CF / SD and large drives FAQ - Page 20

demolition · 23 March 2019, 05:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by AC/DC HACKER!

The only thing I would correct about the initial post is GiB to GB. Otherwise, very, very cool post and thread.

Then it would say 137 GB instead of 128 GiB? I'd prefer the latter..

thomas · 23 March 2019, 10:21

Yes, 128 GiB is the exact value. Converted to GB it would be 137.438953472 GB. Not very convenient to use in correct explanations.

AC/DC HACKER! · 23 March 2019, 19:47

I have always seen GB on packages and discussions until a few years ago when I started noticing GiB...and I thought it was some kind of typo (as here). OK, so GiB is unformatted where as GB is formatted with a file system. Stuff is often sold formatted with FAT32 or NTFS (GB) vs remove the partition and it's then GiB... Correct?

MageMaster · 23 March 2019, 20:00

GiB vs GB is based on 1000 vs 1024 as base 10 vs base 2

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Di...een-GiB-and-GB

AC/DC HACKER! · 23 March 2019, 20:37

GiB seems to me the "new math" that is in our Schools since ~2015. Hmm.. It's not well accepted where I live, and the surrounding states. Thanks for replies. I'm very used to 1024, but I'll check into GiB more...see if I can understand it better.

dJOS · 23 March 2019, 23:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by AC/DC HACKER!

GiB seems to me the "new math" that is in our Schools since ~2015. Hmm.. It's not well accepted where I live, and the surrounding states. Thanks for replies. I'm very used to 1024, but I'll check into GiB more...see if I can understand it better.

I really dislike GiB - imo it was invented by the HDD manufacturers to make their Drives sound bigger than they really are (in other words marketing wankery).

AC/DC HACKER! · 24 March 2019, 05:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by dJOS

I really dislike GiB - imo it was invented by the HDD manufacturers to make their Drives sound bigger than they really are (in other words marketing wankery).

I've researched a lot of stuff as things have changed. Computer Science people I've been around that are a lot better with this math than I am say it's "new math" and it won't stick around. I don't like or dislike GiB, I'm just not used to it. I'm open to changes if they make sense. So far, GiB doesn't...other than formatted or not. I've read the previous link (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Di...een-GiB-and-GB), but it didn't help.

I...will admit, that I wondered about the HDD makers using it. After all, once "Going Green/Organic" became the "in" thing..WD changed their common speed drives to a Green Label, without changing anything else that I notice and I've looked. Did I miss something?

thomas · 24 March 2019, 11:33

Actually GiB is "the old" math and what the now call GB is new.

IT people have use "kilobytes" as 1024 since ever. Only recently vendors decided that base 10 (kilo = 1000) is the industry standard and base 2 is only used by nerds. So now they call 1000 a kilobyte and 1024 a "kibibyte" a.k.a. KiB.

It's like dJOS wrote, mostly marketing. Obviously is is beneficial for sellers if they can sell 1000 billion bytes as 1000 GB while they only need to put 930 old-school-GB into the package.

AC/DC HACKER! · 25 March 2019, 04:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by thomas

Actually GiB is "the old" math and what the now call GB is new.

IT people have use "kilobytes" as 1024 since ever. Only recently vendors decided that base 10 (kilo = 1000) is the industry standard and base 2 is only used by nerds. So now they call 1000 a kilobyte and 1024 a "kibibyte" a.k.a. KiB.

It's like dJOS wrote, mostly marketing. Obviously is is beneficial for sellers if they can sell 1000 billion bytes as 1000 GB while they only need to put 930 old-school-GB into the package.

Your typos passed by. It wasn't called I.T. at all when I was in School. Well before High School. Well after that, the C128..before any Amiga 1000.. I was engaging with a lot of Computer People, and not one suggested anything about GiB (always "GB") and there was a lot of talk about storage, and the future. Of which I was very attentive. Which a lot of them were surprised about and enjoyed. As well as my love for animals.

