Any New Amiga 500 Hard Disk Solutions?

[vext01]

Hi,

I know there are the GVP style sidecar hard disks the Amiga 500. There was also the ide68k that sat under the m68k. Neither of these solution is particularly cheap or easy to obtain today.

So my question is, has anything changed? Wasn't there some IDE board being developed for the 500. What happened to that? Is there anything else?

Yeh I know. Get a 600 or 1200 and plug in a CF :P

Cheers

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by vext01

Hi,

I know there are the GVP style sidecar hard disks the Amiga 500. There was also the ide68k that sat under the m68k. Neither of these solution is particularly cheap or easy to obtain today.

So my question is, has anything changed? Wasn't there some IDE board being developed for the 500. What happened to that? Is there anything else?

Yeh I know. Get a 600 or 1200 and plug in a CF :P

Cheers

I believe there is a cheap option in the works

[vext01]

Just saw this thread. Looks promising:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65047

[vext01]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

I believe there is a cheap option in the works

Any more details?

[moijk]

Originally Posted by vext01

Hi,

I know there are the GVP style sidecar hard disks the Amiga 500. There was also the ide68k that sat under the m68k. Neither of these solution is particularly cheap or easy to obtain today.

aca500 and zeus68k.

aca500 at 79,90 EUR should be in the area of "cheap".

The ACA500 is powered by a 14MHz CMOS-68000 processor with 2MBytes RAM and a mass-storage controller for CF-cards and CD drives. Autoboot from CF-card is possible from Kickstart V1.3 and higher. Thanks to our TrueIDE technology, any CF card can be used, even if the card identifies as "removable device". A CD-ROM drive can be connected to the easily reachable IDE port on the side of the A500.
The relatively moderate increase in speed is enough to run WHDload. For those who want more CPU power, the ACA500 has a CPU-slot compatible with our accelerators for A1200 computers. This makes even our top model ACA1231 available to the A500 computer. The ACA500 will be available from all resellers for 79,90 EUR. We're currently negotiating about including Kickstart licenses into the ACA500, so the built-in flashrom can be pre-loaded with different Kickstart licenses.

Our new ACA1220 is powered by a full 16,67MHz 68020. For the A1200, this card can be considered a 128MByte-RAM expansion, but for the A500 with ACA500, this board is a turbo-tidbit that provides more memory than has ever been offered at this price: The ACA1220 will be available starting from 89,90 EUR.

look here:

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=66766

Its a smd-PCB for this project:

a500ide

The IDE-Controller works fine as stand alone but requires abootdisk to load the driver from floppy. A DIY-Project for aprox. 12€, it can't be cheaper! But the usability for a stock A500 with Kick 1.3 and 512kb is limmited: You have about 200K left in the WB! At least 1MB or better some real fastram is recomended!

However, a clean install of OS 3.1 consumes ~100K more RAM with two partitions and 30 buffers/partition, compared to a Worbench-boot from floppy.

With best regards

Matthias

[Amiten]

hi, is The ACA500 Out?? or not? thanks

No,

in this Post on the German a1k-forum Jens says, that it will not be produced before Christmas. It seems, that it isn't even developed yet, because he still thinks about "redesigns": A Gayle-Like IDE controller plus A1200-interface for optinal A1200-Turbo boards.

I hope he changes his mind back to 68000@14MHz + 2MB Ram + IDE + A1200-port again.

With best regards

Matthias

[kipper2k]

I was thinking that there will be a new 4mb/8mb fastmem board with ide port and cf card that will be a cheap solution for those on a budget

[Amiten]

Originally Posted by Matze

No,

in this Post on the German a1k-forum Jens says, that it will not be produced before Christmas. It seems, that it isn't even developed yet, because he still thinks about "redesigns": A Gayle-Like IDE controller plus A1200-interface for optinal A1200-Turbo boards.

I hope he changes his mind back to 68000@14MHz + 2MB Ram + IDE + A1200-port again.

With best regards

Matthias

Thanks mate for the information.

Best regards.

[janikosk]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

I was thinking that there will be a new 4mb/8mb fastmem board with ide port and cf card that will be a cheap solution for those on a budget

Waiting for that. Definitely buy one. 8mb maybe.

Originally Posted by kipper2k

I was thinking that there will be a new 4mb/8mb fastmem board with ide port and cf card that will be a cheap solution for those on a budget

Feel free to use my sources!

