Risc PC cold boot fails, restart succeeds

Hello all, hopefully someone here can make sense of this.

Executive summary: it feels like the HDD doesn’t spin up quickly enough for the Boot:choices… and subsequent set-up, when spooling up from a cold boot.

The system: Risc PC, Mk 1 PCB, RiscOS 5.28 ROMs, StrongARM 202MHz, 32MB RAM, 2MB VRAM, i-cubed EtherLan 600A (32bit driver soft loaded), MAXTOR 71626A 1626MB HDD, Sony CD-ROM, floppy drive.

The problem: at power-on…

• The screen shows a flashing cursor in the top left and the HDD does sound as if the drive heads are seeking data.
• Three lines “RISCOS 34MB / SA-110 Processor / Acorn ADFS” without the expected Boot:choices…/DHCP messages etc.
• The boot sequence stops at a grey background with the mouse pointer, mouse working ok, low resolution (WimpMode 28 I think).
• CTRL-BREAK or push of the reset button restarts the machine successfully all the way to the desktop with the configured settings correct.

Otherwise from the grey screen:

• ALT-BREAK shows the “Message from Window Manager / Press Stop to terminate Unknown” dialogue box.
• Clicking Stop takes us to the Supervisor prompt.
• Here a “*status” shows all of the correct settings for the system including Boot/ADFS/Drive 4 etc, but a “*cat” yields “Disc drive not known (Error number &108AC)”.
• “*desktop” gets to the desktop in WimpMode 28 with the “Message from Desktop / Machine startup has not completed successfully: ‘Disc drive not known’” dialogue box. Cancel gets us to the basic desktop as if a SHIFT-boot had been performed, and Retry gets us a normal successful re-boot.

The hardware combination is 100% reliable with RiscOS 3.7.

I have searched the bug reports and not found anything covering this issue. Similarly nothing found within the “bugs” subforum.
Another difference to the RO 3.7 behaviour is that boot will not proceed beyond the top-left flashing cursor if no slave IDE device is present, either a second HDD or CD-ROM drive. There is no inadvertant cable-select jumpered; I did check the jumper positions.

So, two questions:

1. Is this a known issue with the IOMD 5.x ROMs which my bug-report search missed?
2. Would it be worth filing a bug report vs. accepting that the Risc PC doesn’t play well with all HDDs?

Thank you for your time in reading this, everyone! I would appreciate your thoughts.

Martin W

When you get to the desktop Click on the harddisc icon on the left hand side of the iconbar this is the call harddisc.
this will open the drive folder adfs::harddisc.$
Then press and hold the shift key then double click on the !boot to open
Inside go to Utils folder and open double click on the Bootrun file to run the boot it will go thought the boot sequence until the error
you can then hopefully identify what is failing.

report back your findings

I think it means that your power supply is dying and can’t source enough current for the HDD to spin up. Once it has spun up, a CTRL-break works OK?

Executive summary: it feels like the HDD doesn’t spin up quickly enough for the Boot:choices… and subsequent set-up, when spooling up from a cold boot.

I’ve used 5.24 and 5.28 on a Risc PC to backup a variety of long and short filename spinning rust HDDs by temporarily unplugging the CD drive and copying the data via the network to something less aged, ie. 2 HDDs at once; 1 to boot from and the other with data I want to rescue. Never seen any problems, though I don’t think any drives I have are Maxtor make – Conner, Seagate, Western Digital mainly.

The one gotcha/difference between RISC OS 3 and 5 with regard to HDD is RISC OS 3 uses the *Configure IDEDiscs setting to decide whether to bother looking for a disc. RISC OS 5 does not, so needs the drive links to be correctly set for master/slave as appopriate. The Risc PC doesn’t support cable select (the Iyonix does) so be sure the drive isn’t set for that, especially if it’s been pulled from an old Windows PC where you were probably using CS and an 80 way ribbon.

Thank you for the replies, all.

Inside go to Utils folder and open double click on the Bootrun file to run the boot it will go thought the boot sequence until the error

Thanks for that tip Rob, I’ll file that away for future use. The cold boot process doesn’t get far enough for that to be effective, but it does show that there are no problems on the subsequent warm boot.

Sprow, I have done the exact same with 2 HDDs in this RiscPC. That second HDD is a Seagate supplied with a RiscPC back in the day; I have since tried it as the primary under 5.28 with the same result to eliminate that possibility. Also I double checked the master/slave/no-CS jumper config and survived that sanity check. Tried a different IDE cable too.

I think it means that your power supply is dying and can’t source enough current for the HDD to spin up. Once it has spun up, a CTRL-break works OK?

That might well be it Chris. I’m sure my other live PSU has been used with this set-up but will try that. Both PSUs might be marginal of course!

I’ve had this kind of thing with dry capacitors in the PSU (in a 20 year old laser printer). The thing would only power on 1 time out of 10, the other times all the fans spun but the display remained blank. I changed all the capacitors and it then booted reliably.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a similar effect and, as mentioned, it prevents the HDD spinning up in time.

Beyond changing the PSU, one thing worth thinking about is swapping out the HDD for a CompactFlash or SD card to IDE adapter. That will be much less demanding on the PSU. It’ll also boot quicker too.

If you do replace the PSU be aware that some PC units need a fairly high load on the 3.3volt line in order to be stable, and an RPC doesn’t draw enough. This can result in over-voltage being produced.

Going for a unit that’s been tested with light loads (i.e. recommended from another RPC user) would be safer.