Amiga 1200 Problems - Booting/Hard Drives

[anagrama]

Im looking for some help on this, although it seems like a minor issue its got me completely stumped :huh:

So I have an Amiga 1200 with 3.1 roms. This was working fine with a blizzard 1230 a month ago and since then I changed the blizzard for a less powered Amitek Hawk with FPU and 8mb ram.

Anyway I went to setup the system and used an old CF card with workbench 3.1 and it wont boot. I tried it without the amitek and it still wont boot. So I try a CF card with workbench 3.9 and it wont boot either with or without the amitek in.

Another strange thing is that with the amitek and the CF card not installed it takes a little while to get the disk loading screen, which seems unusual.

I also tried a 2.5" hard drive I have and that wont work either but you can here the drive spinning.

Any ideas?

 

[johnim]

hi have you checked for and pins damaged on ide port or cf adapter

which cf adapter do you use

also what cfs are you using, is any that you used with blizzy

can you check them with winuae

 

[anagrama]

Hi John

All of the pins look fine, the CF adapter is a generic one which ive been using for ages without problems (have also tried another adapter).

The CF cards were working fine the other week. I sold my blizzard (needed some money) and got an Amitek to use until I got another blizzard.

I just timed boot up, from switching on the power pack to when the disk loading screen appears and it took 39 seconds. Thats without the amitek or hard drive installed. To me that doesnt seem right, its usually quicker than 39 seconds.

 

[johnim]

hi again i have just been looking on eab as i remembered

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=64122&page=3

are your 3.1 roms origional

3.1 are ment to wait longer to check for drives

do you have 3.0 roms to try

 

[anagrama]

The roms are MX J9547 's - Not sure if they are original or not.

Maybe it is the case of it taking longer to look for drives. Its been a while since ive used it without a hard drive so that would make sense.

Im still stumped as to why it wont boot any of the hard drives though. Its also being a bit temperamental. Drive light comes on then boot again and it wont. Switched on with CF card installed it sometimes wont get a signal on the TV etc. Ive switched it on and off about 100 times now so these things are probably common.

I do have some 3.0 roms but the bulk of Amiga gear is in storage at the moment so ill probably never be able to find them (theres about 30+ big boxes full of the stuff!).

 

[johnim]

does the ram show fully booted from floppy and what is the jumper for

 

[anagrama]

Not sure which jumper you mean.

Cant do anything with the floppy as there isnt one icard

I dont use a floppy drive on this Amiga im afraid.

When both mouse buttons are clicked it says the Amitek is working, so thats something I guess.

 

[johnim]

looking here says somthing about fblit

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=818330&postcount=7

do you have 4mb ram to try

why no floppy? got an external

can you try ram board in another miggy

 

[anagrama]

Ive got some more ram kicking about ill try that. No more Amigas im afraid or externals, its all in storage.

It should be booting the hard drives though, even 3.9 should work without a ram card shouldnt it? Granted it might not work very well, but it should boot?

 

[BLTCON0]

@anagrama
MX ROMs are genuine.
OS 3.9 requires 4 MB of Fast RAM minimum, but surely the boot process ought to begin regardless.
As for the drive, you can use a standard PC drive without modification if you hack the cable a bit (use the segment without the twist):
Swap wires 2 and 34
Swap wires 10 and 12
This will give you a fully working drive, only missing DISK READY which isn't used by Amiga OS anyway.

 

[anagrama]

OK gonna try and swap around some ram sticks before trying 3.9 again. Maybe this is problem. I just presumed that as I bought it working and double click stated card was working it was ok.

Will let you know what happens

 

[Ed.D]

Without a floppy drive installed the bootup will take longer unless you have some kind of floppy drive terminator.

Could your HDD/CF card issue be an IDE cable problem?

 

[anagrama]

Found the problem.

As it stands my Amiga wont boot a hard drive, but if I click both mouse buttons and go into the options DFO is set as enabled. If I disable and boot it loads the CF card. The problem is that it wont save it as disabled so I have to do this every time I want it to boot the CF card.

Any ideas on how to get around this?

 

[BLTCON0]

The A1200 has no NVRAM to store the early startup menu settings.
Perhaps you can change the CF boot partition's priority via HDToolbox so it takes precedence over the floppy. IIRC floppy is 5 (don't know if it's fixed or flexible) so set the CF boot partition to something higher.
A floppy terminator would help, too.
Or even better a real floppy if you have nothing occupying that space (see my previous post for a cheap solution).

 

[anagrama]

Ill give it a try later

Would a PC drive fit ok? Ive been meaning to get an original but if a PC drive will fit and work ok ill give one of them a go.

 

[BLTCON0]

Yes, it will fit, they use the same form factor. Some minor adjustments are required for the A1200's top cover to properly close.
Some Escom made A1200s came with PC drives. I don't know if those A1200 motherboards had been modified to directly accept PC drives, but if so, the cable modification wouldn't apply.