CF "SD card adapter" as "Harddrive" ?

[Mr B]

Whats the chances something like this would work in place of a 4GB CF as a harddrive? Using Brian's "CF slot through the side of my A1200" thingy for my secondary "harddrive" would make this a real easy, not to mention cheap way to transfer stuff to and from the Amiga. I got loads of 2-4GB sd-cards. I'm guessing that for them to work, the adapter must be "dumb" so that the card is simply accessed as hardware, and the card could then be partitioned, and formated on the Amiga, to be used in a regular card-reader for WinUAE. But are these adapters dumb enough, or do they expect some sort of fat partition, and then "translate" that to the CF side of the adapter instead of providing a hardware direct wire, so to speak... (Not sure if i make sense, i know what i want to say, anyone want to get it in Swedish? Since i think Swedish would make even less sense to most of you who read this, please try and guess what i want, and help me out.)
The best would of course be if anyone have tried... But i couldn't find anything in a search.

B!

[thomas]

I don't see a reason why it should not work. The adapter needs to be intelligent, because it needs to translate SD into IDE. CF cards can "speak" IDE by themselves, SD cannot. The specs say the adapter supports IDE UDMA. So basically it should work, but it might fail because the Amiga does not do DMA. I doubt that, though (meaning it think doesn't fail).

One problem could be it's height. It seems like the adapter is a little bit higher than a standard CF card, so it might not fit into every CF-IDE adapter. You need an adapter which supports CF type II.

Storage media is always presented to the computer as mass storage, so there is no special need of "dumbness" for the adapter.

[Mr B]

It needs to be intelligent enough to present the SD card as a drive, but dumb enough to manage something other then FAT... 'aight, it's fairly cheap i might stick one in a current order, and see how it does, when i get the Indivision thingy Jens still hasn't completed. Meaning i wont report back quite yet, don't hold ya breath everyone.

Thanks Thomas.
B!

[Fingerlickin_B]

Here is another option that I can verify does work with A600/1200 native IDE: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Secure-Digit...item29fe2192a5

I've tried it myself & it works fine

PZ.

[fgh]

This one works as well, I have several of them. (slightly cheaper than the above alternatives).
I have used them with several 8gb cards on a600 and a1200 onboard IDE

[Mr B]

@fgh:
For me that's not an option, since i have a CF slot accessible from the outside, not a 44-pin IDE. For someone who went with this instead of Brians (or some other design) CF adapter, this could very well be a great pick.
B!

[Supamax]

Originally Posted by Fingerlickin_B

Here is another option that I can verify does work with A600/1200 native IDE: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Secure-Digit...item29fe2192a5

I've tried it myself & it works fine

PZ.

I see it has a 40pin interface. Did you use an adapter from 40pin 3.5" to 44pin 2.5" IDE interface in order to connect the SD converter to the Amiga 600/1200?

This adapter would be great in my XBOX (old one, not 360), for replacing the original 8GB 3.5" HDD... it should work, I think...

[Fingerlickin_B]

Originally Posted by Supamax

I see it has a 40pin interface. Did you use an adapter from 40pin 3.5" to 44pin 2.5" IDE interface in order to connect the SD converter to the Amiga 600/1200?

This adapter would be great in my XBOX (old one, not 360), for replacing the original 8GB 3.5" HDD... it should work, I think...

Just a 40-44 pin IDE cable

PZ.

[Mr B]

Originally Posted by Supamax

This adapter would be great in my XBOX (old one, not 360), for replacing the original 8GB 3.5" HDD... it should work, I think...

Not so sure about that really. The Xbox use a S.M.A.R.T. security feature to lock the drive to the XboX. Somehow i doubt that feature is supported by any cardreader.
However, that is a gut feeling, more then anything else.
B!

[lost_loven]

Originally Posted by Fingerlickin_B

Here is another option that I can verify does work with A600/1200 native IDE: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Secure-Digit...item29fe2192a5

I've tried it myself & it works fine

PZ.

I ordered that same card and tried it with my adIDE on my a500, tried a 512mb and a 1 gig card .. no go

lost

[fgh]

Originally Posted by lost_loven

I ordered that same card and tried it with my adIDE on my a500, tried a 512mb and a 1 gig card .. no go

I speculate that this is due to the IDE driver.

My SD adapter reports as a removable type ATA device (like most but not all CF cards)

a600/1200 ROM resident scsi.device supports both removable and fixed type ATA devices,
but most third party IDE drivers will not accept removable devices, mistaking them for ATAPI devices etc.
(Unless patched, but I doubt anyone made such a patch for adIDE)

An SD adapter that reports as a fixed type ATA device would be great, but I don't know of any.

An alternative that might work on the adIDE is a fixed type CF card.
buying a fixed type CF card is hit and miss, but if you get an 'industrial' type card, they are usually fixed type. (although a bit more expensive)

[Mr B]

Vesalia tested the card for me, in the way i was intending to use it. They sadly had to tell me it didn't turn out well.

With the SD->CF adapter plugged into the CF->IDE adapter, we can see the card
and even partition it, but after a reboot it acts like a non-compatible CF
card ("no disk present in drive XY:").

So, i'm passing. No idea what makes it fail, it should work, i guess.
B!