Booting from TF1230/1260

[Fenris]

Hi, sorry for the noobish question, but I'm considering either a TF1230 or 1260 (most probably the first one) for an A1200.


I see there's an option for a modified kickstart so to boot directly from the IDE port on the accelerator card, but how does that work?
The option is only available for 3.x or 3.2, but I'm planning to use a kickstart 3.1 on the Amiga.
Does it mean that by using 3.1 I need to use the IDE port on the Amiga board only?
If so, where's the benefit of using the one on the controller?

[Jope]

You can use Doobrey's RomSplit and Remus to add the ehide driver to a 3.1 ROM as well.

Alternatively you can have a small memory card in the internal IDE that has a startup-sequence that runs loadmodule to load ehide.device, so after power on it will quickly load it, reboot and then you can boot off the TerribleFire IDE. You can set the boot priorities of your partitions in such a way that the one on the TF IDE will take precedence over the one on the motherboard IDE and it will be quite automatic.

[Daedalus]

You need a driver for the IDE port on the TF cards that's not present in Kickstart as standard, so the IDE port can only be used once the driver is loaded from the hard drive. So the options are:

- Boot from the internal port with just the Workbench partition on that drive and use the TF1230 IDE port as a second, non-bootable interface for e.g. games, programs, files;

- Boot from the internal port with a bare minimum setup that loads the driver and hands control over to a Workbench installation on the TF1230 IDE port to fully boot;

- Use a modified ROM that contains the driver required so you can cold boot from the TF interface.

Any version of Kickstart can be modified to include the driver, so you should be able to get a modified 3.1 set of ROMs burned and use that.

[Kin Hell]

Originally Posted by Fenris

Hi, sorry for the noobish question, but I'm considering either a TF1230 or 1260 (most probably the first one) for an A1200.


I see there's an option for a modified kickstart so to boot directly from the IDE port on the accelerator card, but how does that work?
The option is only available for 3.x or 3.2, but I'm planning to use a kickstart 3.1 on the Amiga.
Does it mean that by using 3.1 I need to use the IDE port on the Amiga board only?
If so, where's the benefit of using the one on the controller?

This card has it's own ehide.device.

https://www.retropassion.co.uk/produ...a-accelerator/

Buying specific Kickstart ROM's with this ehide.device will allow this particular card to Auto boot from an attached hard drive/device.

Without these ROM's including the ehide.device, you'll need to have a boot floppy to utilise a bootable media from the card.

[Kin Hell]

Wow...three in a row. No Post when I started...

[Fenris]

Well, thank you all that clarifies things a lot.
I guess the concrete benefit of using the TF boot is faster loading times and relatively faster performance?
Now, is it worth the hassle if I'm not interested in extreme performance (i.e. running quake etc...)?

[derSammler]

Due to the small size of the Workbench, boot time is mostly depending on CPU speed. But for loading games, using the IDE port of the TF12x0 is much faster. And you can get even more speed when using SFS/PFS instead of FFS.

[supaduper]

To get the best results out of the TF1230/TF1260, it best to use a buffered adapter then you will get the best experience, obviously you will need to be inventive on how you do this as there is not much room to fit a adapter and a CF card say.
But there are /is small buffered adapters ( Made by Goose) that will sort that problem in conjunction with say an extended/longer IDE cable routed under the floppy drive and out of the Blanking plug, again you can get Blank doors with CF or SD connectivity so you do not have to open the A1200.
And yes you can make your own custom roms using remus or a new custom rom builder program called `Capitoline`, which is great and easy to use with the inbuilt command line

https://imgur.com/a/0mxvb9M

https://imgur.com/DlF23Gj

[wiz12]

Originally Posted by supaduper

To get the best results out of the TF1230/TF1260, it best to use a buffered adapter then you will get the best experience, obviously you will need to be inventive on how you do this as there is not much room to fit a adapter and a CF card say.
But there are /is small buffered adapters ( Made by Goose) that will sort that problem in conjunction with say an extended/longer IDE cable routed under the floppy drive and out of the Blanking plug, again you can get Blank doors with CF or SD connectivity so you do not have to open the A1200.
And yes you can make your own custom roms using remus or a new custom rom builder program called `Capitoline`, which is great and easy to use with the inbuilt command line

https://imgur.com/a/0mxvb9M

https://imgur.com/DlF23Gj

Are these buffered adapters available anywhere?

[supaduper]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Are these buffered adapters available anywhere?

I actually do not know, contact goose and ask him over on Exxos forums

[Kin Hell]

I have two buffered interfaces for sale, one being better orientated for the TF cards.


A1200/600 Buffered IDE Interfaces For Sale