How to boot from floppy with a hard drive attached

[TGB1718]

As the title says, I just can't remember if it's possible to boot from the floppy drive if you

have a hard drive attached.

 

I've looked through 1/2 dozen manuals and can't find anything.

 

The reason is with the hard drive attached I'm getting 3 bombs when it boots and doesn't go to the desktop,

so is there a key sequence that forces a boot from floppy first so I can boot my ICD utility disk and try fix the problem

[ijor]

It depends exactly on the TOS version and the hard disk boot code. Try holding ALT. But in the worst case just boot with the hard disk turned off.

 

[TGB1718]

6 minutes ago, ijor said:

It depends exactly on the TOS version and the hard disk boot code. Try holding ALT. But in the worst case just boot with the hard disk turned off.

I will try that, fingers crossed, I'm running TOS 2.06 in an STE, if that doesn't work, I'll hook up my old STM and see if that works.

 

Didn't want to power up with the drive off and then turn it on as it says in the manual not recommended, but I may not have a choice

 

I suppose I could pull the 50 pin ribbon boot up and push it back on as it's not connected to the ST, just the interface board.

 

[ggn]

I'm not an electrical/electronics engineer so take the following with a pinch of salt:

 

What I would do in your case is to connect the hard drive powered off, turn on the st and boot to desktop on a floppy (possibly with a hard disk driver), then power on the hard disk, run the hard disk driver from floppy, aaaaaand then it should work? Perhaps even "install devices" in TOS 2.06 will create the detected drives for you.

Edited September 21, 2023 by ggn

[ijor]

37 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

Didn't want to power up with the drive off and then turn it on as it says in the manual not recommended, but I may not have a choice

Which manual says that? I don't see why it would be a problem.

 

Quote

I suppose I could pull the 50 pin ribbon boot up and push it back on as it's not connected to the ST, just the interface board.

 

Don't do that. That's is far much more dangerous than turning the hard drive on after the computer.

 

[TGB1718]

I tried all sorts of key combinations, but nothing worked, however I have another older hard drive that

gave up some time ago, but I thought I might try that, this really sounds weird, but when I powered the old

drive up I could hear it trying to initialize, but not succeeding, not sure why, but I pressed lightly on the top

of the drive and it initialized and even booted.

 

So I swapped drive ID's, made this old one drive 0 and the other 1, I managed to boot and although ICD see's the

drive that wouldn't boot, it can't see the partitions, so for now, as long as my old drive holds up I may be able to

recover the other drive.

 

 

[+DarkLord]

There are a couple of options with TOS v2.06.

 

If you think any ACC's or AUTO folder programs are the problem, hold <control> right after the

hard drive software flashes (usually just a couple of seconds - it's all about the timing, it may

take you a couple of practice tries).

 

To bypass altogether, hold <alt>.

 

If you're using HDDriver, you can hold <A> or <D> to boot to a floppy or another hard drive

partition. Not sure about other software. HTH's.

 

EDIT: Oh, looks like you're using ICD's stuff...

 

 

 

[TGB1718]

1 hour ago, DarkLord said:

If you think any ACC's or AUTO folder programs are the problem, hold <control> right after the

hard drive software flashes (usually just a couple of seconds - it's all about the timing, it may

take you a couple of practice tries).

It doesn't get that far, as soon as I abort the memory test, I hear the drive being accessed, but nothing

on screen except the 3 bombs.

 

Now the really weird thing, I just went out to try fix the issue, booting off the old drive as before, I hadn't

done anything else since I last turned it off and it booted fine and the second drive and all partitions came up

working fine.

 

So I think I'll rebuild the boot partition and see if that fixes it.

[Tillek]

7 hours ago, DarkLord said:

EDIT: Oh, looks like you're using ICD's stuff...

 

Yeah... poor guy.

[Tillek]

Based on what you just said though.... I'm wondering if the drive isn't going flaky and is about to go.  I honestly would reconsider trying again unless/until you have something ready to go to do a full backup.  (Obviously, ignore this if there is nothing that needs saving).  What are the hardware specs on the drive?

 

[TGB1718]

9 hours ago, Tillek said:

Yeah... poor guy.

Unfortunately I can't use any other driver, tried HDDRIVER, but it just crashes, no reason why, even have some conversations

with the author, but couldn't resolve why.

 

The drive is a 4GB 80 pin SCSI with a 80/50 pin convertor, have a feeling this may be the actual issue as I had this drive working

for a couple of years, but I managed to break the 80 pin connector on the interface unit and had but a new one which is not

quite the same design as my older one.

[bfollowell]

I would think that there has to be a way. Otherwise, how would HD system owners have loaded games like Dungeon Master and others that auto loaded at boot?

 

[TGB1718]

47 minutes ago, bfollowell said:

I would think that there has to be a way.

I thought that too, but I've tried all combinations of ALT/CTRL/SHIFT, Function keys etc. etc. I could think of and nothing works.

