SATA controller for Amiga computers?

[cloverskull]

@Xanxi when I use my CSMK3 SCSI my computer feels completely different than when I use any of the IDE solutions. To me, HDD speed has a very understated impact in the overall computing experience. To each their own, for sure, but I would still love to find a way to use an m.2 or similar direct on a CPU board.

 

[dalek]

@cloverskull It's not throughput that gets you getter performance it's SCSI DMA. The big difference is with IDE the CPU has to sit there waiting for the (relatively) slow transfer rather than doing something useful. With DMA, the CPU is free to continue doing other things that are relevant to to the "feel" of it, like processing what it has just received, window updates etc.

The reason noone has done native SATA is that the HBA or "controller" part that sits between the CPU and the storage device is not easy unless you use an off the shelf SATA controller chip. Those chips all "speak" PCI. You don't have the benefit of the older SCSI tech like the NCR 53C700 line that natively "speak" the motorolla bus protocol.

Sure you can look at converting from PCI to Zorro but that's already done with e.g. mediator and prometheus solutions... the issue there is your 680x0 CPU doesn't have fast access to the PCI side. So the only real way forward is to implement something like prometheus not on the zorro bus but directly on the CPU bus (socket) to speak PCI. I don't think anyone is interested in doing that. You would also need to implement drivers that support DMA.

The even less palatable option is using some SATA FPGA IP and developing a custom solution which is a huge amount of engineering.

All other current solutions just translate SATA to plain old CPU driven IDE. So they will all have the same "slow" feel when compared to something that has SCSI DMA natively like the A3000/T/4000T, or CPU cards. That's why using an ordinary old A3000 with ~3MB/s SCSI DMA can "feel" better than a system with 6-7MB/s IDE on a modern accelerator.

@Micam At the end of the day an .adf is like 900kb, which can be copied in less than 1sec on most systems. What else are you doing with your system that needs throughput more than 3MB/s? (toaster flyer excepted).

 

[cloverskull]

Ah, thanks for the explanation. That makes a lot more sense, now it's less mysterious why people haven't been making things like these.

 

[JHanna]

@dalek

Thanks very much for the detailed explanation. It makes so much sense now!

So basically what I need for my A4000T is a SATA to 50-pin SCSI adapter.

Yikes - those are ridiculously expensive.

 

[LazarX]

Hi

I am sure that nobody really knows this, but why is there no SATA controllers for classic Amiga computers? When new Amiga hardware comes out, it's always based around an IDE (PATA) controller.

So is SATA under an expensive patent or i any other ways to expensive to implement on classic hardware?

I know that there are converters from IDE to SATA and SCSI to SATA

/Michael

There does not exist the chipset to power a SATA controller the Motorola chips can't hack it. Also until very recently SATA drives were too large to be handled by the Amiga's Kickstart chips.

 

[8 Bit Dreams]

Yes, that's true. Implementation of large drives started with Kickstart 3.1.4, earlier Kickstarts wasn't able to operate them. (Well, at least preinstalled FFS wasn't able to)...

 

[bdb]

Years ago (2010-2016) in a Galaxy far away (Cape Girardeau, MO and Guam) I used my CSPPC with its SCSI-3 interface to get 30+ MB/s speeds using an SCSI-2-IDE adapter in combination with an IDE-to-SATA adapter and achieved 30-38 MB/s access speeds and documented the speeds in the Hyperion OS4.1 forum (I also used an OS3.9 partition, but didn't write about that experience.

The speed was nice and gave a silent experience (using a Noctua PSU and case fan on my A4000T). I realized that both the SCSI-3 speed and OS4.1 we're not that fun. I now do all my Big Box builds with SSDs using a $10 USD IDE2SATA adapter because the cost per megabyte ratio is better, and because CF, SD and TF (uSD} cards were not, to the best of my quite poor knowledge, designed for rapid R/W random access needed by an Operating System. Small SOC systems were designed to use TF cards, and the price of a 128 MB SSD vs a 128 MB TF can be competitive, but SATA SSDs look, feel and run, to me, like they belong in an Amiga Computer. This is just my personal choice.

 

[StrongARM]

but SATA SSDs look, feel and run, to me, like they belong in an Amiga Computer.

