CF / SD and large drives FAQ

[Daedalus]

Yeah, I've just run some rough tests there and there's far less difference with a CF card than a mechanical drive. When I went from 512 to 8192 (or was it 16384? I can't remember...), it made a massive difference in everyday use, but especially when dealing with large files like archives, virtual hard drives etc., and it made a big difference to the speed of my browser cache back then too.

The test I just did was for writing large files - copying a 40MB file from RAM to an 8k block size partition was about 7 seconds faster than copying the same file to a 512 byte block size partition - around 15% faster, but not nearly as dramatic a difference as I got back in the day.

[Lektroid]

No more slow CF cards for me... Fast SSD all the way...

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[Jope]

Why is everyone else getting success with JM20330 based chinesium sata patas but not me? How many of these seemingly identical reference design based things must I purchase before I get something that is even detected or does not disappear after a reboot?

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Jope

Why is everyone else getting success with JM20330 based chinesium sata patas but not me? How many of these seemingly identical reference design based things must I purchase before I get something that is even detected or does not disappear after a reboot?

I have two that work well and one that doesn't, even if they use the same chip. reflex (another EAB user) lately had the same issues as you that were fixed by purchasing the same unit I have:
https://www.amazon.it/dp/B083LXPF91/

The new adapter has been working well on his Amigas.

As for myself I ended up going back to a standard SD-to-IDE for now, because it's much faster to image and restore my A4000D which has been open on the workbench for almost 3 years now. Might finally switch over to mSATA when and if I can finally close it back again in the case...

BTW I remember doing some speedtests and the mSATA looked massively overkill. The high-speed SD adapters should be plenty fast for PIO2 IDE (even more so for PIO0).

[Jope]

Thanks for the tip. Maybe I'll buy one more then. ;-)

[SmoothRunnings]

So what's a good 32GB CF card to get for an Amiga?

I am running 3.2.1 on my A2000 with my TF536 which came with an 8GB CF card that is being recongized as a Scandisk SDCFH-004G for some reason, though when you read the card the says something different.

[Malakie]

Originally Posted by SmoothRunnings

So what's a good 32GB CF card to get for an Amiga?

I am running 3.2.1 on my A2000 with my TF536 which came with an 8GB CF card that is being recongized as a Scandisk SDCFH-004G for some reason, though when you read the card the says something different.

I have been using two versions, sandisk and Transcend. No problems using them for what you are doing. Only problems I have had is using them in the PCMCIA slot of the A1200 because its tolerances are so tight that you buy 10 cards, half are not recognized while the other half are in that slot.

But for use as an IDE drive and such, no issues at all. If you see the thread I posted about the restoration and build I just finished, I show that system using 2 CF cards, 1 MicroSD card and even an m.2 SSD all on the same Amiga.

The 2 CF cards are both 32 GB and used for my system and work drives, the microSD card is used for games etc and the m.2 SSD I am currently using to keep data, files, archives and such.

Note: I just realized I never posted the info about the new restoration here.. I posted on another site so am going to make a thread here about it you should be able to see shortly. Here is that thread link I just made: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?...21#post1541121

[bluewizard]

I seem to be confused with my Amiga 4000D and an IDE2SD adapter I picked up from Amazon (SD35VC0). This does not seem to have a Master selection or any jumpers that I can see.

I currently have the 3.0 ROMs in my A4000D where a physical spinning disk does boot up.

Do I need to upgrade to 3.2 ROMs to try again? This just does not work get something else? Other?

Thank you for the help!

[patrik]

Originally Posted by Jope

Why is everyone else getting success with JM20330 based chinesium sata patas but not me? How many of these seemingly identical reference design based things must I purchase before I get something that is even detected or does not disappear after a reboot?

Thought I should share the experiences I have had with JM20330 mSATA adapters.

At least in kick 3.0 and 3.1, there appears to be some very early check done in scsi.device which the JM20330 is not booting fast enough to answer to correctly. It is not the spin-up wait which is in seconds (8s on 3.0, 30 on 3.1), but something way earlier: if you add say a Blizzard1230 or 1260 the JM20330 adapter will start work, I guess because those accelerators add a small delay when doing it’s initialization and rainbow-effect very early before scsi.device starts executing.

Cutting the RESET line on the JM20330 board (pin 1 on IDE <-> JM20330 chip) so it doesn’t reset when the Amiga resets makes it work after warm boot, but you still have no drive on cold boot.

Don’t remember if 3.1.4 or 3.2 fixes this, but it is possible as it is very slow to init scsi.device.