Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Dr_Righteous on June 16, 2003, 01:00:45 AM
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Well it was just crazy enough to try... So, I got ahold of an IDE to compact flash adapter off Ebay for US$15+S/H. I had a 8M 4x CF card laying around, so when I got it in I hooked it all up to my A4000D.
Worked well right off the bat... So I installed WB3.1 on it....
HOLY SH*T!!! This is an enormous acceleration in boot time! As soon as the machine has power to all the components (ie: my SCSI hard drive powers up) the Workbench screen pops up... No in between screens, just from black screen to Workbench instantly!
I've found CF cards online up to 1GB and speeds to 30x. I'm not sure what the performance threshold will be with regard to the speed of the cards... I imagine a 12x card is all you need, and is far cheaper than a 30x card.
I need to get a larger CF card to work with... I have a few things I want to try out, but need a bit more space to work with. I'll also post a Sysinfo speed test here shortly. So far this has been well worth playing with!
Props to Amyhr for posting this idea originally.
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Update:
Ran Sysinfo speed test on the CF drive and compared it to my SCSI hard drive... Here are the results:
2.15GB Seagate ST12400N on GVP A4008 SCSI controller w/8M RAM: 979,367 Bytes/Sec transfer
8MB Generic 4x Compact Flash card on IDE/CF adapter: 1,554,213 Bytes/Sec transfer
Given the boot performance I was expecting a much higher speed. Then again Sysinfo doesn't test seek time either... That and I think I've hit the wall as far as the on-board IDE interface's transfer speed is concerned.
I bet someone with a FastATA controller would have even better results!
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Thanks so much for trying that.
I've been going on and on about that for a while.
Those big CFs aren't that much (well, compared to the capacities of HDs they are). But, for me, if I replace my 180 Meg SCSI that I bought in 1990 for $905 including tax, with a 256 meg.
must be a 1* CF
128 = $65 + tax = $74.43
256 = $100 + tax = $114.5
Canadian dollars
What's the big deal cost wise?
I'm telling you, Amigas are THE BEST!!!!!
You can't do that with win98, or xp. Weeelllllll, you'd need a 512 for 98.
I just searched here and found me refering to it 11 times, the earliest is March 12, 2003. And they now cut the thread records to about 5 months back.
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Subject : Re: Whatever happend to the Coldfire project?
Posted : 2003/6/11 6:49
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Hi,
The FULL potential of the AGA Amigas has not been shown off yet. (I feel that way, anyway.)
I would like to know,
1) since it takes a couple of seconds for a HD to spin up, could a person load the OS into flashrom to boot up off of, is it big enough, could you put a second flashrom on there for this?
or
1a) Could I boot off of a Compact Flash card? The 25 speed ones?
keltic recently said to me
Subject : Re: Whatever happend to the Coldfire project?
Posted : 2003/6/13 5:42
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Atheist:
Quote:
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1a) Could I boot off of a Compact Flash card? The 25 speed ones?
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Yeah sure see why not(quick google search):
http://www.jactron.co.uk/ad-ide-cf.htm
http://www.emjembedded.com/products/flash/chipdisk.html
http://www.acqu.com/usa/ifd-xxx.htm
I did see some of theese for sale a while back here in Norway but i cannot remember the price, but i'm sure that if they were cheap i would have bought one pronto.
Your name is appropriate for running this test!!! Dr_Righteous!!!
What's your boot time, with no harddrives, or CD roms attached (no printers, scanners, etc)? It may be faster, beacause the drives have to go through diagnostics.
This finally vindicates my fanaticism that A M I G A R U L E S ! ! !
AmigaOne! Upping the ANTE!!!!
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You're probably right about the transfer speed topping out. Back then they couldn't of imagined tranfer rates being able to go that high!
A SCSI interface on an accelerator card may be faster??
I'm quite amazed at the speed, due to, it looks like CFs are 16 bit transfers. Not enough pin holes for 32 bit? Technology, huh?
