Sata to IDE adapter question

-Acid- · 11 September 2016, 02:59

I bought a couple of cheap adapters from China (see picture) to see if they would work with the Amiga. When I tried it out as it came with a 100Gb sata hard drive, the HD LED on my A1200 stays solidly lit from power on and goes straight to the kickstart screen and the system does not see any drive attached.

But as you can see from the photos attached, there is a jumper on the back of the adapter. When I open this jumper and try again it goes straight to the kickstart screen again but the HD LED is normal. I loaded the Install disk from Workbench but nothing there on the Workbench screen.

However if I load up HDToolbox it does see the drive and at the same time the first partition on the drive shows up on the Workbench screen. I can then quit HDToolbox and access that partition as normal and all the files on it.

Does anyone know why the Amiga cannot see drives attached to it until I run HDToolbox and is there a known fix for this?

Zetr0 · 11 September 2016, 11:50

@-Acid-

This is strange - I have quite a few SATA->IDE bridge adaptors like this, amongst other types. Sadly I have trouble getting anything over 60GB to work with these - I think this might be a hard limit with these devices and PIO mode 0.

I do have a FASTATA to try these out with since this can do PIO mode 4 - sadly I haven't built that Amiga yet - although it might be because the device (Hard Disk) is expecting a UDMA protocol and simply wont work with PIO modes at all...

More testing is required.

Kin Hell · 11 September 2016, 12:53

100GB media isn't supported by AmigaDOS FastFileSystem unless you run a file system that can deal with over 4GB.

If you have a Boot partition already on it, keep it small (100Mb-ish) & install nothing here other than System OS Files.

All partitions within the 4GB boundry should work as normal & anything beyond 4GB will require a filesystem to handle it.

From first power on, you say you get to the Kickstart screen. - If you 3 Finger Salute her, does she boot normally afterwards?

-Acid- · 11 September 2016, 13:21

The drive is partitioned as 2gb to boot from and then the rest divided up equally into 3 more partitions. Can't remember which file system as i started using PFS3-AIO a couple of months ago for everything but I used to use SFS all the time before that, it's one of those anyway.

If I soft reset it still cannot see the drive until I run HDToolbox, I don't have any smaller sata drives to test with though. I have some 40 pin adapters I can try with in one of my towers and if that works then it must be adapter specific. I'll see what I can do this afternoon.

Kin Hell · 11 September 2016, 20:49

It's amazing that anyone with an Amiga these days is running a 2GB Boot Partition. This is not a Modern day PC.

Iirc, OS3.9 is a approx a 50Mb install with BB1 & 2 in place. Sure, filesystem helps but maintaining such a large partition is very taxing to an Amiga even with an 060 in it. Lean & mean, even on a Modern day PC & nothing goes on C:\ or the Amiga Boot Partition unless it is OS specific. So much easier to maintain, especially on an Amiga.

SFS should be fine & indeed PS3, but I've seen folk running these filesystems with the other they were using in place as well. You really should remove these in HDToolbox if only to prove. You also have to be sure the Partitions are fomatted in what ever FileSystem you are using or you're just flogging a dead horse!

Irrespective of that, even with the latest FFS in place, providing the Media is Partitioned up to 4GB, all partitions should work fine. Don't forget, any Amiga Software that isn't 4GB+ freindly will not work on the Amiga, even if running SFS or PFS3 & I'm talking Drive specific software like DiskSalv, QuarterBack, etc.....

Having said all this, Zetr0 has a seriously valid point about not all adaptors being suitable, just as some CF cards are not. Proper can of worms tbh.

*edit*

Meant to ask, what Drive/Partition/media are you booting from to run HDToolbox in order to see the Drive?

Thorham · 12 September 2016, 00:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kin Hell

It's amazing that anyone with an Amiga these days is running a 2GB Boot Partition. This is not a Modern day PC.

Why? What's special about connecting a large IDE hard disk to an IDE port?

Arnie · 12 September 2016, 00:17

I had one of these adapters. Interestingly, it was only sold to me as CD compatible. The jumper was to select Master or slave.

idrougge · 12 September 2016, 01:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thorham

Why? What's special about connecting a large IDE hard disk to an IDE port?

Unlike PCs, you don't have to allocate all of it to one partition.

Kin Hell · 12 September 2016, 13:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thorham

Why? What's special about connecting a large IDE hard disk to an IDE port?

