Is suggested to use both IDE peripherals on internal IDE channel of the 1200?

[guybrush]

Hi guys,

I am going crazy, trying to make this work. the original 52x cd drive in my amiga tower, died prematurely (sarcasm), so I replaced it with a DVD drive.

Problem: the dvd mount but at boot reads and spin for quite a while, because I think that the Amiga is trying to boot from it. And when it boot up, many times does not even boot; ending up with a black screen, until I disconnect the drive.

The cable is an ancient 44 to 44 with a 40 pin attached at the end; I suspect that the cable is bad too, but I don't see it sold anywhere.

So the questions:

1) In the past I remember most of the people using the squirrel SCSI interface to connect the CD; is that the best way or it is OK to go for the IDE approach? I have already a CF adapter, and I remember that the channel support 2 devices.

2) where do you get a cable that has 2x44 pin and 1x40 pin? I could crimp it but I would rather get it from a reliable source; I don't want to burn anything (1200 boards are hard to find these days)

3) Do I need to set as slave the DVD or on Auto? It has been so long since when I used to tweak these devices, and I am starting to loose memory of how to do it

Thanks in advance

[Daedalus]

1) Two devices is usually no problem on IDE. There was concern years ago about stressing the IDE lines but with modern devices it shouldn't be a problem. The only issue is that the CF card might not play 100% friendly with other devices since it doesn't normally expect to be sharing its connection with another device.

2) AmigaKit might have them, or if not I'm sure will be willing to make one for you. I know I got a 2x44 pin and 1x40 pin cable from them before and it's worked fine for many years. But if your old drive worked until recently, the cable probably isn't bad so try to rule out other issues first.

3) It needs to be slave, and the CF card adaptor needs to be master, or master with slave present. Auto selecting (cable selecting) doesn't really work well with Amigas so it's best to configure it manually.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by guybrush

Problem: the dvd mount but at boot reads and spin for quite a while, because I think that the Amiga is trying to boot from it. And when it boot up, many times does not even boot; ending up with a black screen, until I disconnect the drive.

Sounds very similar to a problem I had with a 22 speed DVD re-writer that I bought new some years ago. What solved it for me was changing the driver and changing a setting in the mount file.

Install AmiCDFS. Then load the mount file in a text editor and change this line line:

Control = "LC BL=8 FB=32"

to:

Control = "LC BL=8 FB=32 DC=3 SD=1"

Some drives have issues with disk changes and some other things. These settings should fix that. When you mount the drive with these settings you may need to type diskchange CD0: in the CLI to get disks to show up. Perhaps a simple script can help with that.

Originally Posted by guybrush

1) In the past I remember most of the people using the squirrel SCSI interface to connect the CD; is that the best way or it is OK to go for the IDE approach? I have already a CF adapter, and I remember that the channel support 2 devices.

IDE is fine for Harddisk/CF+CD/DVD, and potentially a lot cheaper as well.

Originally Posted by guybrush

3) Do I need to set as slave the DVD or on Auto?

Like Daedalus said: Hardisk/CF = master, CD/DVD = slave.