Could you keep a sustained burst mode transfer? Or switch from synchronous to asynchronous (or vice versa, I don't know how it works)? Try assigning more or less buffers. Maybe a difference?
AmigaOne! CF to boot!!!
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I've wanted to do this for a long time, but can't afford it.
Now I have a MAJOR incentive!
Thanks!
I contacted one of those companies on Friday, but got a hold of a saleslady who wasn't sure what I was talking about. She wasn't sure sure what I meant by PCI card, or "attach to it (PCI IDE controller)" was all about!!!
Like I was gonna waste my time trying to explain what an Amiga was after that!!!
So I don't know the price yet. Their website is a nightmare of NOT explaining what products are, or trying to find the prices associated with said, undescribed product. I might get a call back on Monday.
AmigaOne! Unleash the POWER!
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I see they have 44 pin ones now too. would be nice for a 1200 or 600 .
http://www.cfide.co.uk/compact_flash_ide_adapters.shtml
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Terminills wrote:
I see they have 44 pin ones now too. would be nice for a 1200 or 600 .
http://www.cfide.co.uk/compact_flash_ide_adapters.shtml
Maybe I was wrong, small holes, a bit hard to count them all. (How many holes does it take to fill the Albert Hall? ;-) )
I've seen PCMCIA to Compact Flash adapters. Could those work with A1200s? How about A600s? For booting off of??
A600s PCMCIA was its' ONLY redeeming feature, rarely used, I'd imagine.
AmigaOne! Are you prepared?
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I think i will order one or two of theese babies.
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http://www.provantage.com/buy-22071937-addonics-ide-ultra-digidrive-shopping.htm
this one looks nice. if you want a clean look from it.
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thinking about the pcmcia cf adapter... I wonder if that would allow for other CF style upgrades? CF lan cards, webcams I think I've even seen CF usb lol
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Hey this one is quite cool:
http://www.magicram.com/DimmDrive.htm
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I've seen PCMCIA to Compact Flash adapters. Could those work with A1200s? How about A600s? For booting off of??
Yeah. They work. I tried it out yesterday :-) You need a soft driver for them though (cfd.lha from Aminet), so they're not bootable. Commodore's device can recognize the cards, but it thinks they're write-protected and can't do anything with them.
What I'm planning to do is create a Kick floppy to load the driver, and then reassign and boot the system from PCMCIA.
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Thank you so much for trying this out, now we all know. My trusty A1200 is all packed up for moving, so I won't get to it until the fall, but this is probably one of the first things I'll do. Until then, I'll have to pick up the IDE-to-flash adapter (for the A1200's 44 pin connector?) A 128-254MB CF card, and an ethernet adapter...
:-D
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I'd advice you to take a look at this (http://www.dpreview.com/articles/mediacompare/) page before bying a CF-card. It compares speed of different cards and it seems the most sold card 'sandisk' (at least here in the Netherlands) is also one of the slowest CF-cards available :-P
@Dr_Righteous
Thanks for the info!
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'sandisk' ... is also one of the slowest CF-cards available
Darn! That's what I bought! :-(
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Darn! That's what I bought!
As I said.. most sold :)
I have two Sandisk CF-cards (64MB for digital camera and 256 MB for PDA). But a friend warned me about the speed-issues last week. He noticed that with a very cheap card he was trying his digital camera seemed much faster in storing the images. So he did a web-search and found out the cause... Sandisk is dead-slow, unless you buy their very expensive high-speed versions.
I'm sure gonna check speeds before buying another CF-card in the future :)
Regards,
Onno
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I'm gonna buy one of these next week to put in my new A1200.
Scan (http://web6.scan.co.uk/Products/Info.asp?WPID=2317) in the UK do a 256Mb ScanFlash Compact Flash Media (x10 Speed) for £31+VAT. This seems quite cheap, and it's bigger and a LOT faster than the 2.5" IDE drive in it at the moment.
No brand name is mentioned on the site, can anyone tell me if it's any good? Does 10x mean it's fast?
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Does 10x mean it's fast?
