PCMCIA memory

[Matt_H]

I'm trying to get some more RAM into my secondary Amigas via the PCMCIA port, but Amiga-specific PCMCIA RAM is rare and expensive. Does anyone know if generic old SRAM or DRAM cards up to 4MB are compatible with the 600/1200? What about old 4MB flash cards?

Also, are there any voltage requirements I should be aware of?

Thanks

[JetRacer]

You really, really don't want to use the PCMCIA bus to add memory. It's dead slow.

FLASH cards are removable storage devices with a limited number of write cycles.

[Piru]

It's dead slow.

You're right, it's even slower than chip memory.

[Matt_H]

It's dead slow.

You're right, it's even slower than chip memory.

Er, yes. But it's my only option. I'd rather have available low-performance memory than none at all.

(This upgrade is intended for the 600 and temporarily for the 1200 until I can get a proper accelerator)

[Cyberus]

Now a large PCMCIA storage device for the A1200, now THAT would be nice...

[fragment]

Cyberus wrote:
Now a large PCMCIA storage device for the A1200, now THAT would be nice...

But dead slow  ;-)

[blobrana]

Yea it would be better to have a `spare` IDE cable dangling out the back, to plug in a big HD :-D

Forget the PCMCIA slot (unless you get a squirrel device to connect it to something else) and wait for a cheap accelerator....

[Cyberus]

I was thinking it would be a nice way to use up the vacant slot. I remember a couple of years back wanting a PCMCIA flash disk for my laptop....

[leirbag28]

Matt-H

here I come to the rescue again. Get the PCMCIA flash memory, its definitely worth is as it is the only option you have for upgrading the Amiga 600, (unless you have or can find an Apollo 630 or Viper 630)
 Try getting a Apple Newton Flash card. I have one and it works great. It makes your 600 feel more usefull. I do recommend thoug that if you get a trapdoor 1 meg ChipRAM expansion first though and then the PCMCIA, and get the largest one you can. I suspect that an 8meg Flash might work but not sure and it has to be 5v read and 5v write I believe.

I have a 1meg Flash from an Apple Newton on mine and I love it! gonna get a bigger one soon. You can boot Workbench superfast if you install it in one of these!

[adolescent]

I have yet to find a flash card that would work as fast ram.  Out of the three I have only one is even able to be used as storage and not consistently.

If you can find a 2M or 4M SRAM or PSRAM card you'd be better off.  Unfortunately, they're still expensive.  I've been watching eBay for some time and the 2M cards usually run around $40 used.  I've been waiting for a nice 4M to come in at my local recycler but they only have 1M and less.

[Lemmink]

> I have a 1meg Flash from an Apple Newton on mine and I love it!

Lucky you. I got a 2MB newton flash some time ago an it didn`t work in the Amiga. I sold it on and didn`t get a complain from the new owner, so I assume the card wasn`t defective.

[JetRacer]

Not only is it slower than chipmem, it is MUCH slower than chipmem because of the poor performance of the PCMCIA bus. I also heard that there are general system speed issues due to  managing the bus. The latter is probably limited to network cards though.

Note: FLASH is very fast compared to a HDD for booting, even if you have a nice highspeed IDE buffer. There's just so many small files and paths to lookup that the seektime of the HDD reduce actual transfer rate far below FLASH.

A year ago I experimented a little by archiving some stuff without compression and just blast it up to ram: from HDD at startup (like env:). It worked so well (speeded up boot multiple times) that I desided to leave it there.