CF 2 IDE card, intermittent at best

[KarlM]

Afternoon all!

I purchased a couple of items from a chap on eBay and travelled to his home to collect (I was in rush to get these new toys home).

The memory (8mb) works lovely so no issues there, but the CF card (8gb) +adapter only works on rare - truly rare - occasion.

Alas, although I am a returning Amiga fanboy, I'm at a loss. I've contacted the gent who sold it me and he's been extremely helpful with advice and even agreed to send out a second cable & board (CF reader) for me so I can check that side at least. We know the card works because when it does work - it works tirelessly for aeons - it's only a soft reboot or full reboot that stops it working.

Now, I've checked the pins on the A1200 and they seem glossy clean (the entire machine looks practically brand new). Other contacts throughout the machine seem equally squeaky clean and they all function flawlessly.

I've ran a dry toothbrush around the pins (IDE) to ensure they're free of any dust or other contaminants yet still its only managed to fully work about three-times today.

One thing I have noted is that it seems to work better if the machine is left switched off a long time (20+ minutes). However, that may be mere coincidence.

When checking the Amiga's early boot menu, all appears to function and the "enable/disable" trigger seems to function without issue too.


To summarise;

• The A1200 IDE pins have been cleaned thoroughly.
• The pins have been blown (air can) and so has the plastic female plug on the cable.
• The A1200 early boot menu shows everything works - but an immediate reboot (either using the software button or a hard reboot) results in a full failure (goes to purple disk screen).
• The CF HD only boots on rare occasion, seemingly more likely when cold-booted.

Any ideas, suggestions, threads I should read?


And, thank you, in advance

[thomas]

Cut the reset line on the IDE cable? (pin 1, usually the red one)

[KarlM]

Not to be ignorant, but why would I cut a full cable (I realise you mean one red line)? What would that do other than cease transferring data through it?

[Zetr0]

@KarlM

In regards to Pin 1 on the 44 Pin IDE header refers to an inverted RESET signal. I have experienced a similar issue to this with some older 2.5" hard disks (<1GB) and larger 3.5" Hard Disks. Cutting pin 1 on the IDE cable solved those issues.

However I should say that I have not had this displeasure with a compact flash card - I have found they either work well or the go horribly wrong.

______________________________________________________

Brand is quite a thing here, I will swear by

SanDisk (256MB/1GB/2GB/4GB/8GB)
Dane Elec (1GB, 2GB)
Maxwell (512MB/4GB)

I have used these cards quite extensively, along side the above cards are the following which I do not recommend.

Kingston (512/4GB)
PNY (2GB/4GB)
Lexar (1GB/4GB) -


Do you know what brand of CF card you have?

[KarlM]

OK, thanks - I had wondered if there was a genuine reason (I didn't know the specifics, but thought along the lines of a known bad-batch with badly wired components or such) for cutting the cable. I figured there was either a genuine reason for saying it - or someone was havin' a larf n getting me to chop up my A1200


Anyway, it seems it is a 'Transcend 8gb'.

-=ebay link=-


PS, I don't think it's the card as it works fine when it's working.

[Zetr0]

@KarlM

I am sorry to report that I have found Transcend cards quite fickle at best.

I have tried 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB Transcend Compact Flash cards - the 4GB and under were very hit and miss if they would be seen as either a Fixed Disk or a Removable Disk - the later will not work on the Native IDE of the A600 / A1200.

I have 1 of 8, 16 and 32GB respectively, and I struggled to get them working properly on the Native IDE - sadly while I could write the CF cards eventually they would become corrupt and eventually wouldn't boot.

I tried various FORMATS from FFS (Fast File Formay), SFS (Smart File Format) and even PFS3 - eventually all my Transcend cards failed after a few writes on the host (A1200) - Initially I thought it was the way I was writing them on the PC (USB / SATA->CF / IDE->CF) - however when I used SanDisk / Dane-Elec / Maxwell these worked flawlessly and right now I have several CF's running on various set-up on my Amiga's - Even Kingston I found was less fickle as a Native IDE device.

Now please note that I have used the term Native IDE device - because I have found that the Transcend cards are perfect formatted using Fat95 (fat16/32) on the PC and then used in conjunction with an adaptor for the PCMCIA port.

