pfmnews@cbnewsi.att.com (peter.f.meng) (10/15/90)
I believe I am having problems with my 2090 controller. I have a ST-251 disk (non-SCSI) that I have been using for over a year. Just recently I am trying to recover from file system problems. I am trying to format the disk (FFS) and I keep getting guru'd before the format completes. The Guru is typically a 3 or a 4 (addressing or memory error) and is inconsistent. Also, the one time I did get thru the format and tried to do a restore from backup floppies (Quarterback) I repeatedly get Guru'd before the restore completes (also incosistent). Any advice?? Upgrade to the 2090A controller?? Thanks in advance, Peter Meng att!hotlf!pfm
paulm@cbnewsj.att.com (paul.j.maioriello) (10/15/90)
In article <1990Oct15.114329.18125@cbnewsi.att.com>, pfmnews@cbnewsi.att.com (peter.f.meng) writes: > > I believe I am having problems with my 2090 controller. I have Welcome to the club!! I never had any problems with my 2090 in over a year of use in an A2000. I used the controller to drive a 10 meg shugart and an 86 meg wren (I could only use 8 heads and 809 cylinders even though the drive had more). I have not been able to get this to work reliably in an A3000. > a ST-251 disk (non-SCSI) that I have been using for over a year. > Just recently I am trying to recover from file system problems. > I am trying to format the disk (FFS) and I keep getting guru'd > before the format completes. The Guru is typically a 3 or a 4 > (addressing or memory error) and is inconsistent. > > Also, the one time I did get thru the format and tried to do a restore > from backup floppies (Quarterback) I repeatedly get Guru'd before > the restore completes (also incosistent). > > Any advice?? Upgrade to the 2090A controller?? My theory is that there is nothing wrong with the controller hardware, but rather with the device driver itself. After all the hddisk file was distributed with thee 2090 quite some time ago. When I first got it, I was still running 1.2 on the Amiga. Now I'm running 2.0. Given all the work that has been done in AmigaDos (including the exorcism of the BCPL stuff), it seems as if an update to hddisk might be in order. Is this really a problem or are we both suffering from some hardware problems or incompatabilities? One of CBM's top priorities in evolving the Amiga line was to keep expansion cards backwards compatible. Given this as I goal, and the fact that I can get the 2090 to work half-heartedly (I was able to recover all my files onto the SCSI drive in the A3000), I think what we have here is a software problem. What I would like to know is if anybody has gotten a 2090 to work reliably on a 3000. If so, I would sure like to hear how they did it. > > Thanks in advance, > Peter Meng > att!hotlf!pfm Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Regards, Paul M. lzatt!pjm
tessier@bmerh185.BNR.CA (Daniel Tessier) (10/19/90)
In article <1990Oct15.114329.18125@cbnewsi.att.com>, pfmnews@cbnewsi.att.com (peter.f.meng) writes: |> |> I believe I am having problems with my 2090 controller. I have |> a ST-251 disk (non-SCSI) that I have been using for over a year. |> Just recently I am trying to recover from file system problems. |> I am trying to format the disk (FFS) and I keep getting guru'd |> before the format completes. The Guru is typically a 3 or a 4 |> (addressing or memory error) and is inconsistent. |> |> Also, the one time I did get thru the format and tried to do a restore |> from backup floppies (Quarterback) I repeatedly get Guru'd before |> the restore completes (also incosistent). |> |> Any advice?? Upgrade to the 2090A controller?? |> |> Thanks in advance, |> Peter Meng |> att!hotlf!pfm Please post any answers/suggestions/comments. I own two non-SCSI hard drives (20 and 40 megs), and I started having the same problem recently. I even tried reformatting the drives with Dr. Ami, and it still doesn't help much. /-----------------------------------------------------------\ | Dan Tessier PHONE : (613)765-2590 | | Bell-Northern Research, Ltd. BITNET: tessier@bnr.ca | | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada UUCP : ...!uunet!bnrgate | | !bmerh185!tessier | \-----------------------------------------------------------/
peter@dbaccess.com (Peter A. Castro) (10/19/90)
in article <1990Oct15.114329.18125@cbnewsi.att.com>, pfmnews@cbnewsi.att.com (peter.f.meng) says:
+
+
+ I believe I am having problems with my 2090 controller. I have
+ a ST-251 disk (non-SCSI) that I have been using for over a year.
