The latest member of the family

[mrbombermillzy]

Honestly not sure about any of the other 2GB drives, they just hang the system on power up. The 512MB drive is running perfectly, at least for now.

It was sooo long ago that I cant remember anything but the faintest details, but it may have something to do with the ATAPI/ATA drive mode the CF cards are set to. (Its a factory set thing and not modifiable IIRC).

You may find that the working (512Mb) card is set differently to the non working models.

I vaguely remember this problem from back in my A1200 days.

Sorry its not much to go on Jon, but it may jog someone else's memory. :shrug:

[rubber_jonnie]

Honestly not sure about any of the other 2GB drives, they just hang the system on power up. The 512MB drive is running perfectly, at least for now.

It was sooo long ago that I cant remember anything but the faintest details, but it may have something to do with the ATAPI/ATA drive mode the CF cards are set to. (Its a factory set thing and not modifiable IIRC).

You may find that the working (512Mb) card is set differently to the non working models.

I vaguely remember this problem from back in my A1200 days.

Sorry its not much to go on Jon, but it may jog someone else's memory. :shrug:

Funnily enough I contacted Retrolemon and they've been super helpful, and one of the things they mentioned was trying to use an SD to IDE adapter rather than a CF adapter, so I have ordered one as I don't have any spare.

I have tried a different CF adapter and I seems to be working with the 1GB card again. So it's likely to be CF card incompatibility.

As for the 4GB card, it's simply slightly larger than the Amiga can handle, which is annoying but such is life.

Hopefully the SD card solution will be a better way to go.

[rubber_jonnie]

So I swapped the CF adapter to a different one (looks identical though) late last night and now my 1GB card works again. Very odd.

I'm hoping the SD to IDE adapter will be here fairly soon so I can see if that's more reliable.

[Maximilian]

Remember that these kind of IDE ports mostly aren't buffered, so 5cm cables or better no cable comes first.

[rubber_jonnie]

Remember that these kind of IDE ports mostly aren't buffered, so 5cm cables or better no cable comes first.

OK, so more diagnostics later...

Firstly, my short 5cm cable seems to have a fault. If I fit it with the red wire to pin 1, it doesn’t work, even without a CF card adapter connected.

If I flip it so the red wire is at pin 43 the cable works. I’m wondering if the IDE reset at pin 1 is somehow cross connected or just not connected, meaning flipping it resolved the problem. I’ve never seen this in a cable before, but I've ordered a new cable and for now I'll use my 20cm cable which seems stable.

Secondly it seems like my CF adapter is faulty. That also causes issues when connected. I have an SD to IDE adapter on the way, which will hopefully take away the CF card randomness, though I think the 4GB card is just simply too big for the OS to handle.

At the moment I'm hoping that the upgrade is fine, and I'll keep testing now I know there are bad components in the mix.

[rubber_jonnie]

More CF stangeness.

If I use the long (20cm) cable, the 1GB CF card works, but none of the others do. If I use the 1GB card with the short cable (5cm, flipped so it works) the card doesn't work, but all the others do...

We'll see what happens when the new 5cm cable arrives. I'm not overly bothered about using the 1GB card as I'd like to have at least 2GB so whatever happens as long as I can get a workable solution, it's all good.

The other CF adapter is definitely off and not working properly though.

Also be interesting to see how the SD adapter goes as I can hopefully use that for 4GB.

[stephen_usher]

Cheap CF adapters are very hit and miss. One of mine tries to cremate itself if I plug in a Hitachi Microdrive. Also the CF cards themselves are hit and miss. I've a 128MB Fuji one which on a PC with USB module works fine but when connected via any of these adapters just doesn't work properly, giving the wrong size and the identification string is garbled. When I tried it on the TF536 HD Driver gave a size of 4TB and the ident was something like "tAgoggann" or something. Maybe the bytes were endian swapped, as were the words and it was sending everything backwards as 16 bit.

[rubber_jonnie]

Cheap CF adapters are very hit and miss. One of mine tries to cremate itself if I plug in a Hitachi Microdrive. Also the CF cards themselves are hit and miss. I've a 128MB Fuji one which on a PC with USB module works fine but when connected via any of these adapters just doesn't work properly, giving the wrong size and the identification string is garbled. When I tried it on the TF536 HD Driver gave a size of 4TB and the ident was something like "tAgoggann" or something. Maybe the bytes were endian swapped, as were the words and it was sending everything backwards as 16 bit.

Sounds like a very similar experience to me. So much for standardisation, it's a standard for everyone loosely based on the actual standard...

My A1200 has always had an SD to IDE adapter and its been free of problems. Fingers crossed an SD solution will be better for the A500.

[mrbombermillzy]

Focusing more on what I said earlier, I believe that the cards themselves can either be hardwired as 'removable drive' or 'Hard disk'. I believe the removable drive setting is the problematic one to have for Amiga use. You probably wont know which type of card it is; sometimes the manufacturer will list it, sometimes it wont.


I also think some of the cards are not fully 100% ATAPI mode4/5(?) Hard Disk compliant as well (as they are mostly used for cameras 99.9% of the time, so manufacturers may be thinking why bother and hence cutting costs and no one will really notice) which may also be part of the problem.

There may be more issues, but thats probably enough.

Like you say, best to dodge the whole mess and go for a SD solution.

[rubber_jonnie]

Focusing more on what I said earlier, I believe that the cards themselves can either be hardwired as 'removable drive' or 'Hard disk'. I believe the removable drive setting is the problematic one to have for Amiga use. You probably wont know which type of card it is; sometimes the manufacturer will list it, sometimes it wont.


I also think some of the cards are not fully 100% ATAPI mode4/5(?) Hard Disk compliant as well (as they are mostly used for cameras 99.9% of the time, so manufacturers may be thinking why bother and hence cutting costs and no one will really notice) which may also be part of the problem.

There may be more issues, but thats probably enough.

Like you say, best to dodge the whole mess and go for a SD solution.

Yep, I think you're probably right regarding the types, especially since a lot were likely made as removeable drives for cameras.

As I said, my A1200 with SD solution is rock solid. It also has a buffer card that probably helps, so that's the way to go I think. I also expect that the SD card sizes will be more reliable as the 4GB card I have does work, but it is slightly over the limit for Amiga OS. Why can't they just follow the standard? very annoying as mostly these days you are buying smaller used cards from eBay, and whilst they're cheap, it's a bit of a lottery.

As Forrest Gump might say, "CF cards are like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get"...