EIII: no more disk? A possible solution.

[dvdborn]

The disk is Okay but the machine scans SCSI channels, or tells : "No disk", or whatever...

Go to the processor board, take away and put back the NCR5380 in place. It works 50% of the time. Or change it.

If the Emu is connected to external SCSI devices, touch the flat cable (inside) going to the SCSI connector. If its hot, your external devices are ripping off the emu and this wall happen again !

Thanks to Dr.C (dr.c@keyboardsrecording.fr)for providing this info.

[buchla]

Well guys, the first crash of my EIII is a fact. 

Before going on holiday the last time I used the EIII it didn't want to start up. The machine constant scanned all the SCSI channels and the floppy drive. I pushed a system floppy disk in the disk drive and then the machine started up normally. I had acces to the hard disk and my zipdrive.

I came back from holiday and wanted to record some samples this evening. I turned the EIII on and it did again the same thing: scanning the SCSI channels and the floppy drive. Because putting a system disk in the floppy drive helped the last time I did it again this evening. The machine boots then from the floppy and takes a long time mounting the drives. After two minutes the display shows an empty bank but I haven't access to the hard drive neither the zip. Only the floppy drive is available. The hard disk never turned on.

I checked the forum and David's blog for a solution. I opened the machine and disconnected and reconnected the internal flat cable that goes from the CPU to the SCSI connector and I did the same thing with the hard disk power connector. I've tried to pull out the NCR5380 chip but I haven't a calliper yet so I didn't succeed with that. I will look for a calliper tomorrow.

I put everything back and switched on the machine again. No chance, the problem still exists! Even if I switch the EIII on without the external SCSI cable connected in the back of the EIII it does the same thing.

Any suggestion?

[Elmbeatz]

Ewww sh*t

[ubass]

Disconnect the hard disk, boot and wait. If zip drive works it's an hd issue.
Hope this help

[buchla]

Yesss, the beast came back to life 

As David suggested above, I pulled out the NCR5380 chip with a calliper and put it back. I switched the EIII back on and believe it or not but everything works fine again.

Life can be so simple ...

[Elmbeatz]

Ohh man, thank god for this forum!

[dr.c]

A big "classical" 

[rokuez]

I have the power supply on both of my EIII's calibrated.  However I wasn't following dvdborn's direction precisely because I had one set of hands.  I would measure the voltage then bump it up or down in increments with everything connected.

The EIII I got from E-MU HQ works fine and is now calibrated.  The other EIII is having some small issues. 

At first it would scan the SCSI's 1-7 and continuously scan them not loading the 2.42 OS from the HD.

Then I unplugged the HD's IDE and Power cable.  Plugged them back in and rebooted the EIII.  Now the EIII boots up scans the SCSI drives, and when the HD has had time to spin and get ready it finds OS 2.42 on the HD and says its booting.  BUT it continues to scan and I guess doesn't finish booting?

I followed dvdborn's directions about unplugging the NCR5380 chip from the processor board.  Then plugging the NCR 5380 back in and booting up the EIII.  It still scans scsi drives 1-7, then when the HD is ready it says Booting OS , the 2.42 numerals show up, but then it continues to scan scsi 1-7 as before. 

After this I tried unplugging the HD power and IDE cable again but no luck  


Is it possible that the HD is damaged, or the OS 2.42 information is damaged on the HD?  Any suggestions on what I should do

The HD sounds fine, I don't "think" its broken.










Here are some pics for anyone who needs a visual guide on how to remove the NCR5380


Pic of calipers you use to pull the NCR5380 from the processor board with

http://www.eiiiforum.com/picsfromusers/scsiproblem/IMG_1031.JPG

Pic of the EIII card cage with all cards in the cage.

http://www.eiiiforum.com/picsfromusers/scsiproblem/IMG_1018.JPG

Removing the middle board, which must be removed first to get to the processor board.

http://www.eiiiforum.com/picsfromusers/scsiproblem/IMG_1030.JPG

Removing the processor board.

http://www.eiiiforum.com/picsfromusers/scsiproblem/IMG_1029.JPG
 
Pic of the processor board with the NCR5380 chip with a red square around it.

http://www.eiiiforum.com/picsfromusers/scsiproblem/IMG_1028.JPG

[dvdborn]

Hi Rokuez,

First thing I'd try is booting the EIII from a floppy disk with OS 2.42 on it.

