X-surf IDE success stories?

[NMI]

Has anybody successfully used a hard drive on the X-surf IDE-interface?
If so, what hard drive did you use, make, model?
And what version of the xsurfide-device?

Been googling on the topic and I can’t find a single success-story! But maybe it’s just my Google-karma that is bad at the moment.

[fitzsteve]

I only used a CDROM on mine, it worked fine but never tried a HDD.

[thomas]

It's a long time since I used that interface, but I vaguely remember that I even was able to boot from it by writing the XSurfIDE driver into the flash ROM of an eFlash4000.

[strim]

Originally Posted by NMI

Has anybody successfully used a hard drive on the X-surf IDE-interface?
If so, what hard drive did you use, make, model?
And what version of the xsurfide-device?

Been googling on the topic and I can’t find a single success-story! But maybe it’s just my Google-karma that is bad at the moment.

I once knitted a X-Surf IDE driver for NetBSD. I remember phx got some old hard drive working with it, as he tested and bugfixed the driver for me. Ask him, maybe he will remember what kind of hard drive it was.

[Zetr0]

Currently in my A2000

GVP G40@33

• 16MB RAM (4x4MB Burst Mode)
• GVP Omni SCSI adaptor
• 8.1GB SCSI (Compaq 10k rpm)

Picasso II+
X-Surf Network Card

• 20GB 2.5" IDE Hard Disk (IBM/Hitachi Travel Star)
• 80GB 3.5" IDE Hard Disk (Samsung Spin Point)

I get about just under 3MB per second transfer from the X-Surf when accessing the Hard Disks.

[NMI]

So it can actually work with hard disks! I might just give it yet another try then, even though it so far been like

CDROM was easy, worked on the first try.
But so far over the years I've tested more than 20 different IDE-drives on numerous 3.1, 3.5, 3.9 installations and never had a single drive show up in HDToolBox or any other utility capable of listing disk devices. The closed I’ve come was using a known faulty drive that would stall the device detection on other IDE-controllers, it stalled the device detection in HDToolBox too (but the disk didn’t show up like it did on other controllers).

[Turran]

I've used 2 or 3 different disks on it (not bootable though). Worked like a charm. Dont think I did anything special...

[NMI]

Tried half a dozen 2.5" and 3.5" IDE-drives of varying size from 700MB to 250GB, not a single one of them was detected by HDToolBox.
Running out of IDE-drives I thought I might as well test a CF-card in a cheap Chinese CF-adapter just to make sure I had tested everything I had, and it worked!!!!!!

Tried a few different CF-cards and they where all detected and I was able to install and partition them in HDToolBox. So it seems that the IDE-interface on my X-surf does indeed work, but only with CDROMs and CF-cards.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by NMI

So it can actually work with hard disks! I might just give it yet another try then, even though it so far been like CDROM was easy, worked on the first try.

Disk drives and CD-ROMs work. The limiations were :

1) You cannot boot from these ports
2) You cannot use CD writers
3) They don't support configurable timing (not sure what that means)

[strim]

Originally Posted by alexh

They don't support configurable timing (not sure what that means)

It just means they always use the same PIO mode (mode 0 I guess), no matter what hard disk does or doesn't support.

Besides, some early X-Surf revisions have these timings messed up, that's where the compatibility problems come from.

[Locutus]

Except for the obvious lack of speed and no support to boot from the xsurf ide it has always worked pretty well for me in a A3000.

It was a handy way to have a 80GB IDE disk back when i still used the A3k for 'serious' stuff (read: disk full of mp3's) :-)

[Mozzerfan]

Originally Posted by alexh

Disk drives and CD-ROMs work. The limiations were :

1) You cannot boot from these ports
2) You cannot use CD writers
3) They don't support configurable timing (not sure what that means)

I'm using a burn-proof Lite-on CD-Writer with my xsurf-2 for many many years now.
Before I bought my Deneb, I used it for making backups of my a4000.
A couple of times I used the backup to restore my system.

I know that Jens Schoenfeld says you cannot use CD-writers, but that simply is not true. You just have to set the right tooltypes in MakeCD.

[alexh]

I don't think burn-proof cd-writers existed when X-Surf was made / in production.

[Mozzerfan]

Originally Posted by alexh

I don't think burn-proof cd-writers existed when X-Surf was made / in production.

Burn proof drives hit the market in the year 2000.
MakeCD started supporting this feature with V3.2d (2005?).

My point is, the argument that you can't use CD-Writers with a xsurf isn't valid anymore.

[alexh]

I doubt Jens was interested at the time as he was selling a competing product, the buddha IDE.

As the X-Surf with IDE ports is now out of production I imagine he's even less interested now?

But in case he isn't it might be worth raising to him, or whomever writes his Wiki pages? Get it updated for all us Amiga freaks.

http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/X-Surf

Go on... send them a mail

[Mozzerfan]

Originally Posted by alexh

I doubt Jens was interested at the time as he was selling a competing product, the buddha IDE.

As the X-Surf with IDE ports is now out of production I imagine he's even less interested now?

But in case he isn't it might be worth raising to him, or whomever writes his Wiki pages? Get it updated for all us Amiga freaks.

http://wiki.icomp.de/wiki/X-Surf

Go on... send them a mail

The last time I sent an email to icomp.de, I didn´t get an answer.
Maybe he´ll answer you.

Edit: BTW this thread is about what devices can be connected to the XSurf IDE. It´s not about whether Jens Schoenfeld is still interested or not, or if the xsurf is still for sale or not.