Compact Flash as HD in Amiga500?

[BraindeaD]

Hi there!

I've used the search but I can find nothing about it.
Can I use a compact flash as Hard Disk unit, in an Amiga 500 with kickstart 1.3?
If it is possible, anybody can explain how? What I need (what kind of card adapter, and so)?

Thank you!
Regards.

PS: sorry for my bad english

[Terse]

You need a CF to IDE adapter and then an IDE host controller on the A500.  There are not many out there (maybe 1 or 2 internal like the ICD and 1 or 2 external side expansions)
Alternately, if you can get a slightly more common external SCSI sidecar-style controller for the A500 (Dataflyer, Supra, Commodore, GVP, etc) you could go CF -> IDE adapter -> SCSI bridge.

[countzero]

you need either ;

1- SCSI A500 sidecar (A590, GVP A500HD+) - SCSI*IDE adapter - IDE*CF adapter

2- IDE A500 sidecar (AlfaData and such) - IDE*CF adapter

alternatively, you can try ICD 68000 socket IDE addons. Or mrkl's 68k IDE adapter, but it requires kickstart 2.350 minimum (3.1 recommended).

[BraindeaD]

Thanks for the answers, I'll try to find something to provide an IDE or SCSI port to my a500.

Thanks for the help!

[motorollin]

You can also make one...

--
moto

[pyrre]

@ Moto

If someone put the ide.device for this particular controller inside the kickstart. Would it then be possible to autoboot from it?
Or would you have to do more than just that?

[Ilwrath]

1- SCSI A500 sidecar (A590, GVP A500HD+) - SCSI*IDE adapter - IDE*CF adapter

2- IDE A500 sidecar (AlfaData and such) - IDE*CF adapter

Or,
3- SCSI A500 sidecar (A590, GVP A500HD+) - SCSI*CF Media reader/writer.  

They're available for keyboards and samplers (so they work without needing custom drivers).  They're a little rare, but this site claims to be selling them...

[motorollin]

pyrre wrote:
If someone put the ide.device for this particular controller inside the kickstart. Would it then be possible to autoboot from it?
Or would you have to do more than just that?

I don't know. I know that there are autobooting interfaces for the A500, but I would guess their BIOS would do more than just make the device available to the system.

--
moto

[rkauer]

 If the user are smart enough, there is way to put a reset-survivor driver in RAM: to start from the HD in the second soft-reset, using the driver in a special boot floppy.

[pyrre]

@ rkauer

using the driver in a special boot floppy.

I would like to avoid that. And boot it from the harddrive itself...

@ moto

How complex is the task of adding a bios to this or similar devices....?