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Compatible SD / CF media for Ultimate cart, Incognito & SIDE


Kyle22

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I have both a Kingston and a Transcend card in my collection. So I was running some tests on each today while also testing a new beta version of the U1MB BIOS and discovered something interesting with the Kingston card. First of all, partitioning and subsequent formatting is not reliable. Secondly ATRs hang when launched from the Loader, although they do show up fine either individually or in folders, they just don't want to run. Surprisingly XEXs work just fine whether in the root directory, or when nested within folders. So maybe I'll make this a gaming card.

The Transcend card so far looks good no matter how I use it, although it can be stubborn to refresh after hot plugging it. A good test would be to stream some video from it and see if it chokes on that.

All of my tests are being run on a 1088XLD.

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I found it sometimes helps to reformat the card to the same fat system as my 'reliable' sd cards...sometimes the default system of a particular brand or size card doesn't act well with whatever device. the speed of the card comes into play as well...

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I found it sometimes helps to reformat the card to the same fat system as my 'reliable' sd cards...sometimes the default system of a particular brand or size card doesn't act well with whatever device. the speed of the card comes into play as well...

The Transcend x133 cards are completely unreliable for Side2 use even with this method. I tried everything: formatting again, delete and recreate partition, even clean from diskpart.

So, best to avoid if are to be used on Side2...

Edited by dimfil
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Necrobump.

 

Will this Sandisk Ultra 16 gb CompactFlash card work with the SIDE2 ?

 

link to the card: -> https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Compact-Frustration-Free-Packaging-SDCFHS-016G-AFFP/dp/B00GHBBK82

 

I received one of these today and it appears that the 16GB version does NOT work in the SIDE2 cartridge. Interestingly, the 8GB version of the same card that I bought a year ago works fine in the same SIDE2 cart.

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I received one of these today and it appears that the 16GB version does NOT work in the SIDE2 cartridge. Interestingly, the 8GB version of the same card that I bought a year ago works fine in the same SIDE2 cart.

Curious.. When you say it doesn't work, does it not register at all, like when SIDE driver in SDX normally displays the name of the card on boot? Or is it just flakey.

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Curious.. When you say it doesn't work, does it not register at all, like when SIDE driver in SDX normally displays the name of the card on boot? Or is it just flakey.

 

As far as SDX is concerned, it's as if there isn't even a card inserted at all - trying to access an APT partition gives an error 138. The Ultimate 1MB SIDE Loader initially says "No partitions" - when you arrow over to the media entry in the menu, the are after "SIDE:" is blank. The 8GB version of the same label card works perfectly in SIDE2 cart, my 1088XEL (with an earlier-design version of Michael's CF-2 interface), and my new 1088XLD (with the CF-3 version of his interface).

Edited by DrVenkman
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Thanks. Probably newer CF cards no longer supporting the oldest PATA modes... (as opposed to later DMA33, UDMA66, etc...)

 

Could try reproducing this with a passive CF IDE adapter on a PC, by disabling DMA on the controller channel.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've had good luck with name-brand "industrial" CF cards in lower capacities. Look for a datasheet that specifically mentions support for True IDE, older PATA access modes / cyl-head-sector settings, and are targeted for use in old CNC controllers and industrial DOS/Win9x PC hard drive replacements.

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The industrial CF cards that I've successfully used with SiDE2 and Incognito, and a chart from Cactus Tech that outlines the differences between industrial, commercial, and consumer grade CF cards. Specifically note BOM Control and Life Cycles.

post-30371-0-80009700-1557001683.jpg post-30371-0-72763600-1557001711.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

 

I received one of these today and it appears that the 16GB version does NOT work in the SIDE2 cartridge. Interestingly, the 8GB version of the same card that I bought a year ago works fine in the same SIDE2 cart.

 

Ugh! Wish I saw this earlier. I got the exact same brand new 16GB SanDisk CompactFlash and it I can confirm that it does not work in the Side2. Why does this have to be so difficult?

 

Can someone provide a link (preferably an Amazon.com one) to a card that does work?

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I have the following CF cards that work on the SIDE2.

 

- ATP 4GB

- GBDriver (TDK) 4GB

- Sandisk 256MB (blue/red card)

- Sandisk Ultra 30MB/sec 8GB (grey/red card)

 

i noticed that using FDISK (Sdx on SIDE2) for the 1st time on the ATP card, that the initial setup of partitions was much slower writing than on the other 3 cards.

 

I tested all 4 cards for 2 weeks and they gave no errors yet. All cards are also new when I bought them.

Edited by Stormtrooper of Death
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i noticed that using FDISK (Sdx on SIDE2) for the 1st time on the ATP card, that the initial setup of partitions was much slower writing than on the other 3 cards.

