A 3000 plus

Would be most appreciative of any help. I have a 1990 A 3000 in a PRES A3K2 housing which contains a second floppy, a CD drive and a 270Mb SCSI hard disc all fed from a Morley interface.
Although not used since about 1998 when my wife’s school decided to ditch Acorn and join Mr Gates community, it powered up 2 weeks ago and appears to work from the floppies and the cd drive, as I can put them into either of the 3 drives and read them. The problem I have is my hard drive just spins up at power up, but does not appear on the screen alongside the others. *status shows the scsi link having no “0” in position 4, although the scsi drive just below says drive 4. The drive sounds a bit ropey when spinning up, I suspect bearings, so any help would be accepted.

Going from an ancient memory, but…

*SCSI
*Devices

Does this show the drive?

Most Drive interfaces store drive settings in CMOS
If the CMOS has been reset you will need to set them again.
*status
might help but you could do with getting a copy of the manual. I may well be on line or:
http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/micros/individual/newprodpages/prodinfo.php?prodcode=MOR-SCSIUG

Let’s see if the interface can see the drive first, then we can look at the applicable CMOS settings.
With a drive that old, especially if it’s not spinning up properly, it won’t handshake with the interface so won’t show up…

Thanks Rick,
devices shows
Device Type Capacity Vendor Product Rev Trans
0 Read only unknown Toshiba CD-Rom XM3401TA 3353 Async
6 ** Device does not conform to CCS 4.B *
7 Host (uncached) Morley SCSI EXPANSION 1.17

Thanks also to Chris, but I have the original Morley interface

Rick,
forgot to mention I have all 3 of the morley discs, and have attempted to run !configure scsi.
This brings up a dialogue box stating it is auto configuration with directory cache at default 16kb, background buffers 0, default drive 4,cdfs buffers at 32, and cdfs drives at 1 ( this being the second drive in the PRES housing I assume).
The only box that I actually change is the one stating “set filing system to SCSIFS” , but the hourglass spins for a few seconds, then hangs, along with the appearance of a second box with Drive links at the top, which is empty (so I assume no configuration has happened), and a completion box lower down asking me to reset the computer

First time I’ve heard of that message. It’s a drive that doesn’t use the standardised command set. Hmmm… Well, something is responding, at least.

To connect that device to be your harddisc, try this:

*Configure SCSIFSLink 4 6

(make SCSI device #6 be drive :4)

There may also be an option (do a *Status) for SCSIDrives or SCSIFSDrives. If there is, set it to ‘1’ so the machine knows there is supposed to be a SCSI drive. Reboot, then see if you can access it.

I dimly recall that there was some oddity with the SCSI configurator, so I just did it all by hand in the command line. But this is harking back to the days of my 1GB (two partition) drive and the tape streamer… what was that, 1993? 1994? Something like that.

Here’s a copy of the manual:

http://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/docs/Morley/Morley_SCSIInterface.pdf

The line

6 ** Device does not conform to CCS 4.B *

suggests to me that cabling, termination or the drive itself is broken. As long as *devices does not respond properly, I doubt you will get anything to work.

Rick,
*status brings up the list and at the lower end are what appear to be all the SCSI options, and after *Configure SCSIFSLink 4 6, the link in the list shows the drive as 4:6, and 3 lines lower SCSIDrive as 4, is this the value you said should be 1. The next line down is SCSIHost at 7, which looks correct. I next ran the Morley scsi formatter on the first of the 3 discs, and the hard disc spins up whilst the screen states it is looking for discs 4,5,6,and 7 to format. The next box showsdisc 4 “not conform” etc as per my second post.If I choose this drive to re-format I get “device not responding or capacity is too low at 10580”. Do I take this to mean the disc is scrap, and even though it is a small drive by todays volumes, can I add another scsi drive in its place, or is it a waste of money, bearing in mind I will probably sell the acorn if I can make it viable

The setup looks correct, so as Steffen says, it is time to delve into the magical world of SCSI termination.
Yes, it matters.
A lot.
And no, it doesn’t always make sense.

Does your drive have onboard termination? The CD-ROM? Where are they on the cable?

Rick,
regarding onboard termination, you are way above my pay grade. With the lid off the PRES housing there are 2 power supplies at the rear, one for the 3 drives (5v and 12v) and the other feeding 5v back out of the housing into the A3000
The ribbon cable from the SCSI interface on the rear of the 3000, which looks to have a centronics connector, firstly goes to the HP 270Mb hard disc and then over to the Toshiba CD Rom,( there is a spare connector on the ribbon not used between the 2 drives and all 3 connectors used appear to be fully home, so please explain the “termination”. I could sent a Jpeg if I knew how on this site, it doesn’t appear possible. Today my mouse has lost the menu function, middle button, which is annoying as it worked for the 3 weeks since powering up the system.
One other thing, on the *status listing, line 2 states no boot (boot file?) and line 3 states no caps and there are a few lines with no value

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/scsi4.htm

For images, upload to somewhere like imgur.com and post a link…

First, I would try to disconnect the SCSI cable from all devices and reconnect it.

