dtiberio@eeserv1.ic.sunysb.edu (David Tiberio) (04/09/91)
I accidentally destroyed an earlier file, so here goes.
The joint info: a2000 or a500.
1) Do not tread across any rugs unless you enjoy severe static shocks.
2) Touch something metal before you begin, and even while you are working.
Optimally, you would want to have an anti-static wristband.
3) Do not drink or eat while performing this installation.
4) Do not lose any screws.
I have never opened the a2000 here, so I can only say what comes to mind.
First off, disconnect the power supply and then do whatever else you normally
do to open the case. Find an empty drive bay or area in the expansion bay
to mount the hard drive. However, the hard drive is the last thing that you
will mount. It is a good idea just to make sure that it will fit somewhere
before you do any drilling. Also, find the Motarola 68000. It is probably
under the drive bay. It will be the longets chip there, and wider than the majority of the other chips (but not
the square chip). Using a small flat screwdriver (or a 68000 chip puller),
gently pry the 68000 on one end, but do not raise it very high. Alternate
sides until the chip is removed, and be careful not to bend any pins or
whatever. Note the way that the 68000 goes into the socket and set it aside
in a safe place. Even better, just plug it into your IDE controller right
away! First place one of the two rows in the socket, then gently squeeze the
other side until each pin is aligned. Then push the sucker in. If it looks
like some of the pins will bend, then stop. If any of the pins bend, bend
them back or call some place that sells 68000 and be prepared to cough up
another $5 or so. Next, plug in the IDE controller so that the Motorola is
facing properly. In an a500, the interface hangs towards the center of the
a500. You may have to bend a capacitor or something if it is in the way (I
had to). If you have Kickstart 1.2, move the jumper to the other position.
Next, decide whether you will be using an LED for drive access, and drill a
hole in your Amiga case or stick it somewhere where you can see it. Plug the
LED into the LED pins on the AdIDE.
Plug in the interface so that the red stripe is facing the 1.2/1.3 jumper.
Obviously, if this doesn't work, plug it in the other way! Connect it to the
IDE drive, so that the red stripe faces the center of the drive (or however
you get it to work). If you have a 40 pin drive and AdIDE 40, plug in a 4
prong power cable as found within an a2000 or an expansion box (if anyone
knows of any expansion boxes, please tell me). If you have an AdIDE 44 and a
40 pin drive, call ICD and ask for a custom cable, or try Computer Shopper.
If you have AdIDE 44 and a 44 pin drive, where did you get the 44 pin drive?!
I want one! Well, anyway, you probably also have the little heat shield
with the tripod plastic feet. Sit it somewhere and mount the drive. If you
have a 40 pin drive and an a500, either mount it in the floppy bay or hope
that it is no taller than one inch and stick it perpendicular to the floppy
drive (remove the a500 heat shield, or cut it). Try to make it as secure as
possible. If you have an a500 and a 40 pin IDE drive and an AdIDE 40, you
will have to find some way to connect the power (even an expansion box for
SCSI drives should do).
Do a low-level format of the drive, then do an FFS format for 1.3 kickstart
partitions (but not AMAX-2 partitions). For 1.2 kickstart, do a generic
format (or get kickstart 1.3).
If you want an AMAX-2 partition, name it AMAX0: or AMAX1: etc, and place
the proper software driver in the appropriate dir of your Workbench. Then
boot AMAX-2 and you should see a little icon that has AMAX written on it,
and it should ask to format the drive. Select OK. If it formats in less than
the blink of an eye, something is wrong. It may not have been able to find
the right driver for the IDE drive, so you may as well stick them all in
the dir or something. If you read the file for the drivers you will see a
list of compatible drives. For my ICD boot disk I had to provide the path
name to find the MORE program to read the driver files.
Connect the power LED to the drive and stick it through a hole in the case
or whatever you want to do with it. Even if the power light comes on when
you are testing it, it doesn't necessarily mean that the power is connected
(sounds hard to believe, but true for my Connor 3044).
Well, I hope I didn't leave anything out, but for those of you who need it:
5) Put the case back on.
6) Plug in the power. NOTE: do not turn the power on until AFTER the case
has been replaced, unless you feel lucky!
7) Stand a few feet back in case anything explodes (just joking).
Well, my source for 44 pin drives did not come through. When I called to see
how it was coming, I was told that the order was canceled because it is
only being released to corporations and stuff, and that I would have to wait
90 days to get one.
Some drive model numbers (off the top of my head):
Connor CP3000, CP3024, CP3044, CP3104, etc. 3.5 inch, 1" high usually
expect $300 for the 40 meg CP3044, 25 ms
Connor CP2024, CP2044 2.5 inch, very short
expect $340 for 20 meg CP2024, $450 for CP2044, 23 ms
WD 9-3044A 40 meg drive, 3.5 inch, taller than 1 inch, uses more power
can get one for $200 if you look hard enough, 28 ms
PrairieTek 20, 40, or 60 meg 2.5 inch hard drives
Don't know much about them...a recent Amiga mag had an ad, but I never
saw the ad again, after checking AWorld, AComputing, AC Tech, INFO. Has
anybody seen the Prairie Tek ad? I think they make a controller too!
3.5 inch drives:
KC-40GA
Seagate ST157 <---- not that great
Quantum P40A <---- Good - fast and small
Miniscribe 8
If anybody knows where to get 44 pin drives, please let me know! Or if
you know a good way to use a 40 pin drive with a 44 pin controller, let me
know too!