As I progressed through Mainframes....not once did GiB or GB come into play. A lot of Dat tapes, and so on, even Hard Drives were discussed..but no one went beyond MBs. Not Mbs. KB was also discussed often...as well as Kb. I remember later when the Amiga 1000 was released, people were astonished by the 512KB of RAM for a Personal Computer, or rather a Microcomputer. Remembering Mainframes...

512 and 1024 remains a constant in my life. How you get GiB from that I'm unsure of. That's the I.T. I've known all of my life, and with other people..I do jobs with.

Jope · 25 March 2019, 08:20

Your life just got an i in the middle once GiB, MiB, KiB etc. were introduced. Seems our lives were ruined by this redefinition back in 1998. 21 long years of disappointment.

Blame the hard disk manufacturers for selling us kilobytes that were 1000 while computers were talking about kilobytes of 1024, not Thomas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte

AC/DC HACKER! · 26 March 2019, 18:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jope

Your life just got an i in the middle once GiB, MiB, KiB etc. were introduced. Seems our lives were ruined by this redefinition back in 1998. 21 long years of disappointment.

Blame the hard disk manufacturers for selling us kilobytes that were 1000 while computers were talking about kilobytes of 1024, not Thomas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte

Blame?? Ruined lives?? That's not where I'm coming from. I don't deal in that stuff - unless I'm using it for humor only. Only commenting and having a conversation.

Nothing personal aimed toward Thomas.

demolition · 26 March 2019, 21:32

A kilo is an SI unit which has always been defined as 1000. People just started using it with 1024 as well when talking about computers since it was easier to handle in software and it was 'close enough'.

kibi was introduced in an attempt to correct that mistake and bring back kilo as 1000 as it was always meant to be. I think perhaps the big IT industry in US had a more lenient approach to what a kilo was since they don't really care much about SI units anyway?

Turrican_3 · 26 July 2019, 09:10

Keyword "priority" query didn't show what I was looking for so I'm asking here...

I've received this IDE/SD adapter yesterday and added a 4GB card.

HDToolBox from Install 3.0 (I have the stock 39.106 Kickstart ROM) was able to read configuration from the drive and let the A1200 see it, so I left the default values and got two ~1.9 GB partitions.

Problem is, I cannot change boot priority in neither.
No error messages at all, it just accepts whatever value I put and then, when I enter the configuration page, it just reverts to 0.

Any thoughts?

Jope · 26 July 2019, 09:34

And you pressed return after typing in the value?

Turrican_3 · 26 July 2019, 10:13

Hmm... that's a VERY good question.

I can't remember if I actually added return or not, but I will definitely try again this afternoon. Thanks!

Turrican_3 · 26 July 2019, 18:19

You were right Jope, but I have to add the software is partly to blame since it did not reject what I wrote without pressing enter. That was the confusing part to me.

Having said that... I'd like to fix the always on LED issue.

I've found this solution with a Google search:
http://megaburken.net/~patrik/Amiga%...D%20LED%20Fix/

Would that actually work?

demolition · 27 July 2019, 05:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Turrican_3

You were right Jope, but I have to add the software is partly to blame since it did not reject what I wrote without pressing enter. That was the confusing part to me.

It is a general Workbench thing that it works like, so you should not blame HDToolbox for that behaviour.

Regarding that LED fix, I think the modification that is shown in that link should do the trick. You can also find adapters that already have the transistor on it which will work without modifications but if you have the transistor and knows how to solder then it is quite an easy fix.

Turrican_3 · 27 July 2019, 15:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by demolition

It is a general Workbench thing that it works like, so you should not blame HDToolbox for that behaviour.

Then I blame myself for staying sooo long far from AmigaOS, I got too used to Windows behaviour I guess and I forgot (changed that parameter countless times back in the day) how WB works.

Quote:

but if you have the transistor and knows how to solder then it is quite an easy fix.

Yes I think I can do that, as long as I can source that component.

Thanks!

Turrican_3 · 30 July 2019, 09:24

I can confirm that the above modification is indeed working!

Please note I used a BS170 instead of a 2N7000, which has a different pinout configuration that should be taken care of while modifying the adapter by the way.

