ScuzzBlog: Diaries December 2019
Entry 22nd December 2019: Post 01: Amiga 1200 - Elbox FastATA99.
Amiga 1200 - Elbox FastATA99.
Back to the A1200 'tower era' which I kinda associate with the post
Escom debacle when a lot of disgruntled Amiga enthusiasts, unhappy
at the lack of progress in furthering the platform, started to hack
their beloved Amiga 1200s into towers in the hope they could keep
pace with the changing world of computers generally. Part of this
process involved using faster hard drives, CD-ROMs, PC mice and
external keyboards, flicker fixers and the ability to use standard
PC monitors. A few companies started producing kit to enable this
and one of the popular lines was the IDE controller that simply
plugged into your 1200 and gave ports for IDE drives and CD-ROMs.
The one I feature today is the ELBOX FastATA'99 controller for
the Amiga 1200, which included also the AllegroCDFS file system for
accessing CD-ROMs which I have to say I have never used. The year
99 is pretty common with IDE software what with IDEFix 99 and this
which appears to date from the same era 1998-2004.
Simply put this controller makes use of the 'FAST ATA-2/EIDE' standard.
Enhanced IDE is at present the most common standard controller for
devices like hard drives, CD-ROM drives, CD-RW drives, DVD drives etc.
The Amiga 1200 has a built-in hard disk controller in the IDE
standard. However, only the PIO 0 mode of operation has been
implemented in the Amiga 1200, which is the slowest of all PIO
modes with a maximum transfer rate of about 3 MB/s.
This controller permits an additional 4 devices and gives PIO 3 and
PIO 4 modes. With the controller comes the AllegroCDFS which is
claimed to be the fastest Amiga CD File System. The controller has
the benefit of being able to be installed in a tower or stock A1200.
To install the controller you remove the A1200 ROM chips then plug
the controller into the A1200's ROM sockets. Install the ROMs onto
the controller and then plug the square connector onto the Gayle
chip. The wire is then connected to pin 39 of the IDE connector to
the 1200.
Amiga 1200 - Elbox FastATA99.
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