IDE Compact Flash on A4000 initial review

[Ohno]

I'd advice you to take a look at this page before bying a CF-card. It compares speed of different cards and it seems the most sold card 'sandisk' (at least here in the Netherlands) is also one of the slowest CF-cards available :-P

@Dr_Righteous

Thanks for the info!

[Ohno]

Darn! That's what I bought!

As I said.. most sold
I have two Sandisk CF-cards (64MB for digital camera and 256 MB for PDA). But a friend warned me about the speed-issues last week. He noticed that with a very cheap card he was trying his digital camera seemed much faster in storing the images. So he did a web-search and found out the cause... Sandisk is dead-slow, unless you buy their very expensive high-speed versions.

I'm sure gonna check speeds before buying another CF-card in the future


Regards,

Onno

[Ohno]

Does 10x mean it's fast?

If you look at the link I put here earlier you can see speedtest-results. In that first table at the end of each lines the speeds are displayed. It seems 10x for writing would be about average, for reading even the Sandisk is faster  :-(

[Ohno]

Repeat after me, CF cards ARE NOT FASTER.

Ok.. because you insist: CF cards ARE NOT FASTER.  :-D

I think most people are aware they are not faster, but harddisks have spinup-time and seek-time for every file. On Amiga systems the files usually tend to be quite a bit smaller (less bloat) than on WIndows systems, so the seek-times become more important. That at least makes it feel pretty fast I'm sure.

Apart from that.. it's just plain cool  ;-)

[Ohno]

I suppose it shows that Microsoft have some good compression routines, to be able fit 2.5GB onto a single CD!

No it seems they have no respect for customers resources... every sound is an uncompressed WAV, every image an uncompressed BMP and every program/dll bloated as can be.

Seen the 'Enter the Matrix' already btw? Requires 3.4 Gb harddisk space to install.... and then you still need a CD to be present in the CD-drive while playing. I know harddisks are getting cheaper, but this is really getting out of hand!
Even if that game is pretty nice to play.

Maybe the PC-world should start shipping install-free, ready-to-run games on CF-cards  :-P

[Ohno]

You have AmigaAnywhere in mind by any chance Ohno?

Would you believe me if I told you that I honestly didn't think about that when making that statement? It _IS_ a good idea though :-P

But for now Amiga-Anywhere has no hardware-accelleration on either Windows or Linux, so it is not yet ready for full screen 3D desktop games like this (although it can be in the future). PDA's are still the main target for now. But that _might_ be one of the things Amiga Inc. will add to intent in the future  :-)

[Ohno]

How many coders have they got working for them at the moment? Do you know?

I really have no idea. And I don't know how much I can tell you exactly about it (because of my NDA with Amiga).

I think I _can_ tell you the SDA list is very active. I estimate about two dozen of people are actively using the SDA-lists (with actual development-related discussions), but every now and then someone I've never seen on that list before pops up with a completed application or beta release for us to look at, meaning more people are developing then I can see on that list. Some are mostly in listening mode on that list, while working on their own applications (not just games). On top of that there are also developers who didn't sign an SDA and are therefore only on the other developer-lists, which I don't track as accurately as the SDA-list. The SDA-list is also more active than Tao's open Developers-list which I'm also subscribed to.

All in all it is very hard to say for me. If we go for just Amiga-Anywhere developers (not other intent-developers) I'd say it will most certainly not be thousands and I don't think hundreds either. Although it might very well be a bit over 100. Most of them are only part-time AA-developers though, they usually have a full-time job next to it, untill they are able to earn enough with Amiga-Anywhere to go there full-time (I would love to do so).

As I said.. hard for me to say. The only ones who actually know are the people at Amiga Inc.

[Ohno]

Trying to get a bit more on topic again:

I think it would be very cool if future Amiga-systems would have a CF-card slot from which they can boot. Especially amiga1200-like casings would lend themselves very well for a small sized, high capacity, high speed floppydisk-replacement I think. Larger games can be sold on a single CF-card then and run without having to install it, booting straight from the CF-card (those cards are getting cheaper). Wouldn't that be very Amiga-like? This could work for CD's as well. Floppy's are outdated, but CF-cards and CD/DVD's could take over the role of floppydisks in the classic Amiga. Offcourse games should still be installable for people who wish to do so, but for less computer-savvy people it would be ideal to be able to pop in a CF-card/CD/DVD, reset the computer and boot right into the game.