus/cable needs terminating as well

good luck

Kakaboy · 23 February 2011, 02:11

Yeah I know soldering jumpers is not the done thing but I just wanted to eliminate the jumper connector being the problem .

Im not real good with the A590 , I had a guy here in Aust set it up for me who also upgraded the roms and installed WB etc . I dont understand what you mean about terminating the cable ? I assume your talking about the 50 pin cable that connects the A590 to the SCSI ? Also how do I check the number of the drive in binary ? Will it even show up anywhere if its not booting ? Does anyone have a step by step to show me so I can check ?

When the drive does boot up I have two partitions of 1gb each . One has the WB installed on it and the other is blank .

Thanks Loedown and Cosmicfrog

cpiac64 · 23 February 2011, 08:37

_http://computer.yourdictionary.com/scsi

Loedown · 23 February 2011, 11:03

Usually on the back of SCSI drives you have three jumper points marked as ID0, ID1 & ID2

Working on binary code

Code:

ID0   ID1   ID2   ID Number
 0     0     0         0
 1     0     0         1
 0     1     0         2
 1     1     0         3
 0     0     1         4
 1     0     1         5
 0     1     1         6
 1     1     1         7

0 indicates an open jumper, 1 indicates closed jumper

Kakaboy · 23 February 2011, 13:46

Here is a site that has my drive and details of various Jumpers . My SCSI is a Seagate Barracuda ST32550N

SCSI JUmpers

In J4 I have NO jumpers !! and Im not sure where to put one either ?

Hey Loedown can you give me a hand with this one please ?

Loedown · 23 February 2011, 14:16

OK

J1 pins 5&6 jumpered active termination

J1 pins 1&2 jumpered termination from the drive active

J4 sets SCSI device number, leave all jumpers open, makes it SCSI ID 0

J2 pins 5&6 should be open, but may need to be closed for A590

That site is awfully laid out, information is like a dog's breakfast.

Kakaboy · 23 February 2011, 14:22

OK on my drive I have :

J1 pins 1&2 jumpered

J2 pins 5&6 jumpered

J5 I cannot find ??? I think this is for a different version W/WD drives

J4 for my drive sets the ID but nothing is jumpered , can this cause any problems ?

Kakaboy · 23 February 2011, 14:43

Ok thanks alot Loedown , again you have helped me out

I have changed the jumper on J1 from 1&2 to 5&6 .

I have rebooted 4 times and its working well .....for now . Im really hoping this was my issue , seems like cpiac64 was on the right track

17 February 2011, 21:30	#1
Kakaboy Amiga life crisis Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Sydney/Australia Age: 54 Posts: 256	A590 not booting Hi all , I have had my A590 repaired last year , I think it had damaged controller chips . The repairer replaced the SCSI chip but didnt have any IDE from memory but said I dont need it as its running SCSI and been jumpered to do so . So I had that sorted out and then upgraded to a 2gb SCSI and an extra 1mb of ram to total 2mb and upgraded roms to ver7.0 and installed WB by the repairer . Now last night is the first time I hooked it up to my A500 and had 3.1KS enabled . It wasnt booting and giving me the black and red screen telling me SOFTWRE FAILURE ERROR 80000 00006 or something to that effect . I disconnected the A590 from the A500 and tried to boot the A500 on its own and the 3.1rom didnt seem to want to kickstart . So I reseated the 3.1rom and tried again after a few attempts i managed to get the 3.1KS screen . Being unhappy with the reliability of the 3.1rom I changed it to a 2.05rom and restarted and it worked fine . So I connected the A590 and booted hoping that the preinstalled WB would boot up . I managed after a couple of attempts to get it to boot and I think it had WB38.00 or something installed I cant remember now exactly . But after turning it off I had no more luck in getting it to boot up again . The A500 has the 1mb chip ram mod done to it its an 6A board . So I turn off the autoboot jumper on the back of the A590 and boot up the A500 with WB2.05 in FDD . It boots up fine , WB tells me I have 1mb of chip ram and 2mb of fast ram which is the ram on the A590 . I have the power to the A590 hooked up and it does work as I have switched it off from the PSU and the A590 shut down . Now for interest sakes I trid to prep the drive and install WB 2.05 to see how it would go but I get an error telling me its "Open Drive" or something to that effect . In shell i tried to see what drive I had by typing device . scsi or something like that and it told me couldnt find hardware or something . All the jumpers on the back of the A590 are switched to OFF and its connected with the PSU in ON position . Im using an AT PSU from my A1200 which works fine and powers up the A500 as well and auto shuts down the A590 when switched off also . Does it seem like possible the SCSI drive is not working as I can see the RAM in WB from the A590 so I guess to a point the A500 is talking to the A590 . Does anybody have any ideas or some pointers as to what to check or do next . BTW sorry for the long post but I felt like I needed to cover everything that has happened Extra Info: When I had 3.1 rom and tried to boot I got a red screen when I try to boot with 2.05rom it hangs at light grey screen . Last edited by Kakaboy; 18 February 2011 at 05:47.

