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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Generale on February 13, 2005, 02:02:43 AM
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yeah, me again.
I noticed on ebay last night a flood of IDE to CF adaptors.
At the time I was thinking "Ooh, that would be nice for my PC" even though I have a USB reader...Then it hit me.
Something like that would be perfect for a small storage solution for an Amiga where internal space is at a premium. Especially if the person is willing to put a small slot in their case so they can exchange drives :-)
Only thing is, I have no idea if they require drivers, because the connection appears to be pretty much straight-through.
Any thoughts?
Anyone tried it or know if it will/won't work?
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This has been done alot recently have seen some nice mods in amiga 600s very nice silent too thinking of doing something like this in my 1200 ..and for drivers i think they check out as scsi in idefix not shure do havent tried..
adonay :-D
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Generale wrote:
yeah, me again.
I noticed on ebay last night a flood of IDE to CF adaptors.
At the time I was thinking "Ooh, that would be nice for my PC" even though I have a USB reader...Then it hit me.
Something like that would be perfect for a small storage solution for an Amiga where internal space is at a premium. Especially if the person is willing to put a small slot in their case so they can exchange drives :-)
Only thing is, I have no idea if they require drivers, because the connection appears to be pretty much straight-through.
Any thoughts?
Anyone tried it or know if it will/won't work?
I use one on my 1200 and on my Pegasos without any problems at all.
Be careful of the maxium write cycle of CF cards though. The one in my Peg is used as a boot drive and nothing else, but the one in my 1200 gets written to frequently so it'll die a lot sooner.
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Cool. Thanks for the replies.
I have horrible luck with hard drives. I was considering it myself. It looks to be a nice cheap alternative. Mostly because I don't have a massive amount of data to store anyway. Just DP and some utils really.
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Part of the CF specification requires each CF card to implement an IDE interface. So no, there won't be any problems, because to the computer, the CF card looks just like an IDE disk.
Of course, most CF cards only implement PIO modes (at least these days, you usually get some of the higher PIO modes). And yes, you only get a limited number of write cycles --- but that limited number is reasonably high these days (some manufacturers guarantee up to 100,000 cycles).
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Generale wrote:
Especially if the person is willing to put a small slot in their case so they can exchange drives :-)
Remember that, depending on the design of the adapter, hotplug should be considered dangerous.
Only thing is, I have no idea if they require drivers, because the connection appears to be pretty much straight-through.
The types of adapters likely to allow hotplug are likely to require some sort of driver support. (Note that I'm talking about ones that hang off the IDE bus; USB and so forth are generally fine, or at least marginally more insulated from frying the system.) The 'pretty much straight-through' kind will be fine, but you may wish to refrain from hotplugging those.
Any thoughts?
If write cycles are a concern, see if you can scrounge a Microdrive instead of a truly solid-state card. Access speeds may be even worse, though.
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Given the fragile, unbuffered nature of the in-built IDE's on 600/1200, it might be a good idea not to even concider a hot swap option at all!
I've got an 800MB flash drive with an IDE plug on it and it boots my A4000 in about 3 seconds and no drivers are needed. Check on Ebay, they show up there all of the time.
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@MaDDuck, what card and reader do you have? :)
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MaDDuck wrote:
Given the fragile, unbuffered nature of the in-built IDE's on 600/1200, it might be a good idea not to even concider a hot swap option at all!
Well, AFAIK, this goes equally for all controllers not specifically built for CF (which are then probably driving the card in 'native CF mode,' however that works). There are, however, weird IDE<->CF bridges with some smarts to them, that take care of the buffering and so on, but I have no idea how standard they are, what device class they intend to be, etc... only that they aren't likely to allow mounting at all until someone specifically crafts support, considering even Linux and the BSDs have or at least have-had trouble with them.
I mentioned this 'risk' a long time ago, and I think someone may've called me on it or otherwise elaborated, but basically, if it looks pretty 'straight through,' it's likely to work, and if it has a big ASIC present and comes bundled with a Windows driver CD, caveat emptor.
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heh. I didn't even contemplate hot-swapping to be honest.
I'm the sort of person that can swap hard drives in a PC up to a few times a day. And tend to rearrange hardware on average weekly.
