A1 won't boot from HD or CDRom?

Logging in via my OS4 Classic - hmmm... back from the past? err... anyway

just recently (since I like to tweak too much) after swapping drives around (3 HD and 1 DVDRW) the boot drive will not load OS4 WB...

I tried all manner of things but after loading in the KS etc instead of resetting and loading up WB I get the OS4 Kernel sceen and floppy entering diskdrive (I do not have a floppy drive connected so can't explore that avenue)

Thinking perhaps I'd somehow invalidated the boot priority or even boot settings I attached it to this classic to examine it... It was fine in all ways... I even soft reset and selected it to boot under the classic OS4 KS and no worries...

I then got suspicious of the A1 machine and set it up so it loaded from CDRom... found CDRom fine, loaded in A1 KS from there and then promptly went into the disk requesting screen...

SOOoooooo...

what on earth would create this problem?

I have an XE 800mhz 512meg A1

thanks for any ideas or solutions :)

@Slayer

Quote:

Could you be more specific about what the order was before and in which order the drives are now.

I don't know if this applies to OS4, too, but a common problem with HDD controllers on OS3 was the "last disk" flag in the RDB. So if you moved your boot HDD behind one HDD with that flag on, then the boot HDD is no longer recognised.

For example:

peviously:

primary master - HDD1 (bootable)
primary slave - HDD2 (not bootable)
secondary master - HDD3 (not bootable, "last HDD")
secondary slave - DVD

now:

primary master - HDD3 (not bootable, "last HDD")
primary slave - HDD1 (bootable)
secondary ...

as you can see, HDD3 "hides" HDD1. You have to reset the "last HDD" flag on HDD3 to see HDD1.

Bye,
Thomas

@Slayer

Verify master-slave location on the ide cables: master on the edge connector, slave in the middle of the cable.
And check if uboot settings has any explicit values that define the expected device types of connected devices.

Jack

@Slayer

You should reset UBOOT to factory defaults.

I think it might have some thing to do whit how you defined the devices connected to your ATA controller.
It is for example possible to disable devices connected to secondary ATA channel, or force unit 3 to become a CDROM, and UNIT 2 as HD, if the CDROM is connected to UNIT number that UBOOT think is a HD, then it will not work, if the HD is connected to UNIT that UBOOT thinks is CDROM, your Amiga will not boot, if every thing is configured as AUTO, every thing should work again.

@Slayer
I know it is simple but did you change the jumper settings on your drives from master to slave and vice versa?
As with my work, always check basics first.

@All

I must be missing something here... I fully understand the master/slave relationship and even tried the cable select (although probably not used by A1?)

I mean, how can the cpu recognise the bootable harddrive to load the kickstart in in the first place and then not proceed onward to load the WorkBench after the reset in OS4?

To further elaborate, I arranged the drives in the exact order I had before the problems arose and no change... I've tried the bootable drive alone in primary port on master connection and drive set to master only...

It boots up fine as far as loading in the kickstart but almost immediately it resets into the disk animation screen... I tried booting off the CDRom and exactly the same thing...

I'll have another play at some stage...

btw, I do not use the builtin ide ports but the sii0680ide.device...

thanks

@Slayer

UBOOT reset to defaults!
and check media toolbox bootable option and boot priorities.

That seems to have got me back in the picture... was sure I tried resetting the defaults... perhaps after I did I didn't select a save option...

nonetheless... something in uboot prefs I altered later on caused the same problem... weird...

must track it down... thanks to all for your input :D

@Slayer

Quote:Maybe U-Boot ignores the last disk flag in the RDB.

Quote:Which OS4 CD? sii0680ide.device wasn't included on the first CDs, if you use an old OS4 CD it probably doesn't have the SII0680 driver yet.

Hi @Slayer

nonetheless... something in uboot prefs I altered later on caused the same problem... weird...
One problem I found from going from UD4 to final was Uboot IDE settings. OS4 Final did not like my "automatic" settings, but real device names. Changed that and I booted-up fine. I have no idea why, except maybe the CD and DVD drives were truly dumb!

