Returning after absence. A few questions regarding file system and so on.

[phiwer]

Hello!

It's been 11 years since I sold my amiga 4000, and I just recently bought an amiga 1200 again. The plan is to use the amiga for coding (apps and demo), and as such I've bought an accelerator card.

Next on my list of Wantings is the following:

1) Compact Flash as replacement for a HD.

- Question 1:

Does it matter where I buy the device from? There are cheap connectors from dealextreme, but not sure how reliable they are? Anyone else with experience from this place, or perhaps specifically with this CF adapter.

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/compactflash-cf-card-to-ide-hard-disk-adapter-card-ide-44-10310

Amigakit has a complete kit for 32 Euros, which seems like <snip>, unless they are more reliable than dealextreme's products. I obviously want to support the amiga dealers out there, but if the price difference is large for a generic product, then I don't see the point of buying specifically from amigakit. Perhaps someone can enlighten me on this issue (pros/cons)?:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=883{45}129{48}134

- Question 2:

Which file system should be used today? When I left the amiga scene 11 years ago, there were a number of file systems being developed, and I seem to recall a few of them being mentioned in threads. What are the pros/cons of the file systems today? Does it matter which type of medium I use (CF/HD etc.)?

- Question 3:

Next up is the question of network connection between the Amiga and my network. Amigakit has two options; wireless, and wired. Does the wireless support WPA2? Any problems with the wireless network card in general?

- Question 4:

PCMCIA adapter for compact flash cards (large file transfers, party transfers etc). Same question here regarding amigakit vs dealextreme, anyone with experience?

- Question 5:

Hard disk size. If I remember correctly, the amiga hard drives had a limit at one point (4 Gig). Is this still true or can aos 3.1 (I'll be using this) use larger disks (CF/HD etc)?

- Question 6:

I need a scandoubler!!! If you happen to be Jens reading this: Get your arse in gear! I want my Indivision Aga MKII

I appreciate the help!

 

[cugar124]

Ref the CF card

Ref the CF card

Hi Buddy
Welcome back, As far as the CF card goes as long as you have the 3.1 roms it won't matter I bought the kit from Amikit for my A4000 but found the same kit on Evil bay for less than half the price and its the same kit.

What I would advise is the Kingston CF card they have the best write ups.

I have also bought a £2.15 CF reader to fit one of my spare zorro port slots it works a treat.

so I could have bought the kit for just over Ten Pounds.

Kind regards

Al

 

[phiwer]

Hi Buddy
Welcome back, As far as the CF card goes as long as you have the 3.1 roms it won't matter I bought the kit from Amikit for my A4000 but found the same kit on Evil bay for less than half the price and its the same kit.

What I would advise is the Kingston CF card they have the best write ups.

I have also bought a £2.15 CF reader to fit one of my spare zorro port slots it works a treat.

so I could have bought the kit for just over Ten Pounds.

Kind regards

Al

Thank you!

I ordered said hw last night!

 

[Harrison]

Avoid Kingston CF cards from my experience. A 3 I own refused to work properly with Amigas. Get Sandisk CF cards to guarantee they will work and will continue working. Very reliable.

And just grab a cheap CF to IDE interface from ebay. Chinese sellers have them on there for a couple of pounds and they work perfectly. Will save you some money.

Question 2:

Which file system should be used today? When I left the amiga scene 11 years ago, there were a number of file systems being developed, and I seem to recall a few of them being mentioned in threads. What are the pros/cons of the file systems today? Does it matter which type of medium I use (CF/HD etc.)?

Standard Amiga file system still has the 4GB limitation, but you can now use a third party file system to get around this. Use the SFS filesystem, which is free and allows any size of HDD.

I recommend making the first boot partition under 1GB and formatting it with the standard Workbench FFS file system to ensure it is reliable and can always be read by the system. Then make any additional partitions whatever size you like and format them using SFS. Tutorials and guides on how to do this can be found on here, as well as on the classicamiga wiki and on EAB. If you need actual links to tutorials say and I will post some up for you.

Question 3:

Next up is the question of network connection between the Amiga and my network. Amigakit has two options; wireless, and wired. Does the wireless support WPA2? Any problems with the wireless network card in general?

A 16bit PCMCIA network card will work with the A1200. If you get one with a Prism chipset it should work. And all the software you need to make it work can be obtained free, although if you want the easy root buy the network kit from Amigakit as the software is much easier to setup and works well.

You can also use Wi-Fi PCMCIA cards as another option, to remove the need for wired networks. I use a Netgear MA401 and it works perfectly. Other wireless network cards verified as working by the Amiga community are:

D-Link DWL-650
Linksys WPC11
Netgear MA401 (RA)
Proxim 8430
Proxim 8433-05
Proxim 8434-05

Question 4:

PCMCIA adapter for compact flash cards (large file transfers, party transfers etc). Same question here regarding amigakit vs dealextreme, anyone with experience? :-D

You can use any 16bit PCMCIA to CF card adapter with the A1200. The best software to use with it is Amigakit's EasyADF software, but there is alternative free software that works just as well, but takes more setting up, available on Aminet. Some tutorials on how to set that up were posted in the AmiOracle section a while back so have a search.

