A500IDE works!

[Generale]

Hey all!

Just finished building and debugging (lots of debugging) the a500ide interface. Works beautifully. Even with the proto board rats nest!

I have an IBM 540mb connected and it works fine. As long as I don't use the IDEMount program. It sits there for several minutes before declaring that it doesn't know.

My main problem now is making a half decent boot disk to get the thing up and running without too much extra crud. It's for WB1.3 by the way.

Can anyone suggest to me nice simple setup to cleanly boot it up? In all honesty I'm not sure about what I can get away with pruning.

Thanks!

[Generale]

Thankyou very much
I spent hours trying to find out why it was reading garbage. Found a few minor mistakes, but it wasn't the problem. Turned out the problem was a little bit of superglue jamming down one of the contacts for the connector I made. Hours of probing with a multimeter and tracing wires for nothing!
...At least it has a pretty blue LED

I got it to boot from a floppy, but it needs work. Currently dumping an ADF so I can't cause too much damage.

Next projects are the kickflash and the AT Keyboard, then the case mod.

Anyway, the drive is brilliant! So quick. Now to put my favourite apps on it. No more disk swapping!!!!! I'm so happy!!

I'd definitely recommend this project if you want a cheap solution and don't mind using a boot floppy.

[Generale]

I've been considering putting the drivers on ROM. The only problem is I don't really know how.
If you know of any docs on how to do this I'd really appreciate it.
I was going to take the A500 up to WB 2 or 3, which pretty much cancels out the whole 256k rom advantage. But I noticed there's still a little space on the end of the KS roms. Maybe not enough though. Anyway, there's nothing saying that I can't shove in a ROM elsewhere in memory and just have a jump to it on the KS ROM.

Thanks for the ideas

[Generale]

@AmigaEd
The design I used was at http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/aminet/hard/hack/a500ide.lha

Alternatively you could go to the site that the maker of this hack has the design and drivers too. Thats at http://www.students.tut.fi/%7Eleinone3/ide/index.html

If you do build it, you don't need the 7404. I have no idea why that's on the schematic. And the wiring for the activity LED is only on the PCB, not the schematic, so if you want LED, you'll have to look at the PCB.

@doppie

I was going yo use redskulls design for the kick flasher. it's at http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/aminet/hard/hack/DC-KF500.lha
As an odd coincidence, I have the type of flash ROM the design specifies. Bought them surplus from unisys.

One thing to be wary of. The driver seems to have a massive footprint. I'll have to look into it.
My a500 reports 886816 free with a standard wb1.3 disk and 652840 free with the driver. Kind of irritationg because it hasn't left me with enough for HAM in dp-iv.

[Generale]

Here's some pics.
If you want to build it you'd be best off ordering parts from Futurlec because its impossible to find anything in Melbourne.

Drive Details
Drive nearly empty
card sticking out of the A500

I couldn't get a pic of it with the drive LED on because it's too quick  :-)

[Generale]

SamuraiCrow wrote:
It sounds to me like your next stop will be here although you won't be able to exceed AmigaOS 3.1 with that 68000 processor... even if you do boost it with this.

Would you believe I was just looking at that hack about a minute before I saw your link to it?

Been considering the 14Mhz one. Except I doubt I'd be able to get the CPU, So I was thinking 'I wonder if there's any reason I can't use the original if I can dissipate the excess energy'
It may throw the 8mb hack into chaos anyway because of the delay method.
Still, I did have an idea which I may try later on. It involves using latched buffers as an interface between a ram board and the puter. And running the ram at a multiple of the clock speed, so in the times that the bus is not ready for sending/recieving data the ram can be refreshing and/or accessing the adresses specified and readying the data. So it'd kind of be creating pseudo 1T ram.

I have heaps of dead ibm clone mobos to take simm slots off anyway (even though i think dontronics sells them) and a box of SIMMs, so yeah. Only prob is I'd have to make another board....and another connector (oh crud), with both things built in. erk!

[Generale]

Dandy wrote:
Perhaps it would be a good idea to contact Jens Schoenfeld at nospam[at]jschoenfeld.de...

*eyes glazed*...I know that name. Why do I know that name? I don't remember. help.

[Generale]

That could very well be it. It was bothering me not knowing where I knew the name.
If anyone has tried the project and had different RAM use stats, could you please tell me?
In the meantime I may have to doctor a RAM expansion. New thread time.

