CF ( Compact Flash ) To 2.5" IDE Adapter

[HammerD]

Unless it specifically says it supports DMA then it will only work with IDE controllers and not any SCSI controllers.  Be careful about that.  You also need a CF card that supports DMA (or it may say UDMA).  This is the one that I got that supports DMA and it works:

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0926INGFS10094134&catid=20087

For the A4000/A1200 IDE, any adapter and CF card will be fine, as those ports don't support DMA anyway.

I bought some DMA-capable IDE-to-CF adapters from Mesa Electronics - http://www.mesanet.com/

They work well on Cyberstorm PPC scsi and also A4000T scsi.  On Cyberstorm with a DMA supporting compact flash card (see Best Buy link above) I can get about 19MB/sec, and on A4000T scsi I can get over 8MB/sec.

A4000 IDE you are going to max out at under 3MB/sec no matter what device you have due to the PIO-0 lameness of the built in IDE port...

[HammerD]

@ JuvUK

Looks like that one should work.  It even has "DMA" printed on the circuit board, so maybe it does support DMA.  The adapters I got from Mesa electronics also support DMA and have jumpers to turn on and off DMA and also to set the device to Master or Slave.

[HammerD]

@ JuvUK

Size of the card depends on what file system you are using.  To be totally safe you should keep the card under 4 Gigabytes.  OS 3.5 and above will support larger than 4 GB but those upgrades are not resident on a cold bootup and you may have problems.

The side effect of staying small is that the price is very acceptable.  I am quite happy with 2 GB compact flash cards.  Fully compatible with All Amiga 3.x versions and still large enough for a workbench parition and another partition for data/programs

[HammerD]

@ ral-can

Yes, ACARD makes them. There is one that works on SCSI-II (A4000T, Warp Engine, etc), and one that works on Cyberstorm MK3/PPC (UW SCSI).

Some Amiga dealers stock them or you can order them from ACARD.

[HammerD]

@ A1260, it should work fine in the A4000's IDE port.  Remember it will be a maximum speed of about 3 MB/sec, so don't go overboard on buying a fast compact flash card.  You can get away with a cheap 80X non-DMA card.  (if it doesn't specifically say DMA or UDMA then assume it is NOT DMA, same with the adapter).

Unless you plan to use it on SCSI you do not need a DMA-capable adapter or CF card.

[HammerD]

@A1260  if it doesn't say DMA then it most likely isn't.  Even some fast (eg. 266X) compact flash cards are not DMA.  I have an 8 GB one like that...

I had to specifically look for UDMA or DMA in both the CF card and the adapter to get DMA.