However, since the domain has expired meanwhile (!?) I'll repost the instructions here as well for future reference:

=================================

Symptom: When using the more recent version of the rather common SD card to IDE adapters in an A1200 or A600 (A4000?),
the HD LED is always lit/active. Apart from this, these adapters works perfectly.

Cause: The motherboard should turn on the HD LED when the IDE /ACTIVE input is low. However, the transistor on the motherboard
controlling the HD LED will switch it on whenever it sees more than ~0.6V difference from 5V on /ACTIVE. As the more recent version
of these SD card adapter outputs 3.3V when there is no activity, the LED will never be switched off.

The SD adapter should reasonably have had an open collector/open drain output for the /ACTIVE signal both to be 100% compatible and
to be able to coexist with another device on the IDE bus and this is what this fix will do.

1. Source a 2N7000 N-channel MOSFET
2. Cut trace going to IDE pin 39 (/ACTIVE)
3. Connect D pin to IDE pin 39
4. Connect G pin to 3.3V (for example on the common 3.3V side of the power/activity LEDs)
5. Connect S pin to the trace which was going to pin 39 before you cut it (for example on other side of the resistor connected to onboard activity LED).
6. Enjoy your Amiga, now with a properly working HD LED

jbenam · 13 December 2019, 11:32

Does anyone know if the random read/write speed is any important? Most of the benchmarks I see laying around are solely for sequential - does that mean the Amiga doesn't use random read/writes that much or that there isn't any benchmark software available for the Amiga that tests those?

I'm asking because I have one 16GB SSD laying around which tops at around 20MB/s sequential writes (which should be plenty for the Amiga) but has horrible performance when it comes to random writes (iirc either 0.1MB/s or 1MB/s...) and I wouldn't want to hobble my A4000Di with PIO2 mod down.

Thanks!

23 March 2019, 19:47	#383
AC/DC HACKER! Registered User Join Date: Aug 2016 Location: Earth Posts: 890	I have always seen GB on packages and discussions until a few years ago when I started noticing GiB...and I thought it was some kind of typo (as here). OK, so GiB is unformatted where as GB is formatted with a file system. Stuff is often sold formatted with FAT32 or NTFS (GB) vs remove the partition and it's then GiB... Correct? Last edited by AC/DC HACKER!; 23 March 2019 at 19:52.

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23 March 2019, 10:21	#382
thomas Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 7,003	Yes, 128 GiB is the exact value. Converted to GB it would be 137.438953472 GB. Not very convenient to use in correct explanations.

23 March 2019, 20:00	#384
MageMaster Registered User Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: USA Posts: 106	GiB vs GB is based on 1000 vs 1024 as base 10 vs base 2 https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Di...een-GiB-and-GB

23 March 2019, 20:37	#385
AC/DC HACKER! Registered User Join Date: Aug 2016 Location: Earth Posts: 890	GiB seems to me the "new math" that is in our Schools since ~2015. Hmm.. It's not well accepted where I live, and the surrounding states. Thanks for replies. I'm very used to 1024, but I'll check into GiB more...see if I can understand it better.

24 March 2019, 11:33	#388
thomas Registered User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Germany Posts: 7,003	Actually GiB is "the old" math and what the now call GB is new. IT people have use "kilobytes" as 1024 since ever. Only recently vendors decided that base 10 (kilo = 1000) is the industry standard and base 2 is only used by nerds. So now they call 1000 a kilobyte and 1024 a "kibibyte" a.k.a. KiB. It's like dJOS wrote, mostly marketing. Obviously is is beneficial for sellers if they can sell 1000 billion bytes as 1000 GB while they only need to put 930 old-school-GB into the package.