This is interesting, since the throughput available on CF cards is somewhat greater than the Atari can possibly keep pace with. The only scope for variation exists in two areas:

  • Waiting for the device to become ready after issuing a sector read request, or after writing the last byte of a sector to the IDE data register
  • Retries caused by the 'DRQ' check (designed to try and catch skipped/double reads/writes)

For a speed variation to be noticeable, sector seeks or data commits to the card would have to be extremely slow, or IO errors would have to trigger numerous retries. FDISK only writes a handful of sectors to the card during the setup phase (namely: the MBR partition table sector at LBA 0, one or more APT sectors - depending on the number of Atari partitions - and one optional metadata sector per APT partition).

 

I tested all 4 cards for 2 weeks and they gave no errors yet. All cards are also new when I bought them.

 

What kind of testing have you performed? RWCRC (http://drac030.krap.pl/en-inne-pliki.php) is recommended for the evaluation of hard disk controller integrity, although there's still no easy way to know if a 'pass' was accomplished in the face of repeated IO retries. The XEX loader is a less flattering indicator of what works and what doesn't, since it lacks the retry logic of the PBI BIOS. Does the ATP card work well with the loader?

Edited by flashjazzcat
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I see. I'll have to make a test version of the PBI BIOS which includes an API so that 'DRQ check' retries can be queried in software. I think someone suggested this to me a while ago, but I forgot about it. This would provide a means of establishing whether a card which 'seems to work OK' actually encountered recoverable IO errors during the course of normal operation.

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Ugh! Wish I saw this earlier. I got the exact same brand new 16GB SanDisk CompactFlash and it I can confirm that it does not work in the Side2. Why does this have to be so difficult?

 

Can someone provide a link (preferably an Amazon.com one) to a card that does work?

Just for display:

 

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-ULTRA-Compact-Flash-Cameras/dp/B019CUVFK2

 

Of course not at that price! I bought from eBay at around 12 euros each. Working in all my retro projects flawlessly...

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Just for display: https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-ULTRA-Compact-Flash-Cameras/dp/B019CUVFK2

Of course not at that price! I bought from eBay at around 12 euros each. Working in all my retro projects flawlessly...

Just a warning - when Michael (Mytek) was designing the XEL-CF-2 and XEL-CF-3 interfaces for the 1088XEL, he evaluated a bunch of cards and found that there were a lot fake/counterfeit CF cards on eBay, unfortunately.

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I just bought my two SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s cards from Adorama. It's getting harder and harder to find compactflash cards period, let alone ones at the "slower" speeds that seem to work better in the A8 applications. They have a decent selection in their used section and decent prices, and I don't think it's nearly the crapshoot that you take with all the counterfeits on ebay. You can filter by card type and manufacturer as well.

 

Check out their selection here:

 

https://www.adorama.com/l/Used/Computers/Memory-and-Data-Storage/Memory-Cards-and-USB-Drives/Memory-Cards

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Just a warning - when Michael (Mytek) was designing the XEL-CF-2 and XEL-CF-3 interfaces for the 1088XEL, he evaluated a bunch of cards and found that there were a lot fake/counterfeit CF cards on eBay, unfortunately.

Fortunately, I was able to find some cards used from a known source in UK...
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Just a warning - when Michael (Mytek) was designing the XEL-CF-2 and XEL-CF-3 interfaces for the 1088XEL, he evaluated a bunch of cards and found that there were a lot fake/counterfeit CF cards on eBay, unfortunately.

The funny thing is... that as both the XEL-CFx hardware and software (i.e., FJC's U1MB BIOS) evolved, the 10 counterfeit 1MB SanDisk cards I had purchased off of eBay not only became usable, but are now some of my most reliable cards. Unfortunately I burned my bridge with that seller when I gave bad feedback about them not being genuine SanDisk as he was claiming :) .

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I just bought my two SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s cards from Adorama. It's getting harder and harder to find compactflash cards period, let alone ones at the "slower" speeds that seem to work better in the A8 applications. They have a decent selection in their used section and decent prices, and I don't think it's nearly the crapshoot that you take with all the counterfeits on ebay. You can filter by card type and manufacturer as well.

 

Check out their selection here:

 

https://www.adorama.com/l/Used/Computers/Memory-and-Data-Storage/Memory-Cards-and-USB-Drives/Memory-Cards

 

VERY nice!

 

Better grab as many as I can, before long gone...SD cards are basically a joke, durability-wise!

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SD cards are basically a joke, durability-wise!

 

When you guys say that, what, exactly are you referring to?

 

I've used a lot of different SD cards in a lot of different applications, and I've never had any issues with durability. Of course, I still with known quality brands like SanDisk, but I've never had any issues whatsoever in tablets, cameras, the one in my Ultimate Cart.

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