Microdrive... is it an option?

[Brian]

Does anyone here know if it would be possible to connect a 4GB 1" microdrive to the internal IDE of an A600 or A1200 somehow?

If it could be done fairly easy it might be an option for those of us who have added loads of stuff to our modded  bewond recognision machines and are having a hard time fitting a 2.5" harddrive inside. ;-)

The internal IDE controller of an A6/1200 isn't that fast as we all know but what will be the bottle neck, the IDE controller or the drive? Also does it support master&slave?

[patrik]

@Brian:

Microdrives as far as I know uses the compact flash standard and should be usable in the A600/A1200 with a compact flash to ide -adaptor.


/Patrik

[jaseinblack]

Brian wrote:
Does anyone here know if it would be possible to connect a 4GB 1" microdrive to the internal IDE of an A600 or A1200 somehow?
quote]

I thought you meant a ZX microdrive for a minute!

[Brian]

@Patrik
Sweet but does it support master/slave? I'm going to install a CD in my Black Widow A1200 project at the left side and with the scandoubler underneath it'll be cramped with a 2.5" drive in that end also so I'm looking for options now that my 2.5" drive in that machine has started to show signs of failure and needs changing anyway.

@jaseinblack
No I ment those microdrives that are for digital camcorders etc.

[X-ray]

@ Brian

I have a CF to IDE adapter and it must support master and slave becasue when the jumper is set to slave, the card cannot be seen, but when set to master it appears (I have only the CF on my A4000T IDE).

[Brian]

Aaah.. Good.. so the master/slave is set on the converter then?

Do anyone know if those 2 & 4 GB microdrives are slower than the IDE interface or of the interface will be the bottleneck as always?`

Also are the drives silent (can't imagin a drive being too noisy being in a camcorder that records sound aswell but still)?

[X-ray]

@ Brian:

Yes, the Master/Slave is a jumper on the interface (on mine anyway).

Speed: I haven't a clue, because this is the first IDE device I've had on my A4000T. I suspect the Miggy IDE will be the bottleneck, not the CF card. The CF card is slower than my SCSI drives.

Noise: I disconnected everything except the card on my A4000T and it was super quiet. All I could hear was the case fan and the PSU fan (when straining to hear). In an A1200 or A600 it will be the definition of quiet.

[Akira]

Noise: I disconnected everything except the card on my A4000T and it was super quiet. All I could hear was the case fan and the PSU fan (when straining to hear). In an A1200 or A600 it will be the definition of quiet.

Yes, but you are using a CARD and he wants to use a MicroDrive.

If my mate's iPod is anything to take into consideration, the noise level is super super low, you will barely notice it, if at all. Dunno if smaller models are as quiet.

The speed of a Microdrive is not THAt fast byut for Amiga needs I guess it's OK.

[Hyperspeed]

Personally I'd rather get 2x 512mb Compact Flash cards than a 1Gb
MicroDrive.

For Solid State:
----------------
a)Zero sound
b)Very low power consumption
c)No moving parts - less chance of drive failure
d)Faster seek times/access
e)Much smaller in size (1mm?)
f)Impact resistant
g)More impervious to heat/moisture

And the rest!

Go for a CompactFlash->IDE converter, it'd be the perfect companion
for your project in my opinion.

You could even change your floppy drive for an external card reader
with the access light next to the Amiga logo!

:-D

[Waccoon]

Power consumption and reliability are concerns.  Microdrives are quite famous for the "click of death", and will NOT tolerate being squeezed at the center.

My boss had a 350Meg one for his Canon 10D, and I really hated it.  I always carried a handful of 64Meg cards, instead.

[Akira]

Keep in mind that the number of writes you can do on a card is quite low for normal HD useage, so if you are going to have just that device, a card is useless, and a microdrive would be much better.

How much abuse can it have inside an A1200 case anyway? It would be just a matter of securing it in place properly....

[mrescher]

Akira wrote:
Keep in mind that the number of writes you can do on a card is quite low for normal HD useage, so if you are going to have just that device, a card is useless, and a microdrive would be much better.

How much abuse can it have inside an A1200 case anyway? It would be just a matter of securing it in place properly....

Yes I second that - I have a 64 Mb card in a digital camera that's had a fair bit of use over a couple of weeks, but not nearly as much as it would if it was used as a hard drive for a few weeks.  Already it's deteriorating (it holds less than it used to - not sure of Mb capacity but it now holds around 100 photos, used to be 140+)

You can have unlimited reads from a compact flash device but the write cycles are limited.  Bear in mind that using it as a hard drive will mean many writes to the file allocation table (start of the compact flash card generally) and you will very quickly wear this region out.

There are special (eg. linux) filesystems for writing to CF media for this purpose - they scatter the allocation table across the card and also write sequentially to the card so that all areas wear out at the same speed.  IIRC the fragmentation doesn't matter so much as it's random access anyway (no seek time).

go the microdrive and be careful I reckon

[whabang]

Flash card will do fine as Amiga-boot drives. It has no VM, no constant FS-updates.

Simply install the OS on it, and write protect it! :-D

[Brian]

I'm not concidering a flashcard... I will only have one device and as the flash can't take too many writes I'm taking the microdrive option.

Due to the small size of the microdrive I can secure it in place almost anywhere I want in the machine and since the machine isn't a toss and tumble machine but a custom mod project it'll not be subject for much abuse.

I guess we've come to the clonclusion of this thread that I was looking for, yes the microdrive is an option for me. With that in mind I can always go another road in case I can't find room for a 2.5" IDE drive (I'm currently concidering making a "bigger" custom cradle to make fixingpoints for both the HD and the CD so both can sit horisontal and securelty in the machine).

[darksun9210]

i like the idea of the microdrive. not having to worry about the number of writes etc.
plus i think the amiga's OS is far more suited to a limited write situation that CF presents than any other OS out there (no virutual memory (linux/mac), continuous registry writebacks (windows).
but just looking at the price of these things. man, do you work where they make these things or what? i mean,
i can buy an 80Gb 2.5" drive with 8Mb cache for the price of a 4Gb microdrive...

prices from www.scan.co.uk