25 March 2019, 08:20	#390
Jope - Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Helsinki / Finland Age: 43 Posts: 9,869	Your life just got an i in the middle once GiB, MiB, KiB etc. were introduced. Seems our lives were ruined by this redefinition back in 1998. 21 long years of disappointment. Blame the hard disk manufacturers for selling us kilobytes that were 1000 while computers were talking about kilobytes of 1024, not Thomas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte

26 March 2019, 21:32	#392
demolition Unregistered User Join Date: Sep 2012 Location: Copenhagen / DK Age: 43 Posts: 4,190	A kilo is an SI unit which has always been defined as 1000. People just started using it with 1024 as well when talking about computers since it was easier to handle in software and it was 'close enough'. kibi was introduced in an attempt to correct that mistake and bring back kilo as 1000 as it was always meant to be. I think perhaps the big IT industry in US had a more lenient approach to what a kilo was since they don't really care much about SI units anyway?

26 July 2019, 09:10	#393
Turrican_3 C= and Amiga aficionado! Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: Italy Posts: 318	Keyword "priority" query didn't show what I was looking for so I'm asking here... I've received this IDE/SD adapter yesterday and added a 4GB card. HDToolBox from Install 3.0 (I have the stock 39.106 Kickstart ROM) was able to read configuration from the drive and let the A1200 see it, so I left the default values and got two ~1.9 GB partitions. Problem is, I cannot change boot priority in neither. No error messages at all, it just accepts whatever value I put and then, when I enter the configuration page, it just reverts to 0. Any thoughts?

26 July 2019, 09:34	#394
Jope - Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Helsinki / Finland Age: 43 Posts: 9,869	And you pressed return after typing in the value?

26 July 2019, 10:13	#395
Turrican_3 C= and Amiga aficionado! Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: Italy Posts: 318	Hmm... that's a VERY good question. I can't remember if I actually added return or not, but I will definitely try again this afternoon. Thanks!

26 July 2019, 18:19	#396
Turrican_3 C= and Amiga aficionado! Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: Italy Posts: 318	You were right Jope, but I have to add the software is partly to blame since it did not reject what I wrote without pressing enter. That was the confusing part to me. Having said that... I'd like to fix the always on LED issue. I've found this solution with a Google search: http://megaburken.net/~patrik/Amiga%...D%20LED%20Fix/ Would that actually work?

30 July 2019, 09:24	#399
Turrican_3 C= and Amiga aficionado! Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: Italy Posts: 318	I can confirm that the above modification is indeed working! Please note I used a BS170 instead of a 2N7000, which has a different pinout configuration that should be taken care of while modifying the adapter by the way. However, since the domain has expired meanwhile (!?) I'll repost the instructions here as well for future reference: ================================= Symptom: When using the more recent version of the rather common SD card to IDE adapters in an A1200 or A600 (A4000?), the HD LED is always lit/active. Apart from this, these adapters works perfectly. Cause: The motherboard should turn on the HD LED when the IDE /ACTIVE input is low. However, the transistor on the motherboard controlling the HD LED will switch it on whenever it sees more than ~0.6V difference from 5V on /ACTIVE. As the more recent version of these SD card adapter outputs 3.3V when there is no activity, the LED will never be switched off. The SD adapter should reasonably have had an open collector/open drain output for the /ACTIVE signal both to be 100% compatible and to be able to coexist with another device on the IDE bus and this is what this fix will do. 1. Source a 2N7000 N-channel MOSFET 2. Cut trace going to IDE pin 39 (/ACTIVE) 3. Connect D pin to IDE pin 39 4. Connect G pin to 3.3V (for example on the common 3.3V side of the power/activity LEDs) 5. Connect S pin to the trace which was going to pin 39 before you cut it (for example on other side of the resistor connected to onboard activity LED). 6. Enjoy your Amiga, now with a properly working HD LED

13 December 2019, 11:32	#400
jbenam Italian Amiga Zealot Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Italy Age: 36 Posts: 1,912	Does anyone know if the random read/write speed is any important? Most of the benchmarks I see laying around are solely for sequential - does that mean the Amiga doesn't use random read/writes that much or that there isn't any benchmark software available for the Amiga that tests those? I'm asking because I have one 16GB SSD laying around which tops at around 20MB/s sequential writes (which should be plenty for the Amiga) but has horrible performance when it comes to random writes (iirc either 0.1MB/s or 1MB/s...) and I wouldn't want to hobble my A4000Di with PIO2 mod down. Thanks!

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