If you have one extra IO you can use it as "select IDE-IO"-signal and feed it to some NANDS as in my circuit.
If you have two extraIO on your CPLD you could simply add a IDE-Connector and feed the _IOREAD _IOWRITE from your CPLD.

If you have a third spare IO, please add two 74HCT245.Buffers for the Datalines
to/from the IDE-Conenctor to enable heavy loads on the databus like ATAPI-CD.

The ide.device driver is defenitly better than the scsi.device: It supports 8GB AND ATAPI-CD from scratch but will be not able to do Autoboot .

With best regards Matthias

[TjLaZer]

We definately need a mass produced solution for the A500 that has at a minimum a 68010 or better yet '020 with IDE and RAM that autoboots and autoconfigs! That is what we need.

[kipper2k]

the IDE68K and the 8mb Fastmem boards are compatible together and can be combined to produce an 4mb/8mb fastmem with HDD/built in CF card support. For best compatibility you would need a IDE compatible ROM or a rom with 1.3/3.1 KS. At a guess (strictly a guess) the IDE/Fastmem combo would be about $75 - $85. A clockport would be a simple (ish) idea although that could be obtained via the trapdoor 512k mem addons

[Lord Aga]

When kipper2k says he's on the job, you can take that to the bank

[jiffy]

For me, the card Kipper2k is working on seems to be the most attractive. 8 MB ram and an IDE-port (for a CF-drive) are essential to me. A faster cpu would be nice, but is much less important to me.

The 2 MB the ACA500 will get is not enough for me, while the Zeus68k will be a rather expensive solution.

[desiv]

I know people talk a lot about autoconfig/autobooting, but I have to admit, it's not that big a deal to me.
I mean, it's nice.. But..
My A1000 has a 4M non-autoconfig RAM and non-autobooting IDE dual CF drive.

Not a biggie.
I use a boot disk. (It is a kickwork disk, so it's my kickstart disk as well)
Leave the floppy in the drive, power on..
It's loads the RAM, loads the IDE driver, transfers control to the CF card and boots away.

Of course, autoconfig/autoboot is nicer, but having RAM and a HD is the most important thing.

Kipper's does sound like a great balance to me..
Great price and "enough" for most users..

Remember, whdload requires Kickstart 2.x. So if you are planning on doing this with a 1.x machine, you're going to need a new kickstart.
My A1000 is still 1.x and will stay that way. I likes it!! ;-)
(And my 1200 is my WHDLoad machine..)

desiv

[moijk]

Originally Posted by jiffy

For me, the card Kipper2k is working on seems to be the most attractive. 8 MB ram and an IDE-port (for a CF-drive) are essential to me. A faster cpu would be nice, but is much less important to me.

The 2 MB the ACA500 will get is not enough for me, while the Zeus68k will be a rather expensive solution.

The price is similar, so 2mb/ide/expandibility/faster processor vs 8mb/ide is up to the buyer. good to have choices.

Originally Posted by desiv

Remember, whdload requires Kickstart 2.x. So if you are planning on doing this with a 1.x machine, you're going to need a new kickstart.

doesn't the maprom stuff work with 1.3 up to 2.x or 3.x? I got real kickstarts in my machines despite owning several acas.

[demolition]

Originally Posted by desiv

I use a boot disk. (It is a kickwork disk, so it's my kickstart disk as well)
Leave the floppy in the drive, power on..
It's loads the RAM, loads the IDE driver, transfers control to the CF card and boots away.
Of course, autoconfig/autoboot is nicer, but having RAM and a HD is the most important thing.

I was wondering if it would be possible to create a custom kickstart tailored towards booting from it, and also maybe add the memory?

[desiv]

Originally Posted by demolition

I was wondering if it would be possible to create a custom kickstart tailored towards booting from it, and also maybe add the memory?

Technically, yeah.. But it could be tricky...
If the IDE controller uses the driver from KS 2.x, they you should be able to make a 1.3, but replace the scsi.device with the one from 2.x and it should autoboot there, I would think.

The IDE driver that I use for my card isn't the same one that's in 2.x.
No idea how hard it would be to convert it into a module to load into a kickstart ROM (and if it would be small enough).
As for RAM, you'd need to write a module to do that yourself and insert it into the kickstart. However, as the adding of the RAM is just an executable, that could be the first line in your startup-sequence on your HD, so it's less of an issue than the HD.

Not for the faint of heart....
(The writing modules part. Creating custom kickstarts isn't that difficult.)

desiv