If you look at the link I put here earlier you can see speedtest-results. In that first table at the end of each lines the speeds are displayed. It seems 10x for writing would be about average, for reading even the Sandisk is faster :-(
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Ohno wrote:
Does 10x mean it's fast?
If you look at the link I put here earlier you can see speedtest-results. In that first table at the end of each lines the speeds are displayed. It seems 10x for writing would be about average, for reading even the Sandisk is faster :-(
hmmmmmmm..... I'll have to shop about.
Ten speed is still faster than a 2.5" IDE drive running off Gayle though, no?
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What is the easiest way to add a 40-pin ATA controller to an A1200? Then I can buy a 40pin cfide-adaptor instead of the 44pin one, and use it in other computers besides the A1200 in future.
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how about http://www.mesanet.com/cfadptds.pdf
has both 44 and a 40 pin connector.
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As a general heads-up, I gather there are two sorts of these adapters.
"Dumb" ones are straight-through, perhaps with some power control components on board (maybe still some sort of buffering on the IDE lines?). There's a TAPR?-originated design common and cheap on eBay that's like this... in any case, they 'appear' as a generic ATA drive via the controller on the CF card itself (good), but you *don't* want to pretend you can hotplug, even if the drive is unmounted in software- bad enough to blow out the IDE controller on a generic x86 board, let alone an Amiga (bad!). Power down before swapping the card in and out!
Less common on eBay, but presumably of equal standing everywhere else, are 'smart' adapters, which include a bridging chipset to drive the CF card in what some have called a 'native mode.' As far as I can tell, this just means there's some sort of logic involved to ensure hotplug can occur safely (CF still basically == ATA, as far as I know), but as a side effect, the 'smart' chipset appears to the host as some sort of removable ATAPI(?) device, and thus this breed of adapter doesn't stand a chance of working with OSes that don't recognize and support the device class. Apparently FreeBSD didn't support these three years ago - the best reference I could find; for all I know, Linux might, but probably didn't for a long time, so if you find an adapter being marketed to Linux/*NIX users, it's probably of the simpler sort mentioned above.
[color=FF3300]Edit:[/color] Looks like I was a little wrong about the 'modes' - this post provides a hint as to the spec (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3ADCC317.AAE544DD_soekris.com%40ns.sol.net)... and might open the door to 'smart' bridges being of even weirder Windows-centric design, perhaps.
Over in USB land, all adapters seem like they should support hotplug as a feature of the bridging chipsets used; to be safe, you can just pull the adapter off the USB chain before changing CFs.
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In short: It's a good idea not to hotplug unless you're absolutely certain it's safe (remember, eBay claims and/or the labeling of brandless stuff from overseas doesn't count as 'absolutely certain!'), and it's probably good to be aware that there's a breed of adapters that may not work. (For all I know, there might be a third breed of bridge that manages hotplug safely but *also* presents a 'straight-through' connection to the host controller; caveat emptor.)
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What about the problem with 3.3v and 5v CF cards ?
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What about the problem with 3.3v and 5v CF cards ?
some of the adapters seem to be able to handle both types.
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Yes, I feel it necessary to clarify that my adapter is a "dumb" adapter... With big bold print on the board "NO HOT SWAP!" In fact, the only components on the board at all are two resistors and a master/slave jumper.
A good source for CF cards is http://www.18004memory.com (http://www.18004memory.com) They offer CF cards in both 12x and 30x configurations.
Like I said, at 4x I think I've hit the maximum transfer rate of the on-board IDE connection. Thus a faster CF card likely won't make much difference, unless you're using a bootable FastATA upgrade card.
1.5MB/s transfer is still pretty serious for a plain NON-ATA IDE interface made in the early 90's! :-D
Oh, and a hearty "You're welcome" to the thank-you's :-)
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Dr_Righteous wrote:
Yes, I feel it necessary to clarify that my adapter is a "dumb" adapter... With big bold print on the board "NO HOT SWAP!" In fact, the only components on the board at all are two resistors and a master/slave jumper.
