Atari Falcon IDE to CF

[joska]

This may be true, but not all CF cards are the same. I went though about 10 CF cards before I found one that HDDriver 8.x liked in my Falcon many years ago.

Absolutely correct, and which is why debugging an IDE-port in unknown state with a CF-card you don't know works with a driver you haven't tested with the CF-card in question on a working machine is not a good idea If something doesn't work (OP was lucky with his card here!) you just don't know where the problem is - CF-card that does not work with Falcon hardware, a driver that does not work with this CF-card or (in this case) a suspected broken IDE-port.

Personally I've given up CF-cards years ago. The only Atari I have now with a CF-card is my Milan, but the Milan has a different IDE port and is much more forgiving. I'm using IDE->SD adapters in all other IDE-equipped Ataris (and other retro machines).

[KLund1]

Thanks.
Yes I would do only SD if I had to do it over again. What I have works, so I'll just let it alone. Besides CF's are rising in price for some crazy reason.

[atarian90]

When dealing with old Ataris and other classic computers, I would usually stick with name-brand CF or SD cards such as Kingston, Sandisk, Lexar, Viking, etc. I have a Kingston 4GB CF card in each of my two Falcons and they worked perfectly on the first try.

[tommo]

I had a cf that i thought worked, but sometimes parts of the file where shifted 1or 2 bytes away.

The test i did is:
-copy a large file from pc to cf.
-copy this file on falcon to same cf
-compare on pc both files with hexeditor

3 new kingston 8GB all work. And a sandisk 512mb i use as transfer disk.

cf that did not work for me:
dane-elec 64mb
lexar 16mb, 2gb
leadisk 8gb
sandisk 2gb, 2gb, 1gb

The second cf i use as a floppy.
But it remains a harddisk for the falcon. so when i remove or insert a card the falcon is off.
It is screwed though its 2 holes to the metal case that can be removed from the floppydrive.
It sticks out for easy removal.

[neanderthal]

I had a cf that i thought worked, but sometimes parts of the file where shifted 1or 2 bytes away.

The test i did is:
-copy a large file from pc to cf.
-copy this file on falcon to same cf
-compare on pc both files with hexeditor

Ah there is the the thing,2 different architectures..Big endian and little endian systems..68k style(like falcon) is bigendian and most 'PC'
machines are little endian.

I tend to back up my CF hard-drives on a pc(raw copy),so when looking at the absolute first word(16 bits) of the boot-sector on the pc I get something like 0x0460..
When looking at the same sector on the falcy I see 0x6004(just realized how tricky that is in comparison to pc *nixy machines)

However,when doing the same thing with say a floppy,one sees the same thing like 0x6048 on both machines..weird eh?..Has todo with how the thing is accessed..8bit or 16bit..Coding wise there are lots of software dealing with those issues,which at times can be real tricky when dealing with stacks and so forth.
btw,ISA/IDE/ATA old style is 16 bit-bus,hence the byte-swapping between archs

[wongck]

Are you using the HDDriver TOS/DOS compatible format on your CF ?
I used that without any issues.

[joska]

I had a cf that i thought worked, but sometimes parts of the file where shifted 1or 2 bytes away.

Exactly how is "parts of the file shifted 1 or 2 bytes"? Are there missing bytes, duplicate bytes, swapped words? Which file is correct compared to the original? And which harddisk-driver are you using, and how is the CF-card partitioned?

Ah there is the the thing,2 different architectures..

That would affect the entire disk, not just parts of the file.

[tommo]

Exactly how is "parts of the file shifted 1 or 2 bytes"? Are there missing bytes, duplicate bytes, swapped words? Which file is correct compared to the original? And which harddisk-driver are you using, and how is the CF-card partitioned?
.

Hi Joska,

A shifted block zeros filled in the front, missing the last part.
2 or 3 blocks (20-100byte ?) in a large file.(i think 100/200mb) Not swaped just moved 1 or 2 bytes furter.

The file written to the card by the pc was correct read from the pc
the same file copied (by the falcon) to the same disk had the moved blocks.

Used HD driver 10.11 i think.

Cards where all setup/partitioned with hddriver tools as dos/tos (max 512mb on bigger cards)
to be able to extange files to and from pc.

Did not try to understand why, just tested for cards that worked.
Small files often where good, so in the begining i thought i had a good card, think it was the 64mb one.

Hexedititor has a simple command to compare two files and if you want write the changes found.

[joska]

A shifted block zeros filled in the front, missing the last part.
2 or 3 blocks (20-100byte ?) in a large file.(i think 100/200mb) Not swaped just moved 1 or 2 bytes furter.

Yes, it does sound like your Falcon does not like this CF-card much. You could do the same tests with a real IDE-device if you have one (harddrive, IDE->SD adapter, Zip-drive...) to make sure that it's not a driver-problem (not likely) or a hardware-problem with your Falcon.

[wongck]

If you use Mint, just use FAT32. I think that's better.