IDE Compact Flash on A4000 initial review

[Dr_Righteous]

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.

[Dr_Righteous]

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!

[Dr_Righteous]

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 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  :-)

[Dr_Righteous]

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.

[Dr_Righteous]

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.

[Dr_Righteous]

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.

[Dr_Righteous]

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.