Depends on what exactly you mean by that.

SSD is available in various formats...

 

[bdb]

I mean that, to me, they feel closer to the modern equivalent to a 2.5 inch HDD than a CF or SD card, requiring a less conspicuous adapter and fitting in to the brackets of an A600/1200 Amiga. They may look out of place in a big box Amiga, but less so than a camera storage card, vide supra.

 

[StrongARM]

They do, because there have no kinda mechanical parts anymore...
But there is also a huge speed difference between SATA m.2. SSM, NVME SSM (m.2, m.3, u.3 etc) and 2,5" SSD drives (normal SSDs).

 

[bdb]

Not on a PIO 0 Amiga IDE bus, as "PIO 0" in the context of IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) refers to the lowest and slowest data transfer mode using Programmed Input/Output, a method where the CPU handles each data transfer, making it less efficient than later modes like UDMA.

 

[StrongARM]

Yeah, pio mode 0 is really ooooooold.

 

[bdb]

Yeah, pio mode 0 is really ooooooold.

Hence, all the types of SATA and SSDs, SATA M.2, SSM, NVME SSM (m.2, m.3, u.3 etc) and 2,5" SSD drives (normal SSDs) easily saturate the bus - this includes the 10+ year old 2.5" HDDs I use on my old builds, that still look good in comparison to solid state "cards" favored by the masses.

 

[DarkHood]

I just ordered an m.2 to ide adapter... hoping it lets me plug in a 1tb ssd.

I thinks it’s possible to split it up so your 1tb drive appears as multiple drive letters as I don’t think the Amiga can see the full 1tb

 

[bdb]

I believe that 2 TB may be the limit. I can't say for sure at the moment without testing, but I use a 1 TB Team Group SSD in my A4000D using OS 3.2.2.1. I do have an unused 3 TB 3.5" HDD To test, but it will take a few minutes to set up. [I keep the entire TOSEC collection for access on one partition, but alot remains unused]

Update, neither a 3 TB nor 4 TB HDD are recognized, but using the 4 TB drive, and connecting it to WinUAE, I can see 2 TBs of it.

 

[StrongARM]

I believe that 2 TB may be the limit.

Me too.

 

[bdb]

Since "we" are in the AmiRant forum, I tried yesterday to ascertain this information via the web, quickly by using an LLM, but found conflicting results: Deepseek said 2 TB if the TDx64 was used (not understanding that FFS was 64-bit enabled and that PFS & SFS can't be applied if the computer does not actually recognize the drive), ChatGPT got it wrong - but at least said PFS & SFS could access up to 2 TB, Perplexity got it wrong, and Gemini also got it wrong but stated that PFS3 could partition 128 TB, which is absurd as it also said SFS was limited to 128 GB - I've used both on my old OS 4.1FE with one 500 and another 750 GB HDDs, way higher than 128 GB.

I did a quick check of my AmigaOS 3.2 book (f*cker has no index), and couldn't find the answer under file systems.

Lastly, I tried the internal A4000D IDE, the LIDE (TF4060), Buddha and Matze's CP-IDE-LAN card, and none recognized my 3 TB or 4 TB SATA HDDs (RAID 5 backup drives for my (vintage Synology) intranet NAS devices.

In summary, LLMs don't follow the Amiga scene, WinUAE is damned helpful, and Amigas see [hear] what they want to see [hear] and disregards the rest.

[Paraphrased from Simon and Garfunkel - the Boxer "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."]

**Dudes, it's a rainy Sunday here and pontificating is likely also done by a Pontiff on Sundays.

 

[StrongARM]

On the contrary to that, I change from 2 TB to 2 TiB.

 

[bdb]

On the contrary to that, I change from 2 TB to 2 TiB.

Yawn...

 

[alexh]

I think the main reason that there were no SATA controllers was that you need a quite expensive FPGA with SATA compatible SERDES I/O and then you need an open source AHCI controller that sits on top of these I/O inside the FPGA and then you need AmigaOS drivers for AHCI. All of this adds a lot of expense and they would struggle to compete against a Gayle like PATA interface and a PATA->SATA bridge chip.