G V P I N S T A L L A T I O N D I S K N O T E S ============================================================================= C O N T E N T S --------------- A. Introduction B. Files contained in the GVP drawer 1. SCSI a. GvpScsiCtrl b. FastPrep c. ExpertPrep 2. Memory a. MemTest 3. SystemInfo a. GvpInfo C. Getting Help ============================================================================= A. I N T R O D U C T I O N This GVP.Install disk contains a minimal Workbench 1.3.3 environment (enough to boot from and prepare a hard disk). It should not be copied onto the hard disk and used as Workbench. The FastPrep (and ExpertPrep) program will prompt you to copy Workbench onto that hard drive after it finishes prepping and formatting a partition; this request is explicitly aimed at the Workbench disks that were included with the Amiga when purchased (or any subsequent Enhancer Kit). ============================================================================= B. F A S T P R E P / E X P E R T P R E P When running FastPrep or ExpertPrep from the CLI in Workbench 1.3, the stack must be set to 8192 bytes or more. The default stack is only 4096 bytes, and is not enough for the format and copy operations. To modify the stack, enter the following command from the CLI before running FastPrep or ExpertPrep: "stack 8192 " ============================================================================= C. A M I G A 4 0 0 0 N O T E S The A4008, when running in an Amiga 4000, it is necessary to modify the Rigid Disk Block on all devices (capable of supporting an RDB) to use either on-board A4008 RAM or Chip RAM for DMA transfers. Since the A4008 is a Zorro-II card, access to the A4000 FastRAM is slower than access to onboard FastRAM. If no on-board FastRAM is available, tests have shown that A4000 ChipRAM is the next fastest choice. ============================================================================= D. T H E G V P D R A W E R This section of the document will describe the various utilities included on the GVP.Install disk (and the DH0:GVP drawer for GVP products that have ore-formatted hard drives). Please note that ALL of the standard GVP utilities are provided on this disk; only a few of them will actually pertain to a single product. The others will either report errors (because the product they were designed for could not be located) or they will perform no noticeable function. 1. The SCSI drawer a. GvpScsiCtrl If you have one or more of the following external SCSI devices connected to the A4008, you may need to use GVPScsiCtrl: · Tape Drives ­ may require that Disconnect/ Reconnect protocol be disabled for the device in question. · Removable cartridge drives ­ may not automatically appear on your Workbench screen unless you run a particular GVPScsiCtrl command. If you have either of these types of devices, details follow. Tape Drives Certain tape backup units (e.g., Commodore A3070) will hang up in the middle of lengthy reads or writes because they are incompatible with the GVP SCSI bus's intelligent Disconnect/Reconnect protocol. This protocol normally allows busy hard drives to temporarily remove themselves from the bus and free it for use by another. Most drives can easily reconnect themselves when they are ready to process more data. Many types of tape drives are not capable of reconnecting in this way. If you experience unreliable tape drive performance, issue the following CLI command before attempting your next backup. GVPScsiCtrl Unit_ID DCOFF Unit_ID is the unique SCSI ID number assigned to your tape drive. Check the documentation that came with the tape drive or your Backup Software user's manual, if you do not know the drive's ID number. You can add the GVPScsiCtrl command to your 'user-startup' file so that it will be run automatically each time you power up. Removable Cartridge Drives When you start up, the SCSI controller on the A4008 board checks to see if there are any drives connected. Any that it finds are reported to the Amiga's operating system. These will then appear on your Workbench screen as available storage devices. If there doesn't happen to be a data cartridge in a removable drive at startup, your system may not recognize when you subsequently insert one. Similarly, if you have an older drive that takes a while to spin up to speed, this same condition may result. Double-clicking the GVPScsiCtrl Workbench icon will cause the SCSI controller to rescan for newly inserted cartridges in mounted drives. If you prefer to use the CLI, you should type the following command: GVPScsiCtrl -r If you wish this command to be executed each time you start your computer, edit your 's:user-startup' file to contain the following line: Run >NIL: GVPScsiCtrl -s TEMPLATE: GvpScsiCtrl (option) where option is one of the following: -m This option will force gvpscsi.device to re-examine the SCSI bus and mount any cartridges inserted into removable media drives that were recognized when the system was booted. -r This option will force gvpscsi.device to re-examine the SCSI bus for drives (of any type) that it did not recognize when the system booted (i.e. a drive that is slow to spin-up from a cold start). -s This option is similar to the one above, except that if it locates a removable media device without a cartridge inserted, it will not return control back to the parent CLI until a cartridge is mounted and spun-up. (This can be RUN >NIL: in the startup-sequence, and then whenever a cartridge is first inserted into the drive, it will immediately be recognized). (DCOFF|DCON) This option forces gvpscsi.device to recognize Disconnect/ReConnect requests from a device or tells it to ignore those requests, regardless of what the information in a Rigid Disk Block indicates. This is useful for drives that do not support the Disconnect/ReConnect functions, but do not have a Rigid Disk Block either (i.e. a streaming tape drive). b. FastPrep - This program is the Automatic Hard Drive Prep-and-Format program. It has an easy-to-use Intuition (point-and- click) interface, and performs most of the work for you. Please refer to the FastPrep User's Guide for more information. c. ExpertPrep - This program is a more advanced version of FastPrep and allows more control over the prepping and formatting operations for a hard drive. Care should be taken when using this program, because it allows you to change almost all of the parameters of the drive. While it does attempt to warn you when a potentially problematic operation is requested, it will let you proceed! 2. The Memory drawer a. MemTest - This program is actually a small script that calls two memory test programs to allocate all of the RAM currently in your system (and not in use) and performs tests on it. These tests include writing random values to a RAM address and then reading it back to compare with the original value. If any errors occur, it will report them to the screen. Since it is almost impossible to detect which chip on a SIMM module (or even which SIMM module) is at fault when an error is reported, attempts should be made to slowly reduce the amount of RAM in the system (and the tests re-run) to determine where the bad RAM chip may be. 3. The SystemInfo drawer 1. GvpInfo - GVPInfo is a Workbench program that allows you to examine various characteristics and conditions of your system. When you double-click on its icon, a window will appear offering several different ways of looking into your system. Each item in the displayed list: · Boards · Chips · Drives · Memory is an active button. Double clicking on any item produces a new window displaying information relevant to that item. You can also use the buttons at the bottom of the main window to navigate the informational displays in different ways. ============================================================================= C. C A L L I N G G V P F O R T E C H N I C A L S U P P O R T GVP maintains a staff of Technical Support Representatives to answer calls and assist with installation and operation problems with GVP peripherals. The phone number is (215) 354-9495 and the fax number is (215) 337-9922. Please try to have your machine in front of you when you call, and be ready to provide answers to questions about motherboard revision, Kickstart and Workbench versions, GVP product versions, etc. A little extra research ahead of time will make it easier for the GVP Technicians to diagnose and solve your particular problem. =============================================================================