A600 doesn't recognize CF-cards

I wanted to give my Amiga 600 a lifting and bought several things from Amigakit. First I installed Kickrom 3.1 which works fine.

I also got the CF-IDE-Kit (mounted internally) and the PCMCIA Compact Flash transfer kit from them.
But in both cases the CF cards are not working.

This photo shows, how the new parts are inserted in my Amiga 600:

(the photo is also attached to this forum posting).

The red line of the IDE cable is connected to the side on the PCB, where you can read "1". The computer uses Kickstart 3.1.
On the left side, there is the PCMCIA-CF-adapter inserted.

After powering up, the screen stays black for a few seconds (because the OS cannot find a harddrive), then the standard OS 3.1 boot logo appears.
The HD LED is now permanently on.

When I boot Workbench 3.1 from floppy disk, neither "HD Toolbox", nor "HD Setup" recognize the CF cards.
If I boot the HD install disk from Amigakit, I get the error message "Please insert volume ADH0 in any drive".
If I boot the "ADAPCMCFL" disk from Amigakit, the other CF card is also not recognized.

Am I doing anything wrong?

[Arnie]

Unplug the PCMCIA card and concentrate on getting the HD working first. Check that the jumper on the HD CF card hasn't fallen off, then check that the cable is on properly, it's easy to miss a row of pins thinking it's on correctly.

The HD should boot to the Amigkit logo without any floppy in the drive first, then ask you for the WB disks to initialize the card.

EDIT: Just thinking about it and if I remember correctly, I never got the HD from Amigakit working in the A600, only A1200. I had to use a kingston card FFS formated for the A600. The PCMCIA CF card I bought separately and I could only get Sandisk cards to work.

On the A1200 the card from Amigakit worked perfectly. Can you connect the cards to the PC and use WinUAE to mount them?

[FOL]

Originally Posted by Arnie

Unplug the PCMCIA card and concentrate on getting the HD working first. Check that the jumper on the HD CF card hasn't fallen off, then check that the cable is on properly, it's easy to miss a row of pins thinking it's on correctly.

The HD should boot to the Amigkit logo without any floppy in the drive first, then ask you for the WB disks to initialize the card.

EDIT: Just thinking about it and if I remember correctly, I never got the HD from Amigakit working in the A600, only A1200. I had to use a kingston card FFS formated for the A600. The PCMCIA CF card I bought separately and I could only get Sandisk cards to work.

On the A1200 the card from Amigakit worked perfectly. Can you connect the cards to the PC and use WinUAE to mount them?

Yep.

Check jumper on cf adapter. Also the HDD in CF slot will never work, its ment to be used as HDD using IDE - CF adapter.

@Arnie, it proberly didnt work if it was ordered for say a 1200. As it would have been SFS formatted.

Today I removed the PCMCIA card and initially tried the internal CF-IDE adapter only.

If I connect the jumper to the left side, the CF card doesn't work. To my understanding this should be the correct position to declare the CF card as "master":


If I connect the jumper to the right side, it also doesn't work:


Additionally, if connected to the right side, there is a red light turned on at the CF-card:



So new solution for the internal CF card yet

Next I tried the PCMCIA-Transfer kit. First I removed the internal IDE-CF-Kit completely. Then plugged the PCMCIA card in. This time I used another CF-Card, which is FAT-formatted. But I only get the error "No disk present in device CF0:" when trying via the ADAPCMCFL-disk.

I also openend and closed my A600 case quite often now. At last I accidentally damaged the power connector for the LEDs:


But this should be a cosmetical thing only? The LEDs won't work anymore now, but this shouldn't incluence if the CF-Cards or the rest of the Amiga are working?

[springycz]

You are lucky that you just broke cables away. I was less cautious and I destroyed also the solder pads which I'm unable to repair... But exactly how you wrote this defect does not affect the functionality of the ide/cf adapter.

[kipper2k]

there are a few issues here, the easy one is the 4 pin wire to the LED header can be easily soldered, and is for info only so it does not affect anything. The driver for the PCMCIA slot may not be the latest on tha you are using so ensure you have the latest (I cant remember revision number atm). and lastly not all CF card will work in the PCMCIA slot. I use Lexar but i believe kingston and some ebay elcheapos will not work

Originally Posted by kipper2k

and lastly not all CF card will work in the PCMCIA slot. I use Lexar but i believe kingston and some ebay elcheapos will not work

I only tried Kingston. So this could be the reason why the PCMCIA adapter doesn't work.

Has anybody got another idea why the internal CF card isn't working?

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by A500Fan

I only tried Kingston. So this could be the reason why the PCMCIA adapter doesn't work.

Has anybody got another idea why the internal CF card isn't working?

for your info, all my kingston wont work in pcmcia slot, they will work fine in CF slot though

[fgh]

You should raise a support ticket with amigakit.

IDE problem

Did you ever plug in the IDE-CF adapter the wrong way? (The 44p cable has 5v power, so it would damage the adapter)

Even if the card has the wrong file system (for a1200), it should still show up in hdtoolbox. Both cards should.
You could always double check that HDToolbox tooltype scsi_device_name = scsi.device, but it's usually not changed on floppies.
(Select hdtoolbox icon, then select icon -> information)

Of course the IDE on your a1200 might be dead, but that is not too common either.