Just to elaborate-it now seems I can not alter and save anything in uboot preferences otherwise after I reset I get the dreaded insert disk screen again and then need to reset back to default,,,

this is somewhat annoying because I like to set the udma for my devices...

I created a script that enables the settings for example:

idetool -x sii0680ide.device 0 68
idetool -x sii0680ide.device 1 68
idetool -x sii0680ide.device 2 68
idetool -x sii0680ide.device 3 68

but it usually crashes the system or gives me an elf library error when I try to execute various applications... shell, notepad seem okay but not fryingpan, ibrowse etc

I've tried as a work around to do it via uboot shell... it doesn't seem to work unless idetool can't detect it?

I don't know what has now happened to my A1 to cause such a problem... I've never had this problem before and changed and saved via uboot prefs many many times without a hitch...

any thoughts? I have researched the above and provided the correct syntax for setenv and saveenv etc etc etc... so what I am looking for now is some kind of exact information/suggestion? lol

thanks for your thoughts!

btw, what is the latest available idetool command?

@Slayer

There are 2 uboot variables that may be causing the problem, sii0680ide_conf which defines the drives connection order & sii0680ide_xfer which is the udma settings for the drives. Since you moved the drive order, those 2 variables could be set wrong. Re-define them if you know the correct setting or delete them & let the system sort it out.

@sundown

thanks for the suggestions but I've overwritten those two variables many times during this situation lol

ie every time I removed or shifted harddrives dvd units I changed the settings to actual devices or automatic

I will enter uboot shell and delete these 2 settings and try again then...

why aren't the settings defined in uboot shell valid?

excuse me while I hit my head on the wall ;)

@Slayer

You could open a shell & type,

nvgetvar >ram:uboot.txt

Paste the output text here so we at least know what your uboot settings are.

@sundown

bootcmd=menu; run menuboot_cmd
bootdelay=0
baudrate=115200
preboot=
stdout=vga
stdin=ps2kbd
ide_doreset=on
ide_cd_timeout=30
menucmd=menu
bootmethod=boota
video_num=1
ethact=3Com 3c920c#0
ethaddr=00:09:D2:11:03:3D
video_activate=agp
serial1_address=3f8
serial2_address=2f8
parallel_mode=0
parallel_address=378
usb0_enable=on
usb1_enable=off
usb_use_header=0
ide_maxbus=0
ide_swap=0
boot1=psiicdrom
boot2=psii
boot3=
boot_config=AmigaOS4.0
boota_timeout=3
boot_method=boota
menuboot_delay=3
os4_commandline=debuglevel=0
bootargs=root=/dev/ram rw ramdisk=4096
pci_irqa=9
pci_irqa_select=level
pci_irqb=10
pci_irqb_select=level
pci_irqc=11
pci_irqc_select=level
pci_irqd=7
pci_irqd_select=level
agp_enable=on
agp_sideband=on
agp_speed=2x
limit_memory=512
a1ide_maxbus=0
sii3112ide_maxbus=0
sii3114ide_maxbus=0

I discovered something... as long as I don't touch the udma settings for sii0680ide device section (can't remember if this also applies to changing both to primary) then there isn't any problem with getting back to a WB screen after a cold reset...

I started adding a udma setting to the dvdrom and that reset fine...(didn't try to use it however after this) but as I set another and then another excluding the boot drive those harddrives were no long available after a reset... bloody weird... they showed in mediabox but no icon for one and the other, which I mount manually with
sys:system/mounter device=sii0680ide.device unit=3
complained there was no longer any rigidblock etc...

finally when I add udma to the boot drive the dreaded disk insert screen comes up...

one interesting thing to remark on... if I hold down the mouse buttons after with disk screen it displays one device I can boot off and that is the dvdrom... just not bootable since I don't have a bootable cd/dvd in there I guess... I changed the boot listing around so sii disk was first but still the cd/dvd appears to boot only

this is very odd I reckon... lol

help ;)

@Slayer

Quote:

Just curious: is you dvd drive capable of this speed?
(idetool -l sii0680ide.device, it'll print all the needed info, incl max supoerted speed and current settings)
Imho, the hds (at lteast on the antique ones) should be capable of mode 70, dvd probably at most at mode 66.

