Running multiple drives/Devices on 44-Pin IDE - Amiga 1200

[antiriad76]

Does anyone know what is required to be able to run multiple drives on the 44-pin IDE port of an Amiga 1200?

I remember in the old days I was always using 40 pin Select cables and the devices were set to CS. I am not able to find a 44-pin select cable. Only standard is available.

If I use a Standard Cable does only one of the devices needs to be on Master?

What happens when the secondary device doesn't have a master/slave jumper. For example I have an SD Card to IDE adapter and a SATA to IDE that dont't have a jumper.

I want to be able to run the Master on a Compact Flash adapter and the Slave on an HDD for WhdLoad Stuff.

Thanks

Mike

[emufan]

maybe this solution:

...
To turn a device into a slave, it must not be jumpered to master/slave
(so it looks at pin 28) and pin 28 must be left floating/disconnected.

[antiriad76]

That could make sense. Found this info.

Pin 28 carries the cable select signal (CSEL). In some older drives, it could also carry a spindle synchronization signal (SPSYNC), but that is not commonly found on newer drives. The CSEL function is the most widely used and is designed to control the designation of a drive as master (drive 0) or slave (drive 1) without requiring jumper settings on the drives. If a drive sees the CSEL as being grounded, the drive is a master; if CSEL is open, the drive is a slave.

I also tested Pin 28 on an IDE to mSATA and it seems that it is grounded. That means that these devices are set as Master at the factory.

If that is the case I should still be able to boot from the Slave Drive, correct?

[Jope]

Yes, you can boot from the slave drive, as long as it has a bootable partition. If you want to automatically boot from a partition on the slave drive, it must also have a bootpri higher than the other bootable partitions in your system. DF0 is 5, so keep your HD 4 or less to be able to boot from a floppy.

- I recommend using explicit master/slave jumpers, cable select works best with 80pin ATA66 and onwards.
- some CF adapters have a master/slave jumper, but the cards don't necessarily work as slave
- some CF cards do not like to have a slave present at all, either nothing is visible or the slave will not be visible
- only one master and only one slave on the IDE bus. if there is a single device, it must be master

[daxb]

Originally Posted by Jope

DF0 is 5, so keep your HD 4 or less to be able to boot from a floppy.

You can still boot from floppy or any other device using the early-startup-menu. A HD with pootpri of 10 works fine.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by daxb

You can still boot from floppy or any other device using the early-startup-menu. A HD with pootpri of 10 works fine.

Naturally. It comes down to personal preference whether an inserted floppy is expected to boot automatically, some might get surprised if this doesn't happen any more. :-)

[Codetsu]

A1200 IDE connector support 4 drives
but need Idefix to work and additional card
were is two Ide connector
how to do it found on Aminet

bad side ide signals can be to weak
and some drives not work or none work
right combination you can use 4 device at same time
that’s why you need buffer chip to bust up IDE lines

[antiriad76]

I never really understood how the IDEFix worked. Was this a combination of hardware and software?

If I am not mistaken this was only required if you planned to have a second IDE Channel.

In my case I want to use one device for the OS on a Compact flash so that I can rebuilt/backup easily (4GB) and one HDD where I store WHDLoad stuff, Roms ETC.

[fgh]

What Jope said. CF cards may or may not work in a master/slave setup, depending on each cf card's firmware.(trial and error, unfortunately)

Idefix software patches support for the second IDE chanmel (among other things) into scsi.device (the IDE driver).

As Codetsu said, buffered 4-way interfaces are required to use both channels. (Buffers as in signal buffers for cable length, not buffer memory, so not speed related..)