Best IDE to CF HDD solution

[AmigaBruno]

I've just bought an A1200, as I mentioned on another thread! :banana:

My first upgrade to this machine, which came without a hard drive, will be some kind of IDE CF card adaptor, as well as a CF card itself.

I wonder which of the many items of this type on eBay would be best for me. I can buy a ready prepared adaptor with formatted card containing various games and demos, or I can buy just the adaptor and a blank formatted card, or the adaptor and a CF card separately.

At least one seller claims that some CF cards are "too fast" for the Amiga, but I'm not sure which cards these may be, or if it's even true.

I'd like to have some storage space remaining on the cardl in any case, instead of it being full up with games and demos.

I also need to buy a USB CF card reader to copy files onto the CF card. I'm not 100% sure if these files should be ADF format or not.

What do you recommend?

[NovaCoder]

I use a SSD HD module in my A1200, it's a very nice and neat solution.

To setup your HD using your PC you can buy a USB to 44 pin adapter

I don't believe a HD can be too fast for an Amiga?

[bbond007]

I use a SSD HD module in my A1200, it's a very nice and neat solution.

To setup your HD using your PC you can buy a USB to 44 pin adapter

I don't believe a HD can be too fast for an Amiga?

I agree with NovaCoder, those are nice.

I use one with my A1200 with FastATA.

I always had to c-a-a on cold boot with CF because it was not ready or something.

[AmigaBruno]

I use a SSD HD module in my A1200, it's a very nice and neat solution.

To setup your HD using your PC you can buy a USB to 44 pin adapter

I don't believe a HD can be too fast for an Amiga?

Unfortunately, due to Amiga and other expenses such as my Virgin Media broadband/TV/phone package, my social life has recently been in ruins. I'm hoping to find the cheapest and most suitable IDE CF setup, possibly buying them separately. This device is not only more expensive, but would take weeks instead of days to arrive here and may have customs charges as well.

Can anyone on here give me advice about the IDE to CF adaptors, the CF cards themselves, installing Workbench 3 and WHDload?

[som99]

Unfortunately, due to Amiga and other expenses such as my Virgin Media broadband/TV/phone package, my social life has recently been in ruins. I'm hoping to find the cheapest and most suitable IDE CF setup, possibly buying them separately. This device is not only more expensive, but would take weeks instead of days to arrive here and may have customs charges as well.

Can anyone on here give me advice about the IDE to CF adaptors, the CF cards themselves, installing Workbench 3 and WHDload?

Adapter wise id say most will work without issues, here is one with free shipping for 1.29$.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/CF-to-44-Pin-Laptop-IDE-Hard-Drive-Adapter-bootable-/250790187941?pt=US_Drive_Cables_dapters&hash=item3a644293a5

As far as CF card go I have had the best experience with SanDisk Ultra series cards, the 4GB SanDisk Ultra 30MB/s cards have worked flawless for many years on many Amigas, tho I use PATA SSD modules on my main Amigas nowdays.

So any 44-pin CF adapter and a SanDisk card will work great, I know lots of cards will work but since I have had problems with other brands I can only recommend what I myself have used the most.

As far as installation goes id say use a CF/USB reader for PC and set it all up in WinUAE since it will be fast and easy, I would recommend using ClassicWB http://classicwb.abime.net/, unexpanded A1200 id go for ClassicWB 68K or Lite.
Instructions are available on the ClassicWB page.

When setting up the CF card in WinUAE you boot from a WB 3.1 install ADF and then go to HDTools then left click once on HD Tool Box then rightclick go to the top menu and press "Icons/Information" or A+I.

Then click on the line SCSI_Device_Name=scsi.device and change it to SCSI_Device_Name=uaehf.device and hit enter.

Now you can see and partition your drive in WinUAE.

When setting up your CF card dont forget to set max tranfer to 0x001FE00 and hit enter.

The rest is guided by ClassicWB etc.

Hope it will work out for you

[NovaCoder]

another option

[carls]

Unfortunately, due to Amiga and other expenses such as my Virgin Media broadband/TV/phone package, my social life has recently been in ruins. I'm hoping to find the cheapest and most suitable IDE CF setup, possibly buying them separately. This device is not only more expensive, but would take weeks instead of days to arrive here and may have customs charges as well.

Can anyone on here give me advice about the IDE to CF adaptors, the CF cards themselves, installing Workbench 3 and WHDload?

Amigakit (http://www.amigakit.com) offers packages with an IDE-CF adaptor including a 4 GB CF card. I've bought one of those and one similar package from eBay, they both work great.

