IDE-FIX (Noob)

[Eclipse]

Hi
I won an ebay auction for an Ide-fix express adapter and it came today.
It has no installation instructions (although it has the disk) and I have no idea what connects to what and how to set it up.
If someone has a picture I could follow that quite easily or a brief "put that there and connect this" etc.
I didn't recieve a keycode either but I'm not too worried about that.

[Fingerlickin_B]

Ok, hopefully this will make sense.

There is a 44 pin connector at the very end of the board. It goes to the IDE connector on your motherboard.

There are two connectors called "0", one is 44 pin the other is 40 pin. You can connect one or two devices suck as your boot drive to ONE of these (don't use both "0" connectors at once).

There is another 40 pin connector called "1". You can connect up to a further two devices to it.

That's pretty much it. Power of course will need to be sourced for the 40 pin devices elsewhere, but you can sort that out easily enough.

If you are using a IDE to Compact Flash adaptor, you will be limited to three devices in total, as whichever bus you connect it to will flat out refuse to see any other devices.

I hope that helps.

PZ.

[tonyyeb]

Originally Posted by Fingerlickin_B

If you are using a IDE to Compact Flash adaptor, you will be limited to three devices in total, as whichever bus you connect it to will flat out refuse to see any other devices.

Is that the same for all IDE buffered cards? Mine I can run DVD and CF on the same channel.

[StevenJGore]

If you are using a IDE to Compact Flash adaptor, you will be limited to three devices in total, as whichever bus you connect it to will flat out refuse to see any other devices.

Ah, that perhaps explains why I couldn't connect two CF cards on the same channel. Strangely, though, HDToolBox can see the second CF without any problems, it's just that the OS itself can't see it (no desktop icons or drives in requestors, etc.). A dual CF adapter didn't work either.

Steve.

[Eclipse]

Thanks that makes sense.
I have the express adapter as well though. Do you plug it in, in addition to what you described? Do you still use the IDE header from the Amiga when using the adapter?

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Eclipse

Thanks that makes sense.
I have the express adapter as well though. Do you plug it in, in addition to what you described? Do you still use the IDE header from the Amiga when using the adapter?

If you want to use the Express adapter, you still have to use the IDEFIX board with the IDE header. As the express board connects to the IDEFIX board on its own lead.

I could never get the express board to work with my IDEFIX & CF HDD, so I dont use it.

[extralife]

Well FOL, the Express adapter seems to make a difference here, when I speed test on my CFCARD, so maybe the different cards are to blame. Better try with or without, if it works great, if not too bad. About setting it up check FOL's post

[Eclipse]

It hung like the others posted, so I removed the line from the S-S.
It hung at the end of installation as well looking for the CD, when I did get back into workbench it only shows the hard drive (CF card). scsi.device I think is all that shows.
The hard drive is working but getting a CD is a no show.
I seriously haven't got a clue what I'm doing. I might sell it on to someone that will appreciate it and be able to use it.

EDIT: Is it worth trying with a real HD and not CF before I give up? I'm sure I read as well that scsi.device should not be the only device showing there should be atapi.device as well.

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Eclipse

It hung like the others posted, so I removed the line from the S-S.
It hung at the end of installation as well looking for the CD, when I did get back into workbench it only shows the hard drive (CF card). scsi.device I think is all that shows.
The hard drive is working but getting a CD is a no show.
I seriously haven't got a clue what I'm doing. I might sell it on to someone that will appreciate it and be able to use it.

EDIT: Is it worth trying with a real HD and not CF before I give up? I'm sure I read as well that scsi.device should not be the only device showing there should be atapi.device as well.

You will find using a real HDD with solve the hang problem. As this is what I done to solve it. I didnt want a real HDD, so I dumped the Express board and just used the IDEFIX board on its own with the old IDEFIX 97 program.

I have posted exactly how I did it, in another thread somewhere here. Works a treat, obviously you wont get the faster speeds (cause the IDEFIX Express board is not present).

Heres the post on how I done it.

[Eclipse]

Yeah 5 AM and success!
Thanks for your help everyone.
I'd rather mount a large second HD than a CD_Rom though to be honest.
It will complain like anything now though if I remove the CD won't it?

[TheCorfiot]

@Eclipse

Yes it will complain,
I would suggest you move the CDx (x being your CD drive (use info command in shell prompt to establish) File from your Devs/DosDrivers directory to somewhere where you can simply double click it to mount your CD drive , If you ever connect it up in the future.

TC

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Eclipse

Yeah 5 AM and success!
Thanks for your help everyone.
I'd rather mount a large second HD than a CD_Rom though to be honest.
It will complain like anything now though if I remove the CD won't it?

Nice, glad you got it sorted.

Reminds me of getting 1 of the first mobo's with onboard AGP GFX card. Windows would install, then on reboot would hang. Stayed up all night until 6AM, I thought whats exactly on this driver disc, . Turned out you had to install the IDE drivers for the board.

Hardware can be so fun, .

[Eclipse]

Decided I will try the CD32 games instead.
Got the squirrel disk, but won't it install all the software for it if I install from that disk?
Or can it be taken direct from the floppy.
Anyone have a simple way of doing it maybe?

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Eclipse

Decided I will try the CD32 games instead.
Got the squirrel disk, but won't it install all the software for it if I install from that disk?
Or can it be taken direct from the floppy.
Anyone have a simple way of doing it maybe?

If you have an internal CDROM, simply install the squirrel + CD32 software and when it asks if you want to add it to the startup (i.e. mount scsi) tell it no.

You can then either use mouse button config on boot to boot the CD in drive or edit the startup to tell it to run the CD32 startup, if no cd in drive, it will continue with normal startup.