[Generale]

the distance from the controller to the hdd is 10-15 cm. If you want extra distance, an 80 conductor cable may help. After all, they are designed to sink crosstalk.
I'm just using a 40conductor cable though. Standard IDE length. It's trailing end is currently draped over the hard drive and near the PC monitor, so i'm surprised it works.

I was wondering if using the CPU socket would work. Guess so!

by the way.... What's the rough memory eaten by your drive? like I said earlier its eaten about 250k of ram. I was just wondering if its only me thats having that problem.

It is a good feeling seeing something work though. I thought I'd never get it running.

[Generale]

Heh. I've been tempted. but the prob is that CPUs cost $. And the reasons I build instead of buy are twofold.
1: I don't pay for anything that I can do myself.
2: It's in my price range.

I did come up with an idea on how to 'upgrade' a 68k today which I actually came up with ages ago to trick up a 6502 (but never tried). If I say what it is I'll probably be burned at the stake as a heretic.

Alternatively.....I can't remember how the interrupt handling works on a 68k. If it's anything like MIPS RISC I can cheat. It's amazing what a person can do with an interrupt handler and some overclocking.

I want to try a CD-ROM on my Ami. But I can't  :-( Apart from power drain concerns, is there any support available for ISO9660 in wb1.3 anyway?

[Generale]

hm. So many bits and pieces to reply to. I'm guessing most people here are either vampires or in a different timezone.

Okay. First yeah, buffers work wonders. Especially a nice high speed CMOS buffer. Preferably a schmitt triggered. It'll have those signals nice and crisp. Which is needed moreso if its under the cpu. I suggested the 80 connector cable because its cheaper and simpler.as for better, probably not.

Thanks for the URLs for the drivers. I'll definitely have to try them out. I know I can play audio CDs atm, but it hasn't been enough to justify connecting a cd-rom. I do know the first audio cd and song I'll test it with though. Can you guess what they are?

So it wasnt just me the driver was big for. Hm. Well, an ide interface should only be a few hundred bytes or so, so I'm guessing the rest is interrupt handling and OS interfacing.

The hardest part of interfacing a faster CPU to an a500 as near as I can tell would be the core and IO voltages for the CPU. As for the PPC I have had _no_ experience with that apart from using the computers at uni.

My idea for 'upgrading' a 68k is much more evil and still uses the original 68k, roms, a high speed microcontroller and some tristatable buffers. If you want to know more, say so and I'll spawn another thread.

I considered the CDTV rom too for its fs drivers. Never got further than that.
Extra ROMs? Wow, they really did cheat.

Oh yeah. Like I said, rusty on 68k theory of operation. Been ages and that was hust for altering features on apps for my palm that irritated me. So, it does have an interrupt for illegal opcodes, right? Has anyone made a small patch already that takes advantage of that yet...or does the OS fill in the blanks for the missing opcodes on the more lowly CPUs?

[Generale]

Those are the drivers/schematic I'm using. Thanks for that though.
I'll have a look at the accelerator project in a min.

Oh, would this be right for the mountlist entry?

CD0: Handler   = L:BABELCDROMFS
     Startup   = ide.device/2
     StackSize = 4000
     Priority  = 10
     GlobVec   = -1

The 'Startup' line bothers me. Would it be /1 or /2 (slave on controller)..More to the point, is this a standard syntax used to specify the unit number?

[Generale]

Well, a 32 bit ROM can be used..I think...If it's burnt onto a 16 bit rom or a bit of addressline trickery is done, because all 68ks are 32bit internally anyway. It's just the bus is crippled (like the 8088 was a crippled version of the 8086). The only concern is whether the memorymap is the same between hardware.
Good point about the scsi driver in the CD32. Speaking of which, the scsi/atapi packet tool that came with the ide.driver looks like some fun to play with

[Generale]

I tried Ralph Babel's driver. Either there's something I'm overlooking (most likely), or the babelcdromfs and ide.device don't like each other. I'm not sure. I can't get it to work  :-(

[Generale]

The Xetec drivers can use the ide.driver it seems. The only problem is that I cant actually use it because it complains that the version isn't official. I dumped across the files.
After that, I tried putting the ADF onto floppy. Well, It looks like 1.3 doesn't know how to cope with the format of the disk. Help!!!