Frustrating Booting Problems - Solved

ZeroG (+Rogue) and all.
Thanks your process as outlined in your post worked a treat. Works great.

Cheers
ace


Recently I have been experiencing some strange booting problems. First off I use a KVM but have never had these issues before using it.

1. Often my SAM Flex will boot, show the Amiga startup picture and immediately jump into a shell with Workbench:> Soft resets result in this 9 out of 1`0 times.

2. Other times my workbench will appear but no Dock or any of the startup programs as selected in prefs. the drive icons will not open either.

To try and fix this I disabled my startup items one by one, then all of them. I have also checked the Startup-Sequence and user-startup but there is nothing unusual to be found.

I have been using my KVM for sometime now but these problems have just appeared. Any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks
ace


SAM Flex 800 Radeon 9250/128

@acefnq

It's probably not the KVM, but have you tried booting without it attached? Even without a keyboard and mouse attached you should still get a normal boot. Do you have a CD in the drive? Some sort of bootable USB drive which is messing with your boot sequence? Can you boot reliably from the OS4 CD?

@acefnq Quote:
If your KVM is anything like my KVM, then the KVM most likely has an odd USB keyboard (or mouse) implementation, and often makes OS4 think that one of the keys (I think Shift or Ctrl?) is held down - causing it to boot without any startup-sequence (emergency mode).

I fixed this by changing some of the Kickstart modules, so it stopped using the basic (boot) USB keyboard modules, and instead used the full-blown ones. Have a search for my thread(s) about it, but as I recall it was ZeroG who actually posted how to do what I found worked.

(edit: I never made a mistake, never!)

Hi @acefnq

I have been using my KVM for sometime now but these problems have just appeared. Any thoughts or ideas?
You two faced hypocrite !

I've noticed that if the A1-XE is running and using KVM, if I boot a PC all the video presets are maxed in the PC; frequently the USB mouse isn't recognized. It appears KVM goes through it's own internal default video switch mode. It probably doesn't recognize the A1's signals.
IF a PC is running and the A1-XE is booted-up, it works fine; of course, it totally oblivious to the PC!

Don't know SAM Flex. If were to speculate the problem area, it would be SAM's UBoot IO. Anyway to work without USB IO? That might give a clue.

@ChrisH
Quote:
Yes, it was someone with "Zero" in his name...

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/v ... _id=27541&forum=32#466559

However, the idea itself comes from Rogue.

@acefnq

Usually, in a case like this, we assume that the problem is with the "amiga" system. Is it possible that something has changed with whatever other machine is hooked up to your KVM switch?

For example, my KVM switch uses PS/2 connections for mouse and keyboard. I share mouse, keyboard and monitor with my MicroA1 and a pc. It worked just fine with our old HP pavilion pc, but recently we hooked up a different pc in place of the HP. Sometimes on bootup, the new pc does not see the mouse. It is a Logitech optical mouse with USB/PS/2 compatibility with a green USB/PS/2 adaptor. If we move the mouse to a USB connector on the pc then it works just fine with the pc with the keyboard and monitor still hooked up to the KVM switch.

I haven't experimented much to see how often it occurs or to figure out what causes the problem. I can run both MicroA1 and pc at the same time, flipping back and forth between them. I usually boot up the MicroA1 first. My wife sees the problem when she is using the pc alone. Both machines are usually powered off when not in use. She uses Windows programs not amiga stuff, so she does not power up the MicroA1.

---
redfox

@ZeroG

Thanks I figured it was actually you but still couldn't locate the link last night. I'll give it a look now.

@all
Thanks for the hints and tips it has given me some things to think about. Will advise how I go.

cheers
ace