HELP! which EIDE controller should I get?

[mantisspider]

I am puzzled and slightly perplexed at to what to get for my new beast of an up n coming Amiga :-D

4xEIDE'99 interface
FastATA 1200
or the EyeTech 4xEIDE adapter?
i been trying to find some online reviews to help but im pretty stuck with what to chose. help please guys.

Stuff im gonna stick in:
----------------------------------------------------------------
LS120 Drive
Zip Drive
4.3Gb Hard Drive
30Gb Hard Drive
CDRW
----------------------------------------------------------------
Mediator PCI 1200 LX
Voodoo3 PCI card
Sound Blaster 128 PCI card
USB PCI card
Ethernet 10Mbps PCI card
PCI TV tuner card
PC-KEY 1200
Mroocheck PC Mouse Interface
----------------------------------------------------------------

if only there was a PPC board being given away somewhere :-D

[bloodline]

Have you thought about putting all that stuff on the USB? Since most IDE controlers I know of can only support 4 devices and you want to use 5 :-)

(Sorry I know nothing about the IDE controlers you mention)

[Damion]

The 4xEIDE (elbox) unit is OK, but I would get the 'IDE-Fix EXPRESS'
adpater...it speeds up your drives somewhat (speedup depends on
your turbocard, about double on Bliz 1260 cards, even faster on
others) and uses LESS CPU than the original, slower IDE.

The 'FastATA' is the fastest for IDE, but it eats major CPU and
due to this briefly hangs the system at times.

Blizzard SCSI is best for the 1200, yet also the most expensive...


BTW: IDE-Express is hard to find now, but Vesalia.de still carry them
for about 50 euro. Best price/performance and software IMO...

[mantisspider]

cheers m8,

I should have been a bit clearer, im currently running a 1240/40mhz on my box. not as great as a PPC.

thanks for the link, I cant find IDE-Express but i did find the following, is it one of these that you meant mate?:
Adapter, IDE splitter incl. IDE-MAX 97 (IDE-FIX) A1200 €39.00
IDE Splitter EIDE99 incl. Software/AllegroCDFS €35.00
IDE Splitter, Controller IDE Splitter A1200 €17.90
IDE-MAX '97 (IDE-FIX) €25.00
found them here

Does anyone know if the G-REX PCI busboard adapter can be used for an A1200 which doesnt have a PPC card? Thanks.

[mantisspider]

@bloodline,

hi m8,

i didnt think of that :-) cheers mate. might go for the one harddrive then. I think I will abandon the use of the ZIP drive. I have no idea where my external ZIP drive is. Its got to be somewhere.

Can the Amiga use a USB smart card reader? how about running the OS from a compact flash? that way no matter what damage I do to the harddrive the OS will stay in tact :-) only prob that CF only has a life expentancy of so-many writes before it starts to decrease in quality. So the OS will have to be set up pretty well to not need contstant changing.

[mantisspider]

oooh just remembered my Kumana....

i will use my external kumana for booting up games and a smart card reader to transfer files between my computers that arnt connected over the network. oh now that it rather nice.

one thing i do rather like about the PC is the way to edit the BIOS. would be nice to be able to do that with my amiga:
1st bootable drive = smart card reader
2nd bootable drive = external floppy
3rd bootable drive = DH0

hmmm my insaine reason behind this? well so i can stick my amiga games on a to a CF card and boot up the game from the smart card reader :-) and if i cant stick it on a CF i use the original disk in the external floppy drive :-D it makes kinda sense.... at 1am on sunday

edit:
just been looking at back2roots trying to find obscure games for my miggy. got me thinking, I remember a guy posting on here about trying to burn a compilation of games on to a CD. this would be pretty funky to do onto a compact flash card.
how to convert ADF files back to real amiga disks
might be a bit expensive giving todays prices, might be best to make compilation CD's instead.

[Damion]

Hi mantisspider,

Email Oliver directly (order@vesalia.de) and
let him know you want the 'IDE-Fix Express', it's
not listed on his site very well.

This one is also good for CF adapter, because
bulk "transfer rate" matches well with what you
will find in currently available 'faster' CF
cards.

Also -- If you're using a 2.5" IDE drive, you
may need to buy an extra cable (at least mine
didn't come with one)..

[mantisspider]

cheers m8.

nah its a big chunky harddrive ;-)

[bloodline]

mantisspider wrote:

one thing i do rather like about the PC is the way to edit the BIOS. would be nice to be able to do that with my amiga:
1st bootable drive = smart card reader
2nd bootable drive = external floppy
3rd bootable drive = DH0

hmmm my insaine reason behind this? well so i can stick my amiga games on a to a CF card and boot up the game from the smart card reader :-) and if i cant stick it on a CF i use the original disk in the external floppy drive :-D it makes kinda sense.... at 1am on sunday

All bootable devices on the Amiga (and AROS ;-) ) can be given a Boot Priority :-)

That is to say, set your CF's boot priority to somthing like +30 and when ever it is plugged in it will boot before any of the other devices.

[lempkee]

a small addition to the stuff said here:

if you get an FastATA (elbox) like i have then you will be able to attach 4 of thoose units and if you are as lucky as me? then the system wont hang either (when copying files etc) , what i did was , 1. blocksize to 1024... 2. SFS  , 3. Maxtransfer set to 5.5 megs per sec.

i can get 6.8 megs with it at max (pio5 mode) but i fiddled with the maxtransfer id to let my system be atleast somewhat useable when moving/copying big files etc.


um oh and i have an 060 so all in all i am very happy with the fastata but i am also using scsi for the heavier stuff (get 7.8megs there) , and now i just recently ordered an ide2scsi unit so pretty soon i will remove my fastata i guess as i will be able to attach theide devices to my scsi chain.


in the past i have had an idefix express , it was great until it died, and i have an Eide99 in my cd32 sx1 which does the job very well all condisdered (price etc)..

hope this helped.


pps:you will get heavy cpu load if you dont fiddle witg the maxtransfer on any of the powerflyer(now called FastATA) and idefix express.