CD ROM FAQ Problems

Information in this page updated: 7 Jan 96


5. Problems

5.1.1 A3000 Western Digital Proto Chip 00-04

All Toshiba drives (3x01, 4101, 5x01) work with the PROTO SCSI controler chip in the A3000 or on the A2091 controller card. If you exspect problems you can exchange it with a 00-08 for about US-$40 or less. Look in the filesystem compatibility table for drives that work with Proto-controllers!

The NEC 2xc/NAKAMISHI MBR-7 7disk changer needs a WD 00-08 or it will not work.

5.1.2 A3000 V36 Bootroms, A209x FIRMWARE

You should further note that the V36 scsi.device (and the one in the A2091 firmware) has severe problems with no bootable devices such as empty SyQuest drives and empty CD-ROM drives. With CD drives it depends on the kind of CD inserted during boot how long the timeout will be. Once you have booted with V37 and higher you do not have these long time-outs since the new scsi.device recognises the wrong disk type and moves on.

 CD                     timeout         time
 ----------------------------------------------------
 no CD inserted         very long       >30sec
 CD-DA disk             long            ~20sec
 XA+RRIP                medium          ~10sec
 plain ISO9660          short           ~2-5sec

After the controler has 'touched' the drive for the first time you can hit the eject-button, this will speed up things a little. But its annoying. But if you leave the drive empty at power-up the Amiga will take even longer to boot. The V36 scsi.device has a really long time-out, no disk or unbootable/unreadable disks are not detected very well. V37, V40 ROMs boot rather fast and once you have passed the cold boot, next time you reset it comes up very fast.

There is a solution for this: mount all harddrives before the cd-rom drive (i.e. give the cd-rom the highest ID) and use the tool RDBFlags to tell the controller what harddrive is the last one. Beyond this ID the scsi.device will not search. But beware, the tool could do severe damage! Read the manual very carefully!

NOTE:   The Toshiba 3401 needs the Sync-Bit in the BattMem cleared if
        operated under AmigaOS3.1 or higher. The build-in scsi.device
        pays for the first time attention to this flag and the drive
        does not like it if synchronous transfer modes are initiated
        by the controller. The amiga simply locks up during boot. The
        Toshiba 4101 (and probably all following drives) do not have
        this kind of problem.

5.1.3 A3000 External SCSI

If you exsperience problems on external SCSI-devices on you A3000 check if the term-power diode is inserted correctly. Several revisions had wrongly placed diodes and so have problems with external devices.

5.2.1 A4000 internal drive bay

On early A4000 Commodore used 'thick' Power-Supplies. As a result the 5.25" drive bay is a little to small for standard equipment such as CD-ROMs, 5.25" floppies and SyQuests. Most of the time the drive itselves fits but there is no space left for the power- and bus- connectors. Double-check you drive bay before you buy a device for the internal space in your A4000!

5.2.2 A4000 (E)IDE Controller

See first chapter 2.3!

The internal scsi.device of the A600/A1200 and A4000 models do not recognice CD-ROMs. Use the mentioned extensions for this.

5.3.1 Synchronous transfers

Some CD-ROM drives do not like (or do not support) synchronous transfers over the SCSI bus. And since some controllers only allow a global synchron/asynchron selection, this may prevent you from using a fast transfer mode for your harddisk (e.g. Quantum 730S). So please check all of your equipment (e.g. with ProbeSCSI) if it supports synchronous tranfers. Only if all support this, it is save to initiate it.


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