Hello,
I was wondering if anyone can help. I have purchased a compact flash to SD adapter with my ACA 500 Plus.
The ACA is plugged into a Rev 6 Amiga 500, and is on firmware 0.127.
The FlashAir seems to work fine if I use it on a modern system but I was hoping to use this in the auxiliary CF slot so I could transfer files wirelessly. The card works fine in this capacity on anything, and I can transfer files via WiFi and WebDAV fine, even when plugged into the ACA card. But it's getting the Amiga+ACA to see the card as a normal mass storage device (reading and writing).
I have also tried with an old 1GB SD card and various 32GB SanDisk SD cards, the same problems which leads me to think it might be the CF to SD adapter, but I have got it working in a fashion on the Boot CF slot (see end.)
This is the adapter I have: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Qumox-Compact-Memory-Adapter-Reader/dp/B019REDBY6/
If you plug in just the SD to CF adapter in CFAUX you get CFAUX:NDOS on Workbench.
On boot with the CF->SD in CFAUX with either the 16gb FlashAir or any of the other SD cards I have tried one of the three below happens:
- Almost all the time: On boot whether choosing 1.3 or 3.1 there is a noticeable delay booting compared to it not being in the CFAUX slot, and when finally in Workbench 3.1, nothing appears on screen for the CF card. When booting 1.3 it mostly crashes.
- Occasionally it appears as CFAUX:NDOS and then a reboot means it then works properly through reboots until the Amiga is switched off
- Very very rarely it seems to work from first power on
If you plug in the card (again with the CF->SD in CFAUX with either the 16gb FlashAir or any of the other SD cards I have tried) whilst the system is on and Workbench is on:
- Most of the time, the Amiga power light starts flickering very strangely, not like a Guru flashing but lots of activity
- Sometimes, nothing happens at all
- Rarely,, you get CFAUX:NDOS and then after a reboot it is fine and through successive reboots until the Amiga is switched off
After much tinkering, I tried the CF->SD in the Boot slot and eventually with the Fat95 filesystem and a suitable DOS Driver, so long as I issue DiskChange SD0: from CLI, the card always works and I can write files to it from the Amiga no problems at all, no strange power light activity, always works. I moved the boot Amiga compact flash card to the CFAUX slot and all partitions etc. work fine, the only thing you do get on Workbench is CFAUX:NDOS oddly.
So, any ideas why this CF->SD adapter doesn't like working in the CFAUX slot, but seems ok in the Boot slot, is it the adapter?
Are there any problems with above solution, what I have found is if you issue another Diskchange command after having written files to the card, after reboot the files are gone, I'm guessing that's down to scsi.device not expecting a diskchange whilst the disk is online or something (sorry I'm not technical enough to understand this.) Likewise if I write files over wifi+webdav to the SD card, I have to reboot the Amiga to get it to see the updated file structure (you can't go to Window menu and Update).
I just thought it was odd that no matter what SD is used in this adapter it causes the same behaviour in CFAUX, but in the boot slot it's all fine.
Hope this all makes some sense, thanks!