A good source for CF cards is http://www.18004memory.com (http://www.18004memory.com) They offer CF cards in both 12x and 30x configurations.
Like I said, at 4x I think I've hit the maximum transfer rate of the on-board IDE connection. Thus a faster CF card likely won't make much difference, unless you're using a bootable FastATA upgrade card.
1.5MB/s transfer is still pretty serious for a plain NON-ATA IDE interface made in the early 90's! :-D
Oh, and a hearty "You're welcome" to the thank-you's :-)
Right. I'm convinced. Friday afternoon, i'll be buying one of these babies, and a 256MB compact flash card.
I imagine the Amiga will boot up in a second or three max, as there is no other harddrives to initialise in it.
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No Man!! on't buy that IDE to CF adaptor for your 1200! that would be a waste of an IDE port.....instead just get a PCMCIA Compact Flash adaptor and use the 1200's PCMCIA port.....also you will need to download cfd.lha and fat95.lha from Aminet. you will soon be surprised as now you will be able to use CF cards, Sony memory stick, SD cards, IBM micro drives and others, and you can even boot off them if you make an assign with a floppy I belive. But i have been using this for months. its excellent for tranfering pictures from your Digital camera. It's jsut a matter of plugging it in to the 1200 and thats it!
Amiga freakin rules! BIGTIME!
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leirbag28 wrote:
No Man!! on't buy that IDE to CF adaptor for your 1200! that would be a waste of an IDE port.....instead just get a PCMCIA Compact Flash adaptor and use the 1200's PCMCIA port.....also you will need to download cfd.lha and fat95.lha from Aminet. you will soon be surprised as now you will be able to use CF cards, Sony memory stick, SD cards, IBM micro drives and others, and you can even boot off them if you make an assign with a floppy I belive. But i have been using this for months. its excellent for tranfering pictures from your Digital camera. It's jsut a matter of plugging it in to the 1200 and thats it!
Amiga freakin rules! BIGTIME!
How much do the PCMCIA cards cost?
The cfide adaptors are only 20 pounds and i can boot straight off it, and later on use it in other computers when the 1200 dies.
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leirbag28 wrote:
No Man!! on't buy that IDE to CF adaptor for your 1200! that would be a waste of an IDE port.....instead just get a PCMCIA Compact Flash adaptor and use the 1200's PCMCIA port.....also you will need to download cfd.lha and fat95.lha from Aminet. you will soon be surprised as now you will be able to use CF cards, Sony memory stick, SD cards, IBM micro drives and others, and you can even boot off them if you make an assign with a floppy I belive. But i have been using this for months. its excellent for tranfering pictures from your Digital camera. It's jsut a matter of plugging it in to the 1200 and thats it!
Amiga freakin rules! BIGTIME!
I think you missed the point... You can't boot from the PCMCIA converter.... The idea is to speed up the system, not just plug in memory cards.
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Repeat after me, CF cards ARE NOT FASTER.
The current CF standard tops out at 4mb/s,
thats faster than your observed 1.5mb/s....
but of course, as you mentioned, the Amiga is the bottleneck, not the CF card. And the same thing will be true, if you plug in a modern IDE drive....you'll find the same bottleneck.
But whereas CF cards top out at 4mb/s...and the upcoming CF 2.0 standard will go up to 16mb/s....hard drives were at 16mb/s during the Fast ATA era...and went to 33mb/s, and then 66mb/s and 100 and finally now at 133mb/s....well, that's the speed of the standard, real world is not so fast, but it's way more than 4mb/s...!!!!
I just bought a 30mb maxtor 7200rpm, 2mb cache drive for $30 after rebates from comp-usa.
Not only is it much much larger, has no problems with writes (your card will burn out quickly if you use it for writes a lot)...but my drive is much much faster.
I'm trying to give good advice, please....just look up the published transfer rates...a 1x = 150k/s....so use the speed readings and determine the speed of your CF card....you'll see its much slower.
my brother runs a large business and uses CF drives for boot drives...he does it because of no moving parts, and he thinks it might be more reliable, plus its very small and low power.
