kherron@ms.uky.edu (Kenneth Herron) (12/20/89)
Hello, Some time ago I purchased a 2-megabyte memory board (Progressive Peripherals Megaboard 2, "When Quality Counts"). I had to perform the PAL-ground mod (as well as connect a capacitor on the daughterboard with one on the motherboard) to make this board work, but it's been utterly reliable since then. I just bought a Comspec SA1000 scsi controller (I don't have a disk yet, but after hearing about Comspec not stocking A1000 items anymore, I figured I'd better order while the orderin's good). I hooked everything up together (the memory board has no pass-thru so they can only be attached one way) and tried to boot the Amiga. It reads Kickstart fine; the Comspec tries to boot from the non-existant harddrive, and fails, just fine; it asks for, and recognizes, a workbench diskette just fine. But while booting from the workbench disk, the system hangs in the exact same way it used to hang with the memory board, before I grounded the PALs (Ie, it stops dead either on the white screen or just as the initial CLI is started). The system boots properly with just the memory board, or just the Comspec unit, installed (of course with the Comspec installed it tries to boot from the hard disk first). Now, given what I've heard about Comspec, and the history of this memory board, I DON'T think the Comspec is faulty here, unless it has a defective bus pass-thru. I DO think this *MAY* be normal behavior for a Comspec unit with something on the pass-thru and no hard disk, or, more likely, that the PAL ground mod is not sufficient to handle these two devices on the bus. Does anyone know of a way to make the PAL ground "better", or other ways to improve the situation? Any sage advice out there? Are Comspec or Progressive Peripherals on the net? I'd love to talk to either or both companies about this problem... Thanks in advance for any help you can give, Kenneth Herron