Is it really hit & miss with CF-IDE adapters?

Amiga1992 · 18 April 2010, 17:59

I have bought a grand total of 3 adapters and two have come failing. I bought them from different sources and all.
Is it really that much hit&miss or am I having bad luck with my distributors?

I just plug them in the Amiga and the Amiga won't boot. It's a shame!

Jope · 18 April 2010, 18:22

Good question.. I've bought several different types myself, but none have failed to work so far.

Has your card been proven to work with a certain CF-IDE adapter?

FOL · 18 April 2010, 19:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akira

I have bought a grand total of 3 adapters and two have come failing. I bought them from different sources and all.
Is it really that much hit&miss or am I having bad luck with my distributors?

I just plug them in the Amiga and the Amiga won't boot. It's a shame!

Im with jope on this, never had 1 fail, and I have delt with 50+.
You say they dont boot, do you mean you get kickstart screen?
If so, what happens when you soft boot?

Zetr0 · 18 April 2010, 21:17

@Akira

CF->IDE adapters I have not had a problem with, I would say I have porbably gone through all the known types as well.

I have had problems with cards though.... irrespective of adapter.

Adropac2 · 19 April 2010, 00:21

Iv'e bought from various sources too and had no trouble with the adaptors themselves

Amiga1992 · 19 April 2010, 00:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by FOL

Im with jope on this, never had 1 fail, and I have delt with 50+.
You say they dont boot, do you mean you get kickstart screen?
If so, what happens when you soft boot?

No kickstart screen, just no video at all some times.
MIND YOU, I always got the type that has a FEMALE IDE connector. I've seen here that MALE connector types are the ones to be found the most.

The cards are not to blame, they ran fine in the adapter that works fine.

They are similar to this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Compact-Flash-CF...item19bb68bc28

FOL · 19 April 2010, 01:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akira

No kickstart screen, just no video at all some times.
MIND YOU, I always got the type that has a FEMALE IDE connector. I've seen here that MALE connector types are the ones to be found the most.

The cards are not to blame, they ran fine in the adapter that works fine.

They are similar to this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Compact-Flash-CF...item19bb68bc28

Thats the I have, but I removed the female connector and made it male.

Zetr0 · 19 April 2010, 02:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Akira

They are similar to this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Compact-Flash-CF...item19bb68bc28

Identical as to a couple I have here.

I am sorry to say that I seriously doubt the adapter is the problem, I have 44 male / female varients as well as 40pin male/female vareints too.

I have recently been playing with a 4GB SD card and IDE adapter, very good results so far.

I do believe it likely either a card or setup incompatability.

alas I know that you are proficeint enough to set up a hard disk, so there must be somthing else we are missing.......

I will say that I have a couple of CF cards (from 64mb to 4GB ) that work fine on a PC via USB or PCMCIA adapter, but WONT work at all or wont work 100% on the Amiga.

A recently problem was when a nice chap on AmiBay (mantas) fell foul to an unlucky generic 4GB CF card, works fine on a PC via WinUAE, but on the Amiga, anything over a file size of 3.5MB fails... or bombs out loading.

I tried changing the MaxTransfer Settings, alas still no good, even setting up on the Amiga it still proved the same fault.

I have a 256MB Ivision that has exactly the problem you describe I can setup a workbench on it, but it wont boot on a real Amiga, only via WinUAE.

I have a 64MB and a 512MB generics that read/write fine on the PC but NOT on the Amiga, it just wont write to the card....

rkauer · 19 April 2010, 02:12

I have some of those 64/128/256Mb that don't work on the Amiga, even on the PCMCIA via an adaptor.

A Kodak branded unit and another Xing-Ling one (unbranded). Both freezes the Amiga when inserted in the PCMCIA adaptor.

Not tested as HD (no need for: all my Amigas with HD controller have 2Gb or more HD/CF).

cosmicfrog · 19 April 2010, 09:10

got 3 cf adapters here 2 female 40pin and 1 44pin male, never had a problem
well apart from dual cf not working in wb3 reliably

Amiga1992 · 21 April 2010, 04:45

Retro, with all due respect, I said: the cards work fine in another adapter. And I tested with more than one card and with more than one computer. It's NOT the card(s). It's NOT the computer(s).

