CompuServe Messages

Bob; As I try to think about what might be the problem <some musing follows>: You have one of the earily A3000s, thus the bootable HD must have a device name of WB_2.x and also have a copy of the kickstart file on the drive. Basically, when you turn on your machine, the ROM does the basic sanity check, a check for some CHIP and FAST RAM, while the A2091 (equiv) checks itself and then goes looking for things on its bus. An attempt is made to read the RDB's off of the drives that are found and reported that they were HD type devices. I am pretty sure that if a disk called "SuperKickStart" is found in DF0: (or maybe any floppy drive) the machine will immediately attempt to load the kickstart. When it reports having found a device named WB_2.x the machine's ROM attempts to load the kickstart file. Following the successful load of the kickstart file, the disk devices are rescanned looking for the highest priority bootable device. Now it appears that this works reasonably well for your system IF you have the HD setup for AmigaOS 2.04 but not for 2.1 version. Possible problems: 1. Your 2.1 disk set is bad. 2. Your kickstart is bad but works under 2.04 (which raises its own questions). 3. Your HD is actually not formatted/structured properly. 4. Actual hardware problem with the machine. Solutions (hows that for arrogance?): 1. Can you test your diskset on someone elses' machine? 2. Borrow a disk set from someone else (both sets) and start over? 3. Using HDToolBox: a. Check that the DOStype matches what should be there: Fastfilesystem: ID 0x444f5301 International FFS: ID 0x444f5303 b. Mask: 0x7ffffffe c. Max Transfer: 0xffffff d. Reserved cyls: 2 e. Buffers: at least 30 f. Check the numbers to be sure that the geometry matches itself and physical size of the drive (total number of blocks) g. Be sure that buffer memory type is set to any though you might want to try restricting it to CHIP and then to FAST for testing. It is possible to have an error in some of this that will be version specific as far a failure is concerned. 4. Have you run a memory test program. It is possible for a memory problem to show up in one version of the OS and not another. I don't know if any of this helps but still interested in learning what might be wrong. -bill