cable troubles ide cf card and harddisk a4000
 

Hi all.

I have been trying to make my ide cf card work in combination with a 120gb harddisk on my quite standard a4000/040. It just has a bit more memory and a videocard.

To do so I needed to use a longer cable and a male-male genderchanger.
Since my cf cardreader is female and standard ide-cables are all female too.
For that I use the very simple and cheap store-bought solution wich basicly looks like 40pins through a piece of plastic.
But whatever length or type ide cable I use (and I have quite the variety), it wont boot the cf card.
All the lights go on and nothing happens.
Though it should start with the yellow light off. This will then start too blink with data usage and it will boot.
I know this, since it works perfectly with the short 2,5cm cable I got with the cardreader.
Wich is a just a simple 2,5-3cm 40p cable with a male and female connector krimped on it.

Now I read that the problem could be the cable length.
But even with a 3-4cm piece of 40pin cable I got from some old external hd and the genderchanger, without the 120gb hd, it still wont boot.
So I am beginning to suspect the genderchanger.

Does this make sense? Since they are just pins. Nothing more to it.

Can anyone reflect on this for me?
Thanks!

If the pins of the gender changer are just straight through, that can't work for what you're trying to do as you're reversing the pins. Because there are two rows of pins involved, the gender changer will connect pin 2 to pin 1, 1 to 2, 3 to 4, 4 to 3 and so on. Naturally this can't work. The best option would be to get a CF IDE adaptor that has an IDE header on it instead, maybe something like this.

I just took the male connector of the short cable and krimped it on a long 40p ide cable at the same distance it would be on the short cable.
It boots now with the 120gb harddisk at the long end.
But it still doesnt see it in hdtoolbox.

Is it even possible to use together on the same ide cable?

Thanks. I firgured out it had to be that too. just had it laying around and didnt think about it.

Yeah, it's one of those things that isn't immediately obvious until you have to think about it. As for working on the same cable, that might or might not work because it's depending on the CF supporting master/slave use. Try swapping their current configuration if you have the option on your adaptor as maybe the CF card only supports one arrangement, but I think it might be a case of the CF card simply not supporting two devices on the one cable.

Just chiming in with Daedalus: Most CF cards don't take well to being run in tandem with another device.

The card reader has a jumper for changing the slave master.
I didnt try that yet. I will :)

I did search some more and found someone who got a cf and cd rom to work. But it gave errors. Cant find anyone trying it in combination with a hd.
I also think it just doesnt play well together.

And what about with an ide splitter?
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=599
It seems like it should work like seperate channels.
But I have no experience with it.

I really just want to boot from a cf. And have my data on a large ide.
I also have a scsi board, but no large 50p hd.. And I dont know how these 50 to 80pins adapters will work with this hardware.. probably the try and error :P
Better clear this up then ;)

I don't know if an IDE splitter would help. It really depends on the nature of the incompatibility, and without knowing you can't be sure. IDE splitters still depend on the devices following the specifications, and CF cards often skip big chunks of the specs as they're normally the only device connected to a bus. But if the problem is purely something like missing master/slave support in the card, it could work.

I have a SCSI setup, I can highly recommend using that instead if you can get your hands on drives or adaptors for reasonable money. I use IDE hard drives attached with 50-pin SCSI to 40-pin IDE adaptors that I bought years ago. They apparently work with CF cards too but they're very expensive these days. Alternatively, you might be lucky and find a CF-SCSI adaptor that you could use if your SCSI board is bootable, or if you don't mind using a microSD instead of CF card, this kind of device might be interesting...

I have a CF-Card (IDE) and DVD-RW (IDE) drive on my A4000T and had used it on my A4000D previously. CF is Master, DVD-RW is Slave with the CF connected to the middle connection on the cable and the DVD on the end connection.

I had used a different CF-Card (IDE) on my A4000D with a Hard-Drive (IDE) when I was setting up my A4000D (copying the boot CF-Card SYS: volume to a newly created boot partition on the HD.

I had also used at one time a 4-way IDE adapter on both the A4000D and A4000T with the CF-Card and HD on one channel and a DVD-RW on the second channel by itself.

I have read that some CF-Card readers don't like to be anything other than Master so if you haven't, you may want to try the CF as Master and the HD as slave.

I tried it as slave, but then it wont work at all. It will do exactly as with the harddisk attached.
So I have to use the cf alone and as master.
guess I just have a crappy cf-reader ;) One of the early amigakit ones.

That ide on scsi bus is quite interesting. Never heard about i before.
I found an old thread of someone on amibay selling them and a buyer with a thread how it works for him.
http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php...s-from-frodegh
Too bad they are probably all sold by now and were allready expensive then.
For that money, I could get a few 50 to 80/68p adapters and some used 80/68p 15k disks to test with.

Meanwhile I am using uae and my trusty old wb3.9 cd to set up a 120gb ide harddrive with sfs and a 500mb first partition.
So I can use the hd as standalone.

See what that brings. And by doing so brush up on my amiga skills. :)
It has been very long ago it was 1992 when I was 12 and could set up a whole amiga with my eyes closed.