Fast ATA MK IV question (A1200)

[NovaCoder]

@ Delshay:

I've got a FastATA in my A1200T too (and never had any issues), but how the smeg do you get the smegging thing to stay in the ROM sockets?  That smegging piece of smegging tiewrap isn't worth the smeg it is made out of.  

Like I said then, a pain in the bum

I had a go a fitting one myself a few months back and almost destroyed my 3.1 ROMS trying to fit the FAST ATA whereas the IdeFix Express was basically plug-and-play.

[Darrin]

Like I said then, a pain in the bum

I had a go a fitting one myself a few months back and almost destroyed my 3.1 ROMS trying to fit the FAST ATA whereas the IdeFix Express was basically plug-and-play.

I actually killed an A1200 mobo because of the thing.

I pushed the damn thing into the ROM socket because it was looking loose so hard that the back of the A1200 mobo touched the metal side of my tower case... while it was running!  My own damn, stupid fault, but it was due to pure frustration.  Even with the tie-wraps, you can never seem to get them tight enough and with all the fiddling I was doing at the time then the damn thing would keep working loose.

If you just left it in place and didn't fiddle with any cables then it was great.  I guess if you still have the "wedge" case then it wouldn't be an issue either, but when you have it in a tower it is hanging sideways and the weight of the cables plus gravity is always pulling on it.

[bbond007]

I actually killed an A1200 mobo because of the thing.

So...

Its not designed well for a tower OR desktop A1200 and I'll need to get rid of the RF (a clear violation of the FCC)  AND it potentially is "picky" about the drives.

As long as I'm setting my self for EPIC FAIL I may as well install it in my extremely flaky NTSC CD32. At least it has a Indivision AGA.

Well, I'm off to The Shack(the store formally known as RADIO SHACK) for supplies as I'll need an 150 watt soldering iron and possibly some other stuff. Next, he Tavern for drinks and finally I'll get started around midnight.

[delshay]

i will not post how to fix the problem unless you remove the stars (you know who you are).

[mfilos]

I'm pretty sure your reply will be...

"Replace the kickstart sockets with round hole kickstart sockets. They have better contact and they even have less height."

Apart from that and for those not having the skill or soldering gun+pump, putting straps as the manual says very clearly will give a nice contact and FastATA will stay in it's place. Never had any problem with the straps even when I used the socket risers for BVision.

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[Franko]

@ Franko:

I've got a FastATA in my A1200T too (and never had any issues), but how the **** do you get the ****ing thing to stay in the ROM sockets?  That ****ing piece of ****ing tiewrap isn't worth the **** it is made out of.  

Easy peasy lemon squeezy...

Simply make some bends or kinks in the tie wraps that are almost the same length & height as it would be if it were fitted around the boards & the chips (ie: fold the tie wrap into a rectangular box shape) then open it out, slip it through and bobs yer auntie, one perfectly fitted FastATA...

Never damaged a motherboard, FastATA or the Roms even once and I've got two which I have removed and tested them on other A1200's plenty of times... (not have they ever "popped out")...

If anyone has destroyed or damaged anything while installing a FastATA board, I can only say what a dickhead and best get an adult to do it for you...

[Darrin]

i will not post how to fix the problem unless you remove the stars (you know who you are).

I don't care.  I put the stars in as a joke (yes, I actually typed the stars, no words were auto-censored).  If you're a humourless **** then keep your tips to yourself.  Christ on a bike!

[Darrin]

@ Milfos & Franko:

Cheers.  Next time I decide to dust off the A1200T I'll try being a bit more creative with the tie-wraps.

@ Franko:

I'll get my 11 year old son to do it.  :p

[Darrin]

So...

...I'll need to get rid of the RF (a clear violation of the FCC)...

Yes, you need to watch out for that.  Yesterday a black helicopter gunship hovered over my house and a 10-man SWAT team kicked in my front door and held automatic rifles to my head until I agreed to put the RF shielding back on all of my Amigas and screw the cases together.  Then they told me to "have a nice day now, y'all" and raided the next-door neighbour because he has a crack in his car's windshield.  Bastards!  

As long as I'm setting my self for EPIC FAIL I may as well install it in my extremely flaky NTSC CD32. At least it has a Indivision AGA.

