CF ( Compact Flash ) To 2.5" IDE Adapter

[JuvUK]

any reason why i couldn't use one of these in a A4000? I thought maybe i could extend the cable and mount it in the front of my A4000 tower, easy and quicker data transfer, doable do we think?
  thanks guys & Gals, Justin

[Chain]

better mount it from backside

[HammerD]

Unless it specifically says it supports DMA then it will only work with IDE controllers and not any SCSI controllers.  Be careful about that.  You also need a CF card that supports DMA (or it may say UDMA).  This is the one that I got that supports DMA and it works:

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0926INGFS10094134&catid=20087

For the A4000/A1200 IDE, any adapter and CF card will be fine, as those ports don't support DMA anyway.

I bought some DMA-capable IDE-to-CF adapters from Mesa Electronics - http://www.mesanet.com/

They work well on Cyberstorm PPC scsi and also A4000T scsi.  On Cyberstorm with a DMA supporting compact flash card (see Best Buy link above) I can get about 19MB/sec, and on A4000T scsi I can get over 8MB/sec.

A4000 IDE you are going to max out at under 3MB/sec no matter what device you have due to the PIO-0 lameness of the built in IDE port...

[JuvUK]

i was looking at this one

    Item number: 150194207418   

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=150194207418&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=005

i still haven't worked out how to do the link thing sorry

[HammerD]

@ JuvUK

Looks like that one should work.  It even has "DMA" printed on the circuit board, so maybe it does support DMA.  The adapters I got from Mesa electronics also support DMA and have jumpers to turn on and off DMA and also to set the device to Master or Slave.

[JuvUK]

@Chain



where did that one come from?  it looks the part!

[JuvUK]

thanks for the response Hammer, i figure the small files i'll be transfering aren't going to be a problem at 3mb p/s is there a limit on the size of cf card it will read?

[HammerD]

@ JuvUK

Size of the card depends on what file system you are using.  To be totally safe you should keep the card under 4 Gigabytes.  OS 3.5 and above will support larger than 4 GB but those upgrades are not resident on a cold bootup and you may have problems.

The side effect of staying small is that the price is very acceptable.  I am quite happy with 2 GB compact flash cards.  Fully compatible with All Amiga 3.x versions and still large enough for a workbench parition and another partition for data/programs

[Damion]

The mesanet adapters are teh absolute r0xx0rz. I highly recommend them.



 

[Ral-Clan]

HammerD wrote:
Unless it specifically says it supports DMA then it will only work with IDE controllers and not any SCSI controllers.

How do you get an IDE device to work with a SCSI controller?  IDE to SCSI convertor?

[HammerD]

@ ral-can

Yes, ACARD makes them. There is one that works on SCSI-II (A4000T, Warp Engine, etc), and one that works on Cyberstorm MK3/PPC (UW SCSI).

Some Amiga dealers stock them or you can order them from ACARD.

[yorgle]

I have one of those at home - looks identical to that board.

I've used it inside a G3 PowerBook "Lombard" as well as in a 486DX Gateway "Handbook".

Works really well.

[A1260]

i got some 500mb cf cards that does not mention anying about dma/udma... will they work with the DMA-capable 2.5 IDE Adapter??

[HammerD]

@ A1260, it should work fine in the A4000's IDE port.  Remember it will be a maximum speed of about 3 MB/sec, so don't go overboard on buying a fast compact flash card.  You can get away with a cheap 80X non-DMA card.  (if it doesn't specifically say DMA or UDMA then assume it is NOT DMA, same with the adapter).

Unless you plan to use it on SCSI you do not need a DMA-capable adapter or CF card.

[HammerD]

@A1260  if it doesn't say DMA then it most likely isn't.  Even some fast (eg. 266X) compact flash cards are not DMA.  I have an 8 GB one like that...

I had to specifically look for UDMA or DMA in both the CF card and the adapter to get DMA.