Question 5:

Hard disk size. If I remember correctly, the amiga hard drives had a limit at one point (4 Gig). Is this still true or can aos 3.1 (I'll be using this) use larger disks (CF/HD etc)?

See the top of this post. 4GB limited by FFS built into Workbench, but you can remove this limited by using a third party file system like SFS.

Question 6:

I need a scandoubler!!! If you happen to be Jens reading this: Get your arse in gear! I want my Indivision Aga MKII :-D

Some members on Amibay have some Indivisions available, so post a wanted advert and see if any bit.

Alternately take a look at a cheap external solution called the GBS-8220. I've recently ordered one of these, and other Amibay members have recently received their's and have been testing them with good results. An ebay BIN sale for these if interested is: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-ARCAD...935?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item3a6ac9a0af

Hope that helps.

 

[Justin]

if you are going to do coding/serious things with your amiga with lots of reading/writing and deleting, i'd say DO NOT get a CF card, it won't be reliable enough for you and will corrupt/lose your data.

it's just not what cf cards are supposed to do, playing games perfect, coding? i wouldn't risk it.

 

[Harrison]

True. Traditionally memory cards have a finite number of rewrites before blocks start to become corrupt and won't allow writing again.

Although more recent cards, such as SD Class 10 or UHS1 cards are not meant to suffer from this in the same way, but I don't know how true that is. They do still have a theoretical maximum number of writes, but the minimum this is will be 100,000 times, and for better quality cards like Sandisk it will be 10x that number, so you could need to be using the card heavily for a long time before you hit that figure.

 

[thgill]

Although more recent cards, such as SD Class 10 or UHS1 cards are not meant to suffer from this in the same way, but I don't know how true that is. They do still have a theoretical maximum number of writes, but the minimum this is will be 100,000 times, and for better quality cards like Sandisk it will be 10x that number, so you could need to be using the card heavily for a long time before you hit that figure.

Since AmigaOS 3.x doesn't use any kind of virtual memory system, it would probably be years and years of heavy daily use before you saw any troubles with any modern memory cards.


I think thats a worthwhile compromise in comparison to noisy and power hungry hard drives.

 

[Justin]

so you guys have never had a cf card suddenly go wonky for no reason?

 

[phiwer]

True. Traditionally memory cards have a finite number of rewrites before blocks start to become corrupt and won't allow writing again.

Although more recent cards, such as SD Class 10 or UHS1 cards are not meant to suffer from this in the same way, but I don't know how true that is. They do still have a theoretical maximum number of writes, but the minimum this is will be 100,000 times, and for better quality cards like Sandisk it will be 10x that number, so you could need to be using the card heavily for a long time before you hit that figure.

I've bought this card (4GB version):

http://www.transcend-info.com/Products/ModDetail.asp?ModNo=174&LangNo=0

It says on the technical page:

Durability:
10,000 insertion/removal cycles

Is that the same as max writes? If that's the case, it would seem that I should use this card in my digital camera and buy a Sandisk instead.

---------- Post added at 08:48 ---------- Previous post was at 08:47 ----------

so you guys have never had a cf card suddenly go wonky for no reason?

What brand did you use? Was this in an amiga or camera? I obviously don't want my amiga hd to go to waste, so I'd appreciate all input.

 

[thgill]

so you guys have never had a cf card suddenly go wonky for no reason?

Sure. However have you never had a Hard drive just go tits up?

I have had plenty of them over the years develop problems.

I've bought this card (4GB version):

http://www.transcend-info.com/Products/ModDetail.asp?ModNo=174&LangNo=0

It says on the technical page:

Durability:
10,000 insertion/removal cycles

Is that the same as max writes? If that's the case, it would seem that I should use this card in my digital camera and buy a Sandisk instead.

I am pretty sure thats talking about the mechanical aspect and inserting and removing the card from a device. Not read or writes.

 

[Justin]

@thgill, yes m8 you are right, it can and does happen with hard drives as well

i had heard from quite a few sources the CF cards were a bit prone to corruption on the Amiga if used for more than the odd gaming session, and as the OP was talking about doing some coding etc he should be aware of this potential issue.

 

[thgill]

i had heard from quite a few sources the CF cards were a bit prone to corruption on the Amiga if used for more than the odd gaming session, and as the OP was talking about doing some coding etc he should be aware of this potential issue.

I guess it can happen to any media.


However, I bet some of these cases of corruption stems from: 1. Sh*t CF cards (Kingston, I am looking at you) 2. Crap poor file systems (FFS) 3. Incorrect MaxTransfer settings.



IMHO if you use quality media, a decent file system (I like SFS) and don't fubar up the MaxTransfer settings, its every bit as reliable as a hard disk.