Proof of Concept - A2000 & IBM Microdrive

[curtis]

Well, got the TrueIDE adapters in from Vesalia and got the A500 off my workbench last night.

Heaved the A2000 onto the workbench and popped the top.  Removed the hard drive I had been  using to boot from and installed teh TrueIDE adapter onto the Buddha board.  Booted from the floppy and ran the detection program from the Buddha install disk.  IT FOUND THE IIBM MICRODRIVE!!!

Seeing it was late, I didn't go any further, but will attempt to install the OS on the microdrive tonight.

Couple of notes on the Trueide ADAPTER.

1.  Dual CF connectors!  Nice addition.  Just plug in 2 drives, 1 for system (smaller), and 1 for applications/games(MUCH larger!).

2.  Adapter is designed to plug directly into the IDE controller.  Good and bad!  If you don't want access to the drive, it's okay.  However, IF you are planning to switch OS's or utilize the same drive in several machines, or some other situation where you might need to pull the drive, it's going to be a royal pain in the backside.

Suggestion, make the drive either back panel or drive bay installable.

3.  Following on from #2, IF you're installing somewhere other than directly onto the controller, you're going to need an IDE adapter cable, male to female, which aren't off-the-shelf items.  Popping over to my local techie computer shop (NOT Best Buy) and see if someone can build me one real quick for not a whole lot of $$$.  I'm also going to build some sort of support/mount to fit into the 5.25" drive bay.  That'll give me front panel access which will be nice once I get the ROM switch and can flip back and forth between different versions of the AmigaOS on different drives keepng the Work drive in the secondary position.

Now, there may be several people wondering why the IBM Microdrive rather than a CF memory card.  Simple, it's a REAL hard drive.  This provides a much longer potential life cycle over a static memory card.  I know with the memory cards, they have a fixed read/write life cycle and after that they start to develop "holes" in the memory matrix.  At least that's my take on things.

I'll report on progress later.

Comments are welcome.

Curtis

[curtis]

Installed a 512 Mb and a 1 Gb microdrive in the 2000 tonight.  Attempted to low level and partition them and for some reason was unable to utilize maximum size on both.  Ended up using 2 512 Mb units.  Buddha saw both as the correct size, but for some reason HDToolkit was just acting finicky about the whole arrangement.

Partitioned and formatted both drives with no problems.  Installing 2.1 was a breeze!

So far, everything seems to be going smoothly.

Next up, devise some sort of mounting system so the drives will be accessible from the front of the computer.  Have an IDE extension cable coming from amigakit.  That should give me enough time to figure something out.

Next while waiting for the cable, reconfigure the 386SX bridgeboard so the microdrive I've got driving it will mount on the front also.  My arms are getting tired of reacing around the back of the danged computer!

That and installing some applications/games that I want on the machine.  Also some MS-DOS (yeah, I need access to those too!) are needing to be installed.

Still waiting for someone to comment.

[koshman]

You could use this this to replace your adapter from Vesalia - http://cgi.ebay.com/Amiga-4000-IDE-INTERNAL-CF-5-25-DRIVE-BAY-/220579942726?cmd=ViewItem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item335b96d146

Also supports 2 CFs and is mountable in the front 5,25" bay.

As for the durability and limited write cycles on a CF vs MC - of course, you're right, but from what I've read solid state CFs have been tested in a (home) server environment with lots of logging and swapping going on 24/7 and they lasted for years (at least 2 ). I wouldn't surprised if a solid state CF lasted you a lifetime in an Amiga. Plus I've been using a 4GB Hitachi Microdrive in my A4000 until recently when I swapped it with a 2,5" HDD and I can say that the MD was slowing down the computer - everything from icons loading to game saving in WHDLoad is significantly faster now.

[curtis]

I'll check the link out when I get home.  For some reason, my workplace, where I'm at now, won't let me do ebay from here!  Some forums, yes, ebay, not a chance.  Is that item an active adapter?  From what I gather, the Buddha adapter has to have an active adapter to recognize many CF format drives, solid-state and otherwise.

Probably right about a CF lasting as long as the Amiga, but I just like the idea of a "regular" hard drive.  That's why when I bought a netbook, I got one with a hard drive and not a solid-state drive.  Of course, WinBlows does do a LOT more writing to the swap file which will put more wear and tear on a specific area of the drive.

I can see where a microdrive would be slower than a "regular" hard drive.  The MD's weren't built with the on-board cache to speed things up like a modern hard drive.

Wonder how the power consumption compares?  Anyone know?

[sledge]

 From what I gather, the Buddha adapter has to have an active adapter to recognize many CF format drives, solid-state and otherwise.

I had problems connecting any kind of CF card to my Buddha when not using a TrueIDE adapter. But then I flashed the firmware with the IDEFix-patches for Buddha. Now it recognize my SanDisk, Sandisk Ultra II and Kingston CF cards. And right now, my Amiga 2000 is running on a 8GB Kingston CF card. Works great.

The TrueIDE is probably a great device, since it allows any CF card to work. I'm not sure if the patch will work with every single CF brand though. But the ones I have works fine.