Hi All,
I thought I would share my adventure installing a GVP (GeForce) A4000DT 060 accelerator in an A4000T to help anybody else out that wants to go down this path. My A4000T storage consists of a SCSI HDD and has a SCSI CD-ROM fitted as well as a SCSI compact flash card/SD card bay.
When the DT board arrived, I thought I would see if I could install it without needing to blow away my original WB 3.9 install, so I lifted out my factory standard 040 board, changed the motherboard jumpers and slotted the DT in place. I turned the machine back on, the screen went green (good sign) but then the machine continued to reset as the SCSI HDD was being accessed. At this stage, the SCSI devices were being run from the A4000T’s on-board SCSI module.
Now on to plan B, I still didn’t want to risk blowing away my original install, so I thought, OK, I’ll just use a different blank HDD so I connected up a known working spare but this time, the machine just hung at a black screen before getting to the Kickstart screen.
Now on to plan C, maybe the DT doesn’t like onboard SCSI, so I connected everything up the DT’s SCSI connector and turned the machine back on and presto, the kickstart screen, so I thought I was getting somewhere. I put in a WB 3.1 install disk, the drive accessed the disk for a few seconds then nothing. OK, I then tried the WB 3.1 system disk and I managed to get into workbench (interestingly, only one out of every three attempts to boot were successful. On the other occasions, the floppy disk access started briefly then stopped and the machine became unresponsive). I then put the DT driver disk in and started the HDD drive setup utilities, but the utilities would not see my drive, it saw the CD-ROM and compact flash bay, but not the HDD. On some occasions it would see the drive but report its size as zero (all drives were 4 GB or less in size and were 50 pin SCSI devices).
Now on to plan D, I tried five different known working 50 pin SCSI drives, the drive prep utility would not see any of them. Some of the blank drives (correctly terminated) even prevented the computer from booting to the kickstart screen.
Now on to plan E, the drive prep utilities can see the compact flash card slot, so I’ll install an OS onto that, so back to the workbench floppy, prep the compact flash card formatted FFS, which formatted with no errors and then went through a full WB 3.1 install onto the card. The install finished with no errors and then I rebooted the machine. During boot, WB reported “bad block” errors everywhere so I thought, maybe the compact flash card is bad. I went through the entire process with a different card, same errors. Just for good measure, I tried with a third card and again the same errors.
Now on to plan F, I’ll use an SD card this time went through the entire process and again, bad block errors reported again.
Now on to plan G, I know my original SCSI works in the machine so, I removed the DT, put back the 040 booted into WB 3.9, and installed the 060 libraries and SCSI drivers onto my original drive. I didn’t want to change this install but I was running out of ideas. I then put the 060 DT back in the machine, left the SCSI connector on the internal SCSI module (wishfully thinking that now that I had the correct 060 libs, the machine would boot) but no joy, the machine hung with the HDD light continually illuminated (different from the original rebooting problem). Rebooted numerous times and waited a long time, but no joy.
Now on to plan H, I put the SCSI chain back onto the DT and the machine this time booted, but reported SCSI device errors with the CacheCDFS application. I tried to fix this error by removing and reconfiguring CacheCDFS and trying to change mountlists but I could not eradicate them all so I bit the bullet and realised an OS reinstall was inevitable.
Now on to plan I, I booted back to the floppy system disk, put the install disk into DF1 and reinstalled onto the SCSI HDD after reformatting the drive. The machine booted fine, no SCSI errors but I was having issues with the CD. I configured the gvpscsi2.device and ID number to match that of the CD and it “sort of” worked. I could put a CD in the drive, but I could not eject it until I rebooted the machine, the eject button was simply non-responsive until reboot. “It doesn’t matter” I thought because I’m just going to throw WB 3.9 on anyway, so I put the WB 3.9 CD in the drive and commenced my install. During install I got periodic error messages about bad blocks, but I continued anyway (no issues were reported by WB 3.1 during that install). The install finished and I rebooted, only to find that half the OS was missing, none of the preference icons worked and some libs were missing (the icon graphics were also still old WB 3.1 icons).
