Elbox 1200FastATA Mk3 splitting drives!

[darksun9210]

Hi there, i've just bough a 60Gb 1.8" drive (half the size of a 2.5" drive! and sooooo quiet! :-o ), and plugging it into my PowerFlyer/FastATA MkIII on my 1200. after having a panic as it wouldn't boot (setpatch - ata3.driver change round in startup-sequence) i've sorted that and installed a basic 3.9 setup on it. but...

in order to support drives greater than 4Gb, it splits it into logical drives each no more than 4Gb. they show in HD toolbox as scsi.device ID 0 Lun 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7, and ID 4 Lun 0,1,2,3,4,5,6. so i now have 15(!) 4Gb drives!

after my system, fusion MAC, Games, Data, and Apps partitions, that leaves 10 more drives!

how can i set it to not split my drive up so i can set the partition sizes i want, on one drive? i know there is a no-split option in ata3prefs, but it keeps resetting to split mode! is there something i am missing?

sorry if i'm being stupid about this, but i feel like i'm hitting my head against a brick wall  :-?

[amigakit]

Just before you go into HDToolbox goto prefs and run the ATA3prefs program

Change the drives from SPLIT mode to NO SPLIT then click USE.

Finally go into HDToolbox and prep/partition/format

[VooDoo]

hmm..

When I buy FastATA mkIII i have smilar problem..but run ATA3.driver perfences v8.4 and change to "NO SPLIT" click on save and after that reset...After that all is OK! But if you using older ata3.driver perfences you can have problem whit saving prefs!

[darksun9210]

ok cool. thanks for that amigakit and voodoo! i'll check it out tonight... hang on. its friday... hmmm depends if i get back from a public drinking establishment at a reasonable time... have a good weekend!

[alexh]

Just out of interest, do these adapters make a big enough speed difference to warrant the price?

[Framiga]

it depend wich CPU you have. (no DMA there)

Anyway at least 3 times on a 060 compared to the internal IDE port.

[VooDoo]

I have whit FastATA MK -III in pio 4 mode 5.5mb/s whit sfs partition!Using BPPC 603/233 + 040/33 in pio5 mode I have 6.2MB/s hdd tramsfer...and that is enough for me!

[darksun9210]

hmmm, with normal ffs, i got 4.99Mb a second last night on my 030/50.... ata3prefs says that it has set up my drive as pio mode3, even though it is pio mode 5 capable...(?)

to be honest, the only way i could fit eveything in a standard case and close the lid was to get one of these FastATA things. the speed is a bonus, but does help when mucking about with DVDs, and copying lots of data to hard disk (2000 odd whdload games downloaded at work

[humppa]

Hmm, I thought there would be a bigger difference between FastATA MK-III and Idefix Epress.
I was first considering to get a FastATA to upgrade my Idefix Express, but after seeing these transfer rates, I think it's not worth the hassle.
I get usually get around 4.8MB/s on SFS-partitions.

I also heard frequently that the FastATA is rather unstable and difficult to fit. I prefer to have something stable and reliable.

[VooDoo]

Here MK-III works perfect..only what i need to say its not safe to using PIO 5 mode !!! whit pio5 i have chekmus error on my partition...whit pio4 all work OK..And yes..its not easy to install FastATA in your Amiga I have a big problem..whit installing FastATA and SubwayUSB (cloclport card)

But now is OK!

[humppa]

Ok, then I'll better stay with my Idefix Express. Very reliable and reasonably fast.

No need for PIO5 anyway. Even PIO3 would probably be sufficient. Just look at the maximum transfer rates:

PIO0 - 3,3 MB/s
PIO1 - 5,2 MB/s
PIO2 - 8,3 MB/s
PIO3 - 11,1 MB/s
PIO4 - 16,6 MB/s
PIO5 - 33,3 MB/s

[x56h34]

@humppa:

I can confirm that IdeFix + Express adapter is very decent as far as speed is concerned. I think that my maximum speed reached was 4MB read/write with PFS3, which isn't too bad at all.

[darksun9210]

the only installation problems i had was clipping the legs off the back of the card so it fitted over the other chips on the mainboard. i'd recommend getting the bvision kit for the FastATA even if you don't have a bvision - just so you can get a good fit in the rom sockets...

anyway, looking at those xfer rates, i guess pio3 should be more than enough. sets my DVD at pio 4 thought....   :-?

oh well.

i wanted to get the IDEfix express, but i couldn't find anyone selling them  :-( both do pretty much the same thing anyway... must get that hardware Pcmcia network card reset fix from power computing though...

[lorddef]

Whilst we are on the subject has anybody noticed the speed improvement in the fast ata mk3 from previous versions?

I used to have a powerflyer gold with the mach chip upgrade a few years back (okay 7 years back) , I've got a different pf now - no idea what version though.

[humppa]

i wanted to get the IDEfix express, but i couldn't find anyone selling them

Amigakit is listing the Express. I got mine from Vesalia, although it says "please call" on their website (it was in stock though).
You could always ask Jens Schoenfeld directly if noone has it in stock.