Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!a218
From: a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: A2286 AT / Disk drive
Message-ID: <1971@mindlink.UUCP>
Date: 31 May 90 20:55:38 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Lines: 53

In article <3916@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> zupke@mars.jpl.nasa.gov
(Brian Zupke) writes:

>Howdy!  Has anyone successfully installed a hardcard inside an A2000 with
>AT bridge board?  I would like to do this, but would like to hear a success
>story first.

     I got tired of the slowness of the Amiga's autoboot partition
for the bridge board (c'mon, admit it, you did too :-) so I dropped
in a 30-megabyte RLL hard card (Seagate ST-138R).  Talk about
compatible - the first time I powered up it booted straight into
the low-level format routine.  It works well, and it's nice and fast.

     There are a couple of quirks, though.  First of all, whenever
I boot, the minutes and seconds of the system time are set to zero.
The battery-backed-up clock is correct (easily verified by entering
the configuration screen with control-alt-escape).  If I pull the
hard card, the time comes up OK.  It's a bit of a pain, but I'd
rather set the time whenever I boot than lose the hard card.  If
anyone knows what's causing this, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

     Another problem which may be caused by the hard card is my
floppy drive configuration.  I've replaced the 1.2-megabyte drive
with a 360K 5 1/4-inch drive and a 720K 3 1/2-inch drive.  If I've
had the power off for more than a few hours, the configuration
forgets about them - I get "Drive 0 configuration error" (possibly
drive 1 as well) and the configuration reverts to a single 1.2-
megabyte drive.  Again, a minor problem as I have to reset the
configuration when I first power the system up.

     I encountered one more problem when I swapped the floppy
drives: the first time I try to access either one after booting,
the bridge board will hang and must be re-booted.  The work-around
here is to leave the disk out of the drive and wait for the "not
ready" message.  I can then pop the disk in and retry, and all
is well.

     I'm not sure whether the above two problems are caused by
the hard card or not.  In any event, I'd appreciate hearing from
anyone who has found out a solution.

     Basically, I'm happy with my hard card.  I use it to do
MS-DOS software development without having to contaminate my
environment with one of those IBM-type boxes.  :-)

>Thanks.
>
>-Brian

You're welcome.

Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.UUCP
"I'm cursed with hair from HELL!"  -- Night Court