[1200 3.2 / 47.96] One more with PCMCIA CF issues

[Rataplan626]

My first post here I recently bought my first Amiga in almost 30 years. My A500 failed in 1994 and while in hindsight I think it was failing RAM which could've been an easy fix, it was thrown away like a lot of us did back in the day...

Anyway, I recently bought an A1200 revision 2B, Escom model, which already had Kickstart 3.2 / 47.96 ROMS in it when I bought it. I removed the floppy-drive bogwires on the motherboard, and modded a PC drive I had lying around which works perfectly with any trackloader so far. The Escom drive I got does not have the Ready signal. It also came with an Apollo 1230/40/8MB (ie with PCMCIA issues when using 8MB). I installed AmigaOS 3.2 on an internal 4GB CF, and all is working pretty damn good. I have a 3Com PCMCIA NIC with it and it works perfecly fine as long as I jumper the Apollo to 4MB.

Now, I also got with it a SanDisk PCMCIA - SD adapter, and a Pretec (?) PCMCIA CF adapter. I think, after reading about 20 threads on several fora I need an idiot check. I can't get it to work.

CF adapter:

• CFD1.33 and FAT95 installed, CF0 mounted
• 4GB CF cleaned with diskpart and formatted as FAT32 (on Windows), both Kingston and Transcend
• When inserted, one out of maybe 10 times I get a CF0: uninitialized icon, but I can't do anything with / to the card
• prepcard will ALWAYS recognize the card and tell me the brand and size correctly. This makes me assume the reader itself is atleast compatible with Amiga, but makes me wonder why the CF0 device is detected only seldom
• HDDReport gives errors on compactflash.device on TD_READ64 (command not supported by device) and HD_SCSICMD error 29 (no disk in the drive)
• hdtoolbox compactflash.device does show an unknown device, but only when AmigaOS recognized an uninitialized CF0 device
• tried with both Kingston and Transcend CF cards (Transcend not on the picture). Both work perfectly fine when used as internal CF
• As of yet I'm still using the original PSU, but it's voltages are pretty good: the 12V line is about 12.8 internally, and the 5V line is 4.96V, measured at the floppy drive. That should be enough to keep a CF card at it's 5V specs rather than 3.3. A new switched PSU is underway though.
• Through one of the threads about this I found Boot-CFD-FAT95-v7.adf which is basically a bootfloppy with CFD1.33 and FAT95 preinstalled, same results as when booting from my own CF
• cardpatch and cardreset TICKS 50 are in my Startup-Sequence, doesn't make a difference at all (although cardreset does help when using network card and rebooting for obvious reasons)

I also got a Sandisk SD card adapter, which would be even more convenient for me to use. I sourced some old SD cards from 32MB () up to 512MB, all non-SDHC. When the adapter is installed, prepcard reports nothing until I actually insert an SD, and it will always report a Panasonic card. So it DOES see something inserted, and my assumption is that it kind of emulates or translates to a Panasonic card.
My Amiga is NOT recapped yet as so far it works perfectly fine otherwise, and the 3Com NIC works perfectly fine every single time I use it, as are the CF/SD cards being recognized by prepcard. So I have the feeling it's not a hardware issue at amiga / adapter level, maybe the CF card itself though.

I tried softkicking into Kickstart v3.1 rev 40.68, to see if that made a difference but I can't get skick to work with that, when rebooting it hangs with a yellow screen. KS1.2/1.3 work fine. Any recommended alternatives to skick to rule my KS47.96 roms out?

So I am out of ideas. That leaves me with 3 questions:

• Does anyone else have issues with PCMCIA - CF / SD in combination with OS3.2 / kickstart 47.96?
• Will the CF issue most probably be just an incompatible cf-card issue? (and I mean the storage card, not the pcmcia adapter)
• Not being able to find pretty much any information on it at all: did anyone ever got a PCMCIA - SD adapter working at all?

[solarmon]

What revision is your A1200?

My Boot-CFD-FAT95-v7.adf boot image is only really meant to bypass the installed Workbench OS, as I have found in the past that ClassicWB loads something that will clash with the PCMCIA slot.

If the cards are still not recognised even when using Boot-CFD-FAT95-v7.adf, then that suggests that the card itself is not hardware compatible, even though it is able to detect it in prepcard. Although, I have not tested Boot-CFD-FAT95-v7.adf with KS 3.2.

Some CF cards (or SD with CF adapters) just aren't electrically compatible with the PCMCIA slot of an A600 or A1200.

I would suggest trying different CF/SD card and PCMCIA adapter.

[Lisko]

Yes from my experience finding a compatible cf card is not so easy. Kickstart version or the fact that it works in the internal ide makes no difference. My genuine 8gb sandisk silver card doesn't work in pcmcia adapter while an old 4gb Kodak works fine.

[Rataplan626]

Ah, forgot to mention. A1200 revision 2B. Updating my post with that.
I'll try to find more CF cards. Of course I could buy a tested kit from an Amiga shop, but the sport for me is to just 'find' things I need (or want ).

About the PCMCIA SD reader - would you suggest the reader itself is not compatible or also the actual SD cards themselves? What strucks me is that prepcard actually 'sees' the cards, both SD and CF, which makes me believe the readers itself are compatible.

[solarmon]

Originally Posted by Rataplan626

Ah, forgot to mention. A1200 revision 2B. Updating my post with that.
I'll try to find more CF cards. Of course I could buy a tested kit from an Amiga shop, but the sport for me is to just 'find' things I need (or want ).

About the PCMCIA SD reader - would you suggest the reader itself is not compatible or also the actual SD cards themselves? What strucks me is that prepcard actually 'sees' the cards, both SD and CF, which makes me believe the readers itself are compatible.

The readers/adapters are typically passive. It is down to how electrically compatible the CF or SD card are. It seems reading product ID is OK on the controller chips, but when it comes to storage access then that is when the compatibility becomes an issue.

[Rataplan626]

For anyones info, it turned out to be the CF card in the end. I got a 512MB Sandisk Ultra II from a friend, and that worked right away! 512MB is more than enough to transfer data and I'm happy that sorted out and my actual CF reader turns out to work. Thanks all!