ACA 1221lc IDE Speeder

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Don't Panic. Please wash hands.

    I have a quick question


    The product page of the ACA1221lc mentions that the speedup to PIO Mode 3 is activated with a software setting. And the wiki page states that the IDE speeder is controlled using ACATool.


    However, ACAtool wiki mentions PIO Mode 3 and PIO Mode 4 can be selected with option IM=IDEMODE/K/N


    WIll PIO Mode 4 work with ACA1221lc ? If so, maybe the product page needs an update. If not, maybe the ACATune documentation needs a clarification that this will not work on the ACA1221lc


    Thank you!

    ACAtool also works for other accelerators, such as the ACA1233n, which supports PIO mode 4. The ACA1221lc will only do PIO mode 3, and only for read accesses. Writing to IDE is NOT accelerated with the ACA1221lc. Only ACA1233n and ACA1234 will also accelerate writing to IDE.

    Thanks for the clarification.


    Is the performance achieved with the IDE SPeeder in the ACA1221lc comparable to the old Idefix+express (which IIRC also enabled up to PIO Mode 3) ? Or is the implementation in the ACA1221lc better in any other respect?

    The old IDE-fix express is superior in terms of writing, as it also speeds up writing to the IDE device. For reading, I'd have to calculate if it really exhausts PIO mode 3, or if it's just a tad bit faster than mode2 and therefore had to be called PIO mode 3.


    The ACA1221lc is a good bit faster on reads, as IDE-fix express still had to run on the 14MHz bus of the A1200 main board. The ACA1221lc will gain more IDE speed with higher CPU clock, so if you have a power supply that is stable enough for the ACA1221lc to reach 40MHz, your IDE speed will fly, outperforming other, way more expensive Fast-IDE solutions.

    Thank you for the precise and detailed explanation, it's now much clearer to me.


    Ones last thing I'd like to ask is about the benefits of combining IDEfix express with the IDE speeder.


    According to the tests shown on the ACA1234_registers wiki, both seem to be complementary and using them together achieves the best result. (if I interpreted the wiki correctly, the "IDEfix" column in the table should refer to "IDEfix+express")


    Could you outline the reason why, and if this behaviour is also expected on the ACA1221lc?


    Thank you!

    Quote from jdieguez

    According to the tests shown on the ACA1234_registers wiki, both seem to be complementary and using them together achieves the best result. (if I interpreted the wiki correctly, the "IDEfix" column in the table should refer to "IDEfix+express")

    That's a misunderstanding - the "IDE-fix" portion is just the software, not the old "express" hardware. The old express hardware and the new IDE speeders may NOT be combined. Also, the latest scsi.device from OS3.1.4 and OS3.2 are also nicely speed-optimized, making the old IDE-fix software package obsolete.

    So yes, a speedup is to be expected if you plan to run only OS3.1 - then, the old IDE-fix software package will give a speed increase. However, my personal recommendation would be OS3.2 or at least OS 3.1.4, as that scsi.device has experienced quite some bug fixing and is definitely an improvement over IDE-fix/IDE-max.

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