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Icedrake 40-pin IDE Question

Joacim Magnusson

Posts 3
03 Oct 2022 14:44


Hello,

I've been trying to get a CD ROM drive to work with the big 40-pin IDE header of the IceDrake with no luck. I've also tried to connect a few different (known good) IDE hard drives, and tried several known good IDE cables, to rule out issues with the devices themselves. The Icedrake detects nothing no matter what I try. I have set them as master (also tried slave and CS to no avail).

I have tried it in ApolloOS and AmigaOS 3.1 and 3.2.1.

At this point I'm unsure of whether this is a software or a hardware issue. So my main question is; is there some way to diagnose the 40-pin IDE header to rule out a hardware problem? Like a CLI tool or something that I can run to see if the secondary IDE controller even responds, or something to that effect.

I should add that the smaller 44-pin header works fine with a CF-card adapter attached.

If someone else has been able to use the 40-pin IDE, I'd love to get some details on your setup!


Roy Gillotti

Posts 517
03 Oct 2022 15:54


How are you powering these drives? I know that the internal sources on the Amiga can be a limiting factor of powering these old rotating drives. External power supplies may be needed.


Joacim Magnusson

Posts 3
03 Oct 2022 16:02


Oh yeah, should have added that the system sits in a ELBOX power tower, so both the drive and the A1200 motherboard (to which the Icedrake is attached) is powered from an AT power supply.


Alexander Gent

Posts 75
04 Oct 2022 12:43


A few questions Joacim,
     
1) Have you checked the jumper settings on your IDE drive?
Most IDE CD/DVD Rom drives have a jumper setting on the rear of the drive for MASTER, SLAVE & CABLE SELECT.
     
2) Have you created a mount list for your drive?
CD/DVD Driver package can be downloaded from EXTERNAL LINK
 
This mount list file is called CD0 located in devs:dosdrivers
Example...
/* CDVDFS filesystem V1.3 */
     
      FileSystem    = L:cdrom-handler
      Stacksize      = 10000
      Priority      = 5
      GlobVec        = -1
      ForceLoad      = 1
      Mount          = 1
      Device        = scsi.device
      Unit          = 1
      LowCyl        = 0
      HighCyl        = 0
      Surfaces      = 1
      BlocksPerTrack = 1
      Buffers        = 5
      BufMemType    = 0
      DosType        = 0x43444653
      Control        = "R J ML"



Joacim Magnusson

Posts 3
09 Oct 2022 17:29


Thank you for your detailed response, and apologies for not responding in a few days. I temporarily bricked my Icedrake while updating the core, and had to wait for a USB blaster to arrive :)

I do have the drive set to master, and CD ROM drivers are installed. I think it's a different driver than the one you link to though. But even if the mount list was wrong, would the drive not be visible in HDToolBox? Nothing showed up there either... Same when I tried a IDE harddrive instead of the CD ROM drive.

Anyway, with the latest core installed the machine will not even boot with the CD ROM drive attached, so I've decided to let this go for now. I've realized that the IceDrake is a better fit for my regular wedge A1200 anyway. Maybe I'll use the Power Tower to explore the Mediator PCI instead at some point :)

Thanks for the help and suggestions in any case!

posts 5