A500IDE works!

[Generale]

Hey all!

Just finished building and debugging (lots of debugging) the a500ide interface. Works beautifully. Even with the proto board rats nest!

I have an IBM 540mb connected and it works fine. As long as I don't use the IDEMount program. It sits there for several minutes before declaring that it doesn't know.

My main problem now is making a half decent boot disk to get the thing up and running without too much extra crud. It's for WB1.3 by the way.

Can anyone suggest to me nice simple setup to cleanly boot it up? In all honesty I'm not sure about what I can get away with pruning.

Thanks!

[Effy]

I can´t help you with your problem but I do want to congratulate you for what you have done so far !!!  :-D

[Generale]

Thankyou very much
I spent hours trying to find out why it was reading garbage. Found a few minor mistakes, but it wasn't the problem. Turned out the problem was a little bit of superglue jamming down one of the contacts for the connector I made. Hours of probing with a multimeter and tracing wires for nothing!
...At least it has a pretty blue LED

I got it to boot from a floppy, but it needs work. Currently dumping an ADF so I can't cause too much damage.

Next projects are the kickflash and the AT Keyboard, then the case mod.

Anyway, the drive is brilliant! So quick. Now to put my favourite apps on it. No more disk swapping!!!!! I'm so happy!!

I'd definitely recommend this project if you want a cheap solution and don't mind using a boot floppy.

[Doppie1200]

Why use a boot floppy. I hear your quite a skilled hardware builder. Then it should be no problem for you to make your own ROM that has the drivers gor your IDE drive. I thought the A500 has 256k Rom and mirrors its ROM in the 256k after the rom space. So it should be possible to create somthing that takes advantage of that.

Or an A600 3.1 Rom. I hear this work on the A500 too. You might be able to replace SCSI.device from that one.

Anyway, good work and congratulations.

[Generale]

I've been considering putting the drivers on ROM. The only problem is I don't really know how.
If you know of any docs on how to do this I'd really appreciate it.
I was going to take the A500 up to WB 2 or 3, which pretty much cancels out the whole 256k rom advantage. But I noticed there's still a little space on the end of the KS roms. Maybe not enough though. Anyway, there's nothing saying that I can't shove in a ROM elsewhere in memory and just have a jump to it on the KS ROM.

Thanks for the ideas

[AmigaEd]

Hi Generale,
I was just wondering what set of plans you built your interface from. I might want to give that a try myself.

Thank you,
AmigaEd

[Doppie1200]

Sorry I have no docs. But at work we do use Flash devices and Eeprom devices. As for kickstarts; ther is always reverse engineering. Copying a Rom is not difficult if you have a compatible device to put it in. Finding the devices you want to replace is another. A collegue of mine claims he made a custom Rom once. So I shall ask him next week when I see him again.

[Azryl]

Bleh... dont beleive ya Generale :-P  as an Aussie sceptic I need pics of the working board and drive

Well done btw!

[Generale]

@AmigaEd
The design I used was at http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/aminet/hard/hack/a500ide.lha

Alternatively you could go to the site that the maker of this hack has the design and drivers too. Thats at http://www.students.tut.fi/%7Eleinone3/ide/index.html

If you do build it, you don't need the 7404. I have no idea why that's on the schematic. And the wiring for the activity LED is only on the PCB, not the schematic, so if you want LED, you'll have to look at the PCB.

@doppie

I was going yo use redskulls design for the kick flasher. it's at http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/aminet/hard/hack/DC-KF500.lha
As an odd coincidence, I have the type of flash ROM the design specifies. Bought them surplus from unisys.

One thing to be wary of. The driver seems to have a massive footprint. I'll have to look into it.
My a500 reports 886816 free with a standard wb1.3 disk and 652840 free with the driver. Kind of irritationg because it hasn't left me with enough for HAM in dp-iv.

[SamuraiCrow]

It sounds to me like your next stop will be here although you won't be able to exceed AmigaOS 3.1 with that 68000 processor... even if you do boost it with this.

[Generale]

Here's some pics.
If you want to build it you'd be best off ordering parts from Futurlec because its impossible to find anything in Melbourne.

Drive Details
Drive nearly empty
card sticking out of the A500

I couldn't get a pic of it with the drive LED on because it's too quick  :-)

[Generale]

SamuraiCrow wrote:
It sounds to me like your next stop will be here although you won't be able to exceed AmigaOS 3.1 with that 68000 processor... even if you do boost it with this.

Would you believe I was just looking at that hack about a minute before I saw your link to it?

Been considering the 14Mhz one. Except I doubt I'd be able to get the CPU, So I was thinking 'I wonder if there's any reason I can't use the original if I can dissipate the excess energy'
It may throw the 8mb hack into chaos anyway because of the delay method.
Still, I did have an idea which I may try later on. It involves using latched buffers as an interface between a ram board and the puter. And running the ram at a multiple of the clock speed, so in the times that the bus is not ready for sending/recieving data the ram can be refreshing and/or accessing the adresses specified and readying the data. So it'd kind of be creating pseudo 1T ram.

I have heaps of dead ibm clone mobos to take simm slots off anyway (even though i think dontronics sells them) and a box of SIMMs, so yeah. Only prob is I'd have to make another board....and another connector (oh crud), with both things built in. erk!

[Dandy]

Perhaps it would be a good idea to contact Jens Schoenfeld at nospam[at]jschoenfeld.de...

[Generale]

Dandy wrote:
Perhaps it would be a good idea to contact Jens Schoenfeld at nospam[at]jschoenfeld.de...

*eyes glazed*...I know that name. Why do I know that name? I don't remember. help.

[SamuraiCrow]

Didn't he design the Catweasel floppy controller?