(he runs a large isp)....ok....he said all along that CF drives are not faster...I made the same mistake a few years back, thinking they must be faster.
Now....since then I read the spec's and keep tabs on them, but they are still not very fast compared to hdd's, even today.
.
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@Marktime
they might not be faster however ... they don't need a boot delay ... nor do they make a sound so in the end it's all a matter of choice. AFAIK it's hit or miss with the new hd's and the A4000 or 1200 ide on whether or not it'll take 3 reboots to start.
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Repeat after me, CF cards ARE NOT FASTER.
Ok.. because you insist: CF cards ARE NOT FASTER. :-D
I think most people are aware they are not faster, but harddisks have spinup-time and seek-time for every file. On Amiga systems the files usually tend to be quite a bit smaller (less bloat) than on WIndows systems, so the seek-times become more important. That at least makes it feel pretty fast I'm sure.
Apart from that.. it's just plain cool ;-)
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Don't forget, I'm guessing here, but even A1200 and A4000 SCSI controllers don't get much higher than the current CF transfer rates. At least the original 020 @14 MHz and 040 @25 MHz.
This is toooo cooollll!!!
AmigaOne! This is the first thing I will try on a One! :-D (full OS 4.0 <20 megs) :-D
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CF Cards ARE FASTER... Modern hard disks have no advantages on OLD controllers. The speed comes from access and seek time... Not how much data they can transfer at once.
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Does 10x mean it's fast?
Something to add here: the 10x or 30x etc is the same as the speed class of a normal cdrom-drive,
so 1x means aprox. 150kByte/s..
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Bluefunk
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Somehow I don't believe that's entirely accurate... Otherwise my 4x flash card would not have produced 1.5MB/s transfer.
Better to say 10x is ten times faster than the first generation of the device.
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Mmmmmm - sounds like the perfect candidate for a laptop conversion project; no need for bulky HDs... Ideally would need a double CF - one for the boot drive, and a removable one for data, etc.
:-D
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Why not use a IDE buffered interface, having a 44pin cf/flash as the boot drive on the main connector, another cf slot on one of the 40pin connectors and then either a cdrom or hd (or both) on another connector?
DiskOnModule's seem like a good idea...
http://www.milesie.co.uk/asp/storage.asp
Seem to have everything we need... Been thinking about it for a while, to make a "media" Amiga to show pics from my digicam/play mp3s etc whilst sitting next to my tv. Would have built a portable, but no lcd screen...
Jason
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Chunder wrote:
Mmmmmm - sounds like the perfect candidate for a laptop conversion project; no need for bulky HDs... Ideally would need a double CF - one for the boot drive, and a removable one for data, etc.
:-D
Laptop eh? I hope you don't need windows on it. Those 1GB IBM Microdrive CF cards are really expensive, and I don't think even one of those would hold an install of XP Pro! ;-)
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Pertinax wrote:
Why not use a IDE buffered interface, having a 44pin cf/flash as the boot drive on the main connector, another cf slot on one of the 40pin connectors and then either a cdrom or hd (or both) on another connector?
DiskOnModule's seem like a good idea...
http://www.milesie.co.uk/asp/storage.asp
Seem to have everything we need... Been thinking about it for a while, to make a "media" Amiga to show pics from my digicam/play mp3s etc whilst sitting next to my tv. Would have built a portable, but no lcd screen...
Jason
Thanks for the link Jason, it's a good one.
Those DiskOnModules look good, no need to buy a CF to IDE adaptor. I think i'll buy one of these.
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Nope, XP Pro needs min 2.5 gb free to install.
2.5gb.... shesshh..... :-(
-Jar.
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Jaruzel wrote:
Nope, XP Pro needs min 2.5 gb free to install.
2.5gb.... shesshh..... :-(
-Jar.
I suppose it shows that Microsoft have some good compression routines, to be able fit 2.5GB onto a single CD! ;-)
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I suppose it shows that Microsoft have some good compression routines, to be able fit 2.5GB onto a single CD!
