This is very simple
interface, with only 3 chips - good even for DIY (Do it yourself)
. Supports 1-2
CF cards as Master & Slave. Features:
Works with Atari ST, STE, Mega STE and TT machines. Usable CF
cards: newer ones, which support faster transfer modes. Recommended is
Sandisk Ultra - with it some unseen speeds on ACSI port are possible.
Update in June 2018 : It
seems that nobody had success with PCB design for this. Some people
built it same as me - using wires, and it works well according to
feedback. PCB is problematic mostly with newer, very fast cards. And
the reason is interfacing of fast CMOS and slower TTL type logic. Then
very fast rise and fall of signals from CF cards, what needs
careful wiring. And it is not only this adapter what has problems. From
my 4 USB card readers, which have CF socket, only 1 can work with 16 GB
sandisk CF card. And even that sometimes just detects it not. Other 3
not at all. And some are bad with even 4 and 8 GB CF cards too. And are
not 10 years old - those are dead already for some years. So, this is
general problem. I started work on solving it.
Will try without adding much components - with different design of PCB
solution. One of the problems is that is simply not possible to make
straight line design, without interleaves on 2 sided PCB.
Which cards can work in fast mode ? It is now clear that only Sandisk
is it. Luckily, that firm is still active, and probably most active
from all in CF manufacturing. Surely not cheapest, but quality has it's
price. Little lower are some deails about concrete reason.
Atari ST ACSI port can much more than Atari claimed (in AHDI
DOCs) : almost 2 MB/sec ! With this simple adapter, so high
speed is possible only with some CF cards. Knowing so far: Sandisk
Ultra is such. Requirement is that CF card support 8-bit transfers in
Multiword DMA mode. Slave card, 1GB Kingston supports it not, so
adapter uses it in single-byte mode - what means transfer speed of some
350 KB/sec. Still not too bad - may be good for some copiing. See video
...
This card
rocks ! Bought 3 years ago for 40 Euros, now price is about 20 . 2 GB
is in fact enough for all Atari needs, especially if you keep your
valuable data on PC, DVDs, and can easy and fast copy to CF
card what
want to use in next period.
Interface
requires proprietary (custom) drivers - works not with
regular drivers
for Atari hard disks. Driver is ready for Compact Flash cards - DL
below .
Driver/partitioning features: TOS/DOS compatible partitions, 14
maximum per media. No first partition special size limit. All
partitions can be up to 512 MB ( TOS 1.04 and higher) . It means very
easy data transfer with some PC - no need for special SW to access
files. Low RAM usage. 100% ASM code.
Autoboot: This is
not possible for this adapter, unless doing some changes in TOS ROM.
Mod for TOS 1.04 and 2.06 will be published soon.
Usage: no need to open machine - while it is not turned on just connect
adapter to ACSI port, insert CF card and ensure power to adapter. Then
may turn on power on ST(E) . Best is to load driver from AUTO folder of
floppy.
Work with other ACSI devices: I made quick tests with ICD AdSCSI
Plus ST, UltraSatan and Mega STE with internal adapter. Pass
through of ICD worked not, so I made
splitter - then can connect 2 devices parallel. ACSI-CF adapter is made
so that 'uses' IDs 4-7, so other devices must be in range 0-3.
The results are not perfect, but it seems that can be used. I tested
with hard case: 2 CF cards at once + ICD or US.
With ICD DMA transfer worked not, only bytewise, while with US was
opposite . Interesting... But bytewise worked not because of Kingston -
with Sandisk it worked too. With Mega STE everything was perfect - all
drives/cards worked well. In any case, such combinations are
not
for regular usage, only for some file transfers. And it worked.
Big mess on desk with SCSI drive - and there is even PS not visible
here ...
Little better with UltraSatan. Running EPIC from CF card, after copying
it from US.
Component list: 19 pin
Sub-D, male. If want to use together with other ACSI devices,
need + 2 x 19-pin Sub-D female + another male for splitter. It is
hard to find such Sub-D connectors - I needed to saw 25-pin ones. GAL 16V8, 74HCT574,
74HCT221, 2 x BAT49 or similar schottky diode (but 1N4148 will work too
in case). 1 LED for activity, some resistors and capacitors. CF
socket(s) ( or IDE connector + IDE-CF adapter ). PCB . Some cable .
Power: you need to supply stabilised, accurate 5V (+-5%) to
IF . Simplest is to take it from Atari self .
Driver SW runnable driver for Sandisk
master in DMA mode, and optional slave in PIO mode . For ST, STE,
MSTE, TT .
Needs PP TOS/DOS compatible, partitioned media : TOS/DOS compatible images
Plans for near future: adding autoboot support in ROM TOS versions. Improving driver SW.
IDE/ATA disk interface for Atari ST(E) Cartridge
port:
Benefits:
No need to open machine, just plug interface and use it.
No driver installation needed - driver is in ROM of interface
No need for external power supply if using CF cards or 2.5
inch drive
Extremely fast, thanks for some tricky solutions
Work with MS DOS disks at full speed, thank to
hardware H/L swap
Writing speed is over 2 MB/sec. Reading speed
may be up to shown 2350 KB/sec ! But so high speed only with optional
small mod. in ST(E) - need to cut 1 line and lead out 2 wires, then
connect them with adapter. When no mod. in machine max reading
speed is about 1400 KB/sec. So, it's on user to decide how to use and
set it.
Interface requires proprietary (custom) drivers - works not with
regular drivers
for Atari hard disks or IDE CD ROMs. Hard disk driver is ready for hard
disks/Compact Flash cards up to 2048GB (LBA48) .
