Did somebody try a flash disk inside an A1200 ?

[kidkoala]

Now i've got seconds thoughts over my order from Ebay the other day; two 2.5" to CF adapters, and two 2Gb CF cards.

Hearing you say that if my cd32 og laptop looses it's power for a mere second the whole drive will be deleted? (!)

I might want to invest in a UPS as well then to protect the data (sounds like an ironic investment in the cf-adapters/cards then after all;)

Will use one of them in my CD32+SX32 and one in my C= i486 Laptop..

[kidkoala]

well I was talking about using cf-cards for booting from and storing data, like a hd, not for mem. use, of course.

it is said that the ide-bus in the 600 is @1,5MB/sec., but due to something, it's only capable of about half of that.
so cf-cards are more than fast enough, you don't need a 150x card, though big cards tend to be fast as well..

..and they are reliable, light, don't make noise etc.

I'm planning on buying the 4way IDE-bus and connecting two cf-adapters to it, making one of them accessible from outside in a custom-made slot to make transfers on cf from pc easy and swift (would look pretty sweet to:).

off topic: right now i'm having trouble with my a2000-keyboard that's connected to my aux-port on the cd32, it worked when i first installed os3.9 but now it doesn't at all; anyone?? (and remember i can't write commandos in cli to check if it's up or something, only mouseclicks;)

[kidkoala]

a couple of interesting notes about cf-cards:


lifespan:

flash memory supports only a limited number of Erase/Write cycles (about 300,000) before a particular "sector" can no longer be written. Typically the controller in a CompactFlash attempts to prevent premature wearout of a sector by mapping the writes to various other sectors in the card - a process referred to as wear leveling.

prices and fraud:

Compact Flash memory is not inexpensive and as such counterfeiting has become a problem. CF cards available at exceptionally low prices (particularly from online merchants, which call for return-shipping for any chance at a refund) should be viewed with skepticism. See http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1029509288

Look at the Edge Stamp

Lexar, SanDisk, Toshiba and others stamp or engrave a series number onto the edge or rear of the card. The photo below shows the edge stamp from an older Lexar CompactFlash card.

Look at the Label

Some companies attach a label to the card that contains the series number, or print it right on the main label.

Look at the Internal Name

You may also see this or similar identifying information for both CompactFlash and SD in the file setupapi.log in the WINDOWS directory on the C: drive of a typical Windows XP installation

[kidkoala]

i cannot use a pcmcia-cd solution since i have a pcmcia-ethernetcard connectet to it at all times, that's why a 4way ide-adapter might be a good solution.

and absolutely the low poser consumption of the cf is of great benefit, both my machines are higly upgraded and are in need of more power..


yes, as you state in your edit, it leads to the thought that i think a modern cf-card can match most classic amiga ide and scsi-bus's (maybe not the 3000, 4000?).

for me it's surely good enough since the a600 ide-bus is so slow, but I eagerly await to benchmark the cf-card on the cd32's
ide-bus (i guess it's about the same as in a 1200's ide-bus?).

[kidkoala]

Ok, nice to know about "Harry", hehe, one more in the c= chip-family...

about the 1.8" I know that you get these micro-hd's which fit right into the cf-slots, but these are actually just 1", you even get 0,85" drives that are the same (not memory cards, but drives. the 1" ones are also suprisingly cheap, you them @40$ on ebay for a 5gb.. (!) --->

"The Microdrive is a brand name for a miniature 1-inch hard disk designed to fit in a Compact Flash (CF) Type II slot. The release of similar drives by other makers has led to them often being referred to as 'microdrives'. However, 'microdrive' is not a genericized trademark and manufacturers other than IBM up to 2003 and Hitachi after do not officially refer to these drives as Microdrives. Some other companies, such as Sony, have licensed the name and sell re-branded versions.

These drives fit into any CompactFlash II slot; however, they may take more power than flash memory (up to 500 mA) and therefore may not work in some low-power devices (e.g. handheld computers). Nevertheless, they have some benefits over flash memory in terms of the way data is stored and manipulated. Microdrives which can store 4 GB or more must be formatted for a file system which supports this capacity, such as FAT 32 or NTFS, which may not be supported by older CompactFlash hosts."

here's some specs. on a hitachi-drive:

Microdrive 3K6  

 
 Feature/Function
 Benefits
 
Capacity
 6GB maximum capacity
 * 6000 digital photos (1MB each)
 
* 1.5 hours DV-quality MPEG-2 video, or
8 hours MPEG-4 video
 
* 1,500 - 3000 songs
 
Size
 42.8 x 36.4 x 5.0 mm
16g
 High-capacity, portable storage in a package the size
of a matchbook.
 
Reliability
 200G operating shock
2000G non-operating shock
 Exceptional ruggedness to withstand tougher
handling and improve portability
 
Interface
 CF+ Type II
IDE
 Flexibility to support embedded or removable designs
 
Performance
 Sustained data rate up to 9.4MB/sec
 30% better than prior generation
 
 


if the sx32 ide-bus is buffered, does that mean it is faster than the plain 600 bus? my ide-cable for the 600 is the 5cm type, i just didn't know that some of the reason is that it might give your trouble if it was longer..

[kidkoala]

read through the topic once more and you'll be enlightened i think

they are a few mb/sec. but they are limited to a few hundred thousand reads/writes before they can't be used anymore. meaning, i think, that a bigger drive, will last longer, because the filesystem will use those areas on the drive first, that are least used.

[kidkoala]

i will also look into the 1.8" disk matter.
 when i've tested the flash-cards i've ordered, i might also test a 1.8" drive, then if that's better than cf, i'll use the cf for transport between pc and amiga, and the 1.8" to boot from.

@adonay

what kind of adapter did you use, how much did the disk and adaptor cost?

[kidkoala]

@j-golden

wow that's a cool drive, how many inches? thought size doesn't really matter is it costy? ..another medium to consider, makes me confused! hehe

@dr_righteous

they are not affected by reading, only the write/erase process, so that's a good thing.
about the boot-up, the only thing i can think of that would be faster than a hdd, is spin-up, the cards don't have spin-up time and similar things that take time at startup.
not sure about read/write times though..will check that out

this great cf comparison says that the fastest cards (sandisk's cards) have about 6MB/sec. write and 5MB/sec. read-speeds.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-7699

looking at this chart from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_memory_cards

it says that (i guess that's theoretical speed) cf cards sport 40MB/sec. bot in reading and writing.

[kidkoala]

@adonay

erru norsk?

[kidkoala]

@adonay

those drives where kinda nifty, especially this one:

http://shop.trenz-electronic.de/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=34&products_id=122

i like that it's embedded in a nice shell, and it would look very good mounted on eg. a A600..though a couple of downsides is that it's pretty pricey (ends up at around £80 if imported to Norway with import-taxes etc., can't find any of these on Ebay), and that you loose the ability to connect anything else to the 2.5" slot (if not using 4way ide-adapter or something).

by the way, what are the inches of your micro-drive? is it 1"?

[kidkoala]

@monami

yes, those are quite popular among classic amiga-users, they fit nicely in all amiga's with a 2.5" slot like the 600 and 1200. Actually I just ordered two of those you mentioned, to use in my cd32 and my 600 ordered two 4gb cf-cards at the same time, really cheap.
there is a lot of scamming going on among these products i've read (cards that can't be written to more than a few times etc.) so watch out, hope i'm not getting scammed