David
--
David Tiberio SUNY Stony Brook 2-3481 AMIGA DDD-MEN
-- Any students from SUNY Oswego? Please let me know! :)maniac@reed.cs.unlv.edu (Eric J. Schwertfeger) (04/10/91)
In article <1991Apr9.025044.25725@sbcs.sunysb.edu>, dtiberio@eeserv1.ic.sunysb.edu (David Tiberio) writes:
[thourough explanation and VERY USEFULL static control info]
) Do a low-level format of the drive, then do an FFS format for 1.3 kickstart
WRONG! IDE drives are factory formatted, and include bad-sector mapping already done for you. If you low-level format, YOU DESTROY THE BAD-SECTOR MAPPING!!! May not sound like a major issue, but at work (I work for a VAR that does IBM Clone work), we had to send back a drive for factory refurbishing due to low-level formatting. We learned our lesson, and I want to pass it on.
In fact, this is one of my two MAJOR gripes with the AdIDE manual. Yes, you have to low-level format SCSI drives, but doing it to an IDE drive makes the drive behave eratically.
This problem is caused by the fact that the ICD_Formatter program is generic as far as the AdSCSI and AdIDE hardware go. The manual is generic also.
Second, do yourself a favor and boot off of the disk that comes with the AdIDE. At least under 1.2, that's the easiest way to do it. The manual mentions that you need FastFileSystem in L:, but doesn't tell you that you need the device driver in DEVS: in order to format. A disk file does mention that you need the driver in DEVS: to boot, but never mentions formatting.
The second problem should be obvious to anyone that knows a lot about the amiga, but at the very least, the software should tell you that it can't find the device.
Other than these two problems, the only problem I had stemmed from hardware incompatibility. For some reason, the AdIDE controller made my EXP-1000 ram board (1 meg, autoconfig, under the CPU) very unreliable. In fact, if I did a fast-mem-first, the computer would crash on the very next disk access. I strongly urge anyone that already has any kind of ram expansion under the CPU to look elsewhere for a controller.
Despite these problems I like the AdIDE controller. There's no other way I could have picked up an 80 Meg Amiga HD for $502 otherwise (please don't ask where I got the drive, my boss gives me his prices on hardware, and I can't get the drive for other people.)
--
Eric J. Schwertfeger, maniac@jimi.cs.unlv.eduben@epmooch.UUCP (Rev. Ben A. Mesander) (04/11/91)
>In article <1991Apr9.223729.7215@unlv.edu> maniac@reed.cs.unlv.edu (Eric J. Schwertfeger) writes: >In article <1991Apr9.025044.25725@sbcs.sunysb.edu>, dtiberio@eeserv1.ic.sunysb.edu (David Tiberio) writes: > >[thourough explanation and VERY USEFULL static control info] > >) Do a low-level format of the drive, then do an FFS format for 1.3 kickstart >WRONG! IDE drives are factory formatted, and include bad-sector mapping already done for you. If you low-level format, YOU DESTROY THE BAD-SECTOR MAPPING!!! May not sound like a major issue, but at work (I work for a VAR that does IBM Clone work), we had to send back a drive for factory refurbishing due to low-level formatting. We learned our lesson, and I want to pass it on. [line wrapped for clarity. Yes, Virginia, the above was a SINGLE LINE. If you didn't know, many newsreaders, mine included, don't like that very much. The return key is located on the right side of your keyboard. You should hit it every 80 or so characters :-) :-)] One of the reasons I don't like IDE drives is that they cannot be formatted. We had a virus install itself in the drive partition table on one of the PC's at work, and we had a heck of a time figuring out how to remove it. I formerly worked for a company that produced disk drives, and from what I know about defect growth and other factors, I'd like to be able to low-level format a drive. Of course my bias is that I wrote drive firmware for SCSI drives. (Wren 5,6,7, and Swift). >Eric J. Schwertfeger, maniac@jimi.cs.unlv.edu -- | ben@epmooch.UUCP (Ben Mesander) | "Cash is more important than | | ben%servalan.UUCP@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu | your mother." - Al Shugart, | | !chinet!uokmax!servalan!epmooch!ben | CEO, Seagate Technologies |
amatthews@zodiac.rutgers.edu (04/13/91)
In a previous post, Eric Schwertfeger wrote: >For some reason, the AdIDE controller made my EXP-1000 ram board >(1 meg, autoconfig, under the CPU) very unreliable. In fact, if >I did a fast-mem-first, the computer would crash on the very >next disk access. I strongly urge anyone that has any kind of >ram expansion under the CPU to look elsewhere for a controller. Help! I just ordered an AdIDE/40, and I have a Microbiotics two meg ram expansion. However, this is an external expansion. Does this mean that I probably won't have any problems since the ram isn't directly under the CPU? There is also a discussion going on about not being able to low-level format an IDE drive. I thought that sooner or later, some additional bad sectors are going to turn up. Then what do I do. Also, if the drive cannot be low-level formatted once and a while, doesn't that mean that it will become awfully fragmented or can I just delete everything occasionally and copy all the files back onto it to take care of file fragmentation. (Forgive me if these are stupid questions, I've never had a hard drive before, so how the heck would I know?) Speaking of things under the CPU, since the AdIDE is also under the CPU, does this mean that it might not be compatable with the AdSpeed 68000 accelerator?