http://www.vesalia.de

> Slimline Drives
These slimline drives come with a CF card adapter and a 2.5" IDE cable with three connectors (one goes to the Amiga's internal IDE, one to the CF adapter, and the third connector to the optical drive. The power is also supplied over the I
thank you

Last edited by mcbone on 16-Jun-2015 at 01:43 PM.
Last edited by mcbone on 16-Jun-2015 at 01:42 PM.

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@mcbone

To buy what?

@Rob


Slimline Drives
These slimline drives come with a CF card adapter and a 2.5" IDE cable with three connectors (one goes to the Amiga's internal IDE, one to the CF adapter, and the third connector to the optical drive. The power is also supplied over the I

Last edited by mcbone on 16-Jun-2015 at 01:43 PM.

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@mcbone

My personal opinion is that optical drives are *pretty much* obsolete these days. The only exception for me is where software itself is delivered on optical media, in which case I need an optical drive to get at the data. But in that case I just use my main PC tower to make an image of it, and then store the image on my network. If I need it on my desktop Amiga 1200, I fetch it from the network and then mount the iso as a virtual drive.

Having an optical drive on the Amiga is still occasionally useful, and in a tower based system I would definitely have one (because why not) but these days the hassle required to do a good job at squeezing one inside a desktop A1200, and also the space that is taken up at the expense of other potential upgrades, is not worth it for the few occasions it proves a little bit useful.

Last edited by BrianHoskins on 16-Jun-2015 at 02:12 PM.

Just saw that this is advertised as an external enclosure device.

Hmm. Still, I personally don't like having IDE cables coming outside my A1200 to use a desktop CDROM drive.

If you think it's a good idea, then I guess this is the drive for you.

It says it has a CF card connection on it (although I can't see this in the image?) which is pretty useful to be honest because it solves the problem of having to remove the desktop cover every time you want to exchange CF cards. Exchanging CF cards is generally pretty rare, but it does happen from time to time and each time you do it you're wearing out the plastic threads (terrible idea) for the screws that little bit.

Of course, the CF card problem on its own can be solved in other ways, without the need for an external optical drive. And I still say optical drives are much less relevant now than they used to be.

I suppose my advice is; if you definitely want an external optical drive for your A1200, and you have the IDE interface for it at your A1200 end (e.g. Powerflyer or other solution), then this seems as good a bet as any.

Last edited by BrianHoskins on 16-Jun-2015 at 02:23 PM.

@mcbone

OK. I see now. As Brian said it depends on how much you'd use CDs with your Amiga.

You probably know already but it's always worth mentioning that quite a few people have fitted the slimline drives internally in the A1200 and even A600.

@BrianHoskins

If optical drives are obsolete, how the heck do you read optical media? While a DVD±R can only be written once, it does have a pretty small cost so it's not an issue. It's a mighty handy way of taking a backup or transferring a lot of data from point A to point B.

Also, a CF (or any other flash based media) card as a system disk in an Amiga is inherently not safe, a CF card will do wear levelling whenever it feels like it and an Amiga will be shut off without any regard for file system state. That's about as unsafe as it gets.

Last edited by olegil on 16-Jun-2015 at 03:17 PM.

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@BrianHoskins

Quote:

My personal opinion is that optical drives are *pretty much* obsolete these days.

Tell that to my 600+ CD collection

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@olegil

Thier no moving part cf card

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@olegil

Quote:

olegil wrote: @BrianHoskins If optical drives are obsolete, how the heck do you read optical media? While a DVD±R can only be written once, it does have a pretty small cost so it's not an issue. It's a mighty handy way of taking a backup or transferring a lot of data from point A to point B. Also, a CF (or any other flash based media) card as a system disk in an Amiga is inherently not safe, a CF card will do wear levelling whenever it feels like it and an Amiga will be shut off without any regard for file system state. That's about as unsafe as it gets.

I don't mean that the medium is totally dead and useless, just that it's much less relevant these days than it used to be, to the extent that now I believe that the hassles surrounding CDROM use on a desktop Amiga (especially internal installs) outweigh the benefits.

I still use CDROM based media on my A1200 desktop, but I tend to make use of network based disk images which I then mount as a virtual drive.

Of course, you still need a machine that can do the imaging in the first place; which is why I accept that the media is not totally dead. But it's far more convenient to do the CD stuff on a towered machine than it is to cock about with a CDROM drive hanging out of a desktop A1200 or stuffed inside where it takes up too much space and causes problems for other more important upgrades.

Just my opinion of course; I accept that others may value a CDROM drive on their desktop more than I do.

