IDE-FIX 97 - Strange Custom(?) Modification Made To It, Any Ideas?

[Nick2K4]

Hi,

I bought this yonks ago when I was still in the amiga scene and I don't think I ever got it to work. It may have been the hard drive or me doing something wrong but I was never able to get my Amiga to recognise there was an IDE hard drive plugged in. It could also be my Amiga that was at fault  :pissed:

Anyway, I've been getting great responses from you guys and though I would ask if anybody has seen this modification made to the IDE-FIX 97 board before?

Pics: (quite high res and about 200k big)

http://www.da014a0002.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/topside.jpg

http://www.da014a0002.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/soldermod.jpg

Sorry the first one is a little blurry I had to do it without the LCD screen because the battery was about to die and couldn't let it focus properly  :lol:

Anyway, is this thing borked or should it be in good working order? The pins appear to be intact and besides the wire solder strange mod thing it seems to appear as if it would work but I've not tried it again yet.

I'm tempted to just get the IDE fix 99 version from Power Computing or get a Flyer version or something but if this is salvageable I wont bother.

Cheers  8-)

[Framiga]

Hi

have you enabled in IDEfixPrefs, the 4-Drive Adapter option?

It is an EB standard (quite all) or a VOB model?

Ciao

EDIT-just seen, it is an Elaborate Bytes so set to EB Standard

[Nick2K4]

I'm assuming you mean the software that comes with it?

Unfortunately I just got the hardware and don't have any software for it  :-(

Is it free to download from somewhere or is there a PD version of the software that does the same thing?

Thanks,

Nick

[Framiga]

ftp://de.aminet.net/pub/aminet/disk/misc/IDEfix97.lha

[-BobW-]

That wire looks pretty sloppy.

I had to do something similar on a different board.  On the one I have there is a little fuse.  I blew it once when I hooked a drive up backwards.  I had to do a similar mod to bypass the fuse.

[Doobrey]

@Nick2K4
 If it doesn`t work with an IDE drive plugged into the primary channel, then it`s dead.
 You only need the software to enable the second channel.

 Looking at the second picture,it`s not the wire that worries me, but all the burnt flux around the pins next to it. Looks like someone has seriously shorted something out there.
 You may be lucky, and find that it`s just the 2x 74245 chips that have gone, they`re cheap and fairly easy to replace . But if it`s the GAL that`s gone, it`d be easier to buy a new adapter.

[Nick2K4]

Thanks for the help guys, I currently have the connectors setup like this:

www.da014a0002.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Connected.jpg

Have I connected this to the first or second channel I'm not too sure. The hard drive is also set to master.

The drive I have is a PC drive, I did have an Amiga formatted one (never got it working when I bought the IDE fix 97 - it came with it) and that didn't work either.

I get activity on the hard drive light to indicate that it is being accessed but nothing loads up. I can hear the hard drive working and the AMiga HD light flashing so that's a good sign.

I'm trying to find my workbench disks now so I can see if I can format the drive or not. I've loaded into a workbench environment using a PD catalogue disk but I don't get an icon for the hard drive at all, not even to say NO DOS or whatever the error message was.

I'm hoping to get this one sorted and save having to buy a new connector but if needs must then I will have to.

Thanks guys for the help so far,

Nick

[Doobrey]

Every time I`ve stuck a HD into an Amiga, it`s never shown anything until it`s been partitioned under HDToolbox.

Looks like it might work after all :-)

[Effy]

Try to get an "Install" disc of OS 3.0 or 3.1 and load the program HDtoolbox in order to prepare the harddrive to be used under Amiga OS ...
Try to connect an Amiga harddrive to Windows 98 and boot the pc up. It also won´t see the harddrive untill you load the program Fdisk ...