Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!necntc!dandelion!dgg
From: dgg@dandelion.CI.COM (Dave Grubbs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Now what?  (Hard Disk woes.)
Message-ID: <4269@dandelion.CI.COM>
Date: 29 Feb 88 22:58:32 GMT
Organization: Cognition, Inc., Billerica, Ma.
Lines: 87

I have two problems.  Random GURU messages and Hard Disk installation.
I'd really appreciate a comment or two.  As usual, use electronic mail
unless the info is of general importance.

I went and bought a hard-disk.  I bought it from my friendly dealer, from
whom I earlier purchased an A2000 to replace my A1000.  I had 2Meg of
Microbotics RAM, for which I bought the $40 adapter to allow its insertion
into the A2000.

Now for the problem.  The A2000 has worked OK for a while, but every so
often, say once per hour, it crashes on me.  The "vt100" program does it
occasionally, INFOCOM games do it occasionally, demos and other junk from
the net do it occasionally, but DPAINT II is the winner.  I have never
exited from DPAINT II.  It always crashes the machine after an hour or so.

I don't have power glitches (The power is stable and I have a "power
conditioner"), temperature changes or wild parties in the floppy drives.

None of the small programs I've written (compiled with MANX 3.4) have ever
ever done this.  But then I haven't written anything large and I don't
allocate a lot of data.

My first question is: Could this be a memory problem?  If so, how do I
find out?  How does one attack a problem like this?  (I am real good
at software, but the hardware I have always used is handled by the
DEC/SUN/APOLLO/IBM field engineers.)

vt100, when it crashes always produces GURU:	00000003.00C0270A

Other random GURU's:				00000003.00204700
						00000004.00218AD8
						00000003.00147040

DPaint II is crazy:	00000003.0020C290	00000003.0020C3D8
			00000004.0020C888	00000004.00C0482E (twice)
			0000000B.0020F010	00000004.0020EEF8
			00000004.0020FF58	00000004.002056E8
			00000004.0020C618	0000000A.002056E8

What the hell?

The second problem is equally confusing, but more expensive.  If I can't make
the hard disk work, I will toss this Amiga out my window or light a $4000
bonfire.

I got a Miniscribe 8438 30Meg drive.

Problem #1:	It is only 30Meg when using RLL and the 2090 controller can
		only deal with MFM format.  So I have a fast 20Meg hard disk.
		Is there anything I have to do to set "MFM"?  Nothing is
		very clear in their manual.

Problem #2:	The damn disk says it can be configured to be units 1 to 4.
		The Amiga manual says it should be unit 0.  (which is mapped
		to "Unit" 1 in the devs/Mountlist file.)  Is this just a
		manufacturer's difference in whether they use ordinal or
		cardinal numbers, a fencepost error, or brain-damage?

Problem #3:	I ran the "Install" program on the disk.  It crashed my
		machine, so I tried to reboot it.  Every time it rebooted
		it crashed.  So I booted off another disk and removed the
		"hddisk" files from the	Expansion drawer.  The next boot
		off that disk worked fine.

		So I decided to walk through the install script by hand.
		"binddrivers" crashed my machine 16 out of 20 trials.
		After the four which worked, "mount RES0:" worked properly,
		and if I tried it a second time, I got the "already mounted"
		message.

		Then "prep" killed the machine in 3 of the remaining 4.
		On the second of the four, I got a "NOT Preped" message.

		Every time the "binddrivers" or "prep" command is executed,
		I hear the drive rattle (the LED doesn't seem to do anything)
		but the machine crashes most of the time.  Random pattern.

		Some GURU's from binddrivers and Prep: (some are the same!)
		3.00147040	3.0021B80C	B.00C050A8 (twice)
		4.0020F86C	B.0020F86C	3.0020F86C (six times)
		B.00C0274A (four times)
				
Then I gave up.  Any help would be appreciated.

David G. Grubbs		Work phone: 617-667-4800
UUCP:  ..!{mit-eddie,talcott,necntc}!dandelion!dgg
Internet: dgg@dandelion.ci.com (or dgg@athena.mit.edu, which still works)