CF Drives in Amiga 2000HD

[DWV]

I originally bought this stuff to put into my Emax samplers, but these SCSI to IDE bridges would not work with the Emax, so when I recently decided to resurrect my Amiga's (they have been packed away for over 10 years) I thought I would try them in my Amiga 2000HD, the first IDE to CF adapters I tried, did not work, so I tried some other ones I had, and they worked fine!
The Amiga is now setup with 2x 4 gig compact flash drives, a cd rom, tape drive and an 88 meg Syquest drive, it also has 2 DPS TBCII's and a PAR
card (looking for a hard drive for it).
My Video Toaster had packed it in so I bought a couple off ebay, but neither one worked, so now I have to try and get my money back from that a$$hole.
I am still looking for some other parts and pieces to get it back up to the way I had it back in the day, but I am not desperate enough to pay the exorbitant prices some people are asking for parts, so it will continue to be a work in progress for a while yet.
All-in-all, is been kinda fun (and sometimes frustrating) re-learning how to do this stuff.

Dave

[danbeaver]

So you are asking for help with?

[DWV]

I am not asking for help with anything, I just thought some people might be interested in this.

[gertsy]

I am not asking for help with anything, I just thought some people might be interested in this.

I am. Where did you get the SCSI-IDE adaptor from?  Do you know the brand/model?  

Cheers on the working 2000.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Love it!  I too use CF drives in my A2000, but I went with a Mechware card reader (sadly no longer available and $$$ when they show up on Ebay or Amibay).  Congrats on getting your old system working again, 2000's are a lot of fun.  Check that battery if you haven't already!  

[DWV]

I bought these off Ebay about 5 years ago, the model numbers are
I-O Data IDSC21-E
I-O Data R-IDSC-E/R
ACard AEC7720U

The ACard was the only one that would work in the Emax, so it is in it.
Both the I-O Data cards work fine in the Amiga, most CF adapters should work, I am using a HXSP-2108P, it is a dual CF adapter, but the SCSI/IDE bridge only supports 1 card, I found an adapter that looks like it is the single version of this one, once they get here, I'll test them out and report the results here.
The SCSI/IDE bridge only uses the CF card that is set to Master, and since you can set either CF card to Master on the CF adapter,  you could wire a switch to the Master/Slave jumper and switch between them.
I have not tried this (yet) so I don't know if you could switch between them live, or if a reboot would be required.

Dave

[DWV]

EDIT:
I tried the adapter using 2 CF cards, you can switch between them, but it requires a reboot. The Amiga only sees the card that was enabled at start up, switching to the other card has no effect, the Amiga will still read/write to the original card.
This would work well in combination with a ROM switcher, you could then have 2 operating systems on one machine.

Dave

[gertsy]

Thanks for the info Dave. Maybe I can get rid of that "bhd" Buddha Hard Drive, in my signature. Haven't been able to get a CF IDE adaptor working on it.

[gary2000]

I use an original Buddha IDE w/ $2 ebay CF adapter & Sandisk CF (after changing bit in DOS machine).

It works, but sometimes gives errors on boot- maybe CF is going bad?

[danbeaver]

I had an A2000 with one of Mech's SCSI CF card readers and although it was hot swappable, the boot "drive" could only be changed through assign commands or a reboot.  It was cool to see it boot from an SD card.

[spirantho]

Thanks for the info Dave. Maybe I can get rid of that "bhd" Buddha Hard Drive, in my signature. Haven't been able to get a CF IDE adaptor working on it.

My Catweasel Zorro MkII has one of those Disk-On-Module solid state 4GB drives on it - works absolutely perfectly. The drive is shared between the A2000 (actually an A1500) and the Goldengate inside it. No silly cables or anything, just plugs straight onto the Catweasel (which has a Buddah built in) - but it does require a bit of juggling to get everything inside the case!

[Matt_H]

Get in touch with Newtek. They should be able to repair your Toaster(s).

[DWV]

I did, but Newtek no longer supports or repairs them.

[gertsy]

I use an original Buddha IDE w/ $2 ebay CF adapter & Sandisk CF (after changing bit in DOS machine).

It works, but sometimes gives errors on boot- maybe CF is going bad?

What size CF Card are you using?

[DWV]

I use an original Buddha IDE w/ $2 ebay CF adapter & Sandisk CF (after changing bit in DOS machine).

It works, but sometimes gives errors on boot- maybe CF is going bad?

If I formatted my 4 gig cards as one large partition, I would also get occasional errors, but with them formatted as 2- 2 gig partitions, I have had no problems at all.