Amiga 500 - compact flash/SD removable storage

[Marle]

Hiya,

Apart from the ACA 500/500 Plus are there any solutions for the Amiga 500 that allow removal mass storage (i.e. compact flash or SD card) from PC formatted cards?

I have looked and I cannot find any such solutions apart from the ACA 500/500 Plus.

Thanks!
Vicky

[solarmon]

There is A508IDE by kipper2k:

http://kipper2k.com/a500fastmem.html

A nice comparison between that and the ACA solution can be found at:

http://coppershade.org/articles/More...DE_vs_ACA500!/

EDIT: Ignore that - I see now you want removable mass storage media.

[solarmon]

@Marle

The Vampire V2 card offers an SD card for removable mass storage:

https://lyonsden.net/installing-the-...-my-amiga-500/

https://lyonsden.net/adding-an-sd-ca...ire-amiga-500/

[Marle]

Aww thanks, but yeah there are lots of ways to get say a compact flash connected to an Amiga 500 via an IDE converter etc. But it's whether there are any removable options, like you get with an Amiga 600/1200 with the PCMCIA adapters.

I don't think there is.

[jbilander]

There are a couple of A500 accelerators out there that have a SPI interface to which you can hook up a SD-card module. For example the Wicher 500i and the TF534 has one. With a long enough ribbon cable you can have the module sticking out the sidecar opening of the A500 for easy access. Don't know if SD-card is hot swappable or not. The Wicher has a driver written already for a specific module, for the TF534 it's write your own driver for whatever module you're using. The HC508 has a CF-card slot easily accessible as it is a sidecar expansion board but the CF-card is not hot swappable, so you would have to power down machine before removing card.

[Marle]

Originally Posted by solarmon

@Marle
The Vampire V2 card offers an SD card for removable mass storage:

Ahh yes, that's true thanks, I think I will be passing on the Vampire though.

Originally Posted by jbilander

There are a couple of A500 accelerators out there that have a SPI interface to which you can hook up a SD-card module. For example the Wicher 500i and the TF534 has one. With a long enough ribbon cable you can have the module sticking out the sidecar opening of the A500 for easy access. Don't know if SD-card is hot swappable or not. The Wicher has a driver written already for a specific module, for the TF534 it's write your own driver for whatever module you're using. The HC508 has a CF-card slot easily accessible as it is a sidecar expansion board but the CF-card is not hot swappable, so you would have to power down machine before removing card.

That's interesting, I couldn't track down where the Witcher's driver is, be handy to know if I do have to go down this route. Unfortunately I am not really best placed to write a driver though

Thanks!

[Photon]

To boot from removable media, first of all you need some way of loading PC format support, e.g. in ROM as in ACA500Plus, or another boot disk like CF card, floppy, or harddisk.

Once that's sorted, CF elongator cables will make the PC CF card accessible, or you can use a SCSI sidecar expansion and set the SCSI ID for the PC CF card to Removable. I think it's up to the controller in the card whether the card is mounted again when re-inserted. An SD card might be better for this if it's just for transfers.

I just have the one CF card, Amiga-formatted, and copy files with WinUAE right to where they should be. I have made slots for the CF card in the Amigas that need it so that it's easily accessible. The drawback is that the Amiga has to be switched off.

[McTrinsic]

I don’t fully understand the requirement of a removable media being setup on a pc.

With WinUAE, you can use the complete medium as a harddrive and then set it up using Amiga filesystem and RDB exclusively.

[jbilander]

Originally Posted by Marle

That's interesting, I couldn't track down where the Witcher's driver is

It's on the 7-bit site under the download tab (included in the WicherInstaller file). According to the changelog it has support for large sd cards.
https://www.7-bit.pl/?lang=en&go=projekty&name=WI500I2C

Click the Connectors/Schematics tab to read info about the SD Card module. I think that module is widely available (Amazon etc) but according to the instructions four resistors need to be removed (de-soldered) from the module.

Just a heads up. Some people has reported issues with the Wicher card. Memory modules not working. cpu freezes etc. It is an overclocked 68k at higher clock frequencies so it might not operate reliably. Search here in the forum and make your own opinion before you go down that route.