How many drives in A4000D?

[Darrin]

I've just finished setting my A4000D up as I want her.  My best advice is to ignore that internal IDE connecter and get a Zorro based IDE adapter.

I got an Elbox FastATA4000 adapter from Amigakit (but they also sell the Bhudda which should be just as good - I have one of them too, but mine has died).

So far I've got 2 x 80GB 3.5" hard drives installed in the hard drive cradle.  Only one is hooked up at the moment and the FastATA broke it down into 18 x 4GB drives.  I have 2 of them "bootable" and back my main boot partition up to the other just incase I need to restore it, plus I've relabled the other drives according to my needs (games, untilities, ADFs, etc).

I've also connected a DVD ROM to the FastATA and installed it in the empty 5.25" bay (tight squeeze).

I've got a single High Density floppy drive attached to the mobo header and space for a 2nd.

I bought some round IDE cables as there is not much room inside the case (A2000D wins hands down for interal expension space as usual).

I've got a 68040 processor card fitted.

I've got the Debian USB board fitted with 2 ports on the back plane and a long cable attached to the internal port and running out the back slots for easy access.

I've got an internal scan doubler/flicker fixer installed.

16MB RAM on the motherboard.

8MB RAM on a Zorro card.

PS2 Mouse and Keyboard adapters.

Now all I need is a USB Ethernet adapter (I bought a Trendnet TU2-ET100, but I haven't tried hooking it up yet).

I hope that I can make some large partitions on the 2nd 80GB drive by using SFS instead of FFS, but I haven't got around to that yet.

[Darrin]

You can always make extra mounts for hard drives by cutting up bits of plastic, jamming them in unused Zorro slots and screwing the drives to the plastic.  It might not look pretty, but with the cover on then who will know.   :lol:

[Darrin]

InTheSand wrote:
I'm surprised! I was under the impression that the IDE connector on the Buddha was just as slow as the A4000/A1200's internal connector. But I'm willing to be corrected!
 - Ali

The internal A4000 IDE connector is pants.  To quote the AHD:

The built in IDE controller supports two IDE devices connected simultaneously. Unlike the A1200 the A4000 has a buffered IDE port. Only mode PIO 0 is supported.

whereas:

Fast EIDE controller
supports PIO0, PIO3 and PIO4 devices
meets the ATA 3 and Fast ATA 2 specifications
up to 16.6 MB/s transfer speed
two 40 pin IDE headers (primary and secondary)
the primary and secondary buses can be accessed at different speeds
up to four IDE or ATAPI devices can be connected at once
hard disk activity LED connector
unconventional handling of >4 GB devices, they are simply split into separate logical 4 GB blocks - can be turned off by software for filesystems implementing NSD, TD64 and Direct SCSI commands
multiple FastATAs are supported

IDE controller
uses polled I/O, not DMA transfer
two buffered IDE ports support up to four IDE devices
each port is compatible with IDE splitters allowing up to a maximum of eight drives
autoboot ROM
two LED port activity connectors - one for drives 0 to 3, the other for drives 4 to 7
software configurable IDE timing - even PIO mode 0 devices are compatible
raw transfer speed is limited by the Zorro II bus to 3.58 MB/s
supports hard disks larger than 4 GB
can mount GVP or AT-Apollo formatted hard disks
supported by Linux

Sysinfo certain reported a huge increase in speed with the FastATA over the internal IDE header.

For example, if I set the FastATA to PIO 0 as used by the internal header I get a speed value of 1,191,563 bytes per sec.

But, when I use the FastATA in PIO 4 mode it jumps to 6,553,600 bytes per sec.

PIO 3 = 3,276,800 bytes per sec

Tests on a Western Digital EIDE WD800 3.5" drive.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
@Darrin

FastATA will naturally be faster than the onboard IDE as it's Z3, and isn't build like the other IDE controllers released.

Which certainly backs up my claim to forget about the IDE connector on the mobo.

There is no speed gain on a Buddha compared to the onboard IDE controller. If any speed increase, it's only minimal.

So you're saying that the Buddha running in PIO4 mode will not be any better than the A4000 IDE in PIO0?  I can't test it because my Buddha is RIP (shows up as OK in early startup, but reports connected drives as "garbage" under HD Toolbox) but I did use it in an A2000 and A3000 and there was a marked difference between PIO0 and PIO3 or PIO4 modes on the same drive (granted they were across the Zorro 2 ports, but obviously PIO3 & 4 give a better data transfer rate than PIO0 and if the Z2 port was the bottleneck then we wouldn't see a difference).

Edit:  I assume Jens is talking about Zorro 2 here:

High speed: Even with slow harddisks like the Quantum Bigfoot, transfer rates of more than 2.2 MBytes per second can be reached. The raw data transfer rate is only limited by the zorro bus: 3.58 MBytes per second.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
No, I'm not. I'm saying you will have no speed increase in using a Buddha compared to the onboard IDE controller of the Amiga 4000 motherboard. You are setting a FastATA equal to a Buddha which is wrong.

Ah, with you.  Yes, the FastATA is faster than the Buddha (and costs more too), but what I was trying to say (badly) was that using a Buddha is better than using the internal IDE on the A4000.

