CF->IDE adaptor on a4000, HDD light always on?

WhyreByter

Member
AmiBayer
Joined
Oct 18, 2010
Posts
171
Country
USA
Region
Washington State
I have a CF adaptor I bought on eBay (model V.A1). It works fine (reads/writes), but the HDD activity light (both on the adaptor and the A4000) is always on.

I've found threads about fixing always-off adaptors for a1200s (44-pin), and fixed one myself, but can't find anything about my problem.

The light on the A4000 works fine with a regular HDD, so it seems to be something with the adaptor. Any suggestions on how to fix?

Thanks!
WhyreByter
 
Are you using a CD Drive on the cable as well? I've read of this happening with some CDROM/CF combinations.

Steve.
 
Steve is quite right. I went through EXACTLY the same problem just today.

With my last compactflash to IDE adapter, I found that the only way it would work was if I set it to SLAVE and my Dvdburner (also IDE) to MASTER.... which is a little irish yet worked.

Just today I found the opposite problem with a different compact flash to IDE adapter.... with this new one, if I set it to SLAVE it would not appear in the early boot menu, and would not boot, yet it would be present when Workbench booted (from another drive) and worked fine. Also, from power on to power off, the HD activity light would stay on constantly.

By making the new adapter MASTER and my DVDrom SLAVE, the compact flash card would then boot and the activity light worked as normal.

Try swapping the MASTER and SLAVE settings and see if this helps.
 
Sure enough... If I disconnect the CD-ROM drive, the CF adapter activity light works properly.

The CF adapter is one of those "dual CF card" jobbies, but the second side doesn't have a socket. The only jumper is a "Master/Slave, Slave/Master" jumper, which affects the mapping of the two CF cards.

If I switch the jumper, then it isn't seen by the system...

I think that the second CF card, even though it's not actually there, is causing it to interfere with the CD-ROM drive. I guess my options are to find a different adapter, or try to modify this one to make it truly a single-CF unit, with a master/slave selector.

Awesome...

Thanks, guys!
WhyreByter
 
Well, I tried another CF adapter (made by Syba), and have the same symptoms. Can someone give me a model number for an adapter that they're 100% sure works perfectly (activity light, etc.)?

Thanks!
WhyreByter
 
My pleasure.

The ones Nathan at Amigamaniac sells work perfectly and are only a few dollars.

Got to www.amigamaniac.com, I think the image is clear enough to read the make (I would tell you, but all mine are sealed in machines!).

If you cannot make out the make let me know and I will give him a call and find out the make for you.
 
@abraXXious - Thanks, and shoot. That CF->IDE 40-pin adapter is *exactly* the same one that I had first.

So, I wonder if it's just something weird with my CD-ROM drive that makes it not play nicely with the CF adapters? Which is odd, because it works fine with the HDD.

If I didn't want to get OS 3.9 on it, I'd consider just dumping the CD-ROM for now... :(

Thanks!
WhyreByter
 
Hey there,

Well, the Amigamaniac ones are the ones I had to set the cd/dvd device to master and the hd to slave to get them to work properly.

Other than that, it may indeed be your cd device causing issues. Silly question, but you dont have your cd device set to CABLE SELECT by accident do you?
 
I have ALWAYS seen this behaviour on A4000 IDE ports with 2 devices attached, doesn't matter if it's a combination of CF/CD, HD/CD or any other ATAPI device.

Only way to fix it is to install IDEFix, that clears it right up for me.
 
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