Now on to plan J, back to the drawing board, reformatted the drive and went back to WB 3.1 floppy. This time, I did a full format (rather than quick) of the drive, no errors reported. I reinstalled WB 3.1, no errors reported and the machine booted fine. Reinstalled the GVP 060 libs, again no errors and all was working fine. Back to the to the WB 3.9 install and this time I only got one bad block error at the very end of the install and the install seemed to work perfectly. I rebooted the machine and found the CacheCDFS was still having problems. It could find the CD but told me that the file system was incompatible (this is a CD I have used “forever” containing tools that worked perfectly on all previous WB installs). Also, the CD-ROM eject button issue was still there. I could also read the CD, but all the filenames were truncated.
Now on to plan J, seeing as I had a semi-working WB install (apart from the CD) I wanted to kick on and try to get it working. I installed CGX 4 for my Spectrum to give me some screen real estate, except I could not get the configuration screen to work. OK, let’s get BB1 and BB2 installed, so I installed them both rebooted and finally, I have a working OS, CGX4 now works, a working CD, no bad block errors and all seems to be working fine (for now!). All I needed to do now was get it back together. To put the icing on the cake, my floppy drive bay wouldn’t go back in with the SCSI ribbon cable plugged into the DT card. So, out came the floppy bay again and I had to chop out a small rectangular “slot” so the cable had enough room to sit in the connector.
So, for A4000T owners contemplating an 060 A4000DT card remember the following:
1. Don’t use the internal SCSI module in the A4000T, use the one on the accelerator card.
2. Have a working OS installed and ready to go before you install the card because you need a drive formatted, I couldn’t get any non-formatted drives to be recognised by the GVP drive prep utilities).
3. Have a separate partition on your prepped drive containing BB1 and BB2 and any other patches because you’ll need these to get it all running stably, including getting your CD-ROM running (just in case you can’t get external media devices working).
4. Have patience.
All up, this “little upgrade” took me 12 hours of troubleshooting and swearing and I almost gave up at many points. Now I have my DENEB up and running with Internet access and the speed difference compared to the 040 is very noticeable.
My A4000T is now configured with 2 MB chip RAM, 16 MB Fast RAM on the motherboard, a 128 MB ZorRAM module, 128 MB on the accelerator card, DENEB USB card, Spectrum EGS 24/28 RTG card and an Arxon scandoubler. It all seems to be working well together but only time will tell.
Hopefully this post helps somebody else going down the same path.
Cheers
Mark
I thought I would share my adventure installing a GVP (GeForce) A4000DT 060 accelerator in an A4000T to help anybody else out that wants to go down this path. My A4000T storage consists of a SCSI HDD and has a SCSI CD-ROM fitted as well as a SCSI compact flash card/SD card bay.
When the DT board arrived, I thought I would see if I could install it without needing to blow away my original WB 3.9 install, so I lifted out my factory standard 040 board, changed the motherboard jumpers and slotted the DT in place. I turned the machine back on, the screen went green (good sign) but then the machine continued to reset as the SCSI HDD was being accessed. At this stage, the SCSI devices were being run from the A4000T’s on-board SCSI module.
Now on to plan B, I still didn’t want to risk blowing away my original install, so I thought, OK, I’ll just use a different blank HDD so I connected up a known working spare but this time, the machine just hung at a black screen before getting to the Kickstart screen.
Now on to plan C, maybe the DT doesn’t like onboard SCSI, so I connected everything up the DT’s SCSI connector and turned the machine back on and presto, the kickstart screen, so I thought I was getting somewhere. I put in a WB 3.1 install disk, the drive accessed the disk for a few seconds then nothing. OK, I then tried the WB 3.1 system disk and I managed to get into workbench (interestingly, only one out of every three attempts to boot were successful. On the other occasions, the floppy disk access started briefly then stopped and the machine became unresponsive). I then put the DT driver disk in and started the HDD drive setup utilities, but the utilities would not see my drive, it saw the CD-ROM and compact flash bay, but not the HDD. On some occasions it would see the drive but report its size as zero (all drives were 4 GB or less in size and were 50 pin SCSI devices).
Now on to plan D, I tried five different known working 50 pin SCSI drives, the drive prep utility would not see any of them. Some of the blank drives (correctly terminated) even prevented the computer from booting to the kickstart screen.
Now on to plan E, the drive prep utilities can see the compact flash card slot, so I’ll install an OS onto that, so back to the workbench floppy, prep the compact flash card formatted FFS, which formatted with no errors and then went through a full WB 3.1 install onto the card. The install finished with no errors and then I rebooted the machine. During boot, WB reported “bad block” errors everywhere so I thought, maybe the compact flash card is bad. I went through the entire process with a different card, same errors. Just for good measure, I tried with a third card and again the same errors.