Nothing special about connecting a large IDE hard disk at all & I never said that. It's just very very unnecessary for any Amiga OS up to & including OS3.9 to have a 2GB Boot partition. It's harder to maintain with AmigaDos Disk Tools & such as I said earlier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by idrougge

Unlike PCs, you don't have to allocate all of it to one partition.

You can still Partition Hard drives on PC's still, even @ the Windows 10 install.

-Acid- · 12 September 2016, 14:03

Okay I think i'm convinced to give up on sata and look at sd cards instead.

Take a look at the photo attached.

The two CF cards both work fine in a standard CF adapter but i would like to move onto SD/MicroSD cards as they are cheaper and have higher capacities (32Gb cards are what i'm aiming for).

As you can see I have a CF adapter that let's you use SD cards. These two micro sd cards by Kingston (a 2gb SD and a 16gb SDHC card using a micro sd to sd adapter) both work in that SD to CF adapter. However the 32gb Kingston SDHC card is not even detected by the Amiga nor is that reduced size MMC card (512mb). I wasn't expecting the reduced card to work but thought the 32gb card should have. Those are the results on the IDE port. In a pcmcia adapter with cfd and fat95 installed none of them work.

So i've been looking at these SD to IDE adapters on ebay. Does anyone have experience with these on the IDE port? I'm obviously looking for them to work with micro sd and sd cards upto 32gb capacity.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/201327300222

Or can anyone recommend a good SD to IDE adapter that accepts SDHC cards?

-Acid- · 26 October 2016, 20:55

For anyone who wants to know, the sd to ide adapter that i linked to in my last post work fine on the Amiga with SD and Micro SD cards in the photo of the last post. However they do not work if any other devices are connected to ide splitters at the same time, no matter if they are on separate channels or not. So these work but are best suited to be used in wedge setups where you are only going to use one device on the ide port. The LED seems to work properly too.

SnkBitten · 26 October 2016, 21:44

I was using this SATA to IDE Adapter for a while.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I used a 256 GB SSD SATA drive on it which the latest patched scsi.device would see on the A4000's IDE controller, but I had issues with it formatting the drives. I had no issues with it using the IDEFix97 scsi.device but it limited the drive to 128 GB. It was configured as SLAVE and the CF-Card I had was configured as MASTER. I was also using the 4-Way IDE adapter and had a slim DVD-RW running on the additional channel.

Not sure what differences there are between the one I was using and the one you were using, but it worked extremely well for me.

11 September 2016, 02:59	#1
-Acid- Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: South Shields Posts: 812	Sata to IDE adapter question I bought a couple of cheap adapters from China (see picture) to see if they would work with the Amiga. When I tried it out as it came with a 100Gb sata hard drive, the HD LED on my A1200 stays solidly lit from power on and goes straight to the kickstart screen and the system does not see any drive attached. But as you can see from the photos attached, there is a jumper on the back of the adapter. When I open this jumper and try again it goes straight to the kickstart screen again but the HD LED is normal. I loaded the Install disk from Workbench but nothing there on the Workbench screen. However if I load up HDToolbox it does see the drive and at the same time the first partition on the drive shows up on the Workbench screen. I can then quit HDToolbox and access that partition as normal and all the files on it. Does anyone know why the Amiga cannot see drives attached to it until I run HDToolbox and is there a known fix for this? Attached Thumbnails

11 September 2016, 20:49	#5
Kin Hell 0ld0r Git Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Cornwall, UK Posts: 1,570	It's amazing that anyone with an Amiga these days is running a 2GB Boot Partition. This is not a Modern day PC. Iirc, OS3.9 is a approx a 50Mb install with BB1 & 2 in place. Sure, filesystem helps but maintaining such a large partition is very taxing to an Amiga even with an 060 in it. Lean & mean, even on a Modern day PC & nothing goes on C:\ or the Amiga Boot Partition unless it is OS specific. So much easier to maintain, especially on an Amiga. SFS should be fine & indeed PS3, but I've seen folk running these filesystems with the other they were using in place as well. You really should remove these in HDToolbox if only to prove. You also have to be sure the Partitions are fomatted in what ever FileSystem you are using or you're just flogging a dead horse! Irrespective of that, even with the latest FFS in place, providing the Media is Partitioned up to 4GB, all partitions should work fine. Don't forget, any Amiga Software that isn't 4GB+ freindly will not work on the Amiga, even if running SFS or PFS3 & I'm talking Drive specific software like DiskSalv, QuarterBack, etc..... Having said all this, Zetr0 has a seriously valid point about not all adaptors being suitable, just as some CF cards are not. Proper can of worms tbh. edit Meant to ask, what Drive/Partition/media are you booting from to run HDToolbox in order to see the Drive? Last edited by Kin Hell; 12 September 2016 at 00:02.