That reminds me...how many of you out there have hotswapped ISA cards in old PCs? I discovered years ago I'm not the only one. Talk about tolerant hardware. Anyhow, that's way off topic.
As for microdrives. If I got hold of one of them it'd go straight into a Fujitsu Stylistic 500 I have. Odd machines, but strangely cool.
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Just a thought about this "limited write cycle" stuff on CF cards, or indeed any flash memory.
I have been "reliably" informed that the majority of cards are sensible in their dealing with bad blocks, and dynamically map bad blocks/exhausted blocks out of the available space, and use another sector.
I haven't tested this :-) , but a quick google suggests there's plenty of technologies punting this sort of behaviour.
Personally, I'd use a microdrive for this sort of thing. The 2.2gb microdrive lookalike from Magicstor is always cheap.
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Generale wrote:
As for microdrives. If I got hold of one of them it'd go straight into a Fujitsu Stylistic 500 I have. Odd machines, but strangely cool.
That takes CF? I gather the old style of PCMCIA (Type III?) hard drive was used on those designs... though I suppose a flatter solution might buy you a slot, depending how they have it arranged. (If you really like those, they took them way past the 486 era, and may have only just renamed the brand as part of the TabletPC mess, I've lost track.)
---
As to the remapping, I'd assume that's snuck in, too (especially as the broader market is forced to use FAT on all these), but even in the best case, how many spares are you guaranteed? The MTBF is probably more than fine for an Amiga -- it certainly works for palmtop users -- but you probably wouldn't want to put something like a swapfile on one.
Edit: Okay, specifically, I'm digging at "dynamically map bad blocks/exhausted blocks out of the available space, and use another sector," just to make sure everyone knows what this means. Drives aren't filesystem-aware, and most filesystems aren't drive-aware to this extent (whether they should be is another question), so the on-disk logic can remap blocks, but can't shrink the 'available space' of the volume -- at least without, pardon the pun, fscking up the assumptions made when partition tables were written and filesystems formatted. After that limited number of spares behind the curtain are used up, it's time for the card or drive to hit the bin.
It would be kind of cool if they'd just shrink the capacity of the drive on you when you run out of spares and let you reformat (perhaps reserving another row's worth of spares each time, until the capacity of the card's down to 0), but there's also kind of no way they can do that without risking access to all your data at the moment, so a) I'm almost completely certain they don't do that, and b) they won't be able to unless 'a miracle occurs' at the host level. It's a lot easier to make the host do it in software -- no coherency concerns, no need for the host to take this 'whoops, we just changed the size of the volume on you' exception at *any* time -- so I gather 'soft' mechanisms and more flexible filesystems are becoming the popular approach for dealing with unreliable media. The other alternative would be to have all sorts of 'mailbox' logic until your humble USB stick becomes its own fileserver, but that's a lot of firmware for what's supposed to be a 'disposable' storage device... still, there are compromises to be made, if I understand how CD and DVD packet-writing actually works at that low level. ('Mailboxing' files gets ridiculous, but 'mailboxing' blocks/sectors/packets just acknowledges what the disks are doing already, and there's a good excuse to let them carry on, what with latency and buffer-lifetime issues if each remap has to be handled 1980s-style by the host.)
My bet is that even, say, Mt. Rainier isn't quite as smart as I wish it is, but after doing all this thinking in public, I'm going to have to look into it now.
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@chiark (and others!)
I've got one of the 2.2GB MagicStor microdrives in my A600, using a standard CF-IDE adapter. Works a charm - don't have any problems with it being too slow (probably because the machine isn't much of a speed daemon, and thus the IDE isn't the bottleneck... :-) )
If anyone wants to check out what I've done, there's some pictures here: http://www.pimpmyamiga.org.uk
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probably wouldn't want to put something like a swapfile on one
Agreed :-)
Just making the point that it's probably not a *huge* concern for the next fair few years if you do use a decent CF card :)
I love that A600 :-) - well pimped ;-)
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I have an IDE2CF adapter, but I cant initialize de CF under Hdtoolbox. Eror 7 it says I think
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Too tired to format this properly. Sorry. But,
The stylistic has 2 pcmcia for normal use and 1 doublewidth for microdrives if I remember correctly.
Now for the bad blocks.
