CF head scratcher..

[amigan24]

So I've been using cf cards with both my a600 and a1200 for about two years now using the cf kit from amigakit.com and it has pretty much handled everything I've thrown at it...until now of course!  :lol:

I recently purchased a few cf to ide adapters to replace my failing hard drives along with some *brand new* sandisk ultra II 2.0gb cards...one is formatted to fat16 and the other is fat32...

I've been able to mount a cf card as a harddisk before using other brands without any issues...both through the pcmcia and ide ports

well these sandisk cards simply do not want to show up on the amigas...they work fine on the mac and these are *not* counterfeit cards...I've installed card patch and just about every other patch / suggested driver recommended over at eab..when using prepcard it shows up but when I tried to prep it it says "error while writing changes"...when used in the ide port all of the options are blanked out so it doesn't even acknowledge it...also tried to do this in e-uae with the same results


I've read that these cards are ok to use with the amiga. I've spent a pretty decent amount on these things and because they are now open there is no returning them.

Any suggestions? I'm running wb 3.1 on both & using bloodwych's wb on the 1200

[amigan24]

sorry..I forgot to mention that I tried hdtoolbox when used with the ide port

that's what I meant by the options being blanked out

[amigan24]

The adapter I'm using is the same one I got to work for a buddy's a1200 system and the one recommended here...so I'm clear there.  :-D

As for it showing up in HDtoolbox at all...nope! It's almost as if one opened it with nothing connected at all.

[amigan24]

ack... realized I might have been mistaken with that last one

I'm using the same *brand type/model* of reader and not the actual same exact item itself..just wanted to clear that up just in case

and yes I'll contact him after work and demand him to stop by and open his amiga so we can swap the card just to test it for sure

however I did try my current readers and they work with other cf 512mb cards...just not these ultra II ones...hmmm

[amigan24]

Well it seems as though we arrived to the problem!

Strangely enough it was a cable I was using. We used the cable in my buddies Amiga and there it was on screen. I guess the head scratcher here is that the cables worked fine for my ide drive. Everything worked..read...write...etc. but i use them with the cf / reader and nothing. Hmmm..

The only difference I see with the cables is that the ones that do work are about an inch long...the ones that don't are about 3-6 inches long. Might anyone be able to shed some light on this matter? Anyone know of a cable resource that would *not* charge $9 a cable?

Oh and in the split second I left the room to grab a beer my friend managed to low level format a cf card which effectively rendered it unreadable by both the mac and amigas. Grrrr..

He owes me!


 :pint: