Quantum 2.5" GO! HDD and A1200
George Poltergeist
get it to work with my A1200. I remember reading back in '94 that A1200
and Quantum GO! drives just don't mix, but I've tried to get it to work.
All I'm getting is a "Software Failure" as soon as the A1200 tries to
access the drive while booting. Is there a way I can get it to work?
I've also tried the following trick: I've booted up with the WB 3.1
Install disk by unplugging the power supply of the Hard Disk. Then
plugged the 5V to the HD, waited to spin up and then tried to partition
it. As soon as the Amiga begun scanning the scsi devices, it just
crashed giving another "Software Failure". :-(((
Any ideas?
Bruce Abbott
This is caused by a bug in the drive firmware. Apparently it tries to
configure its parameters according to what the BIOS tells it at bootup,
which sometimes fails (because the Amiga doesn't have a BIOS?). Once
the drive screws up it will cause the Amiga to crash every time, as
scsi.device doesn't like -1 for the number of cylinders! The bad
parameters are held in non-volatile storage in the drive, so even
booting from a floppy directly after power-on is impossible.
You may be able to revive the drive by plugging it into an old peecee
and manually setting the correct parameters into its CMOS. If this
works (you may have to try several peecees to find a compatible BIOS)
then you can put the drive back into your Amiga. Unfortunately it
will fail again sometime later, which is dependant on the exact time
it takes for the Amiga to start accessing the drive after power-on. A
bare A1200 will fail after just a few cold boots, but with a RAM card
it may last a lot longer. Similarly, having an accelarator card may
improve your success rate.
If your A1200 shows the 'insert workbench' screen on bootup, the drive
has probably gone again. At this point you have _one_ chance to revive
the drive, provided that you do NOT reboot! If you do reboot at this
point then the crashing cycle will recur.
As I found this problem was really annoying on my 127MB GO! drive, I
wired a switch into pin 37 of the IDE cable so the drive could be
disabled during bootup. Then I wrote a small program which accesses
the drive directly (not through scsi.device), and resets the drive's
parameters to their correct values. If you want a copy of this program
then email me with your drive's parameters (cylinders, heads, sectors
per track) and I can send you a version assembled for your drive. I
also have included my asm sorce code in case you can do this yourself.
;----------------------------------------------------------
; Force disk geometry parameters into A600/A1200 IDE drive
;----------------------------------------------------------
;
; B.H.Abbott 12-12-93
opt i-
output ram:SetIDE
SECTS = 17
HEADS = 5 ; change to suit your drive
CYLS = 2891
main:
move.w #$4000,$dff09a ; disable interrupts
lea $00da2000,A4 ; address of IDE drive
move.b #SECTS,8(A4) ; sects/trk
move.b #HEADS-1,24(A4) ; numheads-1
move.b #CYLS/256,20(a4) ; cyls (high byte)
move.b #CYLS&255,16(a4) ; cyls (low byte)
move.b #$91,28(A4) ; command = set drive parameters
move.w #$C000,$dff09a ; enable interrupts
moveq #0,d0
rts
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Bruce Abbott http://www.hawkesbay.com/hcw/ bhab...@inhb.co.nz
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