Well, I'm off to The Shack(the store formally known as RADIO SHACK) for supplies as I'll need an 150 watt soldering iron and possibly some other stuff. Next, he Tavern for drinks and finally I'll get started around midnight.

Nah, it will be fine.  Just attach it better than me.  Thinking about it now, I wonder if some double-sided sticky tape would help...

[delshay]

two can play this game but i don't help out a******. there is no need for * for something so general and a excellent hardware.

[Darrin]

two can play this game but i don't help out a******. there is no need for * for something so general and a excellent hardware.

And I don't need help from a **** either.

Who said that the hardware wasn't excellent?  It has issues, which is to do with the way that it connects to ports that were not designed to have huge circuit boards attached to them, especially when the mobo is rotated in a manner that also wasn't originally intended.  These are facts, so learn to live with them.

Meanwhile, I'll also point out that I own a Mediator 4000, FastATA4000, 2 x Elbox 1200 towers and an Elbox 4000 tower and one of their 256MB Radeon cards.  I'm hardly targeting Elbox for the fun of it.  They've given me excellent support to my problems in teh past.  UNLIKE YOU.

[delshay]

go and **** yourself. your use to it, you faggot. go and get 12 inchs up your ass.

[Franko]

@ Milfos & Franko:

Cheers.  Next time I decide to dust off the A1200T I'll try being a bit more creative with the tie-wraps.

@ Franko:

I'll get my 11 year old son to do it. :p

Good idea, as at your age the old mind has started to go and things like tie wraps can be a bit confusing to old fuddy duddies like yerself...

[Darrin]

Good idea, as at your age the old mind has started to go and things like tie wraps can be a bit confusing to old fuddy duddies like yerself...

I just spent 1 hour wondering why my A4000 that had been working perfectly until then had started freezing when loading Workbench, but before loading the wallpaper.  Meanwhile, any USB devices I plugged or unplugged would show the usual pop-ups and when the pop-up vaished it would show a small "square" of the missing Wallpaper.  20 reboots using various drives and after checking very connection later... I noticed the power cable to the floppy had worked loose.  Once teh cable was reinserted I got my lovely 1920x1080 workbench screen in all of its glory again!  Floppy power cable???!!!  Since when has that locked up Workbench?

[paul1981]

Hello,

I have one of these devices (Mk III).  I can't say I found it difficult to install, but I do remember having to apply a lot of force to get the thing clipped into the ROM sockets - but once it was in it was in, and the tie-wrap wasn't even needed to hold it in place.
I have mine inside a desktop case, with the shielding removed.  I also have in there a Prelude 1200 clockport sound card, and an Apollo 1260/66.  I have a 2.5" 3.25GB HDD attacked to the FastATA running in PIO mode 5 and I get raw reads of up to 8 MB/s.
Without the driver that is loaded at the beginning of your startup-sequence, my hard drive interface speed reverts to the standard slow interface of the 1200's IDE (PIO 0).
The FastATA has a special OPTIONAL way to handle large drives - it is able to split up the huge space ie 40GB into smaller "Amiga friendly" partitions, so it will create different drives (below 4GB manual says)... ie DH0,DH1,DH2,DH3,DH4... and so on so that you end up with all of your drives capacity but as those additional units (depending on size of drive).
I can't remember whether I have ROM riser sockets or not, maybe I have...it was years ago when I assembled my 1200, and I haven't had the machine apart since then.
I do have everything in the case though without problems or modification (except RF shielding removed).  Then again, RF shielding in a 1200 case with an accellerator card is a bad idea due to heat considerations. I do have one fan in the case that circulates air over the CPU and around the case.
The FastATA clears the keyboard by a long way, so there is no need for a tower case.
The only problem I have had with Amiga keyboards is that they warp, they "sink" in the middle.  The simple and effective solution is to bend it until it is straight again, and it bends very easily. I had to bend my keyboard back to spec because if the Apollo card.
There are always people who will attack FastATA's saying they eat CPU cycles, but this certainly isn't an issue on an 040 or 060.  They only tickle the CPU, if at all that.
I've never had any problems with my FastATA, it's built well, it's rock solid performance, and it's seemingly glued onto my motherboard even without the tie-wrap.
Not sure about physical compatibility with Indivision, so I'm unable to answer that question.