CompuServe Messages

#A3640 on A3000

    21-Jan-95 02:21:16
Sb: #A3640 on A3000
Fm: Charles B. McCann 70107,1506
IDI Tech- I recently had the very same problem. Drove me nuts. I installed an A3640 in my stock 16mhz A3000 which caused the system to either ignore my hardrive attached to the 3000's SCSI port, or sometimes it would recognize it during execution of startup-sequence and later crash with "Disk Checksum error on Block xxxx", or some such gobbilty goop. Somehow, I isolated the problem to be a conflict between the A3000's Static Column Zips and the A3640 – This combo freaks out the SCSI port. I discovered this by taking a PAGE mode zip off of my Retina ZIII Display Board and replacing the static column mode ZIP in the first Zip socket (U852, I think) in the A3000. This forces the A3000 FastRam to function in Page Mode , which slows things down just enought for the A3640-SCSI conflict to go away. I was told by someone much more knowledgeable about this that the reason the Static Column mode caused problems and Page mode did not is because the 68040 processor does not use "BURST" memory mode if page mode Zips are used. He said that static column mode zips would probably work if "Burst" mode were disabled with a startup-sequence command. I did not attempt such considering that I got the damn thing working and thought I should leave well enough alone. Oh, and of course, there are several jumpers on the A3000 motherboard you need to set to 25mhz. I don't recall wich all numbers they were, Check your A3000 Manual In Appendix E-1 the A3000 Schematics identify jumpers and corresponding settings for either 16mhz or 25mhz clock speed. (BTW, every Amiga hardware expert I consulted with said the A3640 would only work with the A3000T Tower . Mine now works fine and has for 4 months. ) Good Luck. Would like to here if this works for you too. -Charlie McCann 70107,1506