#Lost Hard Disk
13 messages in this thread
Don:
I picked up one of those 386 Bridgeboards at the WOC show this past
weekend. I have been using an XT boards since they hit the market, with an
old 20-meg Panasonic Hard Drive.
Everything was fine after I installed the new board. The old Hard Drive
popped up the C: prompt as usual. But then I went in to config the Board
to set the date and clock and somehow also selected one of the Hard
Drives. Since then, I can't get the BB to recognize the HardDrive and I
can't get the system up. The DOS disks that come with the Board are 3-1/4
inch, but apparently the software is compressed and I can't get the system
to come up on the DF0:/A: drive.
I have DOS 2.2 on an old 5-1/2 inch floppy, but that drive is now
configured as B:
How do I work around this problem, short of opening the machine, and
reconnecting the 5-1/2 inch drive as A: ?
Any help will be appreciated.
Bill Perez
San Juan, P.R.
Bill,
Sorry…I can't help with your problem….I still have an old XT BB and
haven't any experience with the 386 BB. My only suggestion would be to see if
you can find someone with an MS-DOS computer with a 3.5" floppy on it and have
them format a floppy as a 720K floppy with DOS on the floppy. Use that to boot
the system and reactivate you HD.
Don
This is a perfect example of why to get the BB through EMC…he could be
voice with tech right now…but no, poor Bill is posting a message praying
someone will know the answer….
Out of the kindness in my heart and pity I feel for this poor soul I will
,just this once, help.
First off…you must have flipper setup wrong, since the setup disk is
bootable. Make sure:
You have J501 & 502 set to 2,3 (remeber the positions are opposite of
J515)
PC prefs on the amiga side has disk A: set to shared, and sharded drive
type set to standard.
Also check that cabling…
Now I need to know more about your HD…did you have it set to a certain
type on the XT board? What interface is it? Try setting HD type back to
NONE…if the HD controller has it's own BIOS chip it does not require
CMOS setup.
Elite MicroComputers – Flying high on AutoPilot
First, configure your PCPrefs so the A drive is DF0:. The "Install" DOS disk
is bootable. Then boot with run the SETUP utility (on the Janus disk) and
select "NONE" as your hard drive type. Strange as it sounds, that's what you
use with an 8-bit controller, which you must have since you were using it with
an XT BB.
Marion
CROSSINGS
Newsletter for the Bridgeboard, etc.
Marion: Following up on a thread, can one boot from an 8-bit
controlled hard drive using a 386bb? I've got an A2088 now and am
happy with my 8-bit CompuAdd Flashcard. It wouldn't be too terrible
to boot from a floppy, if it were high density, but it would better
to boot from the HD.
BTW, note the latest Amigaworld ads: One mail order shop is selling
brand new A2088s with the 5.25" disk drive for 49 bucks! Amazing! A
complete 512K, XT-class computer-on-a-card WITH floppy drive for less
than it costs to subscribe to PC magazine for a year! If you had told
anyone a few years ago that this would be the case, they'd have
laughed and brought out the funny white jacket with the long, long
arms.
Amazing, isn't it. I still can't get over those $200 386 BBs at the show!
You can boot from an 8-bit controlled drive easily enough. You just have to
tell the SETUP "none" for the hard drive. In fact, I have an 8-bit controller.
It's a Perstor (no longer available), which doubles the size of an MFM hard
drive, then Stacker doubles it again. I have 150MB on a 40MB drive! V-E-R-Y
slow, but it works.
Marion
CROSSINGS
Newsletter for the Bridgeboard, etc.
Marion:
Thanks. That's exactly what I figured out after a lot of trial and error.
I also had to make a couple of tries with the a: disk before it would work
properly.
Question. I recall that with the XT board you could not have more than 6
megs of ram on the Amiga side. Something to do with the BB's address
memory. Does this limit still hold true for the new Janus software and the
386 board?
Bill Perez
San Juan, P.R.
Bill,
Yes, the RAM limit remains the same. You can actually have 7.5Meg but
not many boards let you setup that configuration.
Don
Don:
Thanks. Could you explain why, . . in layman's terms?
Bill Perez
San Juan, P.R.
Bill,
Sure…the BB's ROM code asks for 512K of autoconfig address space.
It's used by the dual ported RAM on the BB. That's RAM that can be "seen"
by both the BB and the Amiga. The way the Janus code works, that 128K can
be addressed one of 4 different ways (thus it needs the 4 x 128K or 512K
of space) from the Amiga side. Depending on how it's addressed, the
information means different things to the Amiga side. For example, the
difference between a color display and a mono display.
This dual ported RAM is in addition to the BB's other RAM, on the BB it
is in the Upper Memory Blocks and not part of the 640K DOS RAM, but rather
is part of the Adapter/ROM address area. In fact, as far as the BB is
concerned, at least part of it is just that…a video adapter.
So that's why it "eats" 512K of autoconfig RAM space on the Amiga.
Since there's 8 Meg of Autoconfig space…then if you have a 7.5 Meg RAM
expansion card…you could use it. But since there are only a very few
RAM expansion cards that allow you to add in 1/2 Meg increments, you
generally can't use all that 7.5 RAM space. Most boards only allow 1 or 2
Meg increments…thus the board has to be set to 6 or 7 Meg.
Don
Bill,
Ditto what Don said. I do know of one or two people who have rigged switches to
switch out one or two megs when they wanted to use the Bridgeboard, but I
haven't been able to get details.
Marion
CROSSINGS
Newsletter for the Bridgeboard, etc.
I just hooked up a DP/DT toggle switch to the three jumper pins on the RAM
card. Think of it as a long shorting bar. Some cards require four wires, I
used three the Supra brand.
–Paul < Motorola Inside >
Marion:
That's too bad, I had a 4-meg Supra expansion card before I bought my
CBM 25 mhz accelerator with 4-megs of 32-bit ram and finally pulled out 2
megs when I realized that was what was making my old BB act crazy. I hate
ot have two megs of ram sitting in a plastic box.
I've been tempted to buy that expansion board for the accelerator which
claims to let you add 30-bit ram beyond the original four without
affecting the BB operation.
Thanks for the reply.
Bill Perez
San Juan, P.R.