Are you saying that microdrives are smart enough to implement the same sort of system as S.M.A.R.T. Ie, having some capacity put aside for bad sectors that is dynamically remapped, and after that threshold has been hit, 'Sorry but you have bad sectors'. Anyway, I don't see how it could be too much of a problem, because as long as the CF card has the ability to say 'this byte is bad', the filesystem handles the bad blocks anyway.
I just had a stupid idea that I shot down instantly. Just thought I'd say it because some people might get a laugh out of it. My logic went as follows:
*CF would wear out too quickly if used for swap.
*What doesn't have the writing limitations?
*RAM doesn't!
*So use a Ramdisk for virtual memory!!
*.....idiot.
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:lol: Yep - that's pretty funny :-)
It's strange how a chain of thoughts can be started from one thing, and it all seems nice and logical until you step back and look at it from a distance... hehe
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hmm i just want to know why CF cards!! You get 1.8" hd drives theese days for better pris than a 4GIG!!! CF i went to look and found a 40gig1.8"!!!!! on webshop here in norway for 170$ (100£) why dont do this you could fit 3 of theese in a 1200 np my sugestion annways.
adonay :-P
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adonay wrote:
hmm i just want to know why CF cards!!
I use one in an A1200 cos it`s totally silent, and boots up bloody quickly cos there`s no moving parts to spin up.
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As one of the first people to try this on the Amiga, I'm very much a proponent for doing so, I have to say it works very well. I use it in my A4000D. The trick is to use the fastest CF card you can get to take full advantage of the solid state nature of it. Access times are where you'll find the bigest boost.
I don't however recommend using microdrives, as this negates the advantage of being solid state. Me myself personally I use it strictly as my workbench drive, shaving off some boot time.
Oh, and no drivers are needed, as CF is IDE by design. Use it like you would any IDE hard drive. And of course, never try hot swaping it.
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adonay wrote:
hmm i just want to know why CF cards!! You get 1.8" hd drives theese days for better pris than a 4GIG!!!
Size and capacity aren't the issue, speed is. Anything over 1GB is going to be a microdrive and negates the whole idea. It must be solid state to achieve any speed advantage.
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is it that much to gain in acsess advantages.thought this had everything to do with the ide conroller most 1.8" hds is around 15 ms witch is not to bad .I can see that CF cards would be ideal for transfers between amigas as long as switched off but have to try it out personally to see if the acsess time is as good as you say..ahh and you must love the silence.. :-D
adonay
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Generale wrote:
Too tired to format this properly. Sorry. But,
The stylistic has 2 pcmcia for normal use and 1 doublewidth for microdrives if I remember correctly.
To spare you the pain of buying the wrong thing, CF and PCMCIA/Cardbus are different. Modern microdrives are only available in CF form-factor (and I seem to recall there's some 'typing' of CF slots as to whether they're thick enough to let the microdrive fit), but PCMCIA hard drives exist -- they're basically a 1.8"? drive crammed on a hardcard, hence the sheer height of that Type II or Type III PCMCIA slot.
Now for the bad blocks.
Are you saying that microdrives are smart enough to implement the same sort of system as S.M.A.R.T. Ie, having some capacity put aside for bad sectors that is dynamically remapped, and after that threshold has been hit, 'Sorry but you have bad sectors'. Anyway, I don't see how it could be too much of a problem, because as long as the CF card has the ability to say 'this byte is bad', the filesystem handles the bad blocks anyway.
Someone's saying this... the microdrives really ought to, being magnetic and prone to a certain defect rate, and you can probably find out if they do or don't in the product literature; the question is whether they bother doing this for (any? all? some?) of the fully solid-state cards in any of the various formats they come in (CF, SD, USB stick)...
Bad-block remapping is sort of independent of S.M.A.R.T., which, as far as I know, is not much more than a buzzword out in IDE land. They were, in theory, doing remapping long before anyone came up with the S.M.A.R.T. word and the limited ability to let the drive report an 'I personally think I'm about to die for reasons that may or may not be accurate' condition. (Per this article (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6983), I notice IDE S.M.A.R.T. has wobbled a bit in nature, which explains my confusion. Since I'm more of a SCSI guy, I've been able to count on spare-table statistics showing up in mode pages, whether or not its presence there is some requirement of a 'S.M.A.R.T.' spec.)
