EIII Booting Strangeness

[Shogun]

When I first embarked on the ownership of an EIII - I read all I could find about their reliability and how temperamental they could be. Thanks to Forums such as this one  - I found a wealth of honest information from users and techs.

Two years ago I bought a very good condition EIII with an included MO and CD Rom drive. The original internal HD was shot but it booted OK from Floppy. I copied the Op Sys to one of the MO carts but I could never get it to boot from it. (Is there a setting?)  After I found a suitable replacement HD (with a lot of trial and error) I finally got it booting from the internal HD.

For the past year, I have only used the sampler as a Rompler as I have collected a number of CD Roms to use with the drive. However, recently I have noticed when powering on - it will cycle through searching the SCSI chain for the Op Sys repeatedly over and over. I have had her on the bench and checked all internal connectors etc and when on the the bench, she will boot efficiently. When I put her back in situ in the studio we are back to cycling the SCSI chain. After some head scratching -  what I have discovered is  - if I don't power on the CDRom drive it will boot from SCSI 2 (the internal drive) every time. Switch the CDRom drive on (with or without a disk loaded) and she will fail to boot. My workaround is to boot it and then power on the CDRom drive and re-mount the drives again from Master/Disk Utilities.

Has anyone else had this issue or similar? Could it be a fault with the CD Rom drive? It seems to work well otherwise. I'm hoping to borrow another CD Rom drive to see if it does the same.

On a final note - since I've had the EIII, I've noticed it's common to encounter "SCSI Hardware Error" or "Not an EIII Disk" messages. Re-mounting the drives seems to cure.    

I'm a very proud EIII owner as I've always wanted one since 1988. The necessary maintenance to keep them healthy is a small price to pay for it's sonic capabilities.

Shogun.

[midipuppies]

It sounds like a SCSI ID/termination problem. Check Id's on EIII, Internal HD and CDROM.
It looks like it is trying to boot from the CD when it is on. It is most likely set to SCSI 2. As long as they (the devices) are all on different ID numbers, it should work for you.

[Shogun]

Thanks midipuppies for the reply.

Fortunately, all three components are on different ID numbers but I did check as sometimes it's easy to accidentally change the ID when reaching the switch on the CDRom.
(Apple CD300 model)

Any other thoughts anyone?



www.electronicinstrumentarchive.weebly.com

[jdrummer]

Hey,

my machine has got this described issue, too. The same with the CD-rom player (model 300). In most cases a second start helps. Mounting via Master menu works too. It shows this strange behaviour since i bought it 2 years ago (checked cabels and scsi-ids but it didn´t help). Hopefully it isn´t a hint for a near broken scsi controller?! So keep your fingers crossed.

best wishes
Jan

[Elmbeatz]

I think these issues are 'quite normal'  mine's got problems like those too, at least that's what I recall ... haven't used it for quite a while...

[Shogun]

I will experiment with another drive (or chain of drives) when time permits. I have an old MO and another later Apple CD Rom drive to test.  The only reason I don't use the MO drive is that it sounds like an airliner taking off. In the past, I have connected a Zip drive (both 100 & 250 meg versions) but both seemed to create SCSI issues.

I think Elmbeatz is right that these could be just the "normal" joys of EIII ownership.

For general ref -
Anyone interested in looking at old 80's brochures and ads - I've started a website at
www.electronicinstrumentarchive.weebly.com


   

[wirefall]

Good idea your website, I'll send you some more ads to add  , to complete your collection if you like

Regarding SCSI: Yes, Elmbeatz is right, it took me also some sleepless nights to get a working chain
EIII > Apple CD300 > Jaz > Mac (Alchemy 3.0)

I have tested a lot of drives and cables, again and again the EIII shows the same symptoms you described, until I found the right combination. But now it works rock stable!

Could be also important, in which order you switch your gear on in this chain.

Good Luck!