23 February 2011, 11:03	#16
Loedown Precious & fragile things Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Victoria, Australia Posts: 1,946	Usually on the back of SCSI drives you have three jumper points marked as ID0, ID1 & ID2 Working on binary code Code: ID0 ID1 ID2 ID Number 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 1 1 0 3 0 0 1 4 1 0 1 5 0 1 1 6 1 1 1 7 0 indicates an open jumper, 1 indicates closed jumper

23 February 2011, 14:22	#19
Kakaboy Amiga life crisis Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Sydney/Australia Age: 54 Posts: 256	OK on my drive I have : J1 pins 1&2 jumpered J2 pins 5&6 jumpered J5 I cannot find ??? I think this is for a different version W/WD drives J4 for my drive sets the ID but nothing is jumpered , can this cause any problems ? Last edited by Kakaboy; 23 February 2011 at 14:28.

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18 February 2011, 14:49	#2
Loedown Precious & fragile things Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Victoria, Australia Posts: 1,946	It may help everyone here if you diagnosis was a little more organised and not so flaky, not an intentional criticism. Chances are that the repairer did repair most of the issues, but do you know if the PSU was recapped for instance, or whether the ROM chip is properly seated?

18 February 2011, 19:31	#3
cosmicfrog The 1 who ribbits Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: leek, Staffs, UK Age: 56 Posts: 3,557	also theres a 30 second delay if KS3.x cant find a working HDD so if your HDD is borked make sure you wait that amount of time for it seem to do something Now in what way is the 3.1 KsRom more flacky than the 2.04KS I`d try another working HDD if there`s one available

19 February 2011, 13:11	#4
Kakaboy Amiga life crisis Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Sydney/Australia Age: 54 Posts: 256	I realised that its not the roms that are flacky , it was the rom switch that the were plugged into . When I insert the roms on their own they boot perfectly . Now im pretty sure the SCSI drive is nackered . The drive spins and the read LED flickers and it sounds like it wants to load but then you get the Software error screen . When I turn the autoboot off the A500 starts fine and when I load WB it sees the 2mb RAm that is in the A590 . But im afraid the drive is stuffed . Im annoyed as it was purchased last year and was the first time I tried it . Shame the SCSI to IDE converters cost so much I would put a CF card in .

19 February 2011, 17:22	#5
cpiac64 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Italy Posts: 1,136	verify the bootblock on the hd with the utility for a590 or with hdtoolbox, i have similar product (rochard) and the hd boot only if formatted from utility made in rochard your hd size? from bigbook The A590 is a hard drive controller which connects to the side expansion slot of the A500(+). It provides both a SCSI controller, and an XT controller. An XT Controller is the very old 8 bit IDE standard (not to be confused with ST506). Whilst it uses the same 40pin IDE cable that modern IDE controllers use, you cannot use modern IDE drives with the XT controller because they are 16 bit. You must use XT hard drives. These were only ever made up to about 80MB in size. The A590 was usually shipped with a 20MB Seagate SCSI drive by default or a 20MB Western Digial XT drive but the drive specifications are printed on the base of the unit. There are several versions of the ROMs for the A590, Version 6 ROMs only allow hard drives up to 512MB in capacity. Version 6.6 and 7.0 ROMs have been reported to work successfully with drive sizes up to 9GB but you will need at least OS3.5 to use drives over 4GB. Notice the names of the LEDs on the unit, named Fred and Wilma.

