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[gunni]

I have 2 A590 boards that I acquired a while back and just got round to getting myself a power supply for them.
Neither board has a hard drive but I was hoping to use an external scsi cdrom hooked up to the back port.
My problem is my A500 won't switch on with either board attached. I tried removing the trapdoor expansion (which turned out to be a disappointingly misnamed power pc board) as I heard these can sometimes cause problems but still no joy.
Does anyone know if the A590 works without a hard disk attached, or are these boards just knackered?

Thanks in advance...

[Matt_H]

No reason it shouldn't work. My guess is there are SCSI termination issues.

[save2600]

You'd think it would be a simple termination issue, but... a little while back, I helped a buddy out with a GVP A590 like device and sure as ****, you *did* need a HD installed in order for the pass-thru to work. Not 100% sure if not having a HD installed would refuse the computer to boot, but then again, there's an "on-off" switch on the GVP that bypasses the HD and allows it to boot. "Game mode" they call it. Wouldn't be surprised if hooking a harddriveless A590 to an A500 without such a switch would cause the computer to hang. I doubt you'd have two "bad" A590's, so throw a HD in there to be absolutely sure!

[ral-clan]

Just a thought....is the ROM of the A590 recent enough to even allow removable media drives to be hooked up to it? It's got the same ROM as an A2091, as I recall, and that had problems with CD-ROM drives, etc. unless you upgraded the ROM to version 7.0 or something.

Another thing....is there a CD in the drive when you turn on the computer? It could be as simple a problem as the Amiga looking for a boot-block on the disc in the CD drive (because it thinks it is a hard-drive) and not finding one, and so it waits forever.

[arttu80]

Try playing with DIP -switches.

-Turn switch no.1 to OFF position, which disables autoboot function.

-Second is for LUN setting (OFF - one drive at each address, ON - multiple drives at each address) .

-Third is for time out setting ( OFF - Short wait period for drive / parity check enabled. ON - Long wait period for drive / parity check disabled).

-Fourth switch isn't used at all.

[gunni]

tried dip switch settings, jumpered ram to amnesia, tried with and without cd drive attached (both with and without a cd in the drive)... still nothing.
I'll keep my eye out for a cheap scsi drive and give that a whirl
thanks guys