Now, if you want to save on expenses for the forseeable future, one of the pre-installed CF cards that comes complete with WHDLoad etc., that are sometimes available on eBay might turn out to be a good option.

Obviously, buying a pre-installed CF card from eBay will be a bit more expensive than getting a plain one in a local store, but then you can start using the HDD at once and then buy the additional hardware needed for smooth file transfers when you've saved some more money.

In order to set up a CF HDD on the Amiga, you really need at least some kind of CF-reader for your PC, to transfer files to the CF card using WinUAE. I've gone with the option of buying an additional PCMCIA-CF adaptor for my Amiga and a USB-CF adaptor for my PC. Using a 512 MB CF-card in these, I transfer downloaded files such as demos and games to the Amiga.

Using the normal Workbench 3.x install disk is simple. HDToolbox will read the correct options from the CF-HDD (except for maxtransfer, which should be 0x1FE00 - at least that works well for me).

Also note that a 4GB HDD eats up quite a bit of RAM, so if you haven't got some Fast-mem in your Amiga, you'll be wanting some soon.

[AmigaBruno]

So now, there are some more factors to consider!

I didn't know that a 4Gb CF card used as a hard drive would eat up lots of RAM. I've only got the 2Mb onboard RAM at the moment. I've had enough Amiga related expenses recently, which is affecting my social life, so in this case I think I should go for a smaller CF card to start off with. What size do you suggest? Perhaps just a 256Mb or 512Mb card would be good to start off with. As these sizes aren't very popular nowadays, perhaps this would also mean they're more compatible with older equipment. From what I've read here, as well as on eBay, it seems that Sandisk cards would also be the best ones to go for.

At the moment, the most important thing for me to do is to get a copy of Deluxe Paint IV AGA installed onto my Amiga A1200, so I can produce some artwork using the extra facilities of the AGA chipset.

[Leffmann]

Bigger hard drives will not eat up more RAM, that must be a mistake, but if you want to play WHDLoad adapted games then you will need a RAM expansion eventually. Better start saving up, they are all very over-priced unfortunately.

[som99]

You will not loose ram because you have a bigger hard drive so go for a 4GB one so you got space to load some games on it.

2MB chip using WHDLoad can run a decent amount of 1 floppy games and removing preload will run even more, not ideal but you will sure be able to run quite a ok amount of games, but keep the OS at a minimal to free up as much ram as possible.

[Coolhand]

I was running a 4gb CF just fine with an unexpanded 1200, never noticed it was eating a lot of ram, or even any at all.

The speed of the Amiga IDE is a lot slower than most storage solutions so imho there's no need to spend lots on the faster speed etc.  if you just want one drive then go for the CF solution - get a sandisk ultra for compatibility... you can go for SD cards too, which are cheaper than CF but the adapter itself will cost more.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Bigger hard drives will not eat up more RAM, that must be a mistake, but if you want to play WHDLoad adapted games then you will need a RAM expansion eventually. Better start saving up, they are all very over-priced unfortunately.

Bigger hard drives are not going to "eat up" more RAM, the only way they would do that is if you create lots of partitions on them with lots of buffers.  How you set this is entirely up to you, through HDToolbox.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Also note that a 4GB HDD eats up quite a bit of RAM, so if you haven't got some Fast-mem in your Amiga, you'll be wanting some soon.

Bigger hard drives are not going to "eat up" more RAM, the only way they'd do that is if you create lots of partitions on them, with lots of buffers.  This is completely configurable by the user through HDToolbox.

[stefcep2]

There's also something about the maxtransfer that needs to be set?

[AmigaBruno]

Thanks for all your replies! I'd never even heard of the option of using SD cards as an Amiga hard drive before. I've only found one adaptor for this on eBay. I've never even used a CF card to do anything at all, but as people think this is ideal for an Amiga hard drive, it seems that now is the time to start using them. The main thing is to put my new A1200 to some use which takes advantage of the AGA graphics. Not all that much AGA software has ever been produced, so the most important thing is to get an AGA version of Deluxe Paint, or some other graphics software with some detailed instructions on how to use it. This may mean downloading an AGA version of Deluxe Paint and buying a book by a third party, possibly in German. Searches on eBay for Deluxe Paint don't usually bring up an AGA version. Only one has just come up on eBay UK, but I don't want to pay that price at the moment, due to all my other expenses of the IDE to CF adaptor and CF card, Virgin Media, and actually having a social life.