As soon as I plug that adapter with any card, the Amiga will load to a black screen. And this happened to me already with two adapters of the same type. As I said in my post they are LIKE that I linked but NOT EXACTLY that "brand"/model. I can post a pic of the culprit tomorrow if that helps. I also gotta mention that I got them from at least two different sources

rkauer · 21 April 2010, 18:17

Bad solder joints at the CF socket, perhaps?

copperkid · 22 April 2010, 00:18

Got one and it worked great, then one day it decided it wanted to retire, the amiga was running and suddenly couldn't save to the hard disk anymore.
After that I couldn't boot from the CF.

As the soldering on the adapter is the worst I've ever seen I re-soldered again everywhere... same story, didn't work.
I bought another one on ebay (very cheap, you can find them for around 7 euro including shipping here in Germany), I wanted a different kind but couldn't find it, so I bought again the same model.
Same story, can't boot from the CF anymore (tried another card as well and they both work fine on UAE).

Funny thing is that if I plug in a hard disk I can partition it using the HDtools (while nothing is shown if I use the CF adapter), so it's not a motherboard issue.

I'll try to do a new install on the hard disk next weekend but I'm p**** off because I liked the much smaller CF/IDE solution, mostly because it's very simple to run the very same configuration on the real hardware and winuae

Here's an image of the sucker (it's detailed enough to appreciate the "quality" of the soldering):

Zetr0 · 22 April 2010, 01:45

the CF adapters listed here so far are passive,

thats to say its nothing more than wires connecting 40 or 44 pin IDE to 50pin CF card

the Adapter has only two responsibilities,

1. put the CF card into (TRUE) IDE mode,
(CF pins 36 and 44 must be tied to vcc on the host)
(CF Pins 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and pin 17 are grounded at the Host)

2. passive route of the I/O

the real work is done by the CF card, to be fair if the adapter stops known devices from working then clearly its faulty, I would send it back/ask for refund.

Shadowfire · 27 April 2010, 02:11

<-- has a CF adapter & IDE controller that autoboots with the 8gb sandisk compact flash card.
But, you are probably having a CF card/IDE controller problem, not a problem with the adapter.

Amiga1992 · 27 April 2010, 02:40

I wonder when people will start to read what I posted.
This thread could helpfully recognize a whole batch of adapters that do NOT work or tend to bring factory faults.

cosmicfrog · 27 April 2010, 03:13

so got any pics of the ones that don`t work

Shadowfire · 27 April 2010, 22:49

Well, I'd suggest looking at the surface mount pads where the CF slot meets the board. Thats the most likely place you may find shorts.

I bought a few similar ones on ebay a few months back, they have pretty bad solder jobs, one didn't even have solder in some of the the thru-hole floppy disk power connector pads. I kind of assumed that they did the surface mount stuff with a cheap stencil printer, then went back and soldered the thru hole stuff in by hand.

18 April 2010, 17:59	#1
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,645	Is it really hit & miss with CF-IDE adapters? I have bought a grand total of 3 adapters and two have come failing. I bought them from different sources and all. Is it really that much hit&miss or am I having bad luck with my distributors? I just plug them in the Amiga and the Amiga won't boot. It's a shame!

27 April 2010, 02:11	#15
Shadowfire Registered User Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Connecticut USA Posts: 617	<-- has a CF adapter & IDE controller that autoboots with the 8gb sandisk compact flash card. But, you are probably having a CF card/IDE controller problem, not a problem with the adapter. Last edited by Shadowfire; 27 April 2010 at 02:23.

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18 April 2010, 18:22	#2
Jope - Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Helsinki / Finland Age: 43 Posts: 9,861	Good question.. I've bought several different types myself, but none have failed to work so far. Has your card been proven to work with a certain CF-IDE adapter?

18 April 2010, 21:17	#4
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	@Akira CF->IDE adapters I have not had a problem with, I would say I have porbably gone through all the known types as well. I have had problems with cards though.... irrespective of adapter.