Then look at the termination stuff. According to your description, your controller is at one end of the cable (and hence needs to have termination active), and the Toshiba CD-ROM is on the other end of the cable (and hence also needs to have termination active). The harddisc is in the middle and hence must not be terminated.

Termination might work different for different devices. The Morley podule might have a software-controlled termination, please check. The harddisc and the CD-ROM might have a jumper somewhere, or resistor arrays that can be removed.

Steffen,
Many thanks for your suggestions, but as the system had worked as it was wired originally, then the issue of termination must have been resolved on its first build. So before logging on to the site today I took the whole PRES housing to pieces, and removed all the SCSI cables from each device, and replaced them once or twice to produce some form of friction cleaning.
It seemed to do the trick to some extent as on powering up the unit, I was greeted with an icon on the bar showing"SCSIDrive4",but that’s where the progress halted for if I clicked on the symbol, no noise was heard of a disc spinning up, just an hourglass spinning for maybe 2 or 3 minutes until I turned it off. It was at this point that I realised the original noise encountered on start up must have been something else, maybe a cooling fan. Now *devices shows device 0 and device 7, no drive at all.

Okay, open up the PRES unit and disconnect the harddisc and unplug the power from the CD. Power up the harddisc alone (no SCSI cable). Do you hear anything? If you hold it while powered up, is there inertial resistance of you gently tilt the drive? (it spinning is like a gyro, it should feel like it is trying to resist you tilting it)

Any of that?

but as the system had worked as it was wired originally, then the issue of termination must have been resolved on its first build.

In the good old SCSI days I have seen countless systems with bad termination that worked for a while and suddenly failed.

If the harddisc does not spin up, check the power supply – no changes in cabling or termination will help!

Started to check the loss of middle button on my mouse, but the plug was an absolute sod of a job, so has any one got a schematic for my mouse, plug to edge connector on PCB

In the good old SCSI days

My harddisc was in the middle of the cable, tape streamer at the end. It was quirky as hell until I removed the three termination resistors from the tape unit.

Well, there’s a reason why people think of setting up SCSI as being akin to rituals involving the sacrifice of small furry animals…

there’s a reason why people think of setting up SCSI as being akin to rituals involving the sacrifice of small furry animals

I never understood why SCSI caused so many people issues, the SCSI card specifies if its self terminated and supports a single or double ended bus, and most devices had a dip switch (or resistor packs) to set the termination. Most of the confusion I recall came from mixing Active/Passive termination, trying to mix HVD/LVD devices or putting an SE device on a double ended bus.

I believe the original Arc SCSI implementations would probably be single ended, HVD, passive termination, so remove the CD and use a terminated cable with just the HD to see if its visible. It’s quite possible the HD is on it’s dying breath though, the only way to confirm that would be to try it in another machine.

My harddisc was in the middle of the cable, tape streamer at the end. It was quirky as hell until I removed the three termination resistors from the tape unit.

On alternate Fridays when the wind was in the right quarter that was perfect.

(been there, done that, worn out the T-shirt)

Many thanks to all,
But I have finally found the root of my hard drive problem.
As a last resort whilst holding the drive, I applied the 5 and 12 necessary without the ide connection, and sure enough it is the hard drive making the noise. I decided the remove the cover from the drive, only to find the heads off the edge of the platter, with what looks like the sort of carbon brushes hanging out of their correct position. Obviously as the drive is powered up, the arms have scraped the platter really badly, and the drive enclosure is full of “platter dust”. A right mess, so now if I decide to replace the drive, can anybody offer advice, because nowadays most drives are much bigger, and I am wondering if the A3000 will accept these.

Well, you have two problems. The first is that the maximum size that such an old machine will accept is 512MB. Luckily the Morley filesystem supports partitioning, but we’re still looking at multiples of 512MB – which means a drive up to ~2GB.

The second problem is a drive <= 2GB with a 50 way SCSI 1 interface. Be careful of ones you might find on Amazon/eBay unless the vendor GUARANTEES that the drive is “old but new” as opposed to “old and recycled”.

Perhaps: http://cjemicros.co.uk/micros/individual/newprodpages/prodinfo.php?prodcode=VAR-2GB-SCSI

Is there any mileage in a SCSI to CF card adapter? I have an IDE to CF card adapter on an A7000 – luckily I already had a low capacity CF card (128 MB).

Google gives some results, but I don’t know how many pins your SCSI adapter has.