Driver/partitioning features: TOS/DOS compatible partitions, 14
maximum per media. No first partition special size limit. All
partitions can be up to 512 MB ( TOS 1.04 and higher) . It means very
easy data transfer with some PC - no need for special SW to access
files. Low RAM usage. 100% ASM code.
High speed is achieved by using special data transfer
mode - where CPU is used only for addressing RAM, but not in transfer
self - I call it semi-DMA mode. Then transferring 4 bytes requires only
12 CPU cycles instead usual 20 .
Data transfer under windows XP: only first partition on removable
drives (CF cards via USB reader) will be
accessible. How to override it see here
. By regular IDE hard disks no such limit, but connecting
to PC is harder.
It works with Falcon too, in read-only mode. Reading speed
is about 2730 KB/sec (via driver) when CPU is set to 16MHz.
Autobooting
from CATA (cartridge port
IDE IF) :
Boot
is little
different than boot via regular
hard
disk ports as ACSI or AHDI IDE .
It happens before RAM test of TOS 2.06, before floppy and regular
hard disk boot.
But it changes not much whole usage. Even possible to prevent by
holding Alt after reset.
This is new driver concept: no MFP, timer (C) usage at all in
driver core. Timing goes via CPU code, after detecting rough
speed. SpeedR 8 - means 8 MHz ST speed.
Something useful for case of multiple drives/cards attached: Good utility
Hard disk driver
considerations : so high speeds as by CATA and ACSI-CF make
disk cache complete useless. Because transfer from disk is faster than
copiing from RAM to RAM. Especially with fast access CF cards. Driver
is maximal possible gaming compatible: low RAM usage, no Timer C,
any MFP reg. usage, easy movable in High RAM for adapted games.
Because there is no any benefit from using AHDI partitioning, DOS type
is supported. But with TOS/DOS compatibility for all partitions (max.
14 accessible at once, due to TOS limits). With driver goes easy to use
GUI partitioning program. For CATA and ACSI-CF must use custom drivers
- regular Atari drivers will not work. There will be only TOS/DOS
compatible variant, no DOS with BIGDOS.PRG type free variant.
Considering my work on TOS
improving - better FAT16 filesystem, there will be some changes with
partitioner and driver SW soon ...
This
project is for people with some soldering and electronical
knowledge. Unfortunatelly Atari ST machines have no internal bus
connectors (except Mega ST serie), and soldering is only way to make
some specific
hardware extensions.
This
interface will allow to connect IDE hard disks, CD ROM drives and
other Atapi compatible devices to an Atari ST(E) computer. It is
AHDI compatible, and all standard drivers should work on with it.
Additional it supports optional ROM upgrade to TOS 2.06 (what is
at address $E00000, and has 256KB size) in older (ST) machines,
which have 192KB ROM at address $FC0000 - with 4 x 27512 Eproms.
Hard
disk driver for DOS
partitioned disks
It can handle up to 14 FAT16-BigDOS partitions from drives of capacity
to 128GB. Needs freeware program BigDOS for work. Max part. size is
2GB. Only for IDE interfaces. Falcon compatible.
Speed with twisted cable:
Note: access time is so good because is measured only inside 1
partition. Bigdos homesite
Image runner - Run games from ST, MSA images
on real
Atari ST, without writing floppies.
Hard disk speed
test - GUI program with direct HW access testings for diverse
interfaces, with speed tests via installed driver + reliability tests.
It can measure even CPU slowdown in case of ACSI transfers.
First 3 test is with direct hardware access. 'D' is for comparing
installed hard disk driver's speed with direct access speed. If driver
is not installed, it will show garbage.
Blitter tests work only on STE or Mega ST machines. HOG mode may crash.
Random access/read is average time of reading one random sector at any
position on whole disk with direct access (R test). T test is for
same, but on C: partition only, via installed driver. It may be faster
if partition not occupies whole disk, otherwise is little slower.
By Flash drives, as on pic left average access time is very fast - no
mechanic.
Of course all tests are made with interface made by this project.
40 GB Maxtor drive
results. 60MB WD Tidbit 2.5 inch
drive. ST is too fast for it...
Hard disk speed
test version without direct hardware access - so
it will work with any interface. Needs of course installed hard disk
driver. May select which partition to test:
Test is made with same Transcend IDE-Flash drive as above. Lower data
rate is result of different hard disk driver - but access time is
little better.
Atapi
CD/DVD read
speed: Of course, interface allows attachment of CD/DVD readers.
This is measured with new, fast DVD drive. But datarate is very low.
Reason is required byte-swap, because standard CDs, DVDs have Intel
byte order.
This is same drive, but measured with direct read wihout byte-swap.
Speed is as by newer hard disks.Big speed will be required for smooth
video playback - see below.
Note that random
read time
depends on how much disk is
full. First test is with CD only 1/3 filled. Second is with full DVD.
Capacity will be shown correct only by data DVDs, not DVD videos. The program : CD/DVD ROM speed meter
Seltos.prg - Manages
usage of ROM-TOS 1.00, 1.04 and 2.06 on any ST
machine without EPROM change or reprogramming.
idepc.htm
- Hard disk driver for Atari with this
interface, but for PC format partitions.
Copyright: P. Putnik
Last revised: June
2018
Send
mail - Before it enter name
of animal on small picture (antispam):
This card
rocks ! Bought 3 years ago for 40 Euros, now price is about 20 . 2 GB
is in fact enough for all Atari needs, especially if you keep your
valuable data on PC, DVDs, and can easy and fast copy to CF
card what
want to use in next period.
Speed with twisted cable:
40 GB Maxtor drive
results.
60MB WD Tidbit 2.5 inch
drive. ST is too fast for it...
