Improving IDE performance

Hi All,

While surfing I found a nice mod. IDE performance improvement tools. IDE-Fix express (both cards). The fact that they are put on top of the Gayle chip and looks small is attractive. The fact that it speeds up disk access is also very nice of course.

How much performance improvement can I expect when I use a fast CF card with a IDE-Fix express?

Elbox has a mega huge ATA card that completely overtakes my motherboard. Does anyone know if this fits when you have a AGA MK2 flicker fixer?

Thanks all

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Syntrax

Hi All,

While surfing I found a nice mod. IDE performance improvement tools. IDE-Fix express (both cards). The fact that they are put on top of the Gayle chip and looks small is attractive. The fact that it speeds up disk access is also very nice of course.

How much performance improvement can I expect when I use a fast CF card with a IDE-Fix express?

Elbox has a mega huge ATA card that completely overtakes my motherboard. Does anyone know if this fits when you have a AGA MK2 flicker fixer?

Thanks all

IDEFIX-Express is not longer made.


FastATA will fit, if you just angled riser kit.

[Dynamic_Computi]

I understand that the one that fits over the chip offers very nice performance updates - speeding up your hard drive is as big a performance boost as speeding up your CPU and adding RAM.

[MartinW]

Be aware that to get the Elbox FastATA to actually fit (ACA or not) you are almost certainly going to need to de-solder your ROM sockets and replace them with turned pin sockets otherwise you have to apply massive pressure and ultimately rely on cable ties for anything even approaching a reasonable connection. So make sure you are comfortable doing that. I am but still didn't want to have to strip the machine down yet again. Plus I didn't have any turned pin sockets. I hate them. I used to do a LOT of PCB repairs to old arcade games and those sockets were a nightmare to get out when people had used them.

After that, the heat the thing generates in a standard A1200 case is insane and cannot be good for anything in there. The plastic even starts to smell hot! I added a fan into the case but it didn't help that much.

Eventually I just took the FastATA out. Most of the speed issues that were annoying me so much were able to be mitigated by use of an updated icon.lib and fblit / ftext.

So before splashing out on hardware have a constructive think about what's causing you to be annoyed with IDE speed and see if any of it can be resolved in software first. My desktop experience went from something approaching treacle to something I'm perfectly OK with. It won't win any speed awards but it doesn't annoy me.

Oh, PS: I also went back to a clean 3.1 install (actually now 3.1.4) with the softer fixes applied. That helped too.

[trixster]

IDE-Fix Express with an 060 is about 3.78mb/s according to sysinfo

[Pollock]

Originally Posted by Syntrax

Hi All,

While surfing I found a nice mod. IDE performance improvement tools. IDE-Fix express (both cards). The fact that they are put on top of the Gayle chip and looks small is attractive. The fact that it speeds up disk access is also very nice of course.

How much performance improvement can I expect when I use a fast CF card with a IDE-Fix express?

Elbox has a mega huge ATA card that completely overtakes my motherboard. Does anyone know if this fits when you have a AGA MK2 flicker fixer?

Thanks all

As others have said, its a nice bit of kit, but not for the feint of heart to setup, and it runs hot, and i mean uber toasty.

You will see a speed increase if you use it with a CF card etc, but using an IDE drive, like a PIO mode 4 Spinpoint, will produces better results.

and more heat.

my A1200 with an 060, does about 2mb through the IDE channel, it's not great, but it's perfectly livable, unless your using OS 3.9, which uses more resources, and runs slower as a result of it. Use a 3.1 installation with WHDLoad and that's it. you would be surprised at how much speed can be gained, when all those libraries and devices aren't loaded.