One handy feature of the Buddha is the 2.5" header so you can use 2.5" and 3.5" drives directly without hunting down an extra adapter.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:

And why is that? The only advantage with using a Buddha on an A4000 is that the ports are easier to access, and you get two channels instead of one (not a big deal if you only have a harddrive and a CD drive). Speedwise they are more or less equal.

Speedwise, I'm sure that the Buddha in PIO4 mode is going to outstrip that internal header in PIO0 mode by a factor of 2.  Plus it can take 6 IDE devices, has an A1200 clockport expansion port and comes with some nice CD ROM setup software which avoids having to use IDEFix.

[Darrin]

hardlink wrote:

Just beware of the heat generated and the power used. CBM used a crappy PS that doesn't move much air or have much reserve power.

Hmmm... I've been kind of worried about that.  Now that I've filled my Zorro slots up and packed in the extra drives, there's bugger all space left inside the case.

I haven't put the lid back on yet, but considering what you say, I'm tempted to drill a lot of holes into the 2nd floppy drive blanking plate and perhaps mount an extractor fan on the inside and blow that hot air out of the front.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
AFAIK the Buddha can't do PIO4, PIO0 only, and you can only have 4 devices attached, not 6. The clockport is a bonus, I'll give you that.

I bet it can.  The Buddha pref let you set what PIO mode you want to use for each channel.  I remember setting it to high for an old IDEZ drive and couldn't get it to boot until I used the prefs to crank it down (The PIO settings are stored on the Buddha so that it knows in what ode to operate).  You could also see the speed difference if you used SysInfo - and I'm talking A3000 and A2000 here.

You're right, it's not 6 - it's 8 devices (you can use IDE splitters on 2 headers to attach 4 drives to each header giving a total of 8 devices (try finding space for them!)  ;-)

As for the software, well, it's more or less the same as any other CD software around.

Well it's nice to have it all rolled into 1 handy install CD instead of rummaging around on Aminet for unlicensed untilities, some of which need registering to get rid of annoying screens.  There's also a couple of handy untilities on the Buddha disk.

[Darrin]

davideo wrote:
I've been reading this thread with interest and awe  :crazy:

I've got a Buddha that I'll be sticking into my 4000D shortly so that I can add an internal backup hardrive. I've currently got a hardrive and CD connected to the original internal IDE connector.

I thought I'd read that the Buddha wouldn't auto boot  :rtfm:  or is this only the original version? (which is the one I've got).

Dave G  8-)

The one I had was the Buddha Gold (which used gold plated connectors) and it certainly did autoboot on the A2000 and A3000.  IIRC the old one didn't have the A1200 clock port.

[Darrin]

darksun9210 wrote:

for those interested, here are the numbers.
PIO mode 0 - cycle time 600ns - Max Xfer 3.3MB/s
PIO mode 1 - cycle time 383ns - Max Xfer 5.2MB/s
PIO mode 2 - cycle time 240ns - Max Xfer 8.3MB/s
PIO mode 3 - cycle time 180ns - Max Xfer 11.1MB/s
PIO mode 4 - cycle time 120ns - MAX Xfer 16.7Mb/s

hope this helps.  :-)

Thanks for those numbers.

What confuses me is why the same drive in PIO mode 0 manages a lousey 1.1MB/s, but does over 6MB/s in mode 4.  If mode 0 allows 3.3MB/s and I've achieved over 6MB/s over the Zorro 3 bus in mode 4 then surely I should be getting better than 1.1M/s in PIO mode 0?

Task for today:  Connect the same drive to te internal header and check speed, then reconnect to the FastATA in mode 0 and check speed.  I'll be back...    :-D

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
Then you are still putting a FastATA equal to a Buddha card, and it's still wrong. The FastATA will be much faster than the Buddha and it will be much faster than the onboard IDE controller.

As told earlier, the FastATA is Z3, Buddha is Z2, and the Buddha and onboard IDE controller are equal speedwise.

Nah, the point of this test is to check the speed difference of the A4000 mobo IDE in mode 0 against the FastATA in mode 0.

I agree the Zorro3 FastATA is faster than the Zorro2 Buddha.  This is just to see exactly how crappy (or not) the internal IDE header is on the A4000.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
@Darrin

Please specify if you are talking about the Buddha or the FastATA (as I think it is) in the following

I bet it can. The Buddha pref let you set what PIO mode you want to use for each channel. I remember setting it to high for an old IDEZ drive and couldn't get it to boot until I used the prefs to crank it down (The PIO settings are stored on the Buddha so that it knows in what ode to operate).

The Buddha.  It also allowed the changing of PIO modes via the Buddha preferences and that also made a speed difference (when I was using it in my A2000 and A3000).

[Darrin]

Doh!  OK, forget EVERYTHING I said!  Jesus, I'm going senile!!!  I was describing the preferences for my Power Flyer Gold in my A1200T!!!

Sorry!!!  I'm an idiot!  OK, who has got a hat that they want me to eat.

 :crazy:

This is a definate sign that I have too many Amiga models.

[Darrin]

Anyway, back to reality and I've got my two 80GB hard drives finally mounted and running in the A4000D in 4 SFS partitions (2 x 40GB and 2 x 34.5GB).  The Deneb is working fine along with the Cybervision 643D.

Now I just need to sort out this USB ethernet adapter which mounts, but I can't find it with Genesis...