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Tiago
12th August 2008, 18:11
I notice that the converters from IDE to compaq flash to Amiga looks the same to the ones to PC. i wonder if is there any difference....
To amiga, we can find this adapter at 15/20 pounds... but to PC, in ebay from hong kong, we can by at 1 pound...

Looks that the amiga one is female and has an angle of 90 degrees. And the Pc version has no angle and is male, but with a ide cable female, female, we can use it.

So any reason not to buy the version from hong kong?

Harrison
13th August 2008, 00:13
I'm also wondering the same thing. I actually want to mount a CF card reader at the rear of my A600 and A1200 so I can switch between different OS setups very easily by just swapping cards over. This would therefore require an adapter attached using a ribbon cable.

Teho
13th August 2008, 05:29
I know the IDE ports in A600 and A1200 are not quite the same as the PC standard. But whether or not a connector for PC will work in those Amigas I have no idea, but I'd guess not. The Amiga connector does have 44 pins to the PC standard's 40.

Harrison
13th August 2008, 09:50
Except most people are using a buffered IDE interface which then gives you both 44pin 2.5" IDE and 40pin 3.5" IDE connectors for up to 4 devices (when used with IDEFix).

I've had a look on ebay and the CF to IDE adapters are only a couple of pounds at most. I can't see why they would be any different to those sold specifically for the Amiga market.

I also found out that CF cards basically use the same setup as an IDE interface, so that CF to IDE interface is basically just a straight through device to route the connections between the card and IDE interface.

Not so sure about SD to IDE interfaces though. I think they should also work if they present the card as a standard IDE HD to the system. SD cards are also smaller so won't need as large a hole in the case if mounting the port externally, and also cheaper that CF cards.

I'm currently not sure which to go for. CF or SD to IDE. Do dual interfaces exist that take both?

Puni/Void
13th August 2008, 10:35
I've got a cheap IDE to CF adapter installed in my Amiga 600. Works like a charm. It's noiseless, fast, and it doesn't take up much space at all. Beside this, I've got a CF PCMCIA card from Amigakit as well. With this card, I can easily transfer files between the 600 and the PC.

IDE to CF adapters are non Amiga specific hardware. Most should work without any bigger problems after what I've heard, but I could be wrong. Some items on eBay tend to get more expensive when the word "Amiga" is part of the headline. ;) On other forums, I've read that people have ordered their IDE to CF cards from Hong Kong. :)

One problem is the CF-cards themselves. There are apparantly some issues with certain memory cards. When I was about to purchase, I used the following compatibility list as a guide:

CF-card Compatibility Guide (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=28249)

Hope this was of some help. :)

Tiago
13th August 2008, 11:31
I just bought one from Hong Kong. 1 pound .... i will wait and see if works,
i let you now after.

ppill
13th August 2008, 12:20
There's no such thing as Amiga CF>IDE or PCMCIA>CF adapters. They work the same on both the PC and Amiga.

You're only going to have issues with cheap OEM/Noname/Fake CompactFlash cards. I've been using a SanDisk ULTRAII 1GB (PCMCIA) and a Transcend 2GB 75x (IDE) for a while now with great results.

Get cheap adapters but go for quality with the CF cards.

Harrison
13th August 2008, 16:40
I've heard it is dependent on the cards too. The CF to IDE interface is basically just a straight through adapter so it does make sense that the quality of the memory card itself is the most important part.

ppill
13th August 2008, 19:42
The CF to IDE interface is basically just a straight through adapter...

The same thing apllies to PCMCIA adapters. It's sad that people get ripped off buying "Amiga compatible ones" at silly prices.

JLPedro
22nd August 2008, 09:49
Just bought this piece of gear that looks great (can't wait to trie it on the amiga), it's a SD to IDE adapter that supports up to 8GB SD Cards (all type) for $12,49 USD (From Hong Kong), if it works on the amiga i might buy some more (usefull on the pc too), as SD card are getting cheaper all te time (much cheaper and easy to find than CF Cards). Here's the PDF:

http://vlrqyg.blu.livefilestore.com/y1pyCKrs-OYBhfywCQQ3KQSEVl1-Rs_-NdqYU2ZlrfjVpzWMfUnKR5aATBvc5ypamMVqC3PeRdl4AQ/SD2IDE.pdf?download

JLPedro
14th September 2008, 23:23
Tried the adapter mentioned above, and on both the Amiga and PC it's recognized and works fine (not as fast as a CF Card trough, but maybe because of the SD card used, it's a cheap one... 2GB). Will buy a 4GB and a fastest one. :dry:

Harrison
15th September 2008, 15:03
I think CF cards are generally faster than SD cards. And PC Pro recently ran an extensive test comparing speeds of different makes and models of SD card and discovered that the so called fast SD cards that claim things like 66x faster speeds were not actually that much faster than cheaper standard speed ones. The only real factor is quality as good quality known makes will be reliable and retain your data, whereas cheap or unknown makes will corrupt or stop working more often.

JLPedro
15th September 2008, 22:53
You are probably right. But here in Portugal CF cards are much more expensive and smaller in size compared to SD, so i don't mind loosing some speed. On the PC the test was made using a standard ide cable so the speed was limited to pio modes, with 80 wires cable the adapter is capable of UltraDMA data transfer speeds, have to test with 80 wire cable. On the Amiga doesn't matter as the speed of the transfers with an A1200 020 6mb is probably the same with CF cards or SD cards... probably... :).

Harrison
16th September 2008, 00:05
It definitely doesn't matter so much on the Amiga. Unless you upgrade an A1200 with one of the fast buffered IDE interfaces (the expensive ones that also attach so some of the Amiga's custom chips), the standard A1200 IDE port, or a cheap standard buffered IDE interface will only be able to sustain a transfer speed of a couple of MB at most.