How many drives in A4000D?

[RMK305]

I'm using a 4.3 gig ide drive and am about to set it up from scratch again so that it has a  sysyem parttition of aboutt 300 meg and a games partition of 2 or 3 gig with the remainder as something else.

I'm wondering how many drives I can fit in the A4000D case. I have 1 hard drive, floppy and CD ROM. I don't have the manual so I have can't see what Commodore said at the time. I could be interested to add another drive, especially as I have a SCSI connecctor on the Warp Engine which will be much faster than the ide - Was thinking it would be good for video storage.

Thanks,

Robert

[doctorq]

If I were you I would just ditch the 4 GB IDE drive, and get myself a 18+ GB SCSI harddrive for the WarpEngine controller instead.

As for how many drives you can have in there; as many as room allows. You will need to consider heat though.

[amigadave]

If I were in your shoes, I would dump the 4.3gb IDE drive into another computer and get a fast SCSI-2 drive to connect to your WarpEngine accelerator.  It is so much faster than the hd controller on the A4000 motherboard.  I have also heard of people that have removed all RAM except the CHIP RAM on their A4000D's so that the only FAST RAM was installed on the WarpEngine.  This would make your system faster as well, but in my opinion, removing the mobo RAM is not really necessary as the WarpEngine will use the RAM on the accelerator card first and then the slower A4000 RAM only when you need more RAM than you have installed on the WarpEngine.

I am no expert and these are all just things I have read from others.

[zipper]

As long as I had the original case, 2 HDs, 2 floppies + 1 CD-Rom. After towerizing  now I have 4 or 5 HDs, CD-Rom  and lots of free room - 2 Zorro GFX cards + 1 PCI, leaving 4 free Zorro and 3 free PCI slots...

[Darrin]

I've just finished setting my A4000D up as I want her.  My best advice is to ignore that internal IDE connecter and get a Zorro based IDE adapter.

I got an Elbox FastATA4000 adapter from Amigakit (but they also sell the Bhudda which should be just as good - I have one of them too, but mine has died).

So far I've got 2 x 80GB 3.5" hard drives installed in the hard drive cradle.  Only one is hooked up at the moment and the FastATA broke it down into 18 x 4GB drives.  I have 2 of them "bootable" and back my main boot partition up to the other just incase I need to restore it, plus I've relabled the other drives according to my needs (games, untilities, ADFs, etc).

I've also connected a DVD ROM to the FastATA and installed it in the empty 5.25" bay (tight squeeze).

I've got a single High Density floppy drive attached to the mobo header and space for a 2nd.

I bought some round IDE cables as there is not much room inside the case (A2000D wins hands down for interal expension space as usual).

I've got a 68040 processor card fitted.

I've got the Debian USB board fitted with 2 ports on the back plane and a long cable attached to the internal port and running out the back slots for easy access.

I've got an internal scan doubler/flicker fixer installed.

16MB RAM on the motherboard.

8MB RAM on a Zorro card.

PS2 Mouse and Keyboard adapters.

Now all I need is a USB Ethernet adapter (I bought a Trendnet TU2-ET100, but I haven't tried hooking it up yet).

I hope that I can make some large partitions on the 2nd 80GB drive by using SFS instead of FFS, but I haven't got around to that yet.

[Darrin]

You can always make extra mounts for hard drives by cutting up bits of plastic, jamming them in unused Zorro slots and screwing the drives to the plastic.  It might not look pretty, but with the cover on then who will know.   :lol:

[InTheSand]

Darrin wrote:
My best advice is to ignore that internal IDE connecter and get a Zorro based IDE adapter.

I'm surprised! I was under the impression that the IDE connector on the Buddha was just as slow as the A4000/A1200's internal connector. But I'm willing to be corrected!

I have the combined Buddha / Catweasel combo in my A3000 and it seems OK when using an recent-ish (in Amiga terms!) 10Gb IBM IDE drive. My boot drive is an ancient 1.2Gb-ish SCSI from about 1973 (kidding!) and it's pretty slow. But I was under the impression that the A3K's internal SCSI would beat any classic-Amiga-based IDE connection provided the drive was up to the job.

 - Ali

[actung_bab]

thanks for that advice just reading what you said
l have a amiga 4000 d mb and am in the process of building to complete working machine.
need psu and cpu card has taken me ages to get all the parts
l can only afford standred commodore 040 card is this okay.
am going get psu adaptor from amigakit as the case l brought was just shell with no power switch.
l have always had amiga 1200s so looking at my parts made amiga 4000 is bit guess work thats for sure in that l dont know what missing seems its got most the brackets not many though. i did in finish get a daughter board .
living in new zealand been bit hassle getting parts
l dont really want buy standred psu as age of the part and weight mean it cost more. but finding a pc atx psu that fits into the case is this going be problem ?
if anyone esle has any advice on this project whould be great
l used to get friend to help me with electronics but hes far to busy with his biz these days hence dont want buy old psu which chould break down. and has no plans to how they work.

many thanks
ps is the usb card cool its on my wish list gee also when think u lost intrest in the amiga they bring out some cool gear that new scan doubler that hooks on to amiga mb sounds cool esp 24 bit modes on standred pc monitor.
just pity they seem drip feed them over long time
just well the classic range has still some life left ,and the talk about the psx2 having long time line :-)
gee miss my ppc card should not have sold it damm twit hehe

come on amiga inc let someone do something u like school boy holding his lolly bag in case some esle gets them gezz
only trouble is u making yourselves as popular as certain leader on african country not naming names l might get in trouble hehe


