The Day The Music Died Part II - Whoever invented IDE should be shot

I got a bit confused about this. The guy from Power said that Blizzards might work, so I e-mailed Phase V asking about it, still no reply as of yet. C`mon guys!

I also e-mailed Axel Kraemer, head of the services dept. at Amiga International, and he said that there was no special revision motherboard 1D (I had left out the all important 1D.4 ). And so I fretted for a while, and then decided that I should get this mess sorted out once and for all. This is when my HD went on an extended vacation, as I sent it to Eyetech so that they could test the buffered i/f and hard drive together. Of course, as you know, my Amiga, precocious bugger that it is, won`t boot without a hard drive present. No HD, no Amiga.

I phone Wizard, since they did the last repair and it has something to do with the Budgie. I get all confused again, and the guy sorts me out by saying it`s not a matter of what Budgie goes with what motherboard (if only it could be that simple!), that`s its not a clear cut situation, it could be the timing problem with the Budgie, which from what I gleamed, could be repaired without having to get a new motherboard, or something deeper. I think at this point, the only person who could understand my Amiga innards are the original design team. It`s a shame the motherboards not a really early prototype, `cos then I could encase it in lucite or something daft like that.

So that leaves me here. I`m doing the Lair on a PeeCee. Cries of Oiy!, Hanretty, NOOOOOO!!!!! all around the room , I know, but it`s the last option.

When I get my HD back from Eyetech, who are a bit tardy and whose engineers tend to forget phone calls asking for info on the current situation, I am going to send it to Wizard, who can do extended testing, and I`ll set a ceiling on how much calculated by the Hanretty Formula Then, assuming everything goes OK, and I can manage to fit the buffered i/f without destroying large chunks of silicon, I should have my nice little 1230/33 with 4Mbs and a 2-speed CD ROM. Hey, I know it`s entry level now, but let me have some peace, please?

3/9/97

Of course, it`s not as if I can even be sure of that. Thanks to the standard that is IDE, I can`t be sure whether I should put it on Slave, Channel 1, or Master/Slave on Channel 2. And who bloody came up with Master and Slave? Stupid names if you ask me, but hey, what do I know? (rhetorical question, OK?) Or should I even pt the cable in that way up or this way up?

Symptoms range from zilch, not even LEDs, or whir, but no hd activity, or boot up but the CD light not coming on, to every possible combination therein. As I may have said before, it seems that the usual laws of the universe do not apply to "Everybody`s Favourite"

So, hear I am again. I`ll phone Eyetech, asking them if they have had any problems with this model, but I`m pretty sure that even if it doesn`t conform to the full ATAPI spec, the Amiga should boot, it just won`t recognise it with any ATAPI driver software. Then, after that, I`ll phone Wizard, and get them to do an extended test. Of course, getting them to fit the CD would be just to much to ask, since it`s an Eyetech i/f, and that`s third party, so bang go my chances of some kind benevolent computer company fixing the whole shooting match. What I need is an Amiga specialist, an independent, in local range. Yeah right.

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