Also, while Amiga and MS-land filesystems can still deal with bad sectors exposed to them at the software level, not every platform is so lucky. In particular, the code to handle that appears to have suffered 'some' abandonment in BSD-land, and not every *NIX filesystem will bother with the automatic reallocation that makes life on a dying disk comfortable. (This may have something to do with cultural differences, or maybe I just haven't found the best-practice for creating a soft list in BSD-land. A major problem is, of course, what happens when the sectors containing the bad blocks list go bad, or when a cabling or UDMA mode problem suddenly makes 'every' block on the disk look bad...)
I just had a stupid idea that I shot down instantly. Just thought I'd say it because some people might get a laugh out of it. My logic went as follows:
*CF would wear out too quickly if used for swap.
*What doesn't have the writing limitations?
*RAM doesn't!
*So use a Ramdisk for virtual memory!!
*.....idiot.
The other day I caught myself thinking about creating a VM-backed /tmp, then moving the swapfile to it, because it doesn't have to persist across a reboot, and it would only have to swap when the file grew... :-D
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i solved the limited write cycle problem in a very simple way: one big CF card which contains all the tools, games, boot partition etc. and another CF card which is a "work partition". the trick is that the 2nd CF card is pretty small, so if it ever blows up i will get myself a new one for 5 euro.
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I'd just like to warn you that flash RAM disks aren't reliable at all.
My USB flash disk died, and SD Kingston (with lifetime warranty) also broke (wouldn't write).
On the other hand, I never had a single bad block with all HDDs used. It does *seem* that something with no movable parts would last forever, but it doesn't.
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Yeah. S.M.A.R.T. is just a buzzwordused by seagate. what they do is nothing unusual. On my 'big' computer that my partner uses I always keep an eye on the s.m.a.r.t. status in linux, but not too closely, as I dont trust it. Did you know that the drive thinks that it has problems when the data connector isnt 100%? learned that the hard way with a bad caddy.
Heh. I remember trying to make my pc use a ramdisk for the swapfile years ago. the computer had three hundred and something meg of ram and barely touched most of it and still used a swap. Needless to say, it didn't work.
Oh, back to the whole intelligent sector remapping thing, i like to know when somethings going wrong. Unless you use a system like smart, the drive hides it, like winnt glosses over drive errors with NTFS.
Never occurred to me about the bad sector map corrupting. Scary thought but could be mangled back with a hex editor.
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@Dr_Righteous
Size and capacity aren't the issue, speed is. Anything over 1GB is going to be a microdrive and negates the whole idea. It must be solid state to achieve any speed advantage.
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Nope.............they have 4Gig CF cards now with no moving parts.............and I actually think they are upto 9Gig CF cards (Not MicroDrives with moving parts)
Very expensive though.
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Its 8 gig
LEXAR 8 GIG 80X PRO COMPACT FLASH CARD $1,720.34 ($1,495.95 Online price)
Trooper
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ouch! looking at that price I think I'd prefer RAID 0!
Just remembered. Upgrading this garbageheap from a 6x86 120+ to a p200mmx. System is shutting down now....
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@Dr_Righteous
Nope.............they have 4Gig CF cards now with no moving parts.............and I actually think they are upto 9Gig CF cards (Not MicroDrives with moving parts)
Very expensive though.
DAMN! That's just EVIL! I hadn't looked online... Just what I'd seen in the stores... Fry's, Microcenter, CompUSA, etc. I wonder what speeds these puppies run at :-D
*update* 8GB @ 80X?! *pass out*
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Trooper wrote:
Its 8 gig
LEXAR 8 GIG 80X PRO COMPACT FLASH CARD $1,720.34 ($1,495.95 Online price)
Trooper
80X??!! that is about 12 MB/s even my slow harddrive is faster than that :lol:
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Fransexy_ wrote:
Trooper wrote:
Its 8 gig
LEXAR 8 GIG 80X PRO COMPACT FLASH CARD $1,720.34 ($1,495.95 Online price)
Trooper
80X??!! that is about 12 MB/s even my slow harddrive is faster than that :lol:
That as maybe, But flash media doesn`t spin at 5400 or 7200 rpm. And try shoving your harddrive into a digital camera or mp3 player. :roll:
Trooper