20 February 2011, 02:38	#6
Kakaboy Amiga life crisis Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Sydney/Australia Age: 54 Posts: 256	The ROMs are upgraded to 7.0 The HDD is a SCSI 2gb The RAM is upgraded to 2mb All the jumpers are set correctly The A500 sees the extra RAM and the HDD spins and does seek for info but doesnt load and crashes . When I use something like Toolbox it tells me the HDD isnt there and to check connections . When I try and prep the drive it says : -1 open drive , and also says to check connections and hardware . Like I said its an old SCSI offcourse and my first time I used it and it only booted once after a few attempts and now it does not boot at all . Thanks for all your input so far , but Im steering towards the SCSI being damaged .

20 February 2011, 14:12	#7
cpiac64 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Italy Posts: 1,136	have close termination scsi?

20 February 2011, 22:13	#9
cpiac64 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Italy Posts: 1,136	sorry, my bad english, the chain scsi need a SCSI terminator and the hd need set number of device

22 February 2011, 15:48	#13
cosmicfrog The 1 who ribbits Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: leek, Staffs, UK Age: 56 Posts: 3,557	so near and yet so far Kakaboy soldering the jumpers dosn`t sound like a good idea to me scsi and ide are completely diffrent when setting the up scsi needs a number in binary for the dvice/HDD, then the bus/cable needs terminating as well good luck

23 February 2011, 02:11	#14
Kakaboy Amiga life crisis Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Sydney/Australia Age: 54 Posts: 256	Yeah I know soldering jumpers is not the done thing but I just wanted to eliminate the jumper connector being the problem . Im not real good with the A590 , I had a guy here in Aust set it up for me who also upgraded the roms and installed WB etc . I dont understand what you mean about terminating the cable ? I assume your talking about the 50 pin cable that connects the A590 to the SCSI ? Also how do I check the number of the drive in binary ? Will it even show up anywhere if its not booting ? Does anyone have a step by step to show me so I can check ? When the drive does boot up I have two partitions of 1gb each . One has the WB installed on it and the other is blank . Thanks Loedown and Cosmicfrog

23 February 2011, 08:37	#15
cpiac64 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2010 Location: Italy Posts: 1,136	_http://computer.yourdictionary.com/scsi

23 February 2011, 13:46	#17
Kakaboy Amiga life crisis Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Sydney/Australia Age: 54 Posts: 256	Here is a site that has my drive and details of various Jumpers . My SCSI is a Seagate Barracuda ST32550N SCSI JUmpers In J4 I have NO jumpers !! and Im not sure where to put one either ? Hey Loedown can you give me a hand with this one please ?

23 February 2011, 14:16	#18
Loedown Precious & fragile things Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Victoria, Australia Posts: 1,946	OK J1 pins 5&6 jumpered active termination J1 pins 1&2 jumpered termination from the drive active J4 sets SCSI device number, leave all jumpers open, makes it SCSI ID 0 J2 pins 5&6 should be open, but may need to be closed for A590 That site is awfully laid out, information is like a dog's breakfast.

23 February 2011, 14:43	#20
Kakaboy Amiga life crisis Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Sydney/Australia Age: 54 Posts: 256	Ok thanks alot Loedown , again you have helped me out I have changed the jumper on J1 from 1&2 to 5&6 . I have rebooted 4 times and its working well .....for now . Im really hoping this was my issue , seems like cpiac64 was on the right track

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