A1200-compatible ATAPI devices

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

HI,

Has anyone ever comprised a list of A1200-compatible IDE CD-ROMs, etc.?

The reason I ask this is that ever since putting in one of those Elbox 4xEIDE interfaces in my A1200 a couple weeks ago, I've been experimenting with the old gal again.  The first CD-ROM I tried, a brand new Sony CDU5221 52x, was just a complete dog.  With it even connected to the bus the system would boot MAYBE 1 in 20 times.  All of the other times sometimes I could boot as far as a CLI prompt before it would crash shortly later (during any random event - loading a file, inserting a PCMCIA card, starting C:4xEIDE.driver, MCP, just siting there, whatever), other times it would just cause a system reset or guru, over and over, before even giving me the early startup control menu.

Now after some serious fretting that it was my interface, take that Sony drive and pitch it across the room.  Add one older model IBM 24x drive.  No problems ever since. :-D

(I did send a mention of this to support@elbox.com, but no reply yet.)

Mike

[zipper]

[xyth]

This might not be related but I have a noname 40x CD drive hooked up to my 1200 via a 4xEIDE interface.  I've hooked up the CD drive with it's own power supply seperate from everything else.

What I've found is that the CD drive has to be switched on before the Amiga or I would suffer similar problems to those you've described above.  (Booting 1 time in 20 in particular).

The same thing when I hooked up a Zip Drive instead.

I don't know how these work but maybe your faster CD drive takes a while to get enough power to spin up or something, and it confuses the interface.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I don't know how these work but maybe your faster CD drive takes a while to get enough power to spin up or something, and it confuses the interface.

Yup, that was a big part of my problem, thanks for your help!   (along with a loose connection at the interface-->motherboard point and master/slave issues).  I'm now back to using that faster drive, housed in a hollowed out A1020 5 1/4 floppy drive case.  Everything's hooked into my UPS, so it all comes on simultaneously now.  The A1020 wound up being the perfect choice, and it looks so nice sitting next to the A1200.  Maybe one of these days I'll get around to posting a pic...

Thanks,
Mike

[Floid]

xyth wrote:

I don't know how these work but maybe your faster CD drive takes a while to get enough power to spin up or something, and it confuses the interface.

Just FWIW, I bet it's the other way around, sort of.  The faster drives are now supporting DMA (UATA) modes of various sorts, of course with fallback for backwards-compatibility.

But in an x86 box, both the drive and the computer get about 2 or 3 seconds of POST delay at boot, usually followed by a bus reset before it goes to probe the drives.  Which, one assumes, somehow provides time for the drive to decide what the heck it's plugged into and configure itself appropriately.

Perhaps the Amiga (with the 4-way card?) doesn't issue that reset, or issues it more quickly than the drive's designers may have really planned for...  and the drive is left in either a 'Ultra DMA' mode or a totally random state, corrupting the IDE chain(s) while the poor miggy then tries to boot.

Okay, maybe I don't have a clue.  But perhaps this provides more of one.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Floid wrote:

...corrupting the IDE chain(s) while the poor miggy then tries to boot.

 :-D  :-D  :-D

(Sorry, I'm just now finding your response here.  That sounds like my "poor miggy" about every other day!!)