Amiga OS3.9 fresh installation - problems

[amiga2000]

I have not used my 1200 in a while, because the hard drive broke down a long time ago.

I am trying to install OS3.9 on a new unformatted hard drive (an 8gb Fujutisu) on an Amiga 1200 with BlizzardPPC and BVision with 128mb but I am having problems.

Since I have no hard drive, I booted from the last emergency disk, but - of course- the 2 emergency disks I had both have disk block errors. Also, the last OS3.9 I had installed on the 1200 had CGX installed, so that might complicate things (I sometimes get a black screen after bootup).

But the main problem is that after bootup, I get random errors saying "Setpatch is not executable" or "Execute command failed" and stuff like that - I am beginning to wonder maybe if the BlizzardPPC is broken?

No matter what I try, I cannot get the OS3.9 Installer to work - even if I get past the errors, it says that Installer is not installed - and HDToolbox does not work either. If anyone has any starting pointers - it has been a while for me installing os3.9.

Is there a way to manually make an emergency boot disk which would have make the installer work, and also go into a screenmode that works?

[AMIGAZ]

Best thing would be (if you have a monitor which works with 15khz modes) is to connect a monitor to your A1200's own video port and then do a fresh WB3.1 install and install OS3.9 from that point...

[gazsp]

I had similar problems installing 3.9 on my A1200. The solution I used was to boot from 3.1 floppy disks and then use HDInstTools from Aminet (http://main.aminet.net/disk/misc/hdinst.lha) to set up the hard drive.

It involved lots of messing about and using CrossDOS to get the HDInstTools onto the Amiga, via a MSDOS formatted disk. Good luck!

[amigakit]

Do you have real Kickstart 3.1 ROM chips in the Amiga or are you softkicking?

[amiga2000]

amigakit - Real Kickstart 3.1 ROM chips

I do not remember it being so tricky getting OS 3.9 installed, and I cannot even get the computer to recognize the IDE hard drive.

Is the device name for the A1200 IDE port: atapi.device

The hard drive is not showing up under HDToolbox.

I also tried using HDInstallTools on my A2000, and it is recognized, but only as a 2gb drive. This is all confusing me.

I have not installed any drivers for the Blizzard PPC so maybe that could be partly the problem.

I guess the first thing I have to figure out is how to get the hard drive recognized. Maybe the 1200's IDE port got fried when the last hard drive broke, but the CD-ROM seems to be working fine on the 1200 internal IDE controller.

[doctorq]

@amiga2000

You need 68040 and 68060 libraries if you want to avoid problems with the "not executable" problem. If you use a 040 based BPPC install 68040.library and 68040new.library. If you use a 060 based BPPC install 68060.library aswell.

The device driver for the internal hdd controller on Amiga 1200 is scsi.device, not atapi.device.

As suggested, try to set up the drive with Workbench3.1. You only need the Install3.1 disk and the Workbenhc3.1 disk. Please note that both disks might have 68040.library installed for A4000/040 usage, but you might need to replace those.

As for the hdd issue; how big is the hdd? Even though it should be bigger than 4 GB you should be able to set it up, but if it is bigger than 4 GB I would suggest that you create a boot partition of around 250 MB, and get OS3.9 installed on that one. After you have installed Boingbag 1 and 2 you can finish the partitioning, as OS3.9 supports drives bigger than 4 GB.

Hope it helps

[amiga2000]

Thanks for the additional tips.

I did trying putting the 68040 and 68040new.libraries onto the particular emergency disks, and the workbench 3.1 disks to see if it helped. to some extent, it did seem to stabilize some of the random error messages I was getting, but I am still getting them, the most common being (still):

C:Setpatch: file is not executable

and

C:Addbuffers
Program failed (error #80000004)
Wait for disk activity to finish

and

some error message that the CD-ROM drive is write-protected

I am at a loss of what to do. I just cannot get hdtoolbox to recognize the hard drive. And I tried HDInstTools, but for some reason, in putting HDInstTools on the Workbench disk, it says that HDInstTools could not be executed.

Any other ideas?

I was thinking there might be a way I could make a RAD disk, and somehow install from there, but without the computer recognizing that there is a hard drive, it does not help.... maybe I should just try a different IDE ribbon, maybe it is faulty in some way, but as I said, the CDROM drive is working fine.

Roy

[MickJT]

File is not executeable is caused by the executeable protection bit not being set.

Open a shell window

protect path:to/file/setpatch +rwed

software failure windows and random crashes are mainly at first due to a missing 680(40/60).library in libs: which setpatch loads.

So, of course, fix your setpatch problem by setting the protection bit (copy 68040 or 68060.library to libs: first), and the rest should fade away.

[Edit: Summary, you are getting random crashes because setpatch isn't loaded.. if setpatch is loaded and you get random crashes, it's because the 68040/60.library file isn't loaded.. setpatch automatically loads those files if found in libs:]

[Edit 2: After setting the protection bit with setpatch, make sure that it definitely has the RWED protection bits.. type "list path:to/file" to check. If it still can't run, then the file is actually corrupt.]

One easy way to corrupt a file, install toolsdaemon, click on an icon once to select it, then load AmIRC from the toolsdaemon menu ;) The icon of the file you selected will be replaced with the AmIRC executable. Heh.

[Dwyloc]

@amiga2000

I would also recommend reading the Installation Tips section of “Official AmigaOS 3.9 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)” if you have not already found it as most of the common problems are covered there.

http://www.gregdonner.org/os39faq/os39faq.html

If you are running CGX you may also have to upgrade to the latest version to get it working correctly with BB2.

As Luck would have it I was already running the latest version of CGX4 when I installed BB2 so I did not have any problems but other people have been less lucky.

Older versions of CGX checks that the version is equal to the version number used in kickstart 3.1 so fails when exec is upgraded.

[Plaz]

Thanks for this thread. I'm havnig the same kind of problems installing a 3.9 kit just purchased from software hut. (No fault of the softhut of course).
It was working well under OS3.1 with 3.0 roms with an expansion systems scsi controller. Now that I've installed the 3.1 roms and 3.9 OS, I can't seem my SCSI CDrom any more. For that matter, I can't see a atapi CDROM when I plug that in either. I've tried running the CacheCDFS utility, but that normally locks up the system. I'll be using some of the other hints mentioned here to try and solve some of the same messages and problems I'm seeing. Please pass along any CDROM tips you may have. Is it better to be mad at your amiga, than to be content with windows? :-P

Plaz