CompuServe Messages

Mark: When you reboot the machine is the cartridge in or out of the drive? With the A3000 you must have a cartridge in the drive when you boot or else it will not recognise the drive. Also if a cartridge isn't in the drive at bootup the A3000 will wait 30 seconds for a response from the drive before going on and booting the machine. Are you sure that you're writing an RDB (RigidDiskBlock) onto the cartridge after you've formatted the drive? You have to do that after you low level format the drive or else it'll get wiped out by the low level format. Also, do you know the ROM revision of your SyQuest drive? Some of the earlier drives had trouble running on the Amiga, and problems with reselection. My first SyQuest 44 had this problem, and I had to specifically set it to not support reselection or else the drive got slower than a floppy. My newer one doesn't have this problem. Another suggestion I have is that you download the RDPrep software from the Microbotics section of the AmigaVendor forum, as it's much better, gives you much more control over the RDB than Commodore's software, and best of all, MicroBotics has released it as shareware (or possibly freeware, I don't remember), and the version that's available for download is the fully functional version. I've been using RDPrep for years, ever since I originally got my HardFrame controller for my A2000, which was long before they released the software for public use. If you need further help with this, feel free to email me more details, and I'll help as much as I can. // -Mike Schiller \X/ AMIGA! On AutoPilot in sunny Fort Lauderdale