@Trixie

Quote:

Trixie wrote: @BrianHoskins Quote: My personal opinion is that optical drives are *pretty much* obsolete these days. Tell that to my 600+ CD collection

Haha- I also have an extensive CD collection, which is still growing. As an archive media it's a good solution for sure. Even audio CDs; there's something about owning an actual CD, with a professional printed cover, which you don't get with an mp3 download, even though in practice most people use the MP3 (or other convenient digital format) version of their media more than the actual CD.

So I accept that CDs are here to stay. But I think it's less of a necessity now to have one in a desktop A1200, and the hassles outweigh the benefits for the reasons I've described.

Last edited by BrianHoskins on 16-Jun-2015 at 04:24 PM.

@mcbone

Quote:

Thier no moving part cf card

Resetting the computer while a write is taking place will still corrupt the disc contents like it would with a hard disc.

Solid state drives also have a finite amount of times each memory cell can be written to.

Olegil was talking about wear levelling which is where the CF card, from time to time, moves data that doesn't often change in order to make sure that wear is roughly equal across all memory cells. The wear levelling is handled automatically by the CF card so the user may not be aware that a write is taking place when they reset the system.

@olegil

Is there way for the OS to detect when wear levelling may be taking place? If it can that would be a great use for Ringhio, especially considering that an OS3 compatible version is planned.

@Rob

Quote:

Rob wrote: Resetting the computer while a write is taking place will still corrupt the disc contents like it would with a hard disc. Solid state drives also have a finite amount of times each memory cell can be written to. Olegil was talking about wear levelling which is where the CF card, from time to time, moves data that doesn't often change in order to make sure that wear is roughly equal across all memory cells. The wear levelling is handled automatically by the CF card so the user may not be aware that a write is taking place when they reset the system.

The CF card firmware also has the ability to flag certain areas as "bad" so that it doesn't use them for storing data, and all of this is handled automatically too. But there are certain "gotchas" involving the way we use the media that can significantly impede this process.

The wear levelling is to try and avoid frequent data usage in one area of the memory which causes a memory area to become bad more quickly, as you pointed out.

@thread:

There are definitely problems with CF card media which make for interesting reading. But these problems are a separate topic because nobody is claiming that CF cards are a replacement for CD media. The two media have different goals. I only mentioned CF cards at all because the CD drive being advertised seems to have the option of a CF card port which is advantageous and a plus point for buying it over other drives. If you're going to have a CD drive hanging out of your desktop Amiga, may as well have it as convenient as possible.

Last edited by BrianHoskins on 16-Jun-2015 at 04:41 PM.

@mcbone

I bought one of those last week from Vesalia. It is in its way now. As I have a BPPC in my A1200 and a 8cm fan under the 040 I'm building a base to mount the fan and plan to have the cdrom also mounted under it.

I'll post some pictures when it is done.

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@emeck

thank you i look forward seeing it

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@BrianHoskins

the cf is internal, while cd is external. I'm just warning people of the inheret danger in using flash based media on an os that doesn't support safe shutdown. you just don't know when the flash is being written, unlike with a harddrive. since amigans hate good shutdown practice, amigans should stick to rotating media. ssd's are even worse, as there you do this from the os and we don't have that afaik.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil
Quote:

olegil wrote: @BrianHoskins I'm just warning people of the inheret danger in using flash based media on an os that doesn't support safe shutdown.

Yep agreed, I wasn't trying to diminish the validity of your comment - it's good information.

That said, though, I don't know if I agree that the problems with use of CF cards on the Amiga are specific to AmigaOS and unsafe shutdowns.

Consider, for example, a Windows system which is set up on a CF card. Since the internal management of the data on the CF card is totally separate to the OS, how does Windows mitigate these issues? The safe shutdown would prevent the issue of new data being written to the card when the power is being switched off, but it wouldn't help prevent the issue of the CF card deciding to do data management on existing data because the CF card doesn't know that the OS is shutting down.

Of course, there is the additional problem of unsafe shutdowns on the Amiga but that's the same if you're using a regular hard drive as well. Most of us get into the habit of monitoring the HD LED and trying to switch the power off when the LED is not illuminated - far from perfect for sure.

@BrianHoskins

I think you can tell a CF or SD that now it's time to go to sleep, so it should be possible to do a safe shutdown.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

Quote:

olegil wrote: @BrianHoskins I think you can tell a CF or SD that now it's time to go to sleep, so it should be possible to do a safe shutdown.

Yeah that makes sense. So you just need the OS support, as you said before.