+ Just recently I am trying to recover from file system problems.
+ I am trying to format the disk (FFS) and I keep getting guru'd
+ before the format completes. The Guru is typically a 3 or a 4
+ (addressing or memory error) and is inconsistent.
There are a vew basic things you can try, hardware wise. If you're like me
you've got a memory expansion card (I've got a Spirit board). Depending
on your environment and how often you turn your mahcine on/off you might
be suffering from chip-movement. This is where the chips start to move
out of their sockets (if they have sockets). Try opening your machine up
and pushing down on all the socketed chips (or if you don't like to open
your machine up, take it to a dealer). Another thing is re-seat the
controller card in it's slot.
Another thing comes to mind: I have s Supra 4x4 20Mb drive & controller.
The original device driver (harddisk.device) would crash depending on how
much multitasking I did. I fixed it be getting the upgrade to the device
driver from my local dealer (supradirect.device). Since then I haven't
had any problems. Maybe you can get an update for yours from your dealer
or from Commodore.
+
+ Also, the one time I did get thru the format and tried to do a restore
+ from backup floppies (Quarterback) I repeatedly get Guru'd before
+ the restore completes (also incosistent).
+
+ Any advice?? Upgrade to the 2090A controller??
+
+ Thanks in advance,
+ Peter Meng
+ att!hotlf!pfm
Hope this helps.
--
Peter A. Castro INTERNET: peter@dbaccess.com // //|
c/o DB Access Inc. UUCP: {uunet,mips}!troi!peter // //||
2900 Gordon Avenue, Suite 101 FAX: (408) 735-0328 \\ // //-||-
Santa Clara, CA 95051-0718 TEL: (408) 735-7545 \// // ||hawk@pnet01.cts.com (John Anderson) (10/19/90)
To those two people who said they were starting to have problems with their ST506 ST-251's connected to a 2090: I just started haveing read/write errors after I installed a new dual serial board. It took me a while to figure it out but I had too much draining the power from my 2000. I have a flickerfixer, bridgeboard, 2090, 2 meg 16 bit RAM card, dual serial card, 68030 board with 4 megs of RAM, 2 floppies, 2 hard disks, and one 5 1/4 floppy for the bridgecard, oh yeah, and 1 Mac 3 1/2 for A-Max. Things were fine until I added that dual serial board. That was the straw that broke the camels back. Just not enough power to run all those beasts. I now have an external hard disk case with power supply and all is fine. So the moral of the story is: Check to make sure you don't have too much soaking up the power. It seems kinda easy to think of but when it's happening you just think the hard disk(s) are going or the controller os going. By the way, does anybody know why the 2000's no longer have a little shield on the mouse cord right where it plugs into it's port? Another by-the-way: After getting my dual serial board to run a JX-100 color scanner from, I found out they won't work together. The JX-100 software looks into the serial device to see if the scanner is connected but when it transfers data it does not go through the serial.device. It goes directly to the serial port. This makes it impossible to change the serial.device to siosbx.device andn have the scanner send the data to that device instead. I can't use the dual serial board for my modem because A-max can't access that port either, not to mention my modem games that i would have to try to get to work. Has anybody done anything to their software for the JX-100 to get it to work with a dual serial board? How about workbench 2.0? Does it have better support for multi-serial board in that it might work then? Thanks ahead of time for any help.