No it seems they have no respect for customers resources... every sound is an uncompressed WAV, every image an uncompressed BMP and every program/dll bloated as can be.
Seen the 'Enter the Matrix' already btw? Requires 3.4 Gb harddisk space to install.... and then you still need a CD to be present in the CD-drive while playing. I know harddisks are getting cheaper, but this is really getting out of hand!
Even if that game is pretty nice to play.
Maybe the PC-world should start shipping install-free, ready-to-run games on CF-cards :-P
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Ohno wrote:
I suppose it shows that Microsoft have some good compression routines, to be able fit 2.5GB onto a single CD!
No it seems they have no respect for customers resources... every sound is an uncompressed WAV, every image an uncompressed BMP and every program/dll bloated as can be.
Seen the 'Enter the Matrix' already btw? Requires 3.4 Gb harddisk space to install.... and then you still need a CD to be present in the CD-drive while playing. I know harddisks are getting cheaper, but this is really getting out of hand!
Even if that game is pretty nice to play.
Maybe the PC-world should start shipping install-free, ready-to-run games on CF-cards :-P
You have AmigaAnywhere in mind by any chance Ohno? ;-)
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You have AmigaAnywhere in mind by any chance Ohno?
Would you believe me if I told you that I honestly didn't think about that when making that statement? It _IS_ a good idea though :-P
But for now Amiga-Anywhere has no hardware-accelleration on either Windows or Linux, so it is not yet ready for full screen 3D desktop games like this (although it can be in the future). PDA's are still the main target for now. But that _might_ be one of the things Amiga Inc. will add to intent in the future :-)
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Ohno wrote:
You have AmigaAnywhere in mind by any chance Ohno?
Would you believe me if I told you that I honestly didn't think about that when making that statement? It _IS_ a good idea though :-P
But for now Amiga-Anywhere has no hardware-accelleration on either Windows or Linux, so it is not yet ready for full screen 3D desktop games like this (although it can be in the future). PDA's are still the main target for now. But that _might_ be one of the things Amiga Inc. will add to intent in the future :-)
How many coders have they got working for them at the moment? Do you know?
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I found out xp creates a swap file that is 1 and a half times the size of your ram.
I found a place on the internet telling me how to make it smaller with some regisry settings, it didn't work.
Then I tried the, erase swap file on shut down, all I can say is, I have a RAID setup, it was unpleasant, don't believe me, give it a try! (Thought the swap file should maybe be erased before the new size kicked in.)
BTW: I have 1 Gig and was trying to find a motherboard that holds 3 (I got the ram lying around, but can't use it because it is ECC Registered, and I can't use it on the A1 because it uses PC133 and mine is DDR!!!)
AmigaOne! Even the old Amiga is STILL full of surprises!!! :-D :-D
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How many coders have they got working for them at the moment? Do you know?
I really have no idea. And I don't know how much I can tell you exactly about it (because of my NDA with Amiga).
I think I _can_ tell you the SDA list is very active. I estimate about two dozen of people are actively using the SDA-lists (with actual development-related discussions), but every now and then someone I've never seen on that list before pops up with a completed application or beta release for us to look at, meaning more people are developing then I can see on that list. Some are mostly in listening mode on that list, while working on their own applications (not just games). On top of that there are also developers who didn't sign an SDA and are therefore only on the other developer-lists, which I don't track as accurately as the SDA-list. The SDA-list is also more active than Tao's open Developers-list which I'm also subscribed to.
All in all it is very hard to say for me. If we go for just Amiga-Anywhere developers (not other intent-developers) I'd say it will most certainly not be thousands and I don't think hundreds either. Although it might very well be a bit over 100. Most of them are only part-time AA-developers though, they usually have a full-time job next to it, untill they are able to earn enough with Amiga-Anywhere to go there full-time (I would love to do so).
As I said.. hard for me to say. The only ones who actually know are the people at Amiga Inc.
