PCMCIA IDE Discussion
 

I have been playing with a generic PC PCMCIA IDE/CDROM adapter for few days on my A1200. It is a simple converter with a JAE cdrom inside, of course with out success, like many ones before me. I know it does not work, but...

I have been looking at the pictures of the AlfaData PCMCIA CD1200 adapter, and it looks like there are no electronics inside, except some resistors and an IC chip.
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/downlo...1200_2_big.jpg

It looks like there is nothing to it, almost straight connection.

Is it possible to create copy of that PCB?

Is there someone with that device that can post HI rez pics of the PCB, front , back?

The other device I have seen is the IDE to PCMCIA converter, again, simple PCB with some resistors and LEDs.
http://www2.multithread.co.uk/mtcsho...apter_main.jpg

I have tried different combination in the CD0: mount list, changing device drivers or file systems, but no luck.

We all know that PCMCIA-CF adapters work, with a correct driver, because they are ATAPI devices, so in theory PCMCIA-IDE should work too.

I read in the CFD.LHA readme file stating that the author wanted to add CDROM compability to the driver, but abandon it because he had CARDBUS version. Maybe there are some features in the compactflash.device driver that we can use in the PCMCIA-IDE-CDROM adapter?

I'm not a programmer, I wish I was :crying

pcmcia book: http://books.google.com/books?id=cNn...ddress&f=false

Also I found this: http://www.advantech.com/EPC/newslet...00/4IDEsup.htm
It converts CF-IDE but in other direction, I wonder if this could work using CFD.LHA driver.

Or you can make it your self:
http://rumkin.com/reference/aquapad/media/CFtoIDE.pdf


Any comments, suggestions, ideas ?

thanks
 

excellent project can anyone provide componests list?


many thanks:great

I have this AlfaData PCMCIA to IDE adapter.
I can post pictures in the weekend I suppose but dunno if they can help if the related IC's aren't common but programmed.

Thank you very much mfilos i love your hardware too as i saw some fotos ,if you could please post as i couls draw some pcb and publish here programed ic are nor a problem i have willem for programming and with some effort maybe we can get the rom or binaries of the ic best regards from Portugal

JOSÉ GONÇALVES:great

Willem won't help you if they're GAL chips, and if they're protected then nothing will help. :sad

Nevertheless, I wish you good luck with this! :great

the chip in the photo have 14 pin, gal normally have 16 or more pin

That's a good omen. :agree Thanks. :great

thank you prowler and cpiac64 but either eprom or flash or controller i need the list of the components finding them is another question pdf schematics of what have been posted and component list would be helpfull, i am able to retrace schematics to pcb and post here if anyone can help on the rest i need :)

no components?PICTURES PLEEEEAAAASE

for verify the question, i have buy now on ebay for 85€ one alfadata, next week open and photo

I realise this is a very old thread.

AFAIK PCMCIA is superset of PATA (IDE). These PCMCIA-CF adapters are (AFAIK) PATA not ATAPI. They work because a third party wrote a PCMCIA setup and ATA driver for the Amiga's PCMCIA address location (CFD).

PCMCIA is very closely related to the PATA and hence why the these PCMCIA->IDE adapters have very little electronics in them.

Why the interest? Both the A1200 and the A600 (which have PCMCIA) both have native PATA hardware and drivers in addition to PCMCIA. CF cards are surely easier to use than old PATA drives? (You've got to supply external power for example)

Hi, I realized after I wrote this, that ATAPI standard is a CDROM or removable drive extension protocol and not PATA.
My reason was to create a simple PCMCIA interface to the CDROM.
I got couple PCMCIA cards I was playing with and wondered if is possible to get them to work on Amiga. The were recognized but not working.
I have couple old CDROMs from early 1994-96 that I thought it will work. Most of my pc cards did not work, because were made with plug'n'play in mind, which contained some electronics and thus not compatible.
I was interested in AlfaData PCMCIA CDROM interface and wanted to reverse engineer it because of its simplicity (looking at the pictures of course). I think those interface cards worked well with early IDE non ATAPI CDROMs.
The project was my interest at that time for a curiosity reasons, and to this day still would like to see a good scans of the circuit board.

I still have this PCMCIA CD-ROM adapter which was also designed for the A600/1200: http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showha...cgi?HARDID=573

I don't know what's inside the PCMCIA card however. I don't know how to open it without breaking it. But if there was a reliable way of opening it I could take pictures of that one too.

Not easy to open the cards, most of them are glued to each other.
The ones I took apart had a plastic frame with top and bottom plates glued to the frame.

don´t be crazy on those what i mean was these one:
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/downlo...1200_2_big.jpg

this is just a few components and would like to know if anyone can get pictures of it front rear motherboard the one you posted probably would be recked if opened

@rampartsagain: Your link is broken.

To avoid this, always copy links from the panel which opens when you right-click on the object and select 'Properties'.

HI prowler thanks for the info the link i wanted to post was the one that shows the amiga big book of hardware of this adapter,surprisingly i saw one of those on ebay and had cdrom ,i don´t know if the seller could put it worked ,althoug i received my squirell adapter scsi and after burn all my brain fuses i could put the unit detecting on a scsi program of the disk after disassembele the unit ,i thing the problem was that the wires were in bad shape i don´t know how to say in english broken inside,making bad conections i am going to replace and before ,i am going to take some pictures :)
if we get the right components as the cflash conector we can make a better thing i am thinking like an inside board with external conector for those 25db printer cables riight to the scsi cdrom :)

very easely i could open the adapter it is kind of superglued for my lucky the part flued on the plastic was the green coating of the pcb the tracks came intact very few parts are used about 4 smd chips very easy to solder the dificult task is now to print the pcb schematics for a double sided board,if i had a laser printer would be more easy to obtain in acetate,maybe i will develope for an inside project although is hard to find the female conector on top of the adapter i am trying to look on ebay but no sucess

check this out

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Amiga-600-A1...item2ebe72e8d2

arrived today, near pcmcia found a gal, insert photo tomorrow