Anyone use solid state flash drive on Classic Amiga?

[mr_a500]

Is there a particular reason to prefer FLASH over a 2.5" HD other than noise level?

Yes. Modern 2.5" harddrives are total crap and usually wear out and fail after about a year (in my experience with many drives failing at work and home). They are also very hot - by far the hottest thing in my A500. I also hate the 10-second inactivity spindown which can't be disabled.

I'll be switching to CF as soon as I can find a CF to IDE adapter - which seem to be impossible to find in Canada.

[mr_a500]

Hey, mr_a500. Wicked A500 setup you got, BTW.

Thanks. It looks like you've got a pretty nice A500 yourself. Is it just for games or do you do other stuff? I use mine for everything.

Regarding CF-IDE adapters. Try eBay. I got one from Hong Kong for 5 euros. That's including shipping. Finding the right CF card can be a hit and miss affair depending on your controller. Good luck!

I really want the CF to IDE adapter that has 2 slots. I wanted to put in two 4Gb CF cards - one for main usage, one for backup. That would solve all the annoying problems I've been having backing up my stuff.

[mr_a500]

Thanks for the link maffoo, but I don't like eBay or PayPal (or Canada Customs). I was hoping to find it somewhere in Canada.

You mean like this one?

Link

That looks like a 3.5" IDE connector (and I need 2.5"). I saw one like that but with 2.5" connector.

Currently I'm looking into making several boot partitions on my CF card for each Kickstart (1.3, 2.0 and 3.1), each having its corresponding Workbench installed. I know most people hate 1.3, but it's the one I grew up with and somehow it has its charm. Of course it can't hurt to have 1.3 for some of those old games.

I tried that too, but couldn't get 1.3 to recognize my HD. I also like 1.3 because of its "charm", so I use WHDload kick13.slave and have a bunch of "virtual floppies" set up - each with its own system-configuration prefs. The virtual floppy (actually just a folder on HD that the kick13.slave reads) can be any size - but best if less than max RAM so you don't get WHDload screen flashes. For example, on one virtual floppy I have PhotonPaint, AmigaBasic, Sculpt, and the (WB friendly) game Nebula - all programs that have problems in WB 3.1, but work fine in 1.3. So I get the original 1.3 floppy "feel" (each with its own colour scheme) but much faster and much more space than floppy and I can quickly quit back to the more useful WB 3.1 without having to reboot.

You don't need 1.3 for old games if you've got WHDload. Besides, most of those old games are not HD installable or have problems with newer processors. After running games from fast HD, it's a very painful experience to go back to slow floppy loading.

[mr_a500]

BTW, just yesterday I found a stack of floppy disks while going through my parents' attic. They were my very first ProTracker music disks from 1991. All but one still worked! Amazing. I really thought those disks were lost forever. Funny to be confronted with your 15 year younger self through these time capsules.... Wish I had saved all my stuff from back then....

I have just about every possible thing I used to like on my A500 and I'm adding more all the time (like my own personal time machine). Just yesterday I found large versions of the old awesome Apple renders I used to see in pictures advertising the Mac II (and found out it was rendered on a Cray supercomputer, NOT a Mac - ha! ...unlike Amiga render pictures). It used to be considered impossible to display on an A500, but I displayed it in DCTV on my A500 and it looks even better than on a Mac (because DCTV composite blends pixels and original image is 256 dithered).

Anyway, my (extremely off topic) point is that just about every possible thing I liked 15 years ago (before computers started to suck), no matter what computer system it was on, is now on my A500. My 15 year older self can't stop saying "AWESOME!". 8-)

[mr_a500]

Unfortunately, I think we'll be waiting a long time to put that in an Amiga. When the story first came out, they said that when it is finally available on the market, it will be far too expensive for personal computers. Even when it is available, who knows if there will be an adapter to use it on the Amiga. (Introduced in 2008, the price will finally come down 2009-2010: will there be anyone - besides freaky retro users - still using IDE at that time?)

I'm a "die-hard Amiga user", but if I wait that long I'll probably just be a dead Amiga user.