 :-D  :crazy:

[Darrin]

InTheSand wrote:
I'm surprised! I was under the impression that the IDE connector on the Buddha was just as slow as the A4000/A1200's internal connector. But I'm willing to be corrected!
 - Ali

The internal A4000 IDE connector is pants.  To quote the AHD:

The built in IDE controller supports two IDE devices connected simultaneously. Unlike the A1200 the A4000 has a buffered IDE port. Only mode PIO 0 is supported.

whereas:

Fast EIDE controller
supports PIO0, PIO3 and PIO4 devices
meets the ATA 3 and Fast ATA 2 specifications
up to 16.6 MB/s transfer speed
two 40 pin IDE headers (primary and secondary)
the primary and secondary buses can be accessed at different speeds
up to four IDE or ATAPI devices can be connected at once
hard disk activity LED connector
unconventional handling of >4 GB devices, they are simply split into separate logical 4 GB blocks - can be turned off by software for filesystems implementing NSD, TD64 and Direct SCSI commands
multiple FastATAs are supported

IDE controller
uses polled I/O, not DMA transfer
two buffered IDE ports support up to four IDE devices
each port is compatible with IDE splitters allowing up to a maximum of eight drives
autoboot ROM
two LED port activity connectors - one for drives 0 to 3, the other for drives 4 to 7
software configurable IDE timing - even PIO mode 0 devices are compatible
raw transfer speed is limited by the Zorro II bus to 3.58 MB/s
supports hard disks larger than 4 GB
can mount GVP or AT-Apollo formatted hard disks
supported by Linux

Sysinfo certain reported a huge increase in speed with the FastATA over the internal IDE header.

For example, if I set the FastATA to PIO 0 as used by the internal header I get a speed value of 1,191,563 bytes per sec.

But, when I use the FastATA in PIO 4 mode it jumps to 6,553,600 bytes per sec.

PIO 3 = 3,276,800 bytes per sec

Tests on a Western Digital EIDE WD800 3.5" drive.

[doctorq]

@Darrin

FastATA will naturally be faster than the onboard IDE as it's Z3, and isn't build like the other IDE controllers released.

Comparing it to the onboard IDE controller or any Zorro II based controller doesn't show the correct picture. It will be like comparing the FastATA to the CSPPC SCSI controller.

There is no speed gain on a Buddha compared to the onboard IDE controller. If any speed increase, it's only minimal.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
@Darrin

FastATA will naturally be faster than the onboard IDE as it's Z3, and isn't build like the other IDE controllers released.

Which certainly backs up my claim to forget about the IDE connector on the mobo.

There is no speed gain on a Buddha compared to the onboard IDE controller. If any speed increase, it's only minimal.

So you're saying that the Buddha running in PIO4 mode will not be any better than the A4000 IDE in PIO0?  I can't test it because my Buddha is RIP (shows up as OK in early startup, but reports connected drives as "garbage" under HD Toolbox) but I did use it in an A2000 and A3000 and there was a marked difference between PIO0 and PIO3 or PIO4 modes on the same drive (granted they were across the Zorro 2 ports, but obviously PIO3 & 4 give a better data transfer rate than PIO0 and if the Z2 port was the bottleneck then we wouldn't see a difference).

Edit:  I assume Jens is talking about Zorro 2 here:

High speed: Even with slow harddisks like the Quantum Bigfoot, transfer rates of more than 2.2 MBytes per second can be reached. The raw data transfer rate is only limited by the zorro bus: 3.58 MBytes per second.

[doctorq]

Which certainly backs up my claim to forget about the IDE connector on the mobo.

Not really, as you are comparing a FastATA, which isn't the same as the IDE controller on the motherboard (or Buddha for that matter).

So you're saying that the Buddha running in PIO4 mode will not be any better than the A4000 IDE in PIO0?

No, I'm not. I'm saying you will have no speed increase in using a Buddha compared to the onboard IDE controller of the Amiga 4000 motherboard. You are setting a FastATA equal to a Buddha which is wrong.

[hardlink]

Darrin wrote:
You can always make extra mounts for hard drives by cutting up bits of plastic, jamming them in unused Zorro slots and screwing the drives to the plastic.  It might not look pretty, but with the cover on then who will know.   :lol:

Just beware of the heat generated and the power used. CBM used a crappy PS that doesn't move much air or have much reserve power.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
No, I'm not. I'm saying you will have no speed increase in using a Buddha compared to the onboard IDE controller of the Amiga 4000 motherboard. You are setting a FastATA equal to a Buddha which is wrong.

Ah, with you.  Yes, the FastATA is faster than the Buddha (and costs more too), but what I was trying to say (badly) was that using a Buddha is better than using the internal IDE on the A4000.

One handy feature of the Buddha is the 2.5" header so you can use 2.5" and 3.5" drives directly without hunting down an extra adapter.

[doctorq]

what I was trying to say (badly) was that using a Buddha is better than using the internal IDE on the A4000.

And why is that? The only advantage with using a Buddha on an A4000 is that the ports are easier to access, and you get two channels instead of one (not a big deal if you only have a harddrive and a CD drive). Speedwise they are more or less equal.