Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

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part12studios
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Re: Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

Post by part12studios »

how do i make ram 24bit in the TF? is this done somewhere on the card or in some configuration software? I can allocate certain amounts of the 64mb of ram as 24bit?

Understand I'm still building my A2000. The TF card is installed now (hear angelic voices) but I have a few other mods to arrive before I can close the box up. So right now I can't boot up anything to poke around, just wanting to educate myself on my options.

So if I understand you right, I just lose any ram addon form a given SCSI card which often came with additional ram in them, but I should be able to see the SCSI devices.
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Re: Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

Post by terriblefire »

part12studios wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:19 am how do i make ram 24bit in the TF? is this done somewhere on the card or in some configuration software? I can allocate certain amounts of the 64mb of ram as 24bit?

You cant make TF RAM 24 bit. this is the point. You need to setup your software and/or cf card to address mask to 24 bit. This is a long long topic that is covered elsewhere. None of the TF ram can be used as 24 bit.
part12studios wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:19 am
So if I understand you right, I just lose any ram addon form a given SCSI card which often came with additional ram in them, but I should be able to see the SCSI devices.
No thats incorrect. You should still have the ZII ram there. This has been tested. Its just really slow compared to the TF ram.
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part12studios
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Re: Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

Post by part12studios »

ah ok gotcha, so to use scsi you have to disable the built in 32bit ram and thus use ram found on the card or maybe on a dedicated memory board outside the TF536.
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Re: Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

Post by terriblefire »

part12studios wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:32 am ah ok gotcha, so to use scsi you have to disable the built in 32bit ram and thus use ram found on the card or maybe on a dedicated memory board outside the TF536.
No you can use the TF ram. Just not for DMA,
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part12studios
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Re: Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

Post by part12studios »

ah that's great to hear.. so what is DMA then? I mean i know it's "Direct Memory Access" but what's the tradeoff? what does DMA in this case mean in practical application?

Just slower moving data to / from the device somehow? is it that it's copying files direct from one device to another and little / no cache (the memory access?) thus creating a hardware bottleneck perhaps? I'm just speculating.

Slow data transfer is not a big deal to me (i mean i guess i should ask "how slow?") but so long as it works.

or maybe this means there's no "ram disk" access to copy files from say, a zip drive to the ram disk?
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Re: Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

Post by terriblefire »

This is a massive topic and I dont' have the time to go into it in depth. You need to mark the buffMemType as 24BitDMA somehow. There are many ways to skin that cat.
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indicates how much hurting you shall receive."
part12studios
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Re: Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

Post by part12studios »

terriblefire wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 12:06 pm This is a massive topic and I dont' have the time to go into it in depth. You need to mark the buffMemType as 24BitDMA somehow. There are many ways to skin that cat.
Ah ok gotcha, cool I'll look into it. I've got a A2091 on it's way. It has no ram on board, but I'll see if that really matters since i have plenty of ram in the TF!

Thanks!
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Re: Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

Post by GadgetUK164 »

Personally I wouldn't bother trying to add a CD-ROM drive - it's more hastle than its worth... I did get the A2091 working with the 536 but performance from PIO is so very slow it's pointless. I also tried getting a master and slave setup of IDE working with two different IDE CD-ROM drives and I couldnt get either working as master or slave with the 536 (buffered IDE). Even if I had, what would I load from CD, probably nothing - perhaps use it for audio discs... It makes more sense to put time and money into IDE to SD adapters, or convert from IDE to SATA. I think there are some ATAPI differences on lots of the more modern drives that perhaps don't help. You really want a single, dual or quad speed IDE drive for maximum chance of it working I think.

But I do get the challenge of trying to get a CD-ROM fitted inside a 2000 =D Cool if you can get it working, but will you ever use it!!!
My YouTube Channel - www.youtube.com/GadgetUK164
part12studios
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Re: Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

Post by part12studios »

yea i get what you mean about the CDROM.. mostly just thinking of fred fish disks and the video toaster cd that has all the software available..

maybe it's just folders of data i could copy to an SD card? I don't know if the toaster cd is an "installer" style disk that would really need to be read from a CDROM.. vs just copying files / folders over. I have zero experience with toaster so it's up in the air.

I do have a parallel to sd card reader on it's way so that should take care of that.
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Re: Looking to use IDE CDROM with A2000 via TF536 (doable?)

Post by terriblefire »

part12studios wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 1:07 pm yea i get what you mean about the CDROM.. mostly just thinking of fred fish disks and the video toaster cd that has all the software available..

maybe it's just folders of data i could copy to an SD card? I don't know if the toaster cd is an "installer" style disk that would really need to be read from a CDROM.. vs just copying files / folders over. I have zero experience with toaster so it's up in the air.

I do have a parallel to sd card reader on it's way so that should take care of that.
A very long time ago i ripped all my CD images to ISO and now i use CD images that way. I think there is a way to mount ISO files as drives in Amigaland but i cant remember how i did it last time. I remember one time i used a SMB mounted drive...
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