It is a very fast (and great) way to get data from your PC to your Amiga, in the end I kept 4 Transcend cards. 2GB (CF->PCMCIA) 4GB, 16GB and 32GB - these are used on the PC and a couple of fun builds involving CF-SATA and SATA - (fits and giggles )

Currently I am playing with 16GB mSATA solid state (SanDisk) module adapted to IDE - waiting on some bits from the East - and then we shall have some fun =)

Anyway, thats enough of me geeking out, back to your issue, obviously I have plenty of spare CF cards - if you would like, send me a PM of your address and I will send you a configured 2GB CF card for your tests to ensure its not a host issue.

[KarlM]

That's awesome and very generous of you to offer such assistance.

Now, say it turns out that your 2GB works flawlessly from day one onwards...

Can I then purchase a better-branded 8GB and directly copy from the Transcend to the new 'better-brand' 8GB so I don't lose out on the licensed items held on it? (I haven't as yet looked at this within my Linux nor Windoze systems but I'm guessing it's formatted as FAT32 or suchlike so copying from a card-reader on my PC shouldn't be too big an issue)


----====-----

So, I removed the card and plugged into my W10 machine and it wanted to format it - properties showed no information. I'm guessing Windows has no idea what it is. I rebooted into Linux and surprisingly, that didn't have a clue either! I was genuinely surprised that Linux didn't recognise it. It's normally so on top of those kinds of things... But, the Amiga has it fooled!

I plugged the CF back in and - as predicted - it failed to boot. I left it a few mins (about 5 or so) and turned it back on - and it booted. It definitely seems to be about whether the machine has recently been used or not that determines whether it will boot

[fgh]

Try cutting the cable. The reset signal is not important anyway, and it's a rather cheap cable.

The reset issue should not affect cold boots though, so it might be a different issue. Unstable CF card or unstable A1200.
Did you have the caps replaced? Did you try another power supply?

The card has an amiga 'RDB' and file system, unreadable to windows and linux, so use WinUAE to access it.
Start by making an image of the whole card under CD & hard drives -> Add hard drive -> create hard disk image file.
The image can then be used in WinUAE, and contents copied back to another CF if needed.

(I have severe doubts anything on that CF is licenced in any way though. Probably just as illegal as all the other ebay amiga CF cards.)

I've used Transcend cards as main drives for years, but all manufacturers can (and do) change the firmware at any point without changing model names, so you never really know in advance.
Sandisk is often recommended though.

Zetro: Amiga 600/1200/4000 IDE works with both fixed and removable cards.
Elaborate bytes drivers (IDEfix software and Jens Schoenfeld's IDE drivers) do not like removable cards though..
Plenty of info here, mainly in the second half.

[supaduper]

Also it may need recapping, just something to bear in mind

[thomas]

Originally Posted by KarlM

Not to be ignorant, but why would I cut a full cable (I realise you mean one red line)? What would that do other than cease transferring data through it?

Of course only the one line should be cut, not the entire cable.

It's a simple thought: you wrote that you see the card in early-startup but after a reset, either soft or hard, it fails to appear. So if the card wouldn't reset when the rest of the system does, then it wouldn't fail to appear.

Cutting the reset line of the IDE cable has often solved issues with slow-spinning harddrives. It might help with slow-resetting CF cards, too.

[wairnair]

Hi,

I've purchased a CF card backplate for the small trapdoor on the A1200. I'm having the same issues as the original poster with the CF card though: sometimes, say 10% of the time, it doesn't come up, the amiga doesn't detect it upon cold boot or even after a soft reset. The hdd led is lit up constantly and the kickstart screen pops up.
CF card works 100% on a windows pc, ide cable is fine, I've recently ordered a second ide cable to check.
The ide pins are cleaned and there's no physical contact made to the amiga's mainboard when it loses hdd connection (cold boot or reset).
So the only component that remains is the small trapdoor CF card adapter (although it's brand new and a very simple thing really), or the mainboard.

Anyone else with similar experiences?

Thanks much

[thomas]

Originally Posted by wairnair

CF card works 100% on a windows pc

Really? Did you connect it through an CF-IDE adapter to the mainboard's IDE controller? USB card readers do not count, they switch the CF card into a different mode.

[wairnair]

I connect it through an USB card reader.
I don't think my i5 machine has a PATA slot to try that. In that sense you're right, I can't be sure if it's 100% on Windows PC.
Also, when it works on the Amiga (and mostly it does), it's all good.

[wairnair]

Tried 2 ide cables, the fault may come up with both. Cut through pin1 on one of them, it doesn't change anything.