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Ohno wrote:
How many coders have they got working for them at the moment? Do you know?
I really have no idea. And I don't know how much I can tell you exactly about it (because of my NDA with Amiga).
I think I _can_ tell you the SDA list is very active. I estimate about two dozen of people are actively using the SDA-lists (with actual development-related discussions), but every now and then someone I've never seen on that list before pops up with a completed application or beta release for us to look at, meaning more people are developing then I can see on that list. Some are mostly in listening mode on that list, while working on their own applications (not just games). On top of that there are also developers who didn't sign an SDA and are therefore only on the other developer-lists, which I don't track as accurately as the SDA-list. The SDA-list is also more active than Tao's open Developers-list which I'm also subscribed to.
All in all it is very hard to say for me. If we go for just Amiga-Anywhere developers (not other intent-developers) I'd say it will most certainly not be thousands and I don't think hundreds either. Although it might very well be a bit over 100. Most of them are only part-time AA-developers though, they usually have a full-time job next to it, untill they are able to earn enough with Amiga-Anywhere to go there full-time (I would love to do so).
As I said.. hard for me to say. The only ones who actually know are the people at Amiga Inc.
What I meant was Amiga Inc employees that are coders?
Thanks for the info though, it's interesting.
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mdma wrote:
What I meant was Amiga Inc employees that are coders?
Thanks for the info though, it's interesting.
Yeah, just don't pass it on to bbrv. ;-)
AmigaOne! So few, shaking things up BIG TIME! :-D :-D
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Trying to get a bit more on topic again:
I think it would be very cool if future Amiga-systems would have a CF-card slot from which they can boot. Especially amiga1200-like casings would lend themselves very well for a small sized, high capacity, high speed floppydisk-replacement I think. Larger games can be sold on a single CF-card then and run without having to install it, booting straight from the CF-card (those cards are getting cheaper). Wouldn't that be very Amiga-like? This could work for CD's as well. Floppy's are outdated, but CF-cards and CD/DVD's could take over the role of floppydisks in the classic Amiga. Offcourse games should still be installable for people who wish to do so, but for less computer-savvy people it would be ideal to be able to pop in a CF-card/CD/DVD, reset the computer and boot right into the game.
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Very Atari 2600 like!!! :-D :-D
They really are the audio casettes of the 21st century, as far as I'm concerned!!
And floppies, even video casettes!! They just came out with a 4 gig version, a DVD movie can JUST fit on that, well, many can.
Imagine a VCR which uses CFs instead of junky old video tape! :-D It could have 3 - 6 sockets. Or a car stereo, or a boom box, with 3 or 4 sockets.
Resources wise, I think the material that makes 1 CD could make 2 CFs.
I hope that in the future, they are the ubitiquous standard.
In short, I love those little thingies.
AmigaOne! Be there, do that!
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Quote
by Terminills on 2003/6/16 13:57:34
http://www.provantage.com/buy-22071937-addonics-ide-ultra-digidrive-shopping.htm
this one looks nice. if you want a clean look from it.
Very interesting and cheap :-)
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Digidrive requires win driver . . . .no good for Amiga :-(
Ciao
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@Framiga
to quote from the page.
Add a device to your desktop that can handle all the different kinds of Flash media. Drive connects to standard IDE interface - system BIOS automatically detects it as an ATAPI removable drive - no driver is needed
:edit:
I might buy one, so I'll know for sure.
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Real quick post..
Note "# BIOS supports for ATAPI ZIP100® device for boot function" - http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ide_ultra_digidrive.asp
Thus, presumably Iomega has been using the same ATAPI removable standard? Could be possible to hack it into working, or perhaps have it work but not as a boot device?
I dunno what's required by way of IDE Zip drivers, or if everyone in Amigaland just uses SCSI. Could be a problem with hardcoded geometries if extra drivers have been needed... (Linux/BSD might have extra problems because they often choose which driver to load based on various device ID information... It's really hard to say, hence the original caveat.)
