Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!isc-br!hawk!rsami!rick From: rick@rsami.spoami.com (Rick Schaeffer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Amiga 3000 and poor quality control. Message-ID: Date: 4 Aug 90 13:53:20 GMT References: <9008011500.AA25318@jade.berkeley.edu> <32458@cup.portal.com> Sender: ricks@hawk.isc-br.com (Rick Schaeffer) Lines: 75 Well, I, too, thought that I had gotten a bum deal with the A3000. But after living with it for a month I'm quite happy. First, to the problem that the author mentioned with installing a second internal hard disk. I had the same problem with spooky random crashes...keyboard lockups... the whole works. I found two problems: number one was that I didn't read the addendum sheet that came with the A3000 ... which said to be sure and set the "Supports Reselection" flag to "NO" on any added hard disks when using HDToolBox to prep the drive. Once I did that (it took several tries to get it right due to the flakey behaviour of the system) then all my REALLY weird problems disappeared. Now I still have a minor problem with the setup and that is that my EXTERNAL hard drive MUST be powered up at the same EXACT time as the A3000. If it is up and ready BEFORE I power up the A3000 then everything appears to boot up just fine but the keyboard doesn't work at all...not even allowing a warm boot. If I leave the power OFF on the external drive at the time I power up the A3000 then the A3000 doesn't recognize ANY of the hard drives and either hangs or gives me the option of booting from floppy only. As I said, this is a minor problem for me since I have a switch box which powers up the whole system at the same time. I have heard that the keyboard problem and also the problem with not being able to boot unless the external drive is powered up is due to a problem with the termination lines to the external SCSI connector. It as something to do with a diode being installed backward so that termination power is not supplied properly. I can believe this because if I remove the termination resistor packs from the external drive then the system appears to boot just fine whether or not the external drive is powered up. Since access to the external drive when it isn't terminated is somewhat intermittant, I put the termination resistors back in. I would be very interested in hearing from CATS about this diode...so far my dealer has not received any repair notes. Problem two is all my fault! I routinely use an editor that I ported over from MSDOS and a version of the Dillon shell that I have hacked up. This has been true since AmigaDos 1.0 and my old A1000!! Welll...it seems that AmigaDos 2.0 is a bit more picky about memory allocations than previous versions of AmigaDos...because I was having ALL kinds of random crashes and I couldn't get the CShell to work at all. I hacked around on the CShell trying to get it to work and discovered that it was allocating ONE byte too few for it's directory list. This was "amusing" since I have been using this version of the Shell for several years!!! It doesn't fail under DOS 1.3! After fixing that problem I started trying to figure out why I was still having occasional random crashes (never the same program twice) and finally gave up and decided that there must be some bugs in DOS 2.0. In the mean time, I added an AREXX port to the editor that I use and was having a DEVIL of a time with it. Naturally, since the editor seemed to be working fine other than with the AREXX port, that's where I concentrated my efforts. Finally, I discovered that the editor was allocating one byte too few for it's main editing buffer!!!!! That bug has been in there forever, too! Well I fixed that and now my AREXX port works fine. And guess what? ... All those random crashes have gone away!!!!! Apparently, the editor was trashing AmigaDos's memory arena and, since the editor doesn't do any other memory allocations, causing the potential for a program being run later to crash. For instance, when trying to use the AREXX port that I added to the editor, it was ALWAYS AREXX that crashed...never the editor itself! Sorry for being so long winded with this posting. I thought it would be worth mentioning the problems I had because, as I discovered, there ARE solutions. Number one is RTFM! And check that you have set the "Supports Reselection" switch to off for any added drives (both internal and external). If you don't you might have some WEIRD problems. Number two is CHECK YOUR MEMORY ALLOCATIONS. I have read of several folks having strange problems running programs under 2.0 that ran fine under 1.3. It seems that 1.3 AllocMem maybe gave you an even multiple of 4 bytes thus giving you a little slop but 2.0 gives you EXACTLY what you ask for! -- Rick Schaeffer UUCP: uunet!isc-br.isc-br.com!ricks ISC-Bunker Ramo ricks@isc-br.isc-br.com Box TAF-C8 Phone: (509)927-5114 Spokane, WA 99220