True IDE help needed

[Kitch]

Hi,

I have an A4000 that came setup with a plain CF adapter fitted, it goes from the IDE header via cable to the CF adaptor then onto the CD ROM and it boots fine from the CF card.

I had a True IDE CF adapter that I wanted to try out instead of the CF adaptor, so I unplugged the IDE cable from the motherboard and then fitted the True IDE straight onto the motherboard header (checked that pin1 lines up with pin1). No matter which slot on the adaptor I had the CF card plugged into the A4000 would eventually just boot to the kickstart screen. I swapped back to the original CF adaptor setup and it boots fine, I just figured that the True IDE adaptor might have been faulty.

Jump forward a few months and I purchased a new True IDE CF adaptor, just tried to use it and I'm getting the same results. I've tried the card in both slots, tried reseting via the keyboard and every time I just get the kickstart screen.
The only difference I've noticed is that one slot boots to kickstart screen faster than the other.
When I reconnect the original CF card adaptor and cable it all works fine.

Any suggestion to what I could try next or what I'm not doing correctly?
Is it possible the True IDE doesn't want to play nicely with my 4GB Kingston elite pro CF card?

[quarkx]

Are you supplying power to the CF adapter? The "big" 40 pin IDE CF adaptors need a power cable to them. the "laptop" 44 pin ones (such as the A1200 or the A600) have power to them through the IDE cable.

[Kitch]

Yep, both adaptors are powered via the floppy style power plug.

When I hold down both mouse buttons to get into the boot options menu I only see DF0 when using the TrueIDE adaptor.
With the original CF adaptor the boot options menu shows me Df0, UDH0, UDH1 and UDH1.1

[amigakit]

Have you tried holding down the Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga for longer periods of time to ensure that it is not a timing problem on reset?

[Kitch]

Yep, I've held the Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga keys for up to 10 seconds with no noticeable difference.

[amigakit]

What file system are you using on the CF card and block size?

[Kitch]

I'll have to check, I never set up the CF so I'm not sure.
Is HDTool Box the best program to check with?

I did try a different and completely blank 1GB CF card in the TrueIDE adaptor and the system wouldn't even bring up the the kickstart screen even after 60 seconds, it did once I turned it off and removed the CF card from the adaptor.

[danbeaver]

Try the TruIDE on a cable like the original CF adapter

[amigakit]

Forgot to ask: what happens when you cold boot the A4000 - do you get the same result?

[Kitch]

Well I spent a bit of time trying things:

I've tried two different CF cards both with FFS, both boot to Workbench fine in the original CF adaptor.
One 4GB (OS3.9) and one 1GB (OS3.1)
WinUAE show the block size of the 1GB card to be 512.

No CF adaptor installed in A4000:
32 seconds to kickstart screen

Original CF adaptor installed with no CF card:
2 seconds to kickstart screen

Original CF adaptor installed with 1GB CF card:
5 seconds to Workbench screen

TrueIDE installed with no CF card:
32 seconds to kickstart screen

TrueIDE installed with 1GB CF card in Master slot:
32 seconds to kickstart screen

TrueIDE installed with 1GB CF card in slave slot:
2 seconds to kickstart screen

TrueIDE installed with 1GB & 4GB CF cards installed:
2 seconds to kickstart screen

With the TrueIDE installed the HD activity light on the front panel initially flickers and then stay on constantly, even after kickstart screen is displayed.
Also with the TrueIDE installed Ctrl-Amiga-Amiga doesn't seem to change the time for the kickstart screen to be displayed.