19 April 2010, 00:21	#5
Adropac2 Zone Friend Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Kent Age: 51 Posts: 1,056	Iv'e bought from various sources too and had no trouble with the adaptors themselves

19 April 2010, 02:12	#9
rkauer I hate potatos and shirts Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Sao Leopoldo / Brazil Age: 58 Posts: 3,482	I have some of those 64/128/256Mb that don't work on the Amiga, even on the PCMCIA via an adaptor. A Kodak branded unit and another Xing-Ling one (unbranded). Both freezes the Amiga when inserted in the PCMCIA adaptor. Not tested as HD (no need for: all my Amigas with HD controller have 2Gb or more HD/CF).

19 April 2010, 09:10	#10
cosmicfrog The 1 who ribbits Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: leek, Staffs, UK Age: 56 Posts: 3,557	got 3 cf adapters here 2 female 40pin and 1 44pin male, never had a problem well apart from dual cf not working in wb3 reliably

21 April 2010, 04:45	#11
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,645	Retro, with all due respect, I said: the cards work fine in another adapter. And I tested with more than one card and with more than one computer. It's NOT the card(s). It's NOT the computer(s). As soon as I plug that adapter with any card, the Amiga will load to a black screen. And this happened to me already with two adapters of the same type. As I said in my post they are LIKE that I linked but NOT EXACTLY that "brand"/model. I can post a pic of the culprit tomorrow if that helps. I also gotta mention that I got them from at least two different sources

21 April 2010, 18:17	#12
rkauer I hate potatos and shirts Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Sao Leopoldo / Brazil Age: 58 Posts: 3,482	Bad solder joints at the CF socket, perhaps?

22 April 2010, 00:18	#13
copperkid Registered User Join Date: Feb 2010 Location: Germany Posts: 30	Got one and it worked great, then one day it decided it wanted to retire, the amiga was running and suddenly couldn't save to the hard disk anymore. After that I couldn't boot from the CF. As the soldering on the adapter is the worst I've ever seen I re-soldered again everywhere... same story, didn't work. I bought another one on ebay (very cheap, you can find them for around 7 euro including shipping here in Germany), I wanted a different kind but couldn't find it, so I bought again the same model. Same story, can't boot from the CF anymore (tried another card as well and they both work fine on UAE). Funny thing is that if I plug in a hard disk I can partition it using the HDtools (while nothing is shown if I use the CF adapter), so it's not a motherboard issue. I'll try to do a new install on the hard disk next weekend but I'm p**** off because I liked the much smaller CF/IDE solution, mostly because it's very simple to run the very same configuration on the real hardware and winuae Here's an image of the sucker (it's detailed enough to appreciate the "quality" of the soldering):

22 April 2010, 01:45	#14
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	the CF adapters listed here so far are passive, thats to say its nothing more than wires connecting 40 or 44 pin IDE to 50pin CF card the Adapter has only two responsibilities, 1. put the CF card into (TRUE) IDE mode, (CF pins 36 and 44 must be tied to vcc on the host) (CF Pins 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and pin 17 are grounded at the Host) 2. passive route of the I/O the real work is done by the CF card, to be fair if the adapter stops known devices from working then clearly its faulty, I would send it back/ask for refund.

27 April 2010, 02:40	#16
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,645	I wonder when people will start to read what I posted. This thread could helpfully recognize a whole batch of adapters that do NOT work or tend to bring factory faults.

27 April 2010, 03:13	#17
cosmicfrog The 1 who ribbits Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: leek, Staffs, UK Age: 56 Posts: 3,557	so got any pics of the ones that don`t work

27 April 2010, 22:49	#18
Shadowfire Registered User Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Connecticut USA Posts: 617	Well, I'd suggest looking at the surface mount pads where the CF slot meets the board. Thats the most likely place you may find shorts. I bought a few similar ones on ebay a few months back, they have pretty bad solder jobs, one didn't even have solder in some of the the thru-hole floppy disk power connector pads. I kind of assumed that they did the surface mount stuff with a cheap stencil printer, then went back and soldered the thru hole stuff in by hand.

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