Expert: Gregory Donner - 5/24/2011

Question
QUESTION: Hello again,

This is a follow up to the Hard Drive issue I had a week or so ago... I had purchased (on ebay) 3.1 kickstart roms for the Amiga 3000 and installed them, today I received the 3.1 workbench, install, fonts, floppies ordered from amigakit.com and the hard drive is not detected and most of the selection buttons are not selectable. ( The 3.1 disks were a six disk set.)

Could this mean that the 3.1 kickstart rom I purchased on ebay, which were listed as being for an Amiga 3000, actually aren't and don't have the scsi info on them?

I'm assuming they put the scsi information on the ROM's and it isn't software/floppy driven.


Thanks,

James Ruggles

ANSWER: Hi James,

What do you see if you hold down both mouse buttons when booting up? A screen like the one below should pop up, and if so, Kickstart 3.1 should be installed correctly (though the Kickstart number will likely be something other than 40.063):

http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/images/wb_31k.gif

To my knowledge, the only Amiga that has/had the SCSI info as a file instead of on ROM was the 3.1 Kickstart ROMs for the Amiga 4000T (tower model). The 3000 shouldn't be encountering this problem. Also, what numbers do you see on the Kickstart ROMs installed in your 3000?

The installation link below might provide some help in whether or not they were installed correctly:

http://www.softhut.com/cgi-bin/test/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=tech_resources/

If the ROMs are the right ones and are installed correctly, but the hard drive is still not found, I'm not sure what step to take next--the folks/forums at amiga.org may be able to provide some more suggestions on what to check than I can.

I hope this helps!

Greg

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Greg,

Yeah, I've got all that, the Rom's are in correctly and I'm getting the 40.068 during the workbench "insert disk" screen. If I hold down both mouse buttons during power-up, I eventually get an "Amiga Early Start-up Control" screen for configuring boot devices, display options and expansion board diagnostics.

The thing doesn't seem to be able to detect SCSI devices, not even when I boot up with the 3.1 workbench disks I ordered from Amigakit in the UK. (HDTools doesn't detect it or anything either.) BUT if I put the original 40 Meg HD in as the Master HD and slave the 2.1 Gig seagate SCSI HD, it is detected via the 2.1 WB OS on the old hard drive... I'm assuming because of the 2.1 kickstart image that is stored in the DEV's folder.

So, I'm guessing that the actual 3.1 Roms I got via eBay either weren't really pulled from an Amiga 3000 or that the 3.1's don't have or never had the SCSI component or were never meant for Amiga 3000's... The forums seem to suggest otherwise though. As I've said before, some of the info you find there seems contradictory.

:(

Thanks for the help,

James

ANSWER: Hi James,

I'm not sure what to tell you--since you get the Early Startup Boot Screen, they're the right ROMs--anything else would either fry your Amiga or not bootup at all.

What's odd is the fact that the 40MB hard drive is detected seemingly by the old 2.1 Kickstart image--SCSI could care less about that file, and neither should HDToolbox; the only thing that should matter is that the termination is configured correctly (i.e. the boot drive should be master, second drive should be slave and SCSI chain terminated).

Have you started a new thread about this at the amiga.org forums? I'm pretty sure someone there can figure out why your SCSI system doesn't seem to work in the alternate configuration.

Greg

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Greg,

Thanks... I suppose I will try posting to the boards, skimmed them some this week but nothing really already posted that I could find (yet). There had been one question that had been posted back in '06 or so which was similar but it hadn't been answered.

IDK, getting so frustrated I may just put everything back as it was and pray the old 40 Meg Quantum manufactured in 1988 never dies. :) I have noticed that one of the old games (Powermonger) that had a small factor in my getting the A3000m, (other than the massive wave of nostalgia which hit near the anniversary of commodore's bankruptcy in April), doesn't seem to want to run under the 3.1 Rom's anyway... So it partially defeats the purpose to permanently convert the system right now.

But I did want to figure out how to go about it IF the drive died and I'm left with no other alternative besides just using the floppy drives like a glorified A500 system.

Thanks for your help though,

James

Answer
AmigaOS 2.04 did break a lot of games, but only because numerous game developers were "banging the hardware" directly instead of going through the OS (usually meant faster games, but it came with a price). BTW, I know it's not the same as having a real Amiga "in the flesh" so-to-speak, but have you looked into Amiga Forever (http://www.amigaforever.com/) if you have a fairly fast PC?