A4000 and SATA to IDE adapter

[Phantom]

Well, all I wanted to do is to get rid of these IDE cables inside my desktop case, just to gain more space inside. So one friend of mine lent me his SATA to IDE adapter he bought. This adapter supposed to work under Amiga, as a guy stated in a thread on Amiga.org's site.

This adapter you can find it here.

I received it today and I tested it. I have good news and bad news.

Good news first:
My Amiga recognised my SATA HD I've connected to; using HDToolBox. I loaded up Workbench and I've already formatted it. So far so good.

Bad news second:
My Amiga refuses to recognise my SATA DVD-ROM as a scsi.device, unit=1 (that's supposed to be the correct one configuration, if you use normal IDE HD and DVD-ROM combination).

I tried to play with the adapter's jumper, it has a Master/Slave jumper, but with no luck.

Thus, it's impossible install AmigaOS 3.9 again in my SATA HD.

Any ideas how I can get these 2 SATA devices to work together?

[Harrison]

I've heard that in some custom configurations no Amigas CD/DVD drives can be very hard to get working if they are on the same chain as the master HDD.

So, if possible on a second chain as master is the best option.

Obviously, for an A4000, this isn't a standard option as the built in IDE is a single channel, 2 device (master/slave) setup. However, you could installed a 2 channel buffered interface to create it. Alternatively you could install a Zorro card with IDE and connect the DVD or HDD to that.

[Phantom]

Thanks Dave for your answer.

So, I have to go for a FastATA then, as it seems the only solution?

[Harrison]

This is only a guess as I've not tried it myself.

It would be good to somehow test if the DVD drive will be detected by the system as the only device on the SATA to IDE controller. But that would require the CD drivers to be setup on floppy disk, which I don't think would fit.

[Phantom]

Yes, I don't think that either. So no way out.

So it seems, that this adapter is only for *one* SATA device somehow?

[Harrison]

Have you also tried 2 SATA HDDs connected to this device? It might just not work with DVD/CD drives.

[Phantom]

I'll try that too.