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http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ide_ultra_digidrive.asp
has a much better description. plus you'll notice it's also listed for dos systems, yet no dos specific drivers.
Like I said before I'll be buying one hopefully soon. I'll let you know how it works.
:edit:
I would assume they are using the zip100 functions to allow it to hot swap. We'll see tho :-D
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keltic wrote:
I think i will order one or two of theese babies.
looks interestng!
and completely OFFtopic: where did you get the picture of the babe in your AV? :-D
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So you just plug the IDE2CF and sees it like an HD?
You just format it and make it bootable from the HDToolBox?
The Kickflash OS4 (from individual computers) does the same thing? what`s the difference and why should I choose one instead of the other? (Kickflash OS4 is needed to install 4.0 on my A4000?)
Can I do the same thing with an ALGOR? Boot AmigaOS 3.9 from a memory USB stick?
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by Terminills on 2003/6/20 16:15:27
http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ide_ultra_digidrive.asp
has a much better description. plus you'll notice it's also listed for dos systems, yet no dos specific drivers.
At the bottom of the page:
System Requirements:
IBM PC Compatible computer with IDE/ATAPI support
One free 3.5" drive bay or 5.25" drive bay (require adapter bracket for 5.25" drive bay).
BIOS supports for ATAPI ZIP100® device for boot function
One of the following Operating Systems: Windows 98/SE, Me, 2000, XP, NT 4.0+SP6
Why?
Ciao
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@Framiga
Look at the dos version. :-D
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Dagon wrote:
So you just plug the IDE2CF and sees it like an HD?
You just format it and make it bootable from the HDToolBox?
Yes... S'how I did it :-D
The Kickflash OS4 (from individual computers) does the same thing? what`s the difference and why should I choose one instead of the other? (Kickflash OS4 is needed to install 4.0 on my A4000?)
Kickflash is a ROM switcher, not a drive... That and AFAIK Jens hasn't released Kickflash to the public yet.
Can I do the same thing with an ALGOR? Boot AmigaOS 3.9 from a memory USB stick?
In order for USB devices to work, the drivers have to be loaded by the OS first, so I don't think that'll work... Unless of course someone comes out with a hacked Kickstart ROM that covers this.
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by Terminills on 2003/6/21 1:24:39
@Framiga
Look at the dos version.
yes i've read it but . . .i've read the FAQ also.
seems that there are problems with hot-swapping, so you must install a Win specific utility.
However . . . i like that drive :-D
Ciao
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@Framiga
I had mentioned earlier the drivers may have to do with the hot swapping... However it's a very nice system and who knows maybe the zip100 drivers will work for the hot swap.. :-D
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Nice one i have still not tried mine i will sometime, i have just got back from holiday and have quite a few things to play with including my amigaone g4 xe . :-D
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cecilia wrote:
keltic wrote:
I think i will order one or two of theese babies.
looks interestng!
and completely OFFtopic: where did you get the picture of the babe in your AV? :-D
I have no idea ;-)
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Matt_H wrote:
I've seen PCMCIA to Compact Flash adapters. Could those work with A1200s? How about A600s? For booting off of??
Yeah. They work. I tried it out yesterday :-) You need a soft driver for them though (cfd.lha from Aminet), so they're not bootable. Commodore's device can recognize the cards, but it thinks they're write-protected and can't do anything with them.
What I'm planning to do is create a Kick floppy to load the driver, and then reassign and boot the system from PCMCIA.
Uhm, I can see the cfd.lha in the back2roots aminet interface, but the link is invalid. I can't find it on the regular aminet interface...
What gives? File deleted?
Edit: found it on another mirror. So much for the "full mirror" theory ;-)
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"In order for USB devices to work, the drivers have to be loaded by the OS first, so I don't think that'll work... Unless of course someone comes out with a hacked Kickstart ROM that covers this."
The Algor has a flashrom to store Poseidon and its classes, there's no need to burn new kickstart roms :-)
I haven't tested it but I know that it automounts USB memory units... I'm not sure if they can be made bootable, etc...