Now on to plan F, I’ll use an SD card this time went through the entire process and again, bad block errors reported again.
Now on to plan G, I know my original SCSI works in the machine so, I removed the DT, put back the 040 booted into WB 3.9, and installed the 060 libraries and SCSI drivers onto my original drive. I didn’t want to change this install but I was running out of ideas. I then put the 060 DT back in the machine, left the SCSI connector on the internal SCSI module (wishfully thinking that now that I had the correct 060 libs, the machine would boot) but no joy, the machine hung with the HDD light continually illuminated (different from the original rebooting problem). Rebooted numerous times and waited a long time, but no joy.
Now on to plan H, I put the SCSI chain back onto the DT and the machine this time booted, but reported SCSI device errors with the CacheCDFS application. I tried to fix this error by removing and reconfiguring CacheCDFS and trying to change mountlists but I could not eradicate them all so I bit the bullet and realised an OS reinstall was inevitable.
Now on to plan I, I booted back to the floppy system disk, put the install disk into DF1 and reinstalled onto the SCSI HDD after reformatting the drive. The machine booted fine, no SCSI errors but I was having issues with the CD. I configured the gvpscsi2.device and ID number to match that of the CD and it “sort of” worked. I could put a CD in the drive, but I could not eject it until I rebooted the machine, the eject button was simply non-responsive until reboot. “It doesn’t matter” I thought because I’m just going to throw WB 3.9 on anyway, so I put the WB 3.9 CD in the drive and commenced my install. During install I got periodic error messages about bad blocks, but I continued anyway (no issues were reported by WB 3.1 during that install). The install finished and I rebooted, only to find that half the OS was missing, none of the preference icons worked and some libs were missing (the icon graphics were also still old WB 3.1 icons).
Now on to plan J, back to the drawing board, reformatted the drive and went back to WB 3.1 floppy. This time, I did a full format (rather than quick) of the drive, no errors reported. I reinstalled WB 3.1, no errors reported and the machine booted fine. Reinstalled the GVP 060 libs, again no errors and all was working fine. Back to the to the WB 3.9 install and this time I only got one bad block error at the very end of the install and the install seemed to work perfectly. I rebooted the machine and found the CacheCDFS was still having problems. It could find the CD but told me that the file system was incompatible (this is a CD I have used “forever” containing tools that worked perfectly on all previous WB installs). Also, the CD-ROM eject button issue was still there. I could also read the CD, but all the filenames were truncated.
Now on to plan J, seeing as I had a semi-working WB install (apart from the CD) I wanted to kick on and try to get it working. I installed CGX 4 for my Spectrum to give me some screen real estate, except I could not get the configuration screen to work. OK, let’s get BB1 and BB2 installed, so I installed them both rebooted and finally, I have a working OS, CGX4 now works, a working CD, no bad block errors and all seems to be working fine (for now!). All I needed to do now was get it back together. To put the icing on the cake, my floppy drive bay wouldn’t go back in with the SCSI ribbon cable plugged into the DT card. So, out came the floppy bay again and I had to chop out a small rectangular “slot” so the cable had enough room to sit in the connector.
So, for A4000T owners contemplating an 060 A4000DT card remember the following:
1. Don’t use the internal SCSI module in the A4000T, use the one on the accelerator card.
2. Have a working OS installed and ready to go before you install the card because you need a drive formatted, I couldn’t get any non-formatted drives to be recognised by the GVP drive prep utilities).
3. Have a separate partition on your prepped drive containing BB1 and BB2 and any other patches because you’ll need these to get it all running stably, including getting your CD-ROM running (just in case you can’t get external media devices working).
4. Have patience.
All up, this “little upgrade” took me 12 hours of troubleshooting and swearing and I almost gave up at many points. Now I have my DENEB up and running with Internet access and the speed difference compared to the 040 is very noticeable.
My A4000T is now configured with 2 MB chip RAM, 16 MB Fast RAM on the motherboard, a 128 MB ZorRAM module, 128 MB on the accelerator card, DENEB USB card, Spectrum EGS 24/28 RTG card and an Arxon scandoubler. It all seems to be working well together but only time will tell.
Hopefully this post helps somebody else going down the same path.
Cheers
Mark
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