#SyQuest 44 Help
9 messages in this thread
I was wondering if there was anyone out there who has a SyQuest 44
drive working with a 3000.
HDToolBox recognizes the drive and can read the drive information so
I'm pretty sure I have the termination right. I followed the normal steps
of low-level format, verify and format, but when I reboot the drive isn't
recognized.
Any help would be vastly appreciated.
// .Cruising on AutoPilot
\X/
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
Well, now I get my 3000 to recognize the Syquest as ID 1 by using a
MOUNT command using a mount file generated by RDPrep. But, when I try to
FORMAT the drive it reports a format failure, and always in different
places each time I try. I've tried reselection on and off, with no
change.
Therefore, my thinking is I may have a SCSI bus problem. Only trouble
is I think I've tried the terminators in every combination I can think of
with no luck. I've disconnectted my ext. CD-Rom and hard-drive leaving me
with just the internal boot drive and the ext. syquest, both with
termination resistors, even this setup won't work it seems.
Do you know what the jumpers on the drive are? I know three pairs are
for the ID, I was wondering what the other 2 are for, maybe these are my
problem? One has a jumber on it.
// .Cruising on AutoPilot
\X/
Mark:
I know one of the extra jumpers is a test jumper, although I don't know
which one it is 🙁 Have you tried using the quick option of the format
command? I found that sometimes if I format it first with the quick
option, and then normally it worked ok.
// -Mike Schiller
\X/ AMIGA! On AutoPilot in sunny Fort Lauderdale
Mike,
Thanks for the hint to use the quick option ( smaking myself for not
thinking of it ), the disk now appears usable. Darn thing still doesn't
auto-mount, is it posible or must you use a mount command? It does seems
to handle disk changes alright at least.
Mark:
Make sure that you've set it to bootable OR mountable in the RBD. (You are
using RDPrep, right? If so, it'd be under the partitioning screen).
// -Mike Schiller
\X/ AMIGA! On AutoPilot in sunny Fort Lauderdale
Mike,
Since I have a normal hard drive with better access speed, I didn't
want to make it my boot drive, and it doesn't seem work as an auto-mount
drive. Actually I trashed my AP partition while working on getting it to
auto-mount. Soooo, since it is working, I probably will leave it as is.
And, I will definitely back-up my AP part. – still reeling from the
loss.
Mark:
Does an icon show up for the drive? (ie: when you say the drive "isn't
recogni" do you mean it doesn't show up at all, or it show up as SDH0:X?VF
or something like that?) Have you done an AmigaDOS level format of the
drive?
Also, I would recommend a utility called SCSIMounter (SCSIMT.LHA) which
can be run at any time from WB or CLI. If you boot the 3000 w/o a
cartridge in it, you can use SCSIMounter to scan the SCSI bus and then
mount the 44MB cartridge at anytime.
P.S. I found that sometimes my 3000 would not power up if the external
drive was powered up first.
Good Luck,
Erik Flom
Mark;
The SyQuest can be very confusing. First of all, not all SyQuest ROM
versions work very well. The older one's had serious problems (most of
which had some form of "work around").
Since the "as delivered" A3000 has the internal HD set to SCSI ID#6 I'll
assume that it is unchanged (machine behaviour with the SyQuest at higher
address than the internal is considerably different but as a pracitcal
matter it is not possible to put the SyQuest above the internal without
lowering the internal drive's SCSI ID).
If you are using HDToolBox, you want to low level format each cartridge,
partition the cartridge (almost everyone partitions a SyQuest as one
partition). Save changes to the drive.
Reboot. The drive should show up with an icon on the WB but the name will
be either "garbage" or "'Device':NODOS". Perform an AmigaDOS format of
the cartridge. At this point the cart. should be useable.
-bill