Expert: Gregory Donner - 10/17/2007

Question
QUESTION: I used to have an Amiga 500 years ago. I have a video program on it call Pro Video Gold that I used for graphics. Well the Amiga died and I just kinda tucked it away for a rainy day. Well about 6 years later now, I decided to get the Amiga out and tinker with it. I purchased an amiga off ebay and it works great. I can put a disk in the drive and get it to boot up from the floppy. But, I know my video program is on the external hard drive. When I plug the A590 into the slot and turn the computer on the hard drive spins but the computer wants to boot from the floppy. How do I get the computer to look at the external drive to load instead? Do I need a kickstart chip or something? Please take me through this step by step. It's been ages and someone else set it up for me back then, so I don't know how to do it. Thanks inadvance.

ANSWER: Hi Larry,

Without looking at it personally, it's hard to tell, but there could be one of many reasons why the drive is not booting:

1) The A500 it's plugged into does not have Kickstart 1.3 installed

2) The hard drive may not have Workbench installed on it (in which case you'd need to boot from floppy and install Workbench on the hard drive) by dragging and dropping the Workbench disk icon onto the hard drive.

3) The hard drive could be malfunctioning (not uncommon after nearly 20 years of existence)

These are the top three things I would check and try in order as listed. In addition, there's a web page that details more information about the A590 (DIP switch settings, and more):

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=534

Also, it's been more than 15 years since I've used one of these units, but you may need to run a program called "HDTools" or "HDToolBox" on the Amiga Extras disk in order to setup the A590 for the first time (but again, I'm going from ancient memory here). :-/

I hope this helps!

Greg

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

QUESTION: Thanks for your reply greg. I have the Amiga Workbench disk and I can get it to the dos page, but I don't know what to do from there. What do I need to do to boot up to the workbench inorder to drop the workbench onto the drive?

Would there be a kickstart chip inside the computer I bought? Do the Amigas normally come with them?

I don't have a kick start disc if that's the case.

I have and Amiga Extra disc but when I pit that in it attempts to boot but goes right back to the amiga screen.

If I flip dip switch 1 on the external drive it and turn the computer on the power light on the amiga just flashes.

If I turn all dip swtiches off and I hit ctrl, closed apple open apple the hard disk light on the external unit turns on green and then goes off and the amiga still looks for the floppy drive to boot.

Answer
Hi Larry,

When you say "DOS page", do you mean the Workbench screen or the text-only Command Line Interface (CLI)? If you're unable to boot into Workbench from the Workbench disk, you likely have more serious problems with your machine. What number appears toward the right side of the hand when it asks for the Workbench disk to boot from? Is it "V1.2" or "V1.3"?

Yes, all Amigas come with a Kickstart chip--or chips--depending on the model (later models require multiple ROM chips). You cannot boot from the Extras disc, as it is not intended for that purpose--its only use is for holding extra applications that wouldn't fit on the Workbench disk. The only Amiga models that require Kickstart disks are the Amiga 1000 and early Amiga 3000's.

I hope this helps,

Greg