joska wrote:belzrebuth wrote:So, what could be bothering the falcon from booting with just the adapter plugged in?
Only speculating as I have not checked the actual schematics, but maybe the master/slave jumper on the adapter fools TOS into thinking that there's a device present.
It appears that the honorable ppera himself is still reading this forum, despite being banned here twice. He felt the need to comment upon my incredibly stupid and idiotic statement above on atariage:
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/285800-the-experts/To clarify my statement - to my knowledge the only way a common IDE->CF adapter differs from a straight cable is the master/slave jumpers. So if the presence of an empty adapter causes the Falcon to boot, it could *possibly* be related to this. But as I said, just speculations. The IDE->CF adapter on my desk has a Cable Select option but I don't know if that line is connected to anything in the Falcon.
And as both ektus and ppera points out, it's possible that the Falcon itself got damaged when you connected the cable incorrectly. However, it is not easy to check this with a CF-card as you really can't say where the problem lies in that case. Or does the problem also happen if you connect only the cable? In that case your cable could be damaged.
In the post on atariage ppera claims that I'm wrong about not all drivers working with CF-cards. Well, he's the one who is wrong here. If you look at e.g. HD-Driver then Uwe specifically made changes to the IDE driver to support CF-cards. Versions prior to ~2007 (IIRC, I could be wrong about the year here) did not work with CF cards. I actually upgraded HD-Driver specifically to use CF-cards in 2007. Prior versions did not detect the card correctly, and the format/partitioning tool were not able to write to it.
As for his "Then he shows how he smart is - explaining about format, mentioning ICD Tools - do they have IDE driver at all ?" statement - yes, the ICD driver supports Falcon/ST-Book IDE. I used it myself for in the mid 90's. You can safely use this driver for IDE units.
If your Falcon shows the same problem with an actual IDE drive connected it is likely that your Falcon is damaged. Or if you're lucky - the cable. Have you checked it thoroughly? Around 20 years ago a wire in my Falcon's IDE cable actually melted and shorted the cable. I can't remember exactly why it happened, but I probably hooked up the cable incorrectly. No damage to the Falcon though.
The IDE data- and address-lines are connected unbuffered to the Falcon's bus. I doubt that you have done any damaged there since the Falcon works with no IDE device connected. The IDE control lines (atleast some of them) are generated by the COMBEL, it could be damaged. However, I don't see how the presence of a passive IDE->CF adapter alone could cause the problem you describe in this case.
When you say that the Falcon does not boot with the CF-adapter installed - exactly how does it not boot? Do you get a white screen, or a black screen? If a black screen - maybe a reset problem? How is the IDE reset (pin 1 on the IDE interface) connected in the Falcon? In aftermarket IDE-interfaces for the ST the reset-line is connected to the system reset-line, so a problem here could prevent the machine from booting at all. I don't know how it works in the Falcon, but the schematics will tell.
Don't format IDE devices, and in particular not CF- and SD-cards. You only partition it, using the tools supplied with the driver. ICD tools are good, HD-Driver is good. AHDI is also a good driver. Not the fastest, but very reliable in my experience. The problem is that the format/partitioning tools are very basic.
great 