This should normally work, but it's possible that your HD won't mount. If it doesn't mount then try replacing the HD with the one from your working EIII rack. That way you'll know for sure if the HD is broken.

If you're booted from the floppy disk you could reformat the HD and reinstall the OS. Perhaps that might solve the problem.

David

[rokuez]

I got the floppy from the working EIII hooked up to the broken EIII and it loads up the OS.


However when I tried to copy the OS onto the HD i got the error message

SCSI HARDDRISK ERROR

I tried loading a bank and it could see the banks on the HD.  (didn't actually load a bank just looked to see if i could access the HD)

I tried formating the HD but then got the same SCSI HARDDRISK ERROR message.

I see the green led coming on for the hd, but now i can't even see the HD so to speak.  The 2.42 OS just loads from the floppy but I can't mount the HD, or get it to show up now

On this broken EIII I had a zip disk instead of a 3.5 floppy.  The zip disk was on the same ide cable as the hd.  I just unplugged the power cable from zip disc drive hooked up that power cable to the floppy disk and used the floppy cable that comes from the processor board.  the zip disc still had the ide cable that was daisy chained to the HD but no power was going to the zip disk (not sure if this , is causing any SCSI HARDDISK ERROR or not)

Do you think I should take the time of taking out the HD from the working EIII and putting it in the broken EIII?  Or just replace the HD with CF?  Change the scsi ID in the eiii's os under master module??   

Could any issues be coming from the fact that the HD was configured to run on an IDE cable with a zip disc i.e basically do i have to mess with any of the pins on the back of the HD reconfiguring it as if it was the only thing on the IDE cable?  The green HD LED light comes on and the HD sounds normal when it spins etc.

Or any ideas on how to get this none working HD Up and running again?

[dvdborn]

It might be that the ZIP drive and the HD both have the same SCSI ID.

Have you tried disconnecting the ZIP and than starting up from the HD? If it doesn't work without the ZIP drive disconnected I'd definitely try the HD from the working EIII.

If the EIII works with the other HD you know that the SCSI controller isn't faulty and you can safely install the CF-card option.
 
PS: When you say IDE cable, you probably mean SCSI cable :-)

[rokuez]

It might be that the ZIP drive and the HD both have the same SCSI ID.

Have you tried disconnecting the ZIP and than starting up from the HD? If it doesn't work without the ZIP drive disconnected I'd definitely try the HD from the working EIII.

If the EIII works with the other HD you know that the SCSI controller isn't faulty and you can safely install the CF-card option.
 
PS: When you say IDE cable, you probably mean SCSI cable :-)

this weekend I tried it with the HD From the working EIII but still couldn't get it to boot up from the working EIII's HD.

However the working EIII's HD has no jumpers on the back so I'm not sure if I could even configure it to work.  Also the SCSI cable I used has about four different IDE connections on it

if the scsi controller is at fault what would I do?

I might just wait until I can afford all the CF card gear and just CF the thing.  If I can't get the cf card working on it I would assume the scsi controller is at fault?

[dvdborn]

Next step is to try the working HD with the SCSI cable from the working EIII.
It might be that the scsi cable is at fault. If that's the case then the HD that isn't working now isn't really defective but just not working because of the faulty SCSI cable.

If it isn't the SCSI cable then I would swap the CPU card with the one from the working EIII. The CPU card is the card that has the SCSI cable going to it.

[dr.c]

When you format a disk or reinstall a new software, before restarting it, save a bank, just an empty bank, if there is nothing, its not a problem !
This rewrites the TOC of the disk (also known as FAT (Field Allocation Table) and the directory. The disk will then work. If you don't do this, the emu will turn round as an idiot for hours.