Falcon with SD FB HXC Rev F / 14MB RAM

[stust]

Hi, my Falcon was laying around for years with broken floppy drive and a broken internal harddisk collecting dust.
Now I'd like to pimp it up a bit and make it usable, so I took up this old project to find a reasonable way with todays available technology...

So far I've got the SD FB - HXC Rev F from Lotharek and a 32GB SDHC Sandisk 80MB/s, which I would like to have where the floppy drive was.
The hardware installation is no problem for me, but then software-wise: how would I get this setup to work?

I'm aiming to have a Falcon which only uses this SD card as a disk and ideal would be, if the card can be filled with stuff downloaded from my Mac.

I'm wondering if there is a way to get it to work at all with only the SD card and a PC/Mac and without the help of a floppy drive or the internal hard drive, any suggestion? Is it possible at all?

Another thing I'm wondering is: Where to get 14MB of RAM nowadays for this thing, it only has 4 installed.

[alexh]

I have a HXC Rev F but I never considered putting it in a Falcon030, because they have an integrated 2.5" 44-pin IDE interface and almost all tools/games can be installed to HDD I got an IDE->SD card adapter and pre-installed all my games/demos/tools/OS using a PC.

I would strongly suggest ditching / putting aside the HXC Rev F and getting a 44-pin IDE->SD adapter

https://www.dx.com/p/sd-memory-card-to- ... 7NVh3v0lEZ

Several people make/made Atari Falcon 030 14Mb RAM cards.

https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/atari/last/storenew/#0086

[stust]

thanks for the hint alexh, seems like a very cheap alternative

for the transfer, how did you solute that? (i guess you have to make a slit somewhere in the falcon).

still i would not know how to format the card to make it accecable on both atari and fat

so the HXC Rev F i could use for an ST then rather? that maybe a good idea.

any alternatives out there for the 14MB RAM?

[Orion_]

First of all, the HxC is a floppy emulator, so it won't be able to act as a harddrive (you have an utility program that can do that, but it's very slow and limited, and cannot act as a file exchange from PC), and it is pointless to have a fast SD card, because the floppy drive is slow.

Now on the harddrive part, you can get a compact flash card to IDE adapter, or an SD card to IDE adapter (never tried this one), but from what I understand, you cannot have the boot drive readable by your PC computer.
It's what everyone wants, a single SD/CF card that can be bootable on the Falcon and readable on the PC, but I never managed to get that working, and I have been told it's not achievable.
You can only have 2 drives, one bootable on the Falcon (but not readable on the PC), and one both readable on the Falcon and the PC, but not bootable.
So, either 2 SD/CF card, one bootable, and one for exchanging data. You will need one of the latest version of HDDriver to do that.

[stust]

Thanks for clarification orion_
Luckily and thanks to the help from CiH i have that 2 disk system working on my STE...

Then how about the SD Memory Card to IDE 43-PIN Hard Disk Adapter inside the machine and the SD FB HXC Rev F floppy emulator where the floppy drive is, for transfer. That to me seems a cool solution to go for.

In order to get this working on the driver side, is there a manual online how to format what and in what order?
Without a floppy I maybe lost?

[stust]

Thanks for clarification orion_
Then how about the SD Memory Card to IDE 43-PIN Hard Disk Adapter inside the machine and the SD FB HXC Rev F floppy emulator where the floppy drive is, for transfer. That to me seems a cool solution to go for.

I guess that's not possible because:

First of all, the HxC is a floppy emulator, so it won't be able to act as a harddrive (you have an utility program that can do that, but it's very slow and limited, and cannot act as a file exchange from PC), and it is pointless to have a fast SD card, because the floppy drive is slow.

Then I'm wondering if it's possible to have 2 SD cards without an external device at all, or how would you do this on the Falcon:

So, either 2 SD/CF card, one bootable, and one for exchanging data. You will need one of the latest version of HDDriver to do that.

On the STE I have that solved externaly and it works perfectly fine. Can the Falcon have 2 card readers on the IDE?

[alexh]

From what I understand, you cannot have the boot drive readable by your PC computer. It's what everyone wants, a single SD/CF card that can be bootable on the Falcon and readable on the PC, but I never managed to get that working, and I have been told it's not achievable.

I only have one drive. I plug mine into my PC and then use drimus by ppera

http://atari.8bitchip.info/drimus.php

Not quite as flexible as directly useable in windows but file transfer is fast and intuitive.

[Orion_]

I didn't know this tool ! Thanks for sharing !
That can solve lots of problems

[stust]

I would strongly suggest ditching / putting aside the HXC Rev F and getting a 44-pin IDE->SD adapter

https://www.dx.com/p/sd-memory-card-to- ... 7NVh3v0lEZ

Would it be possible to hook up 2 of these on the Falcons IDE, one formated as internal, one for file exchange fat etc?
Has anyone tried that yet?

[KLund1]

This is the best way I have come up with for doing 2 IDE drives on a falcon. See pictures
My boot drive is the CF card. with a IDE to CF adapter on one channel and a SD adapter mounted so it fits out the back of the case on the 2nd channel.
Somethings to look out for:
Not all CF cards are the same. It took me quite a while to find this card. It works great, and it can still be found online for sale in 4,8,16gb. I have several partitions on it. (Boot 1, Boot2, apps, games, utilities, Mics, data)
The SD card adapter needs to be oriented the correct way. The IDE pins have to be opposite the SD card slot. not 90' like many on sale today. Or you will have to fold the ribbon cable 90' and then that may create a spacing problem with height in the case.
Also there are SD card adapters that have slow interfaces, ie slow reads/writes. There is a thread in here that details this.
Also be sure that both adapters have master/slave jumpers.
The SD card can be formatted in FAT or a combo ST/PC format that HDDriver can easily. do. I highly suggest HDDriver well worth the price. There are free versions of older drivers also online, but not recommended. (XAHDI, ICD)
I was able to fit all of mine on and around the stock HD holder. I had to drill a couple new holes.
Then there is the COSMOSEX that gets around all of this. But a bit expensive, and not always available for sale.
Good Luck!!

[stust]

@KLund1 yeah that's really cool!
i'm looking for a solution like that, except that i will place the SD in the floppy drive area, because the drive is broken anyway and replacing it seems pointless to me in 2018.

i checked the COSMOSEX and i like everything about it except that it's more pricey and probably won't fit inside the falcon.
i'd like to have everything fit in there. should be no problem with a longer ide cable

what i don't understand yet is why you would need a compact flash?
isn't it possible to have 2 SDs?

speaking of that i can't find a jumper on that one:
https://www.dx.com/p/sd-memory-card-to- ... 7NVh3v0lEZ
so then i'd probably need another one?

since i have an hxc sd floppy emulator laying around already, i still hope to use that plus the sd - ide thing.

[joska]

still i would not know how to format the card to make it accecable on both atari and fat

I have IDE->SD adapters in most of my Ataris, and I use Hatari if I need to access the card on my PC. Then I can copy to/from the card using the desktop and Hatari's host filesystem feature.

The same approach works well with floppy images too.

I have a HXC Rev F but I never considered putting it in a Falcon030, because they have an integrated 2.5" 44-pin IDE interface and almost all tools/games can be installed to HDD I got an IDE->SD card adapter and pre-installed all my games/demos/tools/OS using a PC.

I agree, there is limited use for a floppy emulator on a Falcon. Unlike the ST there's virtually no software that does not work from harddrive instead, and a lot of demos (and some games) even *requires* a harddrive.

I use PARCP-USB to transfer stuff between my Falcon and PC. Very quick and easy, and it works everywhere.