scot@amigash.UUCP (Scot L. Harris) (10/20/90)
>In article <5145@crash.cts.com> hawk@pnet01.cts.com (John Anderson) writes: > >right where it plugs into it's port? Another by-the-way: After getting my >dual serial board to run a JX-100 color scanner from, I found out they won't >work together. The JX-100 software looks into the serial device to see if the >scanner is connected but when it transfers data it does not go through the >serial.device. It goes directly to the serial port. This makes it impossible >to change the serial.device to siosbx.device andn have the scanner send the >data to that device instead. I can't use the dual serial board for my modem >because A-max can't access that port either, not to mention my modem games >that i would have to try to get to work. Has anybody done anything to their >software for the JX-100 to get it to work with a dual serial board? How about >workbench 2.0? Does it have better support for multi-serial board in that it >might work then? Thanks ahead of time for any help. I have an A2232 multi-port board AND a JX-100. The scanlab software is hardcoded to use the internal serial port. This is done partially so it can talk at the 115,200 baud rate. To do this it apparently goes directly to the hardware(?). The problem I have is that the A2232 comes with a new preferences program that allows the selection of the default serial port. The default port is unit 0. The internal port is unit 1, with additional serial ports being designated unit 2 on up. By selecting unit 2 as the default port I am able to run all of my modem programs with no problem (including Handshake, uucp etc.). Now this is where it gets real strange and is what you ran into. Apparently the ScanLab software opens the DEFAULT serial port to check for the JX-100 being out there. Then it goes and hits the port directly to get the speed. I have exchanged a couple of messages with Aaron Avery and Perry of ASDG about this and Aaron was going to try and provide me a patch so the ScanLab software would either be capable of selecting which port to use (prefered fix) or would at least go to the internal port all the time. Have not heard back from him on this for a few weeks however. At present I have to change the default port when I want to use the JX-100 and switch back when I am done. Kind of a pain but better than plugging cables in and out all the time. If anybody has a patch or fix for this I would be indebted. -- _ /// /_\ Scot L. Harris ...!tarpit!bilver!amigash!scot \XX/ / \ M I G A Orlando, FL (407)273-1759 [Prodigy censor messages? Nah, they wou
daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) (10/22/90)
In article <1990Oct15.160329.28974@cbnewsj.att.com> paulm@cbnewsj.att.com (paul.j.maioriello) writes: >I never had any problems with my 2090 in over a year of use in an A2000. ... >I have not been able to get this to work reliably in an A3000. >My theory is that there is nothing wrong with the controller hardware, >but rather with the device driver itself. That's right on, though probably not for the reasons you're thinking of. The A2090, like all Zorro II devices, is a 24 bit addressed device. That's no big deal in the 3000 if it's simply a slave device, but of course the 2090 is a bus master as well. The A3000 has memory in various places throughout the full 32 bit address space of the 68030. The A2090 as bus master can only reach a subset of that memory, that in the 24 bit space used by the 68000. The only memory like that in the A3000 is Chip memory and any Zorro II fast memory you add. The problem with this and many similar devices is that it was never considered in the device driver that non-24 bit addressable Fast memory would be available at boot time (remember, the A2090 development dates back to 1985 or so, when 68000s were a pretty exciting thing, 68020s just on the horizon, and 68030s not even dreamed of yet). So the A2090, at Binddrivers time, attempts to get a chunk of memory, and since it figures Fast is better than Chip, it doesn't specific the kind of memory. Part of this memory will serve as a DMA buffer for DMAs involving memory the disks it manages can't reach (as specificed in the Mask entry for those disks). Unfortunately, on an A3000, it'll get memory it can't reach for this private buffer, and that's guaranteed to cause the thing to fail. What you need to do is turn off all Fast memory before starting up the A2090 driver, and then turn it back on later. If the drives have a mountlist with "Mask = 0x00fffffe" or something similar, the full 32 bit memory should cause no further problems. If you have an A2090a drive, you'll have to get a disk-loaded A2090 driver and remove the autoboot ROMs, at least for the moment. >Now I'm running 2.0. Given all the work that has been done in AmigaDos >(including the exorcism of the BCPL stuff), it seems as if an update to >hddisk might be in order. I don't personally know of any real software problems beyond that stated above. In any case, it shouldn't be any trouble under 1.3, with the Chip and Fast conflicts resolved, on your A3000. >Paul M. -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold -REM