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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: ZyBeR on January 23, 2006, 11:55:57 AM
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Hello
I have an original A4000T equipped with:
-CyberStorm mk3 060@50, 128mb
-Mediator
-Algor Pro
-Voodoo 3000
-SoundBlaster
-100/10 NIC
My hard drive is a 4.3Gb 10.000rpm SCSI drive, pretty quick but have had some problems with it lately.. I have not been thinking of installing a Compact Flash adaptor with IDE or if there are any with SCSI I would prefer that.
The question is, if I use a CF->IDE adaptor and connect it to the A4000T internal IDE interface, would it work? Could I boot WB 3.9 on it?
How fast would it be?
Will I notice any performance gains if I buy one of those really fast and expensive cf cards or is the IDE interface just to slow?
Would this solution be faster than my old 10.000rpm SCSI disk?
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ZyBeR wrote:
The question is, if I use a CF->IDE adaptor and connect it to the A4000T internal IDE interface, would it work? Could I boot WB 3.9 on it?
Yes, you can boot off of it.
ZyBeR wrote:
How fast would it be?
Will I notice any performance gains if I buy one of those really fast and expensive cf cards or is the IDE interface just to slow?
It would probably be marginally faster as seek time will be quicker than a hard disk, but the IDE interface will still be the bottleneck.
ZyBeR wrote:
Would this solution be faster than my old 1000rpm SCSI disk?
No. The IDE bus is slower than the SCSI bus so SCSI will always be faster.
--
moto
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Of course you can boot!
It will be fast enough. The problem is the limited read/write cycles that the CF card have. It's not recommended to use the CF as a boot disk cause it's constantly working and it will stop running after some months period. It's the best for backup reasons and transfering file via mounting the CF to a PC using UAE.
Another thing I discovered is that if you cut the power while the CF is running you experience problems on the disk 90%. After that, only format is an option.
I hope I helped a bit.
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So what you guys say is basicly that useing a CF card for a Workbench disk is a bad idea?
Are there no CF->SCSI Adaptors out there?
The problem with cutting the power, how does that work? I mean if I use SSF it shoulden't be any problems?
Limited r/w cycles, will I ever reach that limit you think?
The whole sulotion semes very temptnig to me, fast access, no hd sound and love prices :)
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Use it, it'll be fine IMHO.
CF does have a limited write life, but we're talking in excess of 100k cycles here. As I understand it, reading doesn't impact the card's life.
The 'miggy doesn't swap or write files particularly often. You should be fine.
CF cards also have intelligence built in to ensure that bad blocks are mapped out dynamically.
There's a lot of scare stories about using flash media for various things, notably bad for swap, etc, but I'd expect a mass of "it happened to me" posts on the web now which we just haven't seen. yet :-D
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What hardware do you recomend to use then?
How fast (slow) are the built in ide controller in the A4000T?
Is there any CF-SCSI adaptors to buy?
How fast CF card is fast enough?
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I've bought a CompactFlash to IDE adapter with backpanel like this:
http://search.stores.ebay.nl/Kick-Lee-Store_backpanel_W0QQfciZQ2d1QQfclZ3QQfsnZKickQ2dLeeQ20StoreQQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1QQftsZ2QQsaselZ84137632QQsofpZ0
They have all kinds of CF2IDE adapters. Check it out!
http://stores.ebay.nl/Kick-Lee-Store
I'm still waiting for it to be delivered. When I've got
it, I'll post about the testing results.
:-)
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ZyBeR wrote:
Is there any CF-SCSI adaptors to buy?
No, but you can use a SCSI->IDE adapter, and the IDE->CF adapter on that again.
How fast CF card is fast enough?
The fastest you can find....
Seriously, you're better off getting a new (newer second hand drive) harddrive. My personal experience with CF on the CS-PPC UWSCSI was slower than the harddrive.
-Paul
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I bought one of them from Kick-Lee :-) I had trouble using it with my 4xEIDE '99 and it ended up in my vanilla A1200 connected directly to the IDE bus. I would be interested to hear how you got on!
--
moto
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I received the CompactFlash to IDE-adapter, put in a
Sandisk 256MB ULTRAII CF-card and connected it to the
IDE cable of my standard A4000/040/25Mhz. The jumper
is set to slave (850MB HDD is set to master).
It works great! HDToolbox recognizes the CF-card and it
can be formatted and treated just like an HDD.
The only disadvantage is that on a cold power-up,
the system waits about 15 seconds before running the startup-sequence.
(With a warm reboot, there's no such problem.)
This IDE2CF adapter is very handy as a removable
backup-device on the back of an big boxed Amiga!
:-)
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Does amiga OS support swapping? Ive never experienced the hd grid associated with paging memory to disk on AOS like ive seen on windows or macos with limited memory. When there is not enough memory on my amiga to run an app, i usually get a message indicating so.
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Nope, AmigaOS doesn't do virtual memory. There are third party solutions though, but I've always found it to be a bit of a kludge on the Miggy.
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Hmmmm this (http://www.adtron.com/products/S35fb.html) might be something...
This is a real; UW SCSI Flash Drive. These baby's are incredibly reliable and can withstand shock of over 500G (not likely the rest of the Amiga will though).
Expect a HEFTY pricetag on a baby like this; they are however much, much more reliable then CF cards...
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You guys that have this sulotion, can you please run a test and see what speed you get on the CF disk and post it here.
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Any new input on this topic?
Still works like a charm for everyone?
Perhaps it's time for me to order a cf->ide adapter as well and not just talk about it =)