PCMCIA problem

I don't expect they would sell you an incompatible CF card for use with the PCMCIA kit.
The cards that came with the IDE-CF kit used to be a kingston card (flower image) though, and these never used to work in the PCMCIA.
(Although Kingston can change their firmware at any point, and amigakit could use different cards now)

Finally, there might be an issue with the compactflash.device driver as well.
At one point I couldn't make it work in the A600 with the latest version 1.32, but once I reverted to 1.27 it showed up.
This was the day I sold my a600 so I didn't have time to do any further research. (type 'version compactflash.device' to check)

Good luck!

Thanks for your help and suggestions so far.

Originally Posted by fgh

Did you ever plug in the IDE-CF adapter the wrong way? (The 44p cable has 5v power, so it would damage the adapter)

No. I connected the red side of the cable where the number "1" on the PCB is.

Even if the card has the wrong file system (for a1200), it should still show up in hdtoolbox. Both cards should.

You could always double check that HDToolbox tooltype scsi_device_name = scsi.device, but it's usually not changed on floppies.
(Select hdtoolbox icon, then select icon -> information)

This also does not lead to the solution. It cannot been seen in HDToolbox. I think that it's no software problem, but something with the hardware.

Of course the IDE on your a1200 might be dead, but that is not too common either.

Also if it's rare, I unfortunately suspect that this could be the case on this A600.. I now requested Amigakit to return the bought items.

I don't expect they would sell you an incompatible CF card for use with the PCMCIA kit.

The cards that came with the IDE-CF kit used to be a kingston card (flower image) though, and these never used to work in the PCMCIA.

(Although Kingston can change their firmware at any point, and amigakit could use different cards now)

I bought the IDE-CF kit together with a CF Card, but the PCMCIA kit not. I originally thought that I could use one of my other Kingston cards with PCMCIA, because I didn't know that they work with the internal IDE, but not with the PCMCIA adapter.

[Zippy Zapp]

I could not get the kingston flower card that came with my ACA500 from Amigakit to work in my A1200 PCMCIA CF adapter for transfer. It refused to see it ever, no matter what I tried. It works fine in the media slot of the ACA500, though, after some tinkering.

Honestly it was not a great experience and took some tinkering to get it all to work. It was not plug and play like it should have been.

What did work for my A1200 PCMCIA CF adapter was a Sandisk Ultra card. After a quick partition clean and fat format it worked straight away.

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by FOL

@Arnie, it proberly didnt work if it was ordered for say a 1200. As it would have been SFS formatted.

Yes, you,re right, I remember now, SFS was the problem for the A600.

@A500Fan

I would say the Ide Adapter is working O.K as the red light on when moving the jumper is what you would expect to happen.

Have you tried both the CF cards you have in the Ide adapter?

Try a Kingston card (if you have one) and format it to FFS.

Sandisk Ultra cards work 100% in the PCMCIA slot.

As I suggested earlier, can you connect the CF cards to the PC?

Originally Posted by Arnie

Have you tried both the CF cards you have in the Ide adapter?

Try a Kingston card (if you have one) and format it to FFS.

Sandisk Ultra cards work 100% in the PCMCIA slot.

As I suggested earlier, can you connect the CF cards to the PC?

I own three CF cards:
- A Kingston CF which Amigakit shipped together with the IDE adapter
It ist FFS formatted and bootable
- Another bootable Kingston CF, FFS, which I am succesfully using with
the ACA500 of my Amiga 500
- A Kingston CF in FAT95 format (with flower design, came with the
ACA500 too)

All three CF cards are working on my PC: The first and the second are booting and fully working in WinUAE. The third one can be accessed with Windows Explorer.

None of these three are working within the Amiga 600. They can't boot, and they are also not displayed in HD Toolbox. The tooltype for scsi.device is properly set.

I don't own a Sandisk Ultra card. But to have the internal CF card working is far more important to me than the PCMCIA kit. And as far as I have read, Kingston should work on the internal IDE?

[Arnie]

Originally Posted by A500Fan

And as far as I have read, Kingston should work on the internal IDE?

Yes, Kingston Should work 100%, I've never had one fail.

The only thing I can suggest before you send the Items back is just check the cable is seated on the motherboard O.K. As I mentioned earlier it's easy to miss the first 2 pins on either end thinking they are connected right.

Originally Posted by Arnie

The only thing I can suggest before you send the Items back is just check the cable is seated on the motherboard O.K. As I mentioned earlier it's easy to miss the first 2 pins on either end thinking they are connected right.

Thanks for the suggestion, but it also doesn't seem to be the cause. I checked this several times: The pins are straight, and on both ends everything is connected right. I even used a torch to be sure that I don't overlook something.

I would have loved to have a CF inside the A600. But now two of my free days are gone and I am running out of time and ideas...

[fgh]

Try another IDE-CF, IDE-SD, or HDD to decide if it's the adapter or the IDE that's faulty.

[Gunship]

I have this same problem now.
Everything tested on in an A1200

[Jolabandola]

I suggest going with a Sandisk Ultra SD-card and an angled SD-IDE adapter. I have never had any problems with them and i even have a Furia in my A600.