Jack

@Jack

yip...

during these trying times I've had it set at 67 and 66... which had no bearing on things...

one thing I did discover is... if I start fryingpan then implement putting dvdrw into 68 via shell command the resulting mp4 movies are corrupted... every single one... oh they play but artifacting throughout

I just tested setting it via uboot prefs (even though the potential speed increase doesn't matter since the source is limited to Pio mode) I have to reset to have the dvd load onto wb screen but the data is fine...

-------------------Unit 0 information------------------------
Flags : $00000185 - present, supports DMA, ATA, supports cache flush, interrupts used,
Xfer mode : best pio 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s) / best dma 69 (UDMA 5, 100 MB/s) / current 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s)
Total blocks : 78165360
Blocksize : 512
Power mode : 2 / idle (ready for operation)
IO1 / IO2 / BMCR @ : $802400 / $80240A / $802420
-------------------Unit 1 information------------------------
Flags : $0000011D - present, supports DMA, removable media, ATAPI, interrupts used,
Xfer mode : best pio 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s) / best dma 68 (UDMA 4, 66 MB/s) / current 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s)
Total blocks : 0
Blocksize : 2048
SCSI devtyp : 5
Packet size : 12
Current medium read speed : x 65535 ('65535' stands for max.)
Current medium write speed : x 65535 (idem)
Power mode : 2 / idle (ready for operation)
IO1 / IO2 / BMCR @ : $802400 / $80240A / $802420
-------------------Unit 2 information------------------------
Flags : $000001A5 - present, supports DMA, ATA, supports acoustic mgmt, supports cache flush, interrupts used,
Xfer mode : best pio 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s) / best dma 70 (UDMA 6, 133 MB/s) / current 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s)
Total blocks : 120103200
Blocksize : 512
Power mode : 2 / idle (ready for operation)
IO1 / IO2 / BMCR @ : $802410 / $80241A / $802428
-------------------Unit 3 information------------------------
Flags : $00000185 - present, supports DMA, ATA, supports cache flush, interrupts used,
Xfer mode : best pio 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s) / best dma 69 (UDMA 5, 100 MB/s) / current 12 (PIO 4, 16 MB/s)
Total blocks : 234441648
Blocksize : 512
Power mode : 2 / idle (ready for operation)
IO1 / IO2 / BMCR @ : $802410 / $80241A / $802428

unit 0

40g seagate

unit 1

Lite on DVDRW

unit 2

60g Maxtor

unit 3

120g Western Digital

since I started having problems I was limiting the speed of set udmas to 4 2 4 4... has no bearing on the dreaded disk insert screen :p

@Slayer

I don't have a sil0680 card, but according to the docs, the following uboot settings might help.

setenv sii0680ide_conf 1211 <--drive configuration
setenv sii0680ide_maxbus 2 <--use both ports
setenv sii0680ide_irq 1111 <--irq setting
setenv sii0680ide_xfer FEGF <--UDMA setting
saveenv

Hit return after each line.

You can open a shell after & use the nvgetvar command to verify they have been set & saved. You might want to hold off on the UDMA setting until your system is booting right.

thanks sundown... I neglected to check if they had been set however... duh :) but I don't think it's a problem with saving settings... I'm starting to think maybe I should just replace the boot drive... maybe there is a incompatiability that has just surfaced? darn if I know...

thanks everyone for there input and help... I will carry on and see what gives...

give us new hardware in the meantime ;)