A4k and CF adapter woes

[Dr.Bongo]

After a string of problems I've finally got myself a working A4k.....almost! Seems everything I do cures one problem but creates another, the latest has me scratching my head. Somebody please shed some light.
 A4k was running fine with an old seagate HDD on master and a brand new sony CD rom on slave chained on one IDE cable to the A4k's motherboard. Oh, IDE fix 97 installed too. HDD and CD access was perfect and fast. However, the HDD was LOUD! so me thinks time to change it before it goes to silicon heaven, one purchase at Amigakit later I have a IDE-CF + 4GB adapter.
 Directley replace the HDD for the CF adapter, installed workbench 3.1, installed IDE fix which refuses to list the CD unless I check 'show all device' then it lists an unknown device. No , matter what I select (SCSI, Atapi etc.) inserting a CD results in a freeze, blinky power light, crash, guru meditation.
 Has anybody else been through this or can anybody shed some light on my woes please!
 
 Thanks in advance

[MozzerFan]

The problem with idefix is when a CF card is set as a removeable disk ( and most CF cards are), idefix can't handle this, so it will result in a system hang.
 
Doobrey wrote a patch for idefix, but 2 other people tried it on their a4000 systems, and it didn't help. (Though it works for people with an a1200 and a 4-way ide-adapter).
You're free to try it though (search aminet for idefix-patch).
 
If the patch also doesn't work for you, you have a couple of other options:
1. Set the CF-card as a fixed disk (only works for Sandisk cards). You need a PC for this and a dos-utility called atcfwchg.com . edit: this doesn't work for the newer sandisk cards.
2. Use scsi.device from os3.9 instead of idefix. It can handle cdrom-devices and removeable CF-cards. edit: this also means you have to install a cdromfilesystem. the included
CD filesystem in3.1 is not very good. See aminet, or use cachecdfs from os3.9.
3. Transcend sells some industrial CF-cards wihich are set as fixed (see their website).
4. Buy Individual computers TrueIDE CF adapter, (See vesalia website).
5. Buy a zorro ide-controller and connect the CDROM to it.