#2nd SCSI HD Problems
13 messages in this thread
I've connected a 2nd internal SCSI hard drive to a GVP Impact Series II
controller. The trouble is, a cold boot doesnt recognise the 2nd drive.
(inaccessible from WorkBench and the CLI) A warm boot recognises it just
fine. What gives?
Randy Monk
Randy:
It sounds like your drive might take a while to spin up to speed. If
it's not ready when Kickstart goes to read the RDB (sort of a boot block
for HD's) then the drive won't be recognised. When you warm boot, the drive
is already spinning, so the system has no problem seeing it.
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
Thanks for the quick reply. So how do I solve it?
Randy
Randy:
About the only way I know of is to hold down the Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga keys when
you first powerup the machine for a few seconds to give the drive time to
powerup.
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
Mike, your help has been extremely valuable. Many thanks. If you come up
with any other ideas, let me know. Thanks again.
Randy
Randy, I just called the author of the drivers for GVP and he said that you
can do a couple of things.
1. Get the latest revision of the driver. It has a number of improvements
to speed up booting and solve your specific problem as well as a utility
for mounting devices that take longer to spin up.
2. Set the SCSI ID of the slower device to 0 and make the faster device a
higher number.
Hope this helps,
Neil
Many, many thanks. I'll try both of your suggestions.
Randy Monk
Randy,
Is it a SeaGate drive? If so, SeaGates are notorious for taking a
long time to come 'online' and thus aren't recognized on cold start.
Don
You guessed it, a Seagate. So how do I solve the problem? Thanks for your
help Randy
Randy,
I don't have a GVP, so don't know for sure…but memory tells me
that they have a jumper on the board that allows a longer timeout period
during bootup.
I could also be wrong on that…perhaps someone with a GVP that
knows for sure could jump in and let you know for sure.
Another thing that could be done is to have the Seagate on a
separate power supply and turn that on about 5 to 10 seconds before you
turn the computer on.
But short of those two things…there is nothing you can do to fix
it.
Don
Would it make a difference to boot from the slower (Seagate) drive? Thanks
again. Randy
Randy,
No…that won't help because it can't see the drive (since the
drive isn't ready) thus can't boot off the drive.
There is no way the host adapter can know about a drive until the
drive itself reports that it's ready. If the drive takes longer to report
ready than the timeout value of the bus…the drive will not "exist" for
all intent and purposes.
The SeaGates only take this long time period on cold start. On
warm start, they're already spun up, and the power-on diagnostics have
already been run so they come on-line much faster.
Don
Don, your help has been extremely valuable. Many thanks. If you come up
with any other ideas, let me know. Thanks again.
Randy