Does seem a bit of an oversight.

[bfollowell]

30 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

I thought that too, but I've tried all combinations of ALT/CTRL/SHIFT, Function keys etc. etc. I could think of and nothing works.

Does seem a bit of an oversight.

Yeah, I mean, in this day and age, most software has been patched to work with different versions of TOS and/or hard drives, but that wasn't the case back in the day.

 

[Tillek]

5 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

Unfortunately I can't use any other driver, tried HDDRIVER, but it just crashes, no reason why, even have some conversations

with the author, but couldn't resolve why.

Yeah, I remember that conversation.....

 

5 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

The drive is a 4GB 80 pin SCSI with a 80/50 pin convertor, have a feeling this may be the actual issue as I had this drive working

for a couple of years, but I managed to break the 80 pin connector on the interface unit and had but a new one which is not

quite the same design as my older one.

Something to consider.... Is this a Mega STE? (and I'm assuming hooked to the MSTE power supply) have you tried an external power supply?  Just to see if maybe under certain phases of the moon the PS is getting a little overworked?  If it's not a Mega STE, might still be worth looking at the PS as well.

[bandit]

2 hours ago, bfollowell said:

Yeah, I mean, in this day and age, most software has been patched to work with different versions of TOS and/or hard drives, but that wasn't the case back in the day.

 

Back in the 90's I had that issue, I bought a switch like a printer type and then I could boot floppy by using the switch'

 

I heard later that scsi terminator , but never got it work

Edited September 22, 2023 by bandit
Error

[bandit]

[TGB1718]

31 minutes ago, Tillek said:

Something to consider.... Is this a Mega STE? (and I'm assuming hooked to the MSTE power supply) have you tried an external power supply?  Just to see if maybe under certain phases of the moon the PS is getting a little overworked?  If it's not a Mega STE, might still be worth looking at the PS as well.

It's a 4MB 520STE with an external hard drive.

Well a bit of good news (sort of) the problem is the new interface board, it just doesn't sit tightly in the drive socket

and even if it's just a tiny bit off centre, the drive either doesn't power up or if it does, it won't boot, I initially got it

all working, but every time I assembled the drive into the enclosure it stopped working, after a few attempts I realised

it just wasn't going to work and had to figure out why.

 

I fitted one of the old interface boards and it's rock solid and the drive boots first time, every time. The problem I have and one of the reasons I wanted

a new card was the old card is too big to allow me to fit the drive into the enclosure, the card I bought is about 1/2 the size of my old one

and would easily allow me to fit the drive into the enclosure.

[Tillek]

Well, that's good news... it should just be a matter of getting an adapter that fits.

 

Or maybe some kind of extension cable, so you have a little more freedom where in the enclosure the card goes?

 

[TGB1718]

6 minutes ago, Tillek said:

Or maybe some kind of extension cable, so you have a little more freedom where in the enclosure the card goes?

Unfortunately it hits the ICD interface card and not matter what I do, it just won't fit, it stands about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch

above the height of the drive, the new one is flush with the drive.

 

When I first got these interface cards, the height didn't matter as I was using them in a tower PC with a 6 disk

SCSI raid array, had to dig them out when my hard drive failed and the only replacement I could get these days

is one with a 80 pin connecter, hence the interface card, the disk housing was designed to be a nice fit with

a 50 pin cable. 

[Tillek]

Well, I guess what I was getting at was the potential of having a small extension cable between the adapter and the drive, so you could maybe move it in such a way that it doesn't hit the card or that it simply seats a little better.

 

 

Something along the lines of this....

 

https://cs-electronics.com/product/adp-9070-xx/

 

[Tillek]

(And by that, I mean the 80/50 pin adapter and the drive, not the ICD adapter)

 

[ijor]

10 hours ago, bfollowell said:

I would think that there has to be a way. Otherwise, how would HD system owners have loaded games like Dungeon Master and others that auto loaded at boot?

 

For ICD drivers you hold the ALT key at boot time. It doesn't work for him probably because his boot sector is corrupt. And again, in the worst case you can turn off the hard disk. As a matter of fact, back at the day I never played games with the hard disk powered on unless the game was going to use the hard disk itself.

Edited September 22, 2023 by ijor

[TGB1718]

13 hours ago, Tillek said:

Something along the lines of this....

Yes, I see what you mean, was a little confused, there's no reason to have the adaptor card in the back of the drive, having

something like that would certainly free some space.

 

Now thinking about it, I think I saw in a box a few weeks ago the cable I used to hook up my 6 SCSI drives, it's just a

really long one of those, just need to cut the other 5 off.

 

Many thanks, I'll give it a try over the weekend if it's the cable I hope it is.

[+DarkLord]

On 9/22/2023 at 10:58 AM, Tillek said:

Yeah, I remember that conversation.....

 

 

Ah...that conversation. The demo version of HDDriver is being used and not the *full* version.