Emulator III Keyboard - SCSI Hard Drive Issue

[Wildemu]

Hi all,

I?ve been reading this forum religiously over the past few weeks while slowly but surely getting my EIII Keyboard back to full health.

Unfortunately I seem to have hit a brick wall.

Long story short, I cannot get the E3 to recognize any internal SCSI drive.

The machine boots perfectly from Floppy disk OS. The firmware is 2.0 and software 2.42
Sampling, etc, everything else working perfectly. 8Mb RAM version.

I recalibrated the power supply to exactly 5.05volts as per the great instructions on this forum, all is working fine except no SCSI HD working.

I have purchased 3 separate SCSI drives, all of which should be compatible in the E3 -
-Quantum Prodrive LPS 350mb
-Quantum Prodrive ELS 42mb (an exact replica of the scsi drive my E3 shipped with)
-IBM WDS L80

They all spin up. But I can only boot from floppy. Then when the E3 powers up, I cannot mount any of the drives (LCD shows ?Mounting Drives? for about 3 seconds, then back to menu screen. Before and after attempting to mount drive, there is no recognized Hard Drive in any of the locations. No possibility to format the HD as there is no drive recognized in any location 1-7.

All the while the scsi drive spins as it should.

I have reseated the ribbon connector which is attached to the board, which made no difference. Originally the SCSI drive wasn?t even spinning up but recalibrating the power supple sorted this out. But still no drive recognized.

I have changed the E3 internal SCSI address to different numbers while trying the different drives, so no SCSI address conflicts I?m almost certain.. All three drives are terminating as they should.

Is there anything someone could suggest as to what I possibly should or could do next in trying to get this great machine back to full health?!

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Cheers

[Wolfram]

Do connect only one drive and set this to ID 1.
Try to format it. If it isn't shown try the other one on ID1.

I used a SD2SCSI in my EII which works plug and play.
I als used an ZIP drive which works also fine.

[Wildemu]

Thanks for the reply!

I will try setting HDs to ID1, though not sure why this would make a difference from when other IDs are used (as long as none are used twice,  so no ID conflicts)?


With regards to SCSItoSD, I am hesitant to install any other solutions if the SCSI HD system hasn?t been shown to be working yet.

If anyone else has some other suggestions it would be great to hear. Does it sound like perhaps a chip that is responsible for scsi processing may be dead?

[Wildemu]

Ok in some strange twist of fate, nigh on miraculous, the e3 has just recognized the HD.

Eiii scsi set to id 4, and the internal 40mb scsi HD set to id 6.

It allows me to format the hard drive, but after then copying the OS from floppy to the drive, it wont boot from the drive when turned off and on again.

Just to add- critically, this new development of the hard drive finally being recognized would suggest that the NCR5380 chip isn?t bad after all? Would I be correct in assuming this?

This is closer than I?ve ever gotten after 2 months of trying so any advice to get the old dear over the line (the eiii, not me) would be really appreciated!

[Wolfram]

EMU used the SCSI ID 0 to address the floppy drive.

[Wildemu]

Not sure what relevance that has to my issue Wolfram?

As of now, the internal Hard Drive is recognized in the E3. But the system will Not boot from the Hard Drive.

Currently, the E3 SCSI ID is set to 2, and the Internal Scsi Hard Drive is set to ID 1.

I have tried copying the OS 2.42 from the Floppy Disk to the Hard Drive but the emulator will not boot from the hard drive. Only with the bloody floppy!

Can you think of any reason why this might be happening?

[midipuppies]

It's been a while but I think I know what you may be missing.

After you format your hd, you must save an empty bank to it before you do anything else.
You should then be able to write your o.s. to disk and it should boot after that.

I would reformat and try the above.