Tutorial: How to Install A Compact Flash Drive Into the A1200 And A600

[tom_a_spar]

tom_a_spar wrote:

Gpatch is the program you need
tryed with uae patching worked but failed with media
about to try with real computer

"error 3 on write" while saving changes to drive

I tryed HDIntslTools failed with error 1001

help

[JackL]

I have managed to get this running very cheaply - so thanks for the tutorial.

what i want to do now is have one of the partitions on the CF card as FAT. i can then use FAT95 from aminet to access it. I  want to be able to remove the card pop it in a pc write files to it then put it back in the amiga.

Question how do i add a FAT partition on the end of DH0 and DH1 so i can access it in this way? Or is there some other ingenuous util on the PC side that can write into the amiga partition?

[motorollin]

I don't think that will work as simply as you think. Your Amiga's CF card contains an RDB - an Amiga partition table. This is not readable by Windows, even if it contains a FAT partition. You would have to use the CF card within an Amiga emulator under Windows.

--
moto

[JackL]

motorollin wrote:
I don't think that will work as simply as you think. Your Amiga's CF card contains an RDB - an Amiga partition table. This is not readable by Windows, even if it contains a FAT partition. You would have to use the CF card within an Amiga emulator under Windows.

--
moto

Which emulator would you recommend?

Also, will Fat95 be able to access the partition on the real amiga?

[edit] I think i am being dense. so you mean access the CF card, which is amiga formatted only, via some mounted drive in the emulator?

[JackL]

Thanks motorollin.

I downloaded WinUAE, removed the CF from the amiga (which has WB2.1 etc on it) and plugged it in the PC. i added the CF card as a drive (it was recognised as having an RDB) and bobs your uncle - UAE boots. if i 'add pc drives at startup' then i can drag and drop files from my PC to amiga. Once the card is back in the 600 all works as expected...

:pint:  

 

[Jope]

JJ wrote:
I would only look at CF adpater as an alternative to HDD if you use your miggy mainly for games.  There is alot less writes then.

Modern flash memory will last a very long time thanks to write balancing. The amount of writes they report is per sector and you do not actually write to the same sector every time, the flash remaps it transparently to balance the wear.

Hypothesis: flash sectors are 512B, MTBF is 100 000 writes, you write once per second, CF card is 4GB:
- you have 4194304 bytes
- means 8192 sectors of 512 bytes
- the whole card lasts for 819 200 000 seconds of 24/7 writing, which is 9481.48148 days which is around 25 years.

You do not normally write once per second, but even in the worst case scenario your card will last 25 years? I know this is not the real world situation, normally there is less free space on the card, as some of it is software and only some is data.. You must also remember that the cards have a huge amount (someone said double) of spare sectors that it maps in as the originals die.

Unless there is some bad manufacturing defect in the CF card, it will probably last longer than the Amiga it is plugged into, as the Amiga has a head start of at least 14 years towards hardware failure.

[Eriond]

Just to assure those who are really worried about this solution: Nowadays you can buy things like "industrial CF". Those cards are 20x more resistant to write faliures compared to ordinary CF cards. Yes, that means they are specified to withstand 2 million write cycles! Using Jope's formula above, You would get some 500 years... I doubt your Amiga will last that long

/Eriond

PS. Just google on "industrial compact flash" and You will get plenty of results!

[the-topdog]

Great tutorial!  Would this work the same in an A600 HD?

[tnk2k]

I'd like to this but i want to be sure which CF card to use. I want to put in a 4gb card but which brand to take?

Anybody some advice?

Thanks.

[ZeBeeDee]

I've found that in my experience, the brand of CF card is immaterial. Other people may have differing views.

[ZeBeeDee]

the-topdog wrote:
Great tutorial!  Would this work the same in an A600 HD?

Yes, the process is the same for the A600.

[stanlong]

Hi ireally apreciate the job you`ve done explaing this and it works for me up to a point workbench fine untill I tried to reload my  software although I  have 3 gig in thr work partition it keeps telling me ihave less than 1 meg.
 Format both of your newly created drives as outlined in the manual what manual :cry:  could you include a paragraph on that  :-D

[Jiffy]

Do you use Amiga OS 3.1 or lower? If so, you should keep your partitions under 2 GB. OS 3.1 and lower have a limit of 2 GB per partition using FFS. Using larger partitions can cause weird errors, like the ones you are experiencing now.

If you want larger partitions, you should either use OS3.5/3.9 or another filesystem.

[stanlong]

os 3.1 install auto patitions workbench to 8 meg how do Iget around that

Jiffy wrote:
Do you use Amiga OS 3.1 or lower? If so, you should keep your partitions under 2 GB. OS 3.1 and lower have a limit of 2 GB per partition using FFS. Using larger partitions can cause weird errors, like the ones you are experiencing now.

If you want larger partitions, you should either use OS3.5/3.9 or another filesystem.

[stanlong]

how do you overide the 3.1 install disc hard drive setup.
which auto configers the hard drive partition 8meg for workbench and the rest all 3gig+ to work
basically how do iover ride the install disc   :-?  :madashell:  :lol:

[ZeBeeDee]

stanlong wrote:
how do you overide the 3.1 install disc hard drive setup.
which auto configers the hard drive partition 8meg for workbench and the rest all 3gig+ to work
basically how do i over ride the install disc   :-?  :madashell:  :lol:

See steps 8 & 9 and set the partition sizes manually using HDToolbox.

And the 'manual' you asked about in a previous post is your A1200 manual.