12 September 2016, 14:03	#10
-Acid- Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: South Shields Posts: 812	Okay I think i'm convinced to give up on sata and look at sd cards instead. Take a look at the photo attached. The two CF cards both work fine in a standard CF adapter but i would like to move onto SD/MicroSD cards as they are cheaper and have higher capacities (32Gb cards are what i'm aiming for). As you can see I have a CF adapter that let's you use SD cards. These two micro sd cards by Kingston (a 2gb SD and a 16gb SDHC card using a micro sd to sd adapter) both work in that SD to CF adapter. However the 32gb Kingston SDHC card is not even detected by the Amiga nor is that reduced size MMC card (512mb). I wasn't expecting the reduced card to work but thought the 32gb card should have. Those are the results on the IDE port. In a pcmcia adapter with cfd and fat95 installed none of them work. So i've been looking at these SD to IDE adapters on ebay. Does anyone have experience with these on the IDE port? I'm obviously looking for them to work with micro sd and sd cards upto 32gb capacity. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/201327300222 Or can anyone recommend a good SD to IDE adapter that accepts SDHC cards? Attached Thumbnails

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11 September 2016, 11:50	#2
Zetr0 Ya' like it Retr0? Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: United Kingdom Age: 49 Posts: 9,768	@-Acid- This is strange - I have quite a few SATA->IDE bridge adaptors like this, amongst other types. Sadly I have trouble getting anything over 60GB to work with these - I think this might be a hard limit with these devices and PIO mode 0. I do have a FASTATA to try these out with since this can do PIO mode 4 - sadly I haven't built that Amiga yet - although it might be because the device (Hard Disk) is expecting a UDMA protocol and simply wont work with PIO modes at all... More testing is required.

11 September 2016, 12:53	#3
Kin Hell 0ld0r Git Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Cornwall, UK Posts: 1,570	100GB media isn't supported by AmigaDOS FastFileSystem unless you run a file system that can deal with over 4GB. If you have a Boot partition already on it, keep it small (100Mb-ish) & install nothing here other than System OS Files. All partitions within the 4GB boundry should work as normal & anything beyond 4GB will require a filesystem to handle it. From first power on, you say you get to the Kickstart screen. - If you 3 Finger Salute her, does she boot normally afterwards?

11 September 2016, 13:21	#4
-Acid- Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: South Shields Posts: 812	The drive is partitioned as 2gb to boot from and then the rest divided up equally into 3 more partitions. Can't remember which file system as i started using PFS3-AIO a couple of months ago for everything but I used to use SFS all the time before that, it's one of those anyway. If I soft reset it still cannot see the drive until I run HDToolbox, I don't have any smaller sata drives to test with though. I have some 40 pin adapters I can try with in one of my towers and if that works then it must be adapter specific. I'll see what I can do this afternoon.

12 September 2016, 00:17	#7
Arnie R.I.P Smudge 18-08-16 Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Leicester/UK Age: 66 Posts: 3,968	I had one of these adapters. Interestingly, it was only sold to me as CD compatible. The jumper was to select Master or slave.

26 October 2016, 20:55	#11
-Acid- Registered User Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: South Shields Posts: 812	For anyone who wants to know, the sd to ide adapter that i linked to in my last post work fine on the Amiga with SD and Micro SD cards in the photo of the last post. However they do not work if any other devices are connected to ide splitters at the same time, no matter if they are on separate channels or not. So these work but are best suited to be used in wedge setups where you are only going to use one device on the ide port. The LED seems to work properly too.

26 October 2016, 21:44	#12
SnkBitten Amithlon Fanatic Join Date: Aug 2015 Location: Lexington, SC / US Posts: 781	I was using this SATA to IDE Adapter for a while. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I used a 256 GB SSD SATA drive on it which the latest patched scsi.device would see on the A4000's IDE controller, but I had issues with it formatting the drives. I had no issues with it using the IDEFix97 scsi.device but it limited the drive to 128 GB. It was configured as SLAVE and the CF-Card I had was configured as MASTER. I was also using the 4-Way IDE adapter and had a slim DVD-RW running on the additional channel. Not sure what differences there are between the one I was using and the one you were using, but it worked extremely well for me.

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