IDE ATA to CF Compact Flash Internal Memory Card Reader as Amiga Hard Drive

[smerf]

Hi,

Just wanted to let you all know that I purchased one of these and installed it into my amiga 4000. Worked great, you have to fiddle around with HardDisk toolbox in order to get the Amiga to see it but it does work. Here is the title and it only costs .99 cents, it allows you to use a compact flash for a hard disk, the Amiga even boots off of it.

IDE ATA to CF Compact Flash Internal Memory Card Reader

For more details go to ebay and search for the line above.

I bought mine from a dealer called pointingmouse, the reason I am telling you this is because I know it works. Just remember you have to treat it just like a new unformated hard drive.

smerf

[Firedawg]

But, not quite like this A4000T below.  

[smerf]

Hi,

@Firedawg,

Ok, is that connected to an IDE port, or is that somehow built in to the motherboard. Do you have the new media board?

I thought that finding that IDE board for CF,s was pretty entertaining, just watching the old miggy load up off of it was a trip, it even loads faster off the CF than it does off the harddrive. Makes me want to do more with the old A4000. Wish someone out there would start making new PPC boards for the Amiga, but if they do they will probably want over top dollar.

[amigadave]

I have an A600 sitting here just waiting for this kind of mod.  I even have the CF adapter, just not an extra CF card yet.

For the A600 I think I will try to setup the boot time to be as fast as I can make it, just to show off to Windows and Mac users that don't know it is not a typical Amiga setup, then laugh at their amazement.  :lol:

[Firedawg]

This is not my A4000T, but Xray's.  But, here is a shot from the inside.

[smerf]

Hi,

@Firedawg

Well I thought I had found something new for the Amiga, guess I am just a little bit late. Any how nice photo. I believe I see a 4 way ide card there. I could be wrong, it has been a long time since I looked at any of my Amiga's. I am starting to think about building my A1200 up, my friend was throwing out an old burned up A1200 and a real old Amiga 1200 that still worked, he has bought a new Apple with Leopard on it (nice) well the one that burned up had an old Blizzard in it with a 206 mhz ppc chip, well the A1200 that worked would run off the floppy but not the hard drive, so I took a chance and put the Blizzard ppc in my A1200, it worked like a champ, just hope it doesn't burn up MY A1200. Now I am thinking of getting one of these CF adapter's for this A1200, and then getting a mediator board and just want to see how far I can take this Amiga 1200, may even try to buy OS4 for it. The Amiga has gone from the latest and greatest to just about the extinct, only expermimenters using it now to see just how far they can take it.

smerf

[ChrisH]

This also works with the A1200!

One warning:  Flash memory has a limited number of writes before failing, and although this number is very large these days it would still be wise to not use it for anything that gets updated frequently (say email data).  Or you could just buy an IBM Microdrive (which is a *real* harddisk in CF size), which does not suffer from that problem.

edit: A long time ago I replaced a failing 20MB 2.5inch HD with a 1GB IBM Microdrive in my A1200.  You could probably use the space saved (by loosing the big HD) for something else...

[Painkiller]

ChrisH wrote:
This also works with the A1200!

One warning:  Flash memory has a limited number of writes before failing, and although this number is very large these days it would still be wise to not use it for anything that gets updated frequently (say email data).  Or you could just buy an IBM Microdrive (which is a *real* harddisk in CF size), which does not suffer from that problem.

edit: A long time ago I replaced a failing 20MB 2.5inch HD with a 1GB IBM Microdrive in my A1200.  You could probably use the space saved (by loosing the big HD) for something else...

Well AOS doesn't swap constantly like Windows does. So the life of a normal CF card should be long enough. If you want to be cautios then buy a SolidStateDrive these will last many years even on windows, because it has managed write (it only writes to blocks that has been least used). I remember reading somewhere that life expectansy of a SSD drive in windows at normal use would be about 10 years.

[Xamiche]

Well AOS doesn't swap constantly like Windows does. So the life of a normal CF card should be long enough.

When you say long enough, roughly how long is that? Weeks, months, years? I've just bought a couple of CF to IDE adaptors for my Amiga 1200 & 600. If CF cards are too short in life span I may consider going the Microdrive route instead. Thanks in advance for any info you can give.

[JuvUK]

do you need to install any drivers?

[ZeBeeDee]

No, no drivers required ... plug the CF adaptor on the IDE interface, insert a card and proceed in an orderly fashion :-)

There's a handy tutorial here

[ZeBeeDee]

Xamiche wrote:
roughly how long is that? Weeks, months, years? I've just bought a couple of CF to IDE adaptors for my Amiga 1200 & 600. If CF cards are too short in life span I may consider going the Microdrive route instead. Thanks in advance for any info you can give.

The industry reports say that each sector of a 64mb CF card can be erased and written to anywhere between 10,000 and 1,000,000 times and that a card's lifetime would be approx 13.5 years.

There is no reliable data (that I've found) that gives an accurate life expectancy of a CF card that is used for reading only or the odd few writes now and again, but that figure of 13.5 years would be a vast understatement IMHO.

* Hint for those that don't know how *
You can cut down the amount of writes to a card a lot by assigning most workbench dir's such as ENV: T: etc to RAM: in the startup-sequence, provided you have enough Fast RAM installed.

[Xamiche]

Thanks for the info and advice. Even If I only get a few years out of a CF card in an Amiga I'd still be happy.

[Chain]

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0801/08010804pretec48gb.asp

[Eriond]

There are "industrial grade" CF cards.
One mgfr is SimpleTech. Their 1GB unit (SLCF1GM1UI-F) claims to handle more than 2 million write cycles. Should keep an Amiga going for the rest of your life...
ELFA (European electronics supplier) have an offer right now for apx 70€/pcs. Their stock number is 73-871-60.