Anyone know what this error message means?? [solved]

[leonk]

I just finished recapping another X68000 Red Zone (compact) and it "seems" to be fine as I get the boot menu which asks me to insert the floppy.  But when I insert the boot floppy, it spits it out and says that it was not possible to start the system.

I tried rebooting with a known booting SCSI external hard drive as well as SCSI2SD and both give me the exact same error "It was not possible to start the system. Reboot"  (with the SCSI HD it was all in Japanese and not English).

When I move these floppy drives, external SCSI Hard drive and SCSI2SD to the known good red zone, it just works GREAT.  This leads me to believe something is wrong on the motherboard.  But I don't know where to start.

The ONLY thing I managed to boot is memtest68k (because it's tiny? doesn't try to initialize I/O??) and it's testing all the memory and not finding any issues.

If anyone ever ran into this problem and can suggest a fix, it will be appreciated.

[leonk]

Solved the problem

The FDD switch in the back was set to 2/3 instead of 0/1.

UNBELIEVABLE. this prevents SCSI drives from booting!?

[gojirien]

I had this message after recaping my x68k, and another time because of the external sasi connector.

It seems that x68000 checks everything, that message could be because of the floppy drives, or something elle.

[repoMan]

Yep, it's very nitpicking. I've also the same behavior with a Compact I'm also trying to fix. It's fully recapped and seems to work fine; but it also only loads memtest68k. After the fourth track it stops to read, any further attempt to power off the machine gives a "Bus Error" and only a reset could complete the power off procedure.

I've tried chaining a pair of external drives; but they don't boot or react when floppy is inserted (yes, the switch 0-1/2-3 is correctly configured ;-)). Seems that something is wrong in the floppy chain but as I don't have a spare and working internal floppy tower I cannot check it for sure :-(

[leonk]

repoMan:  forget the floppy drive.  Almost nothing came out in 3.5" floppies.

Just follow my instructions to get SCSI2SD running.  It will boot the system and you'd be done.  My personal Red Zone (which I fully restored) has both floppy drives not working, but I'm still happy with the external SCSI drive solution and the system is very much useable.

[repoMan]

Mine seems to have a more serious problem. Although through memtest68k it seems to work fine (CPU, RAM, video system or at least part of it, etc.), the system still have something bad hidden.

We've more or less the same config, I've also tested two external HDD that I know to work 100% fine: a real SCSI HDD set to ID0 and a SCSI2SD set to ID1, only the first one seems to boot or read something and the result is the same when loading from floppy, after loading some data it hangs and the power off stops to work.
I've noticed that the "Bus error has occured" always shows the same info: "SR=$2610 PC=$0000CB6E", mmmm, maybe I need to check what's up with these addresses.

[leonk]

I used to get bus error if I had the switch set wrong.  You need to go back to basics.  Do 1 hard drive only (I suggest the SCSI2SD).  See if that boots on its own.

Also.. were the caps replaced on this system?

[repoMan]

Right, all caps replaced. There's always the risk of remaining broken tracks, I've already repaired some of them in this machine

When you say "only SCSI2SD", do you mean without the floppy tower?, I'll check ASAP

[leonk]

exactly. forget floppies. just go external hard drive (SD) and enjoy.

Can update SD image on PC

[repoMan]

Aw, no luck. Checked against another working Compact that I've disassembled (with an audio problem), it still doesn't loads anything even when using the pieces of the working one. No matters if I have an external HDD or SCSI2SD, I have also checked it with Motos floppy and the behaviour is slighty different as it seems to load only two tracks and then locks up with floppy's red light on.

The only real progress is that, as you mention, the terminated SCSI chain has some "positive" effect over the loading process and sometimes the power off procedure works fine, no bus errors. The addresses in this error were related to Human 3.02, when loading other softwares they change, obviously.

Only one more test can be done: boot from external SCSI2SD; but I need to reprogram SD to use ID0 (os use a new one), right now with ID1 it doesn't boots.