Did somebody try a flash disk inside an A1200 ?

[kidkoala]

read through the topic once more and you'll be enlightened i think

they are a few mb/sec. but they are limited to a few hundred thousand reads/writes before they can't be used anymore. meaning, i think, that a bigger drive, will last longer, because the filesystem will use those areas on the drive first, that are least used.

[Hyperspeed]

I'm still evaluating this Simpletech 1GB 2.5" flash drive. According to some technical data the write life can be 2,000,000 with the internal protection that stops the same block being written to.

The advantage of this 2.5" fixing drive over Compact Flash appears to be that it doesn't need an adaptor, just a small ribbon. It also has industrial temperature, shock and humidity resistance so will carry on functioning in all conditions (whereas dropping a laptop say with a platter drive would be nasty). A compact flash card would be rated at domestic/commercial use which would mean less resistance to heat and impact. This is a major advantage if you want to put your A1200 into a tank or maybe a space shuttle.

:idea:

I'm surprised those microdrives suck out up to 500mA, A CD32 power brick only allows for 2,200mA. Cutting it fine if you have an SX32 and the trimmings.

The drive someone on another thread was talking about is a 1.8" 60GB drive - that may be the thing used in an iPod. It's for an IDE port not a CF adaptor.

I'm going to fiddle with this Simpletech flash drive a bit more before giving a final verdict but I must say it is a little bit surreal watching an Amiga booting in 15-20 seconds completely silent. It's almost like a poltergeist has taken over it...

:-D

[adonay]

I use a 20gig 1.8" hard drive in my amiga 1200 and too tell you the truth it is super silent and fast. so never wanted a flashdrive after i bought that one ,

[kidkoala]

i will also look into the 1.8" disk matter.
 when i've tested the flash-cards i've ordered, i might also test a 1.8" drive, then if that's better than cf, i'll use the cf for transport between pc and amiga, and the 1.8" to boot from.

@adonay

what kind of adapter did you use, how much did the disk and adaptor cost?

[Dr_Righteous]

I just had a thought... The limitation of CF cards is write/erase... What about read cycles? Does that affect the lifespan of a CF card? And, does any writing actually occur on the Workbench partition/drive during the boot process? Would Workbench come up if the drive was write-protected?

I've used one of these in my A4K before and saw a nice drop in boot time as a result. I took it out because it didn't like having a slave device on the IDE channel. But it wouldn't be so bad using SCSI hard drives for apps and such, and simply booting from a CF card on the IDE channel.

[J-Golden]

I think what everyone was talking about in regurads to a previous post was my lil Drive in a A4000T:

http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=1201


This is a 40-pin version, but they make a 44-pin job as well.  A lot smaller and less heat then the one that has the looks of a 2.5" drive AND they also go up to 4-gig in size... :-D

[kidkoala]

@j-golden

wow that's a cool drive, how many inches? thought size doesn't really matter is it costy? ..another medium to consider, makes me confused! hehe

@dr_righteous

they are not affected by reading, only the write/erase process, so that's a good thing.
about the boot-up, the only thing i can think of that would be faster than a hdd, is spin-up, the cards don't have spin-up time and similar things that take time at startup.
not sure about read/write times though..will check that out

this great cf comparison says that the fastest cards (sandisk's cards) have about 6MB/sec. write and 5MB/sec. read-speeds.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=6007-7699

looking at this chart from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_memory_cards

it says that (i guess that's theoretical speed) cf cards sport 40MB/sec. bot in reading and writing.

[J-Golden]

kidkoala wrote:
@j-golden

wow that's a cool drive, how many inches? thought size doesn't really matter is it costy? ..another medium to consider, makes me confused! hehe

If you read the conversation under the pic, you'll find the lead to the info you need.  The down side is I don't know how to order these.  I ordered mine through a friend that works for Simpletech.

I remember it not being all that cheap.  The main info is that it has a burst write speed of 20Mb a second (not that the Amiga could do that) and standard 5Mb read/write.

The other interesting thing is that they make them leaning to the left (like mine) leaning to the right or standing strait up depending on your needs.

*EDIT*

Just tried to find the info myself and came up goose egg.  They may not make these any more

*EDIT EDIT*

Just did an ehaustive search and found the correct part # to google.  If you are really into this drive and it's types, do a search for : SLFDM40LPV

That's the 40-pin version, but where they sell the 40-pin, they'll also have the 44-pin.  becareful not to get a Vert. one...  :rtfm:

Oh, and here is you tech sheet:

http://www.psism.com/simpleflashdiskmodule.pdf

[adonay]

what kind of adapter did you use, how much did the disk and adaptor cost?

mine uses no adaptor as it is 44pin ide and plug in like usual hd only diff is that it is super small.. about half the size and the noice and power consuption is low,,,

[kidkoala]

@adonay

erru norsk?

[adonay]

kidkoala wrote:
@adonay

erru norsk?

hmm ja


back too topic @ j- golden http://shop.trenz-electronic.de/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=34&products_id=102 are these drives not the same

[kidkoala]

@adonay

those drives where kinda nifty, especially this one:

http://shop.trenz-electronic.de/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=34&products_id=122

i like that it's embedded in a nice shell, and it would look very good mounted on eg. a A600..though a couple of downsides is that it's pretty pricey (ends up at around £80 if imported to Norway with import-taxes etc., can't find any of these on Ebay), and that you loose the ability to connect anything else to the 2.5" slot (if not using 4way ide-adapter or something).

by the way, what are the inches of your micro-drive? is it 1"?

[monami]

i'd never seem them before... they are really cool.

mmm.. ebay has some interesting bits...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Compact-Flash-CF-to-IDE-adapter-boot-windows-linux_W0QQitemZ140055270945QQihZ004QQcategoryZ41994QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[kidkoala]

@monami

yes, those are quite popular among classic amiga-users, they fit nicely in all amiga's with a 2.5" slot like the 600 and 1200. Actually I just ordered two of those you mentioned, to use in my cd32 and my 600 ordered two 4gb cf-cards at the same time, really cheap.
there is a lot of scamming going on among these products i've read (cards that can't be written to more than a few times etc.) so watch out, hope i'm not getting scammed

[Hyperspeed]

I'm sure I read somewhere that you could boot from RAD: thus you would need to keep your Amiga powered up all the time but if it crashed then Workbench would load from your FastMem!

Could anyone who's used a RAD: disk shed some light on this?

[TjLaZer]

On a kinda related note, have you seen the MyIDE flash drives for